A Room With A View, E. M. Forster [best mystery novels of all time txt] 📗

had. When the maid opened the door, she was unable to speak, and stared stupidly into the hall.

Miss Bartlett at once came forward, and after a long preamble asked a great favour: might she go to church? Mr. Beebe and his mother had already gone, but she had refused to start until she obtained her hostess’s full sanction, for it would mean keeping the horse waiting a good ten minutes more.

“Certainly,” said the hostess wearily. “I forgot it was Friday. Let’s all go. Powell can go round to the stables.”

“Lucy dearest—”

“No church for me, thank you.”

A sigh, and they departed. The church was invisible, but up in the darkness to the left there was a hint of colour. This was a stained window, through which some feeble light was shining, and when the door opened Lucy heard Mr. Beebe’s voice running through the litany to a minute congregation. Even their church, built upon the slope of the hill so artfully, with its beautiful raised transept and its spire of silvery shingle—even their church had lost its charm; and the thing one never talked about—religion— was fading like all the other things.

She followed the maid into the Rectory.

Would she object to sitting in Mr. Beebe’s study? There was only that one fire.

She would not object.

Some one was there already, for Lucy heard the words: “A lady to wait, sir.”

Old Mr. Emerson was sitting by the fire, with his foot upon a gout-stool.

“Oh, Miss Honeychurch, that you should come!” he quavered; and Lucy saw an alteration in him since last Sunday.

Not a word would come to her lips. George she had faced, and could have faced again, but she had forgotten how to treat his father.

“Miss Honeychurch, dear, we are so sorry! George is so sorry! He thought he had a right to try. I cannot blame my boy, and yet I wish he had told me first. He ought not to have tried. I knew nothing about it at all.”

If only she could remember how to behave!

He held up his hand. “But you must not scold him.”

Lucy turned her back, and began to look at Mr. Beebe’s books.

“I taught him,” he quavered, “to trust in love. I said: ‘When love comes, that is reality.’ I said: ‘Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.’” He sighed: “True, everlastingly true, though my day is over, and though there is the result. Poor boy! He is so sorry! He said he knew it was madness when you brought your cousin in; that whatever you felt you did not mean. Yet”—his voice gathered strength: he spoke out to make certain—“Miss Honeychurch, do you remember Italy?”

Lucy selected a book—a volume of Old Testament commentaries. Holding it up to her eyes, she said: “I have no wish to discuss Italy or any subject connected with your son.”

“But you do remember it?”

“He has misbehaved himself from the first.”

“I only was told that he loved you last Sunday. I never could judge behaviour. I—I—suppose he has.”

Feeling a little steadier, she put the book back and turned round to him. His face was drooping and swollen, but his eyes, though they were sunken deep, gleamed with a child’s courage.

“Why, he has behaved abominably,” she said. “I am glad he is sorry. Do you know what he did?”

“Not ‘abominably,’” was the gentle correction. “He only tried when he should not have tried. You have all you want, Miss Honeychurch: you are going to marry the man you love. Do not go out of George’s life saying he is abominable.”

“No, of course,” said Lucy, ashamed at the reference to Cecil. “‘Abominable’ is much too strong. I am sorry I used it about your son. I think I will go to church, after all. My mother and my cousin have gone. I shall not be so very late—”

“Especially as he has gone under,” he said quietly.

“What was that?”

“Gone under naturally.” He beat his palms together in silence; his head fell on his chest.

“I don’t understand.”

“As his mother did.”

“But, Mr. Emerson—MR. EMERSON—what are you talking about?”

“When I wouldn’t have George baptized,” said he.

Lucy was frightened.

“And she agreed that baptism was nothing, but he caught that fever when he was twelve and she turned round. She thought it a judgment.” He shuddered. “Oh, horrible, when we had given up that sort of thing and broken away from her parents. Oh, horrible— worst of all—worse than death, when you have made a little clearing in the wilderness, planted your little garden, let in your sunlight, and then the weeds creep in again! A judgment! And our boy had typhoid because no clergyman had dropped water on him in church! Is it possible, Miss Honeychurch? Shall we slip back into the darkness for ever?”

“I don’t know,” gasped Lucy. “I don’t understand this sort of thing. I was not meant to understand it.”

“But Mr. Eager—he came when I was out, and acted according to his principles. I don’t blame him or any one… but by the time George was well she was ill. He made her think about sin, and she went under thinking about it.”

It was thus that Mr. Emerson had murdered his wife in the sight of God.

“Oh, how terrible!” said Lucy, forgetting her own affairs at last.

“He was not baptized,” said the old man. “I did hold firm.” And he looked with unwavering eyes at the rows of books, as if—at what cost!—he had won a victory over them. “My boy shall go back to the earth untouched.”

She asked whether young Mr. Emerson was ill.

“Oh—last Sunday.” He started into the present. “George last Sunday—no, not ill: just gone under. He is never ill. But he is his mother’s son. Her eyes were his, and she had that forehead that I think so beautiful, and he will not think it worth while to live. It was always touch and go. He will live; but he will not think it worth while to live. He will never think anything worth while. You remember that church at Florence?”

Lucy did remember, and how she had suggested that George should collect postage stamps.

“After you left Florence—horrible. Then we took the house here, and he goes bathing with your brother, and became better. You saw him bathing?”

“I am so sorry, but it is no good discussing this affair. I am deeply sorry about it.”

“Then there came something about a novel. I didn’t follow it at all; I had to hear so much, and he minded telling me; he finds me too old. Ah, well, one must have failures. George comes down to-morrow, and takes me up to his London rooms. He can’t bear to be about here, and I must be where he is.”

“Mr. Emerson,” cried the girl, “don’t leave at least, not on my account. I am going to Greece. Don’t leave your comfortable house.”

It was the first time her voice had been kind and he smiled. “How good every one is! And look at Mr. Beebe housing me—came over this morning and heard I was going! Here I am so comfortable with a fire.”

“Yes, but you won’t go back to London. It’s absurd.”

“I must be with George; I must make him care to live, and down here he can’t. He says the thought of seeing you and of hearing about you—I am not justifying him: I am only saying what has happened.”

“Oh, Mr. Emerson”—she took hold of his hand— “you mustn’t. I’ve been bother enough to the world by now. I can’t have you moving out of your house when you like it, and perhaps losing money through it—all on my account. You must stop! I am just going to Greece.”

“All the way to Greece?”

Her manner altered.

“To Greece?”

“So you must stop. You won’t talk about this business, I know. I can trust you both.”

“Certainly you can. We either have you in our lives, or leave you to the life that you have chosen.”

“I shouldn’t want—”

“I suppose Mr. Vyse is very angry with George? No, it was wrong of George to try. We have pushed our beliefs too far. I fancy that we deserve sorrow.”

She looked at the books again—black, brown, and that acrid theological blue. They surrounded the visitors on every side; they were piled on the tables, they pressed against the very ceiling. To Lucy who could not see that Mr. Emerson was profoundly religious, and differed from Mr. Beebe chiefly by his acknowledgment of passion—it seemed dreadful that the old man should crawl into such a sanctum, when he was unhappy, and be dependent on the bounty of a clergyman.

More certain than ever that she was tired, he offered her his chair.

“No, please sit still. I think I will sit in the carriage.”

“Miss Honeychurch, you do sound tired.”

“Not a bit,” said Lucy, with trembling lips.

“But you are, and there’s a look of George about you. And what were you saying about going abroad?”

She was silent.

“Greece”—and she saw that he was thinking the word over— “Greece; but you were to be married this year, I thought.”

“Not till January, it wasn’t,” said Lucy, clasping her hands. Would she tell an actual lie when it came to the point?

“I suppose that Mr. Vyse is going with you. I hope—it isn’t because George spoke that you are both going?”

“No.”

“I hope that you will enjoy Greece with Mr. Vyse.”

“Thank you.”

At that moment Mr. Beebe came back from church. His cassock was covered with rain. “That’s all right,” he said kindly. “I counted on you two keeping each other company. It’s pouring again. The entire congregation, which consists of your cousin, your mother, and my mother, stands waiting in the church, till the carriage fetches it. Did Powell go round?”

“I think so; I’ll see.”

“No—of course, I’ll see. How are the Miss Alans?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“Did you tell Mr. Emerson about Greece?”

“I—I did.”

“Don’t you think it very plucky of her, Mr. Emerson, to undertake the two Miss Alans? Now, Miss Honeychurch, go back—keep warm. I think three is such a courageous number to go travelling.” And he hurried off to the stables.

“He is not going,” she said hoarsely. “I made a slip. Mr. Vyse does stop behind in England.”

Somehow it was impossible to cheat this old man. To George, to Cecil, she would have lied again; but he seemed so near the end of things, so dignified in his approach to the gulf, of which he gave one account, and the books that surrounded him another, so mild to the rough paths that he had traversed, that the true chivalry—not the worn-out chivalry of sex, but the true chivalry that all the young may show to all the old—awoke in her, and, at whatever risk, she told him that Cecil was not her companion to Greece. And she spoke so seriously that the risk became a certainty, and he, lifting his eyes, said: “You are leaving him? You are leaving the man you love?”

“I—I had to.”

“Why, Miss Honeychurch, why?”

Terror came over her, and she lied again. She made the long, convincing speech that she had made to Mr. Beebe, and intended to make to the world when she announced that her engagement was no more. He heard her in silence, and then said: “My dear, I am worried about you. It seems to me”—dreamily; she was not alarmed—“that you are in a muddle.”

She shook her head.

“Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to