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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But perhaps you would rather not?"

"I'm sorry--if you could manage without it, I think I would rather not."

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

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

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

"What is the heroine's name?" asked Miss Bartlett.

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

"I do hope she's nice."

That desideratum would not be omitted.

"And what is the plot?"

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

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

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

Miss Lavish gave a Machiavellian smile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We were chatting to Miss Lavish."

His brow contracted.

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

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

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

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

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

They assented.

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

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

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

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

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

"Practically."

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

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

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

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

"And you and your friend--"

"Were over at the Loggia."

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

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

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

"Willingly would I purchase--" began Miss Bartlett.

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

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

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

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

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

They were talking about the Emersons.

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

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

"Is he a journalist now?" Miss Bartlett asked.

"He is not; he made an advantageous marriage."

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

"Oh, so he has a wife."

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

"What?" cried Lucy, flushing.

"Exposure!" hissed Mr. Eager.

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

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

"Lucy, dear--" said Miss Bartlett, gently reproving her cousin's
penetration.

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

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

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

"You have said very little."

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

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

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

"How?" she retorted.

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

"Not a word, Mr. Eager--not a single word."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Drive? Oh, is our drive to come off?"

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

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

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

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

"How?"

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

"That will mean another carriage."

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't know what I think, nor what I want."

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

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

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

"And the news?" asked Miss Bartlett.

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

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

"They're nice people, the Vyses. So clever--my idea of what's really
clever. Don't you long to be in Rome?"

"I die for it!"

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

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

Miss Bartlett, with equal vivacity, replied:

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

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




It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth
all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master's horses up
the stony hill. Mr. Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of
Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany
driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on
the way, saying that she was his sister--Persephone, tall and slender
and pale, returning with the Spring to her mother's cottage, and still
shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light. To her Mr. Eager objected,
saying that here was the thin edge of the wedge, and one must guard
against imposition. But the ladies interceded, and when it had been made
clear that it was a very great favour, the goddess was allowed to mount
beside the god.

Phaethon at once slipped the left rein over her head, thus enabling
himself to drive with his arm round her waist. She did not mind.
Mr. Eager, who sat with his back to the horses, saw nothing of the
indecorous proceeding, and continued his conversation with Lucy. The
other two occupants of the carriage were old Mr. Emerson and Miss
Lavish. For a dreadful thing had happened: Mr. Beebe, without consulting
Mr. Eager, had doubled the size of the party. And though Miss Bartlett
and Miss Lavish had planned all the morning how the people were to sit,
at the critical moment when the carriages came round they lost their
heads, and Miss Lavish got in with Lucy, while Miss Bartlett, with
George Emerson and Mr. Beebe, followed on behind.

It was hard on the poor chaplain to have his partie carree thus
transformed. Tea at a Renaissance villa, if he had ever meditated it,
was now impossible. Lucy and Miss Bartlett had a certain style about
them, and Mr. Beebe, though unreliable, was a man of parts. But a shoddy
lady writer and a journalist who had murdered his wife in the sight of
God--they should enter no villa at his introduction.

Lucy, elegantly dressed in white, sat erect and nervous amid these
explosive ingredients, attentive to Mr. Eager, repressive towards Miss
Lavish, watchful of old Mr. Emerson, hitherto fortunately asleep, thanks
to a heavy lunch and the drowsy atmosphere of Spring. She looked on the
expedition as the work of Fate. But for it she would have avoided George
Emerson successfully. In an open manner he had shown that he wished to
continue their intimacy. She had refused, not because she disliked him,
but because she did not know what had happened, and suspected that he
did know. And this frightened her.

For the real event--whatever it was--had taken place, not in the Loggia,
but by the river. To behave wildly at the sight of death is pardonable.
But to discuss it afterwards, to pass from discussion into silence,
and through silence into sympathy, that is an error, not of a startled
emotion, but of the whole fabric. There was really something blameworthy
(she thought) in their joint contemplation of the shadowy stream, in the
common impulse which had turned them to the house without the passing of
a look or word. This sense of wickedness had been slight at first. She
had nearly joined the party to the Torre del Gallo. But each time that
she avoided George it became more imperative that she should avoid
him again. And now celestial irony, working through her cousin and two
clergymen, did not suffer her to leave Florence till she had made this
expedition with him through the hills.

Meanwhile Mr. Eager held her in civil converse; their little tiff was
over.

"So, Miss Honeychurch, you are travelling? As a student of art?"

"Oh, dear me, no--oh, no!"

"Perhaps as a student of human nature," interposed Miss Lavish, "like
myself?"

"Oh, no. I am here as a tourist."

"Oh, indeed," said Mr. Eager. "Are you indeed? If you will not think me
rude, we residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little--handed
about like a parcel of goods from Venice to Florence, from Florence to
Rome, living herded together in pensions or hotels, quite unconscious
of anything that is outside Baedeker, their one anxiety to get 'done'
or 'through' and go on somewhere else. The result is, they mix up towns,
rivers, palaces in one inextricable whirl. You know the American girl
in Punch who says: 'Say, poppa, what did we see at Rome?' And the father
replies: 'Why, guess Rome was the place where we saw the yaller dog.'
There's travelling for you. Ha! ha! ha!"

