Chapter I: The Bertolini
The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no
business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close
together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a
courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!"
"And a Cockney, besides!" said Lucy, who had been further
saddened by the Signora's unexpected accent. "It might be
London." She looked at the two rows of English people who were
sitting at the table; at the row of white bottles of water and
red bottles of wine that ran between the English people; at the
portraits of the late Queen and the late Poet Laureate that hung
behind the English people, heavily framed; at the notice of the
English church (Rev. Cuthbert Eager, M. A. Oxon.), that was the
only other decoration of the wall. "Charlotte, don't you feel,
too, that we might be in London? I can hardly believe that all
kinds of other things are just outside. I suppose it is one's
being so tired."
"This meat has surely been used for soup," said Miss Bartlett,
laying down her fork.
"I want so to see the Arno. The rooms the Signora promised us in
her letter would have looked over the Arno. The Signora had no
business to do it at all. Oh, it is a shame!"
"Any nook does for me," Miss Bartlett continued; "but it does
seem hard that you shouldn't have a view."
Lucy felt that she had been selfish. "Charlotte, you mustn't
spoil me: of course, you must look over the Arno, too. I meant
that. The first vacant room in the front--"
------"You must have it," said Miss Bartlett, part of whose
travelling expenses were paid by Lucy's mother--a piece of
generosity to which she made many a tactful allusion.
"No, no. You must have it."
"I insist on it. Your mother would never forgive me, Lucy."
"She would never forgive me."
The ladies' voices grew animated, and--if the sad truth be
owned--a little peevish. They were tired, and under the guise of
unselfishness they wrangled. Some of their neighbours
interchanged glances, and one of them--one of the ill-bred people
whom one does meet abroad--leant forward over the table and
actually intruded into their argument. He said:
"I have a view, I have a view."
Miss Bartlett was startled. Generally at a pension people
looked them over for a day or two before speaking, and often did
not find out that they would "do" till they had gone. She knew
that the intruder was ill-bred, even before she glanced at him.
He was an old man, of heavy build, with a fair, shaven face and
large eyes. There was something childish in those eyes, though it
was not the childishness of senility. What exactly it was
Miss Bartlett did not stop to consider, for her glance
passed on to his clothes. These did not attract her. He was
probably trying to become acquainted with them before they got
into the swim. So she assumed a dazed expression when he spoke to
her, and then said: "A view? Oh, a view! How delightful a view
is!"
"This is my son," said the old man; "his name's George. He has a
view too."
"Ah," said Miss Bartlett, repressing Lucy, who was about to
speak.
"What I mean," he continued, "is that you can have our rooms, and
we'll have yours. We'll change."
The better class of tourist was shocked at this, and sympathized
with the new-comers. Miss Bartlett, in reply, opened her mouth as
little as possible, and said "Thank you very much indeed; that is
out of the question."
"Why?" said the old man, with both fists on the table.
"Because it is quite out of the question, thank you."
"You see, we don't like to take--" began Lucy. Her cousin again
repressed her.
"But why?" he persisted. "Women like looking at a view; men
don't." And he thumped with his fists like a naughty child,
and turned to his son, saying, "George, persuade them!"
"It's so obvious they should have the rooms," said the son.
"There's nothing else to say."
He did not look at the ladies as he spoke, but his voice was
perplexed and sorrowful. Lucy, too, was perplexed; but she saw
that they were in for what is known as "quite a scene," and she
had an odd feeling that whenever these ill-bred tourists spoke
the contest widened and deepened till it dealt, not with rooms
and views, but with--well, with something quite different, whose
existence she had not realized before. Now the old man attacked
Miss Bartlett almost violently: Why should she not change? What
possible objection had she? They would clear out in half an hour.
Miss Bartlett, though skilled in the delicacies of conversation,
was powerless in the presence of brutality. It was impossible to
snub any one so gross. Her face reddened with displeasure. She
looked around as much as to say, "Are you all like this?" And two
little old ladies, who were sitting further up the table, with
shawls hanging over the backs of the chairs, looked back, clearly
indicating "We are not; we are genteel."
"Eat your dinner, dear," she said to Lucy, and began to toy again
with the meat that she had once censured.
Lucy mumbled that those seemed very odd people opposite.
"Eat your dinner, dear. This pension is a failure. To-morrow we
will make a change."
Hardly had she announced this fell decision when she reversed it.
The curtains at the end of the room parted, and revealed a
clergyman, stout but attractive, who hurried forward to take his
place at the table, cheerfully apologizing for his lateness.
Lucy, who had not yet acquired decency, at once rose to her feet,
exclaiming: "Oh, oh! Why, it's Mr. Beebe! Oh, how perfectly
lovely! Oh, Charlotte, we must stop now, however bad the rooms
are. Oh!"
