A Room With a View, E. M. Forster [great books to read TXT] 📗

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 dustpans 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 watertight 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 anyone; 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