"I quite agree," said Miss Lavish, who had several times tried to
interrupt his mordant wit. "The narrowness and superficiality of the
Anglo-Saxon tourist is nothing less than a menace."

"Quite so. Now, the English colony at Florence, Miss Honeychurch--and it
is of considerable size, though, of course, not all equally--a few are
here for trade, for example. But the greater part are students. Lady
Helen Laverstock is at present busy over Fra Angelico. I mention her
name because we are passing her villa on the left. No, you can only see
it if you stand--no, do not stand; you will fall. She is very proud of
that thick hedge. Inside, perfect seclusion. One might have gone back
six hundred years. Some critics believe that her garden was the scene of
The Decameron, which lends it an additional interest, does it not?"

"It does indeed!" cried Miss Lavish. "Tell me, where do they place the
scene of that wonderful seventh day?"

But Mr. Eager proceeded to tell Miss Honeychurch that on the right lived
Mr. Someone Something, an American of the best type--so rare!--and that
the Somebody Elses were farther down the hill. "Doubtless you know
her monographs in the series of 'Mediaeval Byways'? He is working at
Gemistus Pletho. Sometimes as I take tea in their beautiful grounds I
hear, over the wall, the electric tram squealing up the new road with
its loads of hot, dusty, unintelligent tourists who are going to 'do'
Fiesole in an hour in order that they may say they have been there, and
I think--think--I think how little they think what lies so near them."

During this speech the two figures on the box were sporting with each
other disgracefully. Lucy had a spasm of envy. Granted that they wished
to misbehave, it was pleasant for them to be able to do so. They were
probably the only people enjoying the expedition. The carriage swept
with agonizing jolts up through the Piazza of Fiesole and into the
Settignano road.

"Piano! piano!" said Mr. Eager, elegantly waving his hand over his head.

"Va bene, signore, va bene, va bene," crooned the driver, and whipped
his horses up again.

Now Mr. Eager and Miss Lavish began to talk against each other on the
subject of Alessio Baldovinetti. Was he a cause of the Renaissance, or
was he one of its manifestations? The other carriage was left behind. As
the pace increased to a gallop the large, slumbering form of Mr. Emerson
was thrown against the chaplain with the regularity of a machine.

"Piano! piano!" said he, with a martyred look at Lucy.

An extra lurch made him turn angrily in his seat. Phaethon, who for some
time had been endeavouring to kiss Persephone, had just succeeded.

A little scene ensued, which, as Miss Bartlett said afterwards, was
most unpleasant. The horses were stopped, the lovers were ordered to
disentangle themselves, the boy was to lose his pourboire, the girl was
immediately to get down.

"She is my sister," said he, turning round on them with piteous eyes.

Mr. Eager took the trouble to tell him that he was a liar.

Phaethon hung down his head, not at the matter of the accusation, but
at its manner. At this point Mr. Emerson, whom the shock of stopping
had awoke, declared that the lovers must on no account be separated, and
patted them on the back to signify his approval. And Miss Lavish, though
unwilling to ally him, felt bound to support the cause of Bohemianism.

"Most certainly I would let them be," she cried. "But I dare say I
shall receive scant support. I have always flown in the face of the
conventions all my life. This is what I call an adventure."

"We must not submit," said Mr. Eager. "I knew he was trying it on. He is
treating us as if we were a party of Cook's tourists."

"Surely no!" said Miss Lavish, her ardour visibly decreasing.

The other carriage had drawn up behind, and sensible Mr. Beebe
called out that after this warning the couple would be sure to behave
themselves properly.

"Leave them alone," Mr. Emerson begged the chaplain, of whom he stood
in no awe. "Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the
box when it happens to sit there? To be driven by lovers--A king might
envy us, and if we part them it's more like sacrilege than anything I
know."

Here the voice of Miss Bartlett was heard saying that a crowd had begun
to collect.

Mr. Eager, who suffered from an over-fluent tongue rather than a
resolute will, was determined to make himself heard. He addressed the
driver again. Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream,
with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it from monotony.
In Mr. Eager's mouth it resembled nothing so much as an acid whistling
fountain which played ever higher and higher, and quicker and quicker,
and more and more shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click.

"Signorina!" said the man to Lucy, when the display had ceased. Why
should he appeal to Lucy?

"Signorina!" echoed Persephone in her glorious contralto. She pointed at
the other carriage. Why?

For a moment the two girls looked at each other. Then Persephone got
down from the box.

"Victory at last!" said Mr. Eager, smiting his hands together as the
carriages started again.

"It is not victory," said Mr. Emerson. "It is defeat. You have parted
two people who were happy."

Mr. Eager shut his eyes. He was obliged to sit next to Mr. Emerson, but
he would not speak to him. The old man was refreshed by sleep, and took
up the matter warmly. He commanded Lucy to agree with him; he shouted
for support to his son.

"We have tried to buy what cannot be bought with money. He has bargained
to drive us, and he is doing it. We have no rights over his soul."

Miss Lavish frowned. It is hard when a person you have classed as
typically British speaks out of his character.

"He was not driving us well," she said. "He jolted us."

"That I deny. It was as restful as sleeping. Aha! he is jolting us now.
Can you wonder? He would like to throw us out, and most certainly he is
justified. And if I were superstitious I'd be frightened of the girl,
too. It doesn't do to injure young people. Have you ever heard of
Lorenzo de Medici?"

Miss Lavish bristled.

"Most certainly I have. Do you refer to Lorenzo il Magnifico, or to
Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, or to Lorenzo surnamed Lorenzino on account of
his diminutive stature?"

"The Lord knows. Possibly he does know, for I refer to Lorenzo the poet.
He wrote a line--so I heard yesterday--which runs like this: 'Don't go
fighting against the Spring.'"

Mr. Eager could not resist the opportunity for erudition.

"Non fate guerra al Maggio," he murmured. "'War not with the May' would
render a correct meaning."

"The point is, we have warred with it. Look." He pointed to the Val
d'Arno, which was visible far below them, through the budding trees.
"Fifty miles of Spring, and we've come up to admire them. Do you suppose
there's any difference between Spring in nature and Spring in man? But
there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper,
ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both."

No one encouraged him to talk. Presently Mr. Eager gave a signal for the
carriages to stop and marshalled the party for their ramble on the hill.
A hollow like a great amphitheatre, full of terraced steps and misty
olives, now lay between them and the heights of Fiesole, and the road,
still following its curve, was about to sweep on to a promontory which
stood out in the plain. It was this promontory, uncultivated, wet,
covered with bushes and occasional trees, which had caught the fancy of
Alessio Baldovinetti nearly five hundred years before. He had ascended
it, that diligent and rather obscure master, possibly with an eye to
business, possibly for the joy of ascending. Standing there, he had seen
that view of the Val d'Arno and distant Florence, which he afterwards
had introduced not very effectively into his work. But where exactly had
he stood? That was the question which Mr. Eager hoped to solve now. And
Miss Lavish, whose nature was attracted by anything problematical, had
become equally enthusiastic.

But it is not easy to carry the pictures of Alessio Baldovinetti in your
head, even if you have remembered to look at them before starting. And
the haze in the valley increased the difficulty of the quest.

The party sprang about from tuft to tuft of grass, their anxiety to keep
together being only equalled by their desire to go different directions.
Finally they split into groups. Lucy clung to Miss Bartlett and Miss
Lavish; the Emersons returned to hold laborious converse with the
drivers; while the two clergymen, who were expected to have topics in
common, were left to each other.

The two elder ladies soon threw off the mask. In the audible whisper
that was now so familiar to Lucy they began to discuss, not Alessio
Baldovinetti, but the drive. Miss Bartlett had asked Mr. George Emerson
what his profession was, and he had answered "the railway." She was very
sorry that she had asked him. She had no idea that it would be such a
dreadful answer, or she would not have asked him. Mr. Beebe had turned
the conversation so cleverly, and she hoped that the young man was not
very much hurt at her asking him.

"The railway!" gasped Miss Lavish. "Oh, but I shall die! Of course it
was the railway!" She could not control her mirth. "He is the image of a
porter--on, on the South-Eastern."

"Eleanor, be quiet," plucking at her vivacious companion. "Hush! They'll
hear--the Emersons--"

"I can't stop. Let me go my wicked way. A porter--"

"Eleanor!"

"I'm sure it's all right," put in Lucy. "The Emersons won't hear, and
they wouldn't mind if they did."

Miss Lavish did not seem pleased at this.

"Miss Honeychurch listening!" she said rather crossly. "Pouf! Wouf! You
naughty girl! Go away!"

"Oh, Lucy, you ought to be with Mr. Eager, I'm sure."

"I can't find them now, and I don't want to either."

"Mr. Eager will be offended. It is your party."

"Please, I'd rather stop here with you."

"No, I agree," said Miss Lavish. "It's like a school feast; the boys
have got separated from the girls. Miss Lucy, you are to go. We wish to
converse on high topics unsuited for your ear."

The girl was stubborn. As her time at Florence drew to its close she was
only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent. Such a one was
Miss Lavish, and such for the moment was Charlotte. She wished she had
not called attention to herself; they were both annoyed at her remark
and seemed determined to get rid of her.

"How tired one gets," said Miss Bartlett. "Oh, I do wish Freddy and your
mother could be here."

Unselfishness with Miss Bartlett had entirely usurped the functions of
enthusiasm. Lucy did not look at the view either. She would not enjoy
anything till she was safe at Rome.

"Then sit you down," said Miss Lavish. "Observe my foresight."

With many a smile she produced two of those mackintosh squares that
protect the frame of the tourist from damp grass or cold marble steps.
She sat on one; who was to sit on the other?

"Lucy; without a moment's doubt, Lucy. The ground will do for me. Really
I have not had rheumatism for years. If I do feel it coming on I shall
stand. Imagine your mother's feelings if I let you sit in the wet
in your white linen." She sat down heavily where the ground looked
particularly moist. "Here we are, all settled delightfully. Even if my
dress is thinner it will not show so much, being brown. Sit down, dear;
you are too unselfish; you don't assert yourself enough." She cleared
her throat. "Now don't be alarmed; this isn't a cold. It's the tiniest
cough, and I have had it three days. It's nothing to do with sitting
here at all."

There was only one way of treating the situation. At the end of five
minutes Lucy departed in search of Mr. Beebe and Mr. Eager, vanquished
by the mackintosh square.

She addressed herself to the drivers, who were sprawling in the
carriages, perfuming the cushions with cigars. The miscreant, a bony
young man scorched black by the sun, rose to greet her with the courtesy
of a host and the assurance of a relative.

"Dove?" said Lucy, after much anxious thought.

His face lit up. Of course he knew where. Not so far either. His arm
swept three-fourths of the horizon. He should just think he did know
where. He pressed his finger-tips to his forehead and then pushed them
towards her, as if oozing with visible extract of knowledge.

More seemed necessary. What was the Italian for "clergyman"?

"Dove buoni uomini?" said she at last.

Good? Scarcely the adjective for those noble beings! He showed her his
cigar.

"Uno--piu--piccolo," was her next remark, implying "Has the cigar been
given to you by Mr. Beebe, the smaller of the two good men?"

She was correct as usual. He tied the horse to a tree, kicked it to make
it stay quiet, dusted the carriage, arranged his hair, remoulded his
hat, encouraged his moustache, and in rather less than a quarter of a
minute was ready to conduct her. Italians are born knowing the way. It
would seem that the whole earth lay before them, not as a map, but as a
chess-board, whereon they continually behold the changing pieces as well
as the squares. Any one can find places, but the finding of people is a
gift from God.

He only stopped once, to pick her some great blue violets. She thanked
him with real pleasure. In the company of this common man the world
was beautiful and direct. For the first time she felt the influence
of Spring. His arm swept the horizon gracefully; violets, like other
things, existed in great profusion there; "would she like to see them?"

"Ma buoni uomini."

He bowed. Certainly. Good men first, violets afterwards. They proceeded
briskly through the undergrowth, which became thicker and thicker. They
were nearing the edge of the promontory, and the view was stealing round
them, but the brown network of the bushes shattered it into countless
pieces. He was occupied in his cigar, and in holding back the pliant
boughs. She was rejoicing in her escape from dullness. Not a step, not a
twig, was unimportant to her.

"What is that?"

There was a voice in the wood, in the distance behind them. The voice
of Mr. Eager? He shrugged his shoulders. An Italian's ignorance is
sometimes more remarkable than his knowledge. She could not make him
understand that perhaps they had missed the clergymen. The view was
forming at last; she could discern the river, the golden plain, other
hills.

"Eccolo!" he exclaimed.

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of
the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little
open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end.

"Courage!" cried her companion, now standing some six feet above.
"Courage and love."

She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view,
and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating
the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems collecting into
pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But
never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head,
the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.

Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man.
But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone.

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he
contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant
joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue
waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and
kissed her.

Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice called,
"Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!" The silence of life had been broken by Miss Bartlett
who stood brown against the view.



Some complicated game had been playing up and down the hillside all the
afternoon. What it was and exactly how the players had sided, Lucy
was slow to discover. Mr. Eager had met them with a questioning eye.
Charlotte had repulsed him with much small talk. Mr. Emerson, seeking
his son, was told whereabouts to find him. Mr. Beebe, who wore the
heated aspect of a neutral, was bidden to collect the factions for the
return home. There was a general sense of groping and bewilderment. Pan
had been amongst them--not the great god Pan, who has been buried these
two thousand years, but the little god Pan, who presides over social
contretemps and unsuccessful picnics. Mr. Beebe had lost everyone, and
had consumed in solitude the tea-basket which he had brought up as a
pleasant surprise. Miss Lavish had lost Miss Bartlett. Lucy had lost Mr.
Eager. Mr. Emerson had lost George. Miss Bartlett had lost a mackintosh
square. Phaethon had lost the game.

That last fact was undeniable. He climbed on to the box shivering, with
his collar up, prophesying the swift approach of bad weather. "Let us go
immediately," he told them. "The signorino will walk."

"All the way? He will be hours," said Mr. Beebe.

"Apparently. I told him it was unwise." He would look no one in the
face; perhaps defeat was particularly mortifying for him. He alone had
played skilfully, using the whole of his instinct, while the others
had used scraps of their intelligence. He alone had divined what things
were, and what he wished them to be. He alone had interpreted the
message that Lucy had received five days before from the lips of a
dying man. Persephone, who spends half her life in the grave--she could
interpret it also. Not so these English. They gain knowledge slowly, and
perhaps too late.