Miss Bartlett said, with more restraint:
"How do you do, Mr. Beebe? I expect that you have forgotten
us: Miss Bartlett and Miss Honeychurch, who were at Tunbridge
Wells when you helped the Vicar of St. Peter's that very cold
Easter."
The clergyman, who had the air of one on a holiday, did not
remember the ladies quite as clearly as they remembered him. But
he came forward pleasantly enough and accepted the chair into
which he was beckoned by Lucy.
"I AM so glad to see you," said the girl, who was in a state of
spiritual starvation, and would have been glad to see the waiter
if her cousin had permitted it. "Just fancy how small the world
is. Summer Street, too, makes it so specially funny."
"Miss Honeychurch lives in the parish of Summer Street," said
Miss Bartlett, filling up the gap, "and she happened to tell me
in the course of conversation that you have just accepted the
living--"
"Yes, I heard from mother so last week. She didn't know that I
knew you at Tunbridge Wells; but I wrote back at once, and I
said: 'Mr. Beebe is--'"
"Quite right," said the clergyman. "I move into the Rectory at
Summer Street next June. I am lucky to be appointed to such a
charming neighbourhood."
"Oh, how glad I am! The name of our house is Windy Corner." Mr.
Beebe bowed.
"There is mother and me generally, and my brother, though it's
not often we get him to ch-- The church is rather far
off, I mean."
"Lucy, dearest, let Mr. Beebe eat his dinner."
"I am eating it, thank you, and enjoying it."
He preferred to talk to Lucy, whose playing he remembered, rather
than to Miss Bartlett, who probably remembered his sermons. He
asked the girl whether she knew Florence well, and was informed
at some length that she had never been there before. It is
delightful to advise a newcomer, and he was first in the field.
"Don't neglect the country round," his advice concluded. "The
first fine afternoon drive up to Fiesole, and round by
Settignano, or something of that sort."
"No!" cried a voice from the top of the table. "Mr. Beebe, you
are wrong. The first fine afternoon your ladies must go to
Prato."
"That lady looks so clever," whispered Miss Bartlett to her
cousin. "We are in luck."
And, indeed, a perfect torrent of information burst on them.
People told them what to see, when to see it, how to stop the
electric trams, how to get rid of the beggars, how much to give
for a vellum blotter, how much the place would grow upon them.
The Pension Bertolini had decided, almost enthusiastically, that
they would do. Whichever way they looked, kind ladies smiled and
shouted at them. And above all rose the voice of the clever lady,
crying: "Prato! They must go to Prato. That place is too sweetly
squalid for words. I love it; I revel in shaking off the trammels
of respectability, as you know."
The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then
returned moodily to his plate. Obviously he and his father did
not do. Lucy, in the midst of her success, found time to wish
they did. It gave her no extra pleasure that any one should be
left in the cold; and when she rose to go, she turned back and
gave the two outsiders a nervous little bow.
The father did not see it; the son acknowledged it, not by
another bow, but by raising his eyebrows and smiling; he seemed
to be smiling across something.
She hastened after her cousin, who had already disappeared
through the curtains--curtains which smote one in the face, and
seemed heavy with more than cloth. Beyond them stood the
unreliable Signora, bowing good-evening to her guests, and
supported by 'Enery, her little boy, and Victorier, her
daughter. It made a curious little scene, this attempt of the
Cockney to convey the grace and geniality of the South. And even
more curious was the drawing-room, which attempted to rival the
solid comfort of a Bloomsbury boarding-house. Was this really
Italy?
Miss Bartlett was already seated on a tightly stuffed arm-chair,
which had the colour and the contours of a tomato. She was
talking to Mr. Beebe, and as she spoke, her long narrow head
drove backwards and forwards, slowly, regularly, as though she
were demolishing some invisible obstacle. "We are most grateful
to you," she was saying. "The first evening means so much. When
you arrived we were in for a peculiarly mauvais quart d'heure."
He expressed his regret.
"Do you, by any chance, know the name of an old man who sat
opposite us at dinner?"
"Emerson."
"Is he a friend of yours?"
"We are friendly--as one is in pensions."
"Then I will say no more."
He pressed her very slightly, and she said more.
"I am, as it were," she concluded, "the chaperon of my young
cousin, Lucy, and it would be a serious thing if I put her under
an obligation to people of whom we know nothing. His manner was
somewhat unfortunate. I hope I acted for the best."
"You acted very naturally," said he. He seemed thoughtful, and
after a few moments added: "All the same, I don't think much harm
would have come of accepting."
"No harm, of course. But we could not be under an obligation."