The thoughts of a cab-driver, however just, seldom affect the lives of
his employers. He was the most competent of Miss Bartlett's opponents,
but infinitely the least dangerous. Once back in the town, he and his
insight and his knowledge would trouble English ladies no more. Of
course, it was most unpleasant; she had seen his black head in the
bushes; he might make a tavern story out of it. But after all, what have
we to do with taverns? Real menace belongs to the drawing-room. It
was of drawing-room people that Miss Bartlett thought as she journeyed
downwards towards the fading sun. Lucy sat beside her; Mr. Eager sat
opposite, trying to catch her eye; he was vaguely suspicious. They spoke
of Alessio Baldovinetti.

Rain and darkness came on together. The two ladies huddled together
under an inadequate parasol. There was a lightning flash, and Miss
Lavish who was nervous, screamed from the carriage in front. At the next
flash, Lucy screamed also. Mr. Eager addressed her professionally:

"Courage, Miss Honeychurch, courage and faith. If I might say so, there
is something almost blasphemous in this horror of the elements. Are we
seriously to suppose that all these clouds, all this immense electrical
display, is simply called into existence to extinguish you or me?"

"No--of course--"

"Even from the scientific standpoint the chances against our being
struck are enormous. The steel knives, the only articles which might
attract the current, are in the other carriage. And, in any case, we are
infinitely safer than if we were walking. Courage--courage and faith."

Under the rug, Lucy felt the kindly pressure of her cousin's hand. At
times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care
not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it
afterwards. Miss Bartlett, by this timely exercise of her muscles,
gained more than she would have got in hours of preaching or cross
examination.

She renewed it when the two carriages stopped, half into Florence.

"Mr. Eager!" called Mr. Beebe. "We want your assistance. Will you
interpret for us?"

"George!" cried Mr. Emerson. "Ask your driver which way George went. The
boy may lose his way. He may be killed."

"Go, Mr. Eager," said Miss Bartlett, "don't ask our driver; our driver is
no help. Go and support poor Mr. Beebe--, he is nearly demented."

"He may be killed!" cried the old man. "He may be killed!"

"Typical behaviour," said the chaplain, as he quitted the carriage. "In
the presence of reality that kind of person invariably breaks down."

"What does he know?" whispered Lucy as soon as they were alone.
"Charlotte, how much does Mr. Eager know?"

"Nothing, dearest; he knows nothing. But--" she pointed at the
driver-"HE knows everything. Dearest, had we better? Shall I?" She took
out her purse. "It is dreadful to be entangled with low-class people.
He saw it all." Tapping Phaethon's back with her guide-book, she said,
"Silenzio!" and offered him a franc.

"Va bene," he replied, and accepted it. As well this ending to his day
as any. But Lucy, a mortal maid, was disappointed in him.

There was an explosion up the road. The storm had struck the overhead
wire of the tramline, and one of the great supports had fallen. If they
had not stopped perhaps they might have been hurt. They chose to regard
it as a miraculous preservation, and the floods of love and sincerity,
which fructify every hour of life, burst forth in tumult. They descended
from the carriages; they embraced each other. It was as joyful to be
forgiven past unworthinesses as to forgive them. For a moment they
realized vast possibilities of good.

The older people recovered quickly. In the very height of their emotion
they knew it to be unmanly or unladylike. Miss Lavish calculated that,
even if they had continued, they would not have been caught in the
accident. Mr. Eager mumbled a temperate prayer. But the drivers, through
miles of dark squalid road, poured out their souls to the dryads and the
saints, and Lucy poured out hers to her cousin.

"Charlotte, dear Charlotte, kiss me. Kiss me again. Only you can
understand me. You warned me to be careful. And I--I thought I was
developing."

"Do not cry, dearest. Take your time."

"I have been obstinate and silly--worse than you know, far worse. Once
by the river--Oh, but he isn't killed--he wouldn't be killed, would he?"

The thought disturbed her repentance. As a matter of fact, the storm was
worst along the road; but she had been near danger, and so she thought
it must be near to everyone.

"I trust not. One would always pray against that."

"He is really--I think he was taken by surprise, just as I was before.
But this time I'm not to blame; I want you to believe that. I simply
slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really truthful. I am a
little to blame. I had silly thoughts. The sky, you know, was gold,
and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like someone in a
book."

"In a book?"

"Heroes--gods--the nonsense of schoolgirls."

"And then?"

"But, Charlotte, you know what happened then."

Miss Bartlett was silent. Indeed, she had little more to learn. With a
certain amount of insight she drew her young cousin affectionately
to her. All the way back Lucy's body was shaken by deep sighs, which
nothing could repress.

"I want to be truthful," she whispered. "It is so hard to be absolutely
truthful."

"Don't be troubled, dearest. Wait till you are calmer. We will talk it
over before bed-time in my room."

So they re-entered the city with hands clasped. It was a shock to the
girl to find how far emotion had ebbed in others. The storm had ceased,
and Mr. Emerson was easier about his son. Mr. Beebe had regained good
humour, and Mr. Eager was already snubbing Miss Lavish. Charlotte alone
she was sure of--Charlotte, whose exterior concealed so much insight and
love.

The luxury of self-exposure kept her almost happy through the long
evening. She thought not so much of what had happened as of how she
should describe it. All her sensations, her spasms of courage, her
moments of unreasonable joy, her mysterious discontent, should be
carefully laid before her cousin. And together in divine confidence they
would disentangle and interpret them all.

"At last," thought she, "I shall understand myself. I shan't again
be troubled by things that come out of nothing, and mean I don't know
what."

Miss Alan asked her to play. She refused vehemently. Music seemed to
her the employment of a child. She sat close to her cousin, who, with
commendable patience, was listening to a long story about lost luggage.
When it was over she capped it by a story of her own. Lucy became rather
hysterical with the delay. In vain she tried to check, or at all events
to accelerate, the tale. It was not till a late hour that Miss Bartlett
had recovered her luggage and could say in her usual tone of gentle
reproach:

"Well, dear, I at all events am ready for Bedfordshire. Come into my
room, and I will give a good brush to your hair."

With some solemnity the door was shut, and a cane chair placed for the
girl. Then Miss Bartlett said "So what is to be done?"

She was unprepared for the question. It had not occurred to her that she
would have to do anything. A detailed exhibition of her emotions was all
that she had counted upon.

"What is to be done? A point, dearest, which you alone can settle."

The rain was streaming down the black windows, and the great room felt
damp and chilly, One candle burnt trembling on the chest of drawers
close to Miss Bartlett's toque, which cast monstrous and fantastic
shadows on the bolted door. A tram roared by in the dark, and Lucy felt
unaccountably sad, though she had long since dried her eyes. She lifted
them to the ceiling, where the griffins and bassoons were colourless and
vague, the very ghosts of joy.

"It has been raining for nearly four hours," she said at last.

Miss Bartlett ignored the remark.

"How do you propose to silence him?"

"The driver?"

"My dear girl, no; Mr. George Emerson."

Lucy began to pace up and down the room.

"I don't understand," she said at last.

She understood very well, but she no longer wished to be absolutely
truthful.

"How are you going to stop him talking about it?"

"I have a feeling that talk is a thing he will never do."

"I, too, intend to judge him charitably. But unfortunately I have met
the type before. They seldom keep their exploits to themselves."

"Exploits?" cried Lucy, wincing under the horrible plural.

"My poor dear, did you suppose that this was his first? Come here
and listen to me. I am only gathering it from his own remarks. Do you
remember that day at lunch when he argued with Miss Alan that liking one
person is an extra reason for liking another?"

"Yes," said Lucy, whom at the time the argument had pleased.

"Well, I am no prude. There is no need to call him a wicked young man,
but obviously he is thoroughly unrefined. Let us put it down to his
deplorable antecedents and education, if you wish. But we are no farther
on with our question. What do you propose to do?"

An idea rushed across Lucy's brain, which, had she thought of it sooner
and made it part of her, might have proved victorious.

"I propose to speak to him," said she.

Miss Bartlett uttered a cry of genuine alarm.

"You see, Charlotte, your kindness--I shall never forget it. But--as you
said--it is my affair. Mine and his."

"And you are going to IMPLORE him, to BEG him to keep silence?"

"Certainly not. There would be no difficulty. Whatever you ask him he
answers, yes or no; then it is over. I have been frightened of him. But
now I am not one little bit."

"But we fear him for you, dear. You are so young and inexperienced, you
have lived among such nice people, that you cannot realize what men can
be--how they can take a brutal pleasure in insulting a woman whom her
sex does not protect and rally round. This afternoon, for example, if I
had not arrived, what would have happened?"

"I can't think," said Lucy gravely.

Something in her voice made Miss Bartlett repeat her question, intoning
it more vigorously.

"What would have happened if I hadn't arrived?"

"I can't think," said Lucy again.

"When he insulted you, how would you have replied?"

"I hadn't time to think. You came."

"Yes, but won't you tell me now what you would have done?"

"I should have--" She checked herself, and broke the sentence off. She
went up to the dripping window and strained her eyes into the darkness.
She could not think what she would have done.

"Come away from the window, dear," said Miss Bartlett. "You will be seen
from the road."

Lucy obeyed. She was in her cousin's power. She could not modulate out
the key of self-abasement in which she had started. Neither of them
referred again to her suggestion that she should speak to George and
settle the matter, whatever it was, with him.

Miss Bartlett became plaintive.

"Oh, for a real man! We are only two women, you and I. Mr. Beebe is
hopeless. There is Mr. Eager, but you do not trust him. Oh, for your
brother! He is young, but I know that his sister's insult would rouse
in him a very lion. Thank God, chivalry is not yet dead. There are still
left some men who can reverence woman."

As she spoke, she pulled off her rings, of which she wore several, and
ranged them upon the pin cushion. Then she blew into her gloves and
said:

"It will be a push to catch the morning train, but we must try."

"What train?"

"The train to Rome." She looked at her gloves critically.

The girl received the announcement as easily as it had been given.

"When does the train to Rome go?"

"At eight."

"Signora Bertolini would be upset."

"We must face that," said Miss Bartlett, not liking to say that she had
given notice already.

"She will make us pay for a whole week's pension."

"I expect she will. However, we shall be much more comfortable at the
Vyses' hotel. Isn't afternoon tea given there for nothing?"

"Yes, but they pay extra for wine." After this remark she remained
motionless and silent. To her tired eyes Charlotte throbbed and swelled
like a ghostly figure in a dream.

They began to sort their clothes for packing, for there was no time to
lose, if they were to catch the train to Rome. Lucy, when admonished,
began to move to and fro between the rooms, more conscious of the
discomforts of packing by candlelight than of a subtler ill. Charlotte,
who was practical without ability, knelt by the side of an empty trunk,
vainly endeavouring to pave it with books of varying thickness and size.
She gave two or three sighs, for the stooping posture hurt her back,
and, for all her diplomacy, she felt that she was growing old. The girl
heard her as she entered the room, and was seized with one of those
emotional impulses to which she could never attribute a cause. She only
felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world
be happier, if she could give and receive some human love. The impulse
had come before to-day, but never so strongly. She knelt down by her
cousin's side and took her in her arms.

Miss Bartlett returned the embrace with tenderness and warmth. But she
was not a stupid woman, and she knew perfectly well that Lucy did not
love her, but needed her to love. For it was in ominous tones that she
said, after a long pause:

"Dearest Lucy, how will you ever forgive me?"

Lucy was on her guard at once, knowing by bitter experience what
forgiving Miss Bartlett meant. Her emotion relaxed, she modified her
embrace a little, and she said:

"Charlotte dear, what do you mean? As if I have anything to forgive!"

"You have a great deal, and I have a very great deal to forgive myself,
too. I know well how much I vex you at every turn."

"But no--"

Miss Bartlett assumed her favourite role, that of the prematurely aged
martyr.

"Ah, but yes! I feel that our tour together is hardly the success I had
hoped. I might have known it would not do. You want someone younger
and stronger and more in sympathy with you. I am too uninteresting and
old-fashioned--only fit to pack and unpack your things."

"Please--"

"My only consolation was that you found people more to your taste, and
were often able to leave me at home. I had my own poor ideas of what a
lady ought to do, but I hope I did not inflict them on you more than was
necessary. You had your own way about these rooms, at all events."

"You mustn't say these things," said Lucy softly.

She still clung to the hope that she and Charlotte loved each other,
heart and soul. They continued to pack in silence.

"I have been a failure," said Miss Bartlett, as she struggled with the
straps of Lucy's trunk instead of strapping her own. "Failed to make you
happy; failed in my duty to your mother. She has been so generous to me;
I shall never face her again after this disaster."

"But mother will understand. It is not your fault, this trouble, and it
isn't a disaster either."

"It is my fault, it is a disaster. She will never forgive me, and
rightly. For instance, what right had I to make friends with Miss
Lavish?"

"Every right."

"When I was here for your sake? If I have vexed you it is equally true
that I have neglected you. Your mother will see this as clearly as I do,
when you tell her."

Lucy, from a cowardly wish to improve the situation, said:

"Why need mother hear of it?"

"But you tell her everything?"

"I suppose I do generally."

"I dare not break your confidence. There is something sacred in it.
Unless you feel that it is a thing you could not tell her."

The girl would not be degraded to this.

"Naturally I should have told her. But in case she should blame you in
any way, I promise I will not, I am very willing not to. I will never
speak of it either to her or to any one."

Her promise brought the long-drawn interview to a sudden close. Miss
Bartlett pecked her smartly on both cheeks, wished her good-night, and
sent her to her own room.

For a moment the original trouble was in the background. George would
seem to have behaved like a cad throughout; perhaps that was the view
which one would take eventually. At present she neither acquitted nor
condemned him; she did not pass judgement. At the moment when she was
about to judge him her cousin's voice had intervened, and, ever since,
it was Miss Bartlett who had dominated; Miss Bartlett who, even
now, could be heard sighing into a crack in the partition wall;
Miss Bartlett, who had really been neither pliable nor humble nor
inconsistent. She had worked like a great artist; for a time--indeed,
for years--she had been meaningless, but at the end there was presented
to the girl the complete picture of a cheerless, loveless world in which
the young rush to destruction until they learn better--a shamefaced
world of precautions and barriers which may avert evil, but which do not
seem to bring good, if we may judge from those who have used them most.

Lucy was suffering from the most grievous wrong which this world has yet
discovered: diplomatic advantage had been taken of her sincerity, of
her craving for sympathy and love. Such a wrong is not easily forgotten.
Never again did she expose herself without due consideration and
precaution against rebuff. And such a wrong may react disastrously upon
the soul.

The door-bell rang, and she started to the shutters. Before she reached
them she hesitated, turned, and blew out the candle. Thus it was that,
though she saw someone standing in the wet below, he, though he looked
up, did not see her.

To reach his room he had to go by hers. She was still dressed. It struck
her that she might slip into the passage and just say that she would
be gone before he was up, and that their extraordinary intercourse was
over.

Whether she would have dared to do this was never proved. At the
critical moment Miss Bartlett opened her own door, and her voice said:

"I wish one word with you in the drawing-room, Mr. Emerson, please."

Soon their footsteps returned, and Miss Bartlett said: "Good-night, Mr.
Emerson."

His heavy, tired breathing was the only reply; the chaperon had done her
work.

Lucy cried aloud: "It isn't true. It can't all be true. I want not to be
muddled. I want to grow older quickly."

Miss Bartlett tapped on the wall.

"Go to bed at once, dear. You need all the rest you can get."

In the morning they left for Rome.

 Lucy decides to accompany Charlotte for the day rather than go on an outing with Mr. Beebe and the Emersons, as she feels confused by the odd situation with George. In the Piazza Signoria , they find Miss Lavish, who as usual is exulting in her idea of the real Italy and making snide remarks about English tourists. Lucy and Charlotte then come across the tiresome and snooty chaplain, Mr. Eager, who has connections with the expatriate English community in Florence. He invites Lucy and Charlotte to come out for a trip into the country of Fiesole the following day. Lucy finds she has lost her respect for both Miss Lavish and Mr. Eager. Mr. Eager discusses his distaste for Mr. Emerson, explaining that he once wrote for a Socialist paper, and revealing that he believes Mr. Emerson to have murdered his own wife, though he provides no substantiating evidence. Charlotte accepts the invitation for a drive into the country, but realizes after Mr. Eager departs that they have also planned to drive with Mr. Beebe and Miss Lavish, who displeases Mr. Eager with her audacity. While Charlotte is planning who will sit with whom in the carriages, Lucy admits "I don't know what I think, or what I want. " She has gotten a letter from her mother which informs her that some friends, the Vyses, are staying in Rome. Charlotte wants to do anything that will please her cousin, and Lucy expresses her desire to join these friends in Rome. The outing to Fiesole takes place the next day, but to everyone's surprise, the group consists not only of Lucy, Charlotte, Miss Lavish, Mr. Beebe, and Mr. Eager, but also the Emersons, who were invited by Mr. Beebe. They are driven by a young Italian man who all the while courts his sweetheart  at the front of the car. Lucy is envious of them, realizing that they are the only ones enjoying the trip at all, while the others deride the lower classes and admire the homes of wealthy ex-pats. Finally the Italians kiss, at which point Mr. Eager commands the girl to leave for such lack of decency. Mr. Emerson argues with this cold-hearted decision, declaring that the influences of "spring" are as admirable in man as in the nature they have come to appreciate. Everyone roams around in the hills, admiring the somewhat hazy view. Lucy accompanies Charlotte and Miss Lavish, who are aghast that George's profession is "the railway. " They ask Lucy to leave them alone to their criticisms, and she tries to discover the whereabouts of Mr. Beebe and Mr. Eager by communicating with the Italian driver in very rudimentary Italian. The driver leads her instead to a beautiful terrace covered with blue violets, where she encounters George. The driver cries out, "Courage! Courage and love!" George is standing at the terrace's brink, "like a swimmer who prepares." He turns around when she arrives, and, in an instant, overcome by the radiant beauty of the flowers and Lucy among them, kisses her. Suddenly Charlotte appears, calling for Lucy. The party returns to Florence in the carriages, but a lightning storm soon begins. George walks home. They nearly drive into an exploded tram wire which had been hit by a lightning bolt. Everyone feels worried and then relieved, while Lucy tries to explain to Charlotte that she is blameless for the incident in the violets, remarking, "I want to be truthful... It is so hard to be absolutely truthful." Charlotte comforts her with the prospect of talking it over that night at bedtime. However, that night, the soul-bearing session of self-understanding that Lucy hoped for never occurs. Charlotte instead simply demands to know how Lucy intends to "silence" George, making insinuations against his character. Lucy wants to talk to George to settle the matter; Charlotte disapproves. Charlotte asks what would have happened if she had not appeared in the violet terrace, but Lucy cannot provide an answer. Charlotte announces that they will catch the morning train at eight for Rome. They begin to pack. Lucy tries to show warmth for Charlotte, who makes Lucy feel obligated toward her, until Lucy finally promises not to tell her mother about what has happened with George. George appears outside the window and rings the doorbell, but Lucy blows her lamp before he can see her. Charlotte appears in the hall and asks George to have a word in private. Lucy cries out, "It isn't true. It can't all be true." Charlotte silences her and they leave for Rome the next morning.