"He is rather a peculiar man." Again he hesitated, and then said
gently: "I think he would not take advantage of your acceptance,
nor expect you to show gratitude. He has the merit--if it is one
--of saying exactly what he means. He has rooms he does not
value, and he thinks you would value them. He no more thought of
putting you under an obligation than he thought of being polite.
It is so difficult--at least, I find it difficult--to understand
people who speak the truth."
Lucy was pleased, and said: "I was hoping that he was nice; I do
so always hope that people will be nice."
"I think he is; nice and tiresome. I differ from him on almost
every point of any importance, and so, I expect--I may say I
hope--you will differ. But his is a type one disagrees with
rather than deplores. When he first came here he not unnaturally
put people's backs up. He has no tact and no manners--I don't
mean by that that he has bad manners--and he will not keep his
opinions to himself. We nearly complained about him to our
depressing Signora, but I am glad to say we thought better of
it."
"Am I to conclude," said Miss Bartlett, "that he is a Socialist?"
Mr. Beebe accepted the convenient word, not without a slight
twitching of the lips.
"And presumably he has brought up his son to be a Socialist,
too?"
"I hardly know George, for he hasn't learnt to talk yet. He
seems a nice creature, and I think he has brains. Of course, he
has all his father's mannerisms, and it is quite possible that
he, too, may be a Socialist."
"Oh, you relieve me," said Miss Bartlett. "So you think I ought
to have accepted their offer? You feel I have been narrow-minded
and suspicious?"
"Not at all," he answered; "I never suggested that."
"But ought I not to apologize, at all events, for my apparent
rudeness?"
He replied, with some irritation, that it would be quite
unnecessary, and got up from his seat to go to the
smoking-room.
"Was I a bore?" said Miss Bartlett, as soon as he had
disappeared. "Why didn't you talk, Lucy? He prefers young people,
I'm sure. I do hope I haven't monopolized him. I hoped you would
have him all the evening, as well as all dinner-time."
"He is nice," exclaimed Lucy. "Just what I remember. He seems to
see good in every one. No one would take him for a clergyman."
"My dear Lucia--"
"Well, you know what I mean. And you know how clergymen generally
laugh; Mr. Beebe laughs just like an ordinary man."
"Funny girl! How you do remind me of your mother. I wonder if she
will approve of Mr. Beebe."
"I'm sure she will; and so will Freddy."
"I think every one at Windy Corner will approve; it is the
fashionable world. I am used to Tunbridge Wells, where we are all
hopelessly behind the times."
"Yes," said Lucy despondently.
There was a haze of disapproval in the air, but whether the
disapproval was of herself, or of Mr. Beebe, or of the
fashionable world at Windy Corner, or of the narrow world at
Tunbridge Wells, she could not determine. She tried to locate it,
but as usual she blundered. Miss Bartlett sedulously denied
disapproving of any one, and added "I am afraid you are finding
me a very depressing companion."
And the girl again thought: "I must have been selfish or unkind;
I must be more careful. It is so dreadful for Charlotte, being
poor."
Fortunately one of the little old ladies, who for some time had
been smiling very benignly, now approached and asked if she might
be allowed to sit where Mr. Beebe had sat. Permission granted,
she began to chatter gently about Italy, the plunge it had been
to come there, the gratifying success of the plunge, the
improvement in her sister's health, the necessity of closing the
bed-room windows at night, and of thoroughly emptying the
water-bottles in the morning. She handled her subjects agreeably,
and they were, perhaps, more worthy of attention than the high
discourse upon Guelfs and Ghibellines which was proceeding
tempestuously at the other end of the room. It was a real
catastrophe, not a mere episode, that evening of hers at Venice,
when she had found in her bedroom something that is one worse
than a flea, though one better than something else.
"But here you are as safe as in England. Signora Bertolini is so
English."
"Yet our rooms smell," said poor Lucy. "We dread going to bed."
"Ah, then you look into the court." She sighed. "If only Mr.
Emerson was more tactful! We were so sorry for you at dinner."
"I think he was meaning to be kind."
"Undoubtedly he was," said Miss Bartlett.
"Mr. Beebe has just been scolding me for my suspicious nature. Of
course, I was holding back on my cousin's account."
"Of course," said the little old lady; and they murmured that one
could not be too careful with a young girl.
Lucy tried to look demure, but could not help feeling a great
fool. No one was careful with her at home; or, at all events, she
had not noticed it.
"About old Mr. Emerson--I hardly know. No, he is not tactful;
yet, have you ever noticed that there are people who do things
which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time--beautiful?"
"Beautiful?" said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word. "Are not
beauty and delicacy the same?"
"So one would have thought," said the other helplessly. "But
things are so difficult, I sometimes think."
She proceeded no further into things, for Mr. Beebe reappeared,
looking extremely pleasant.
"Miss Bartlett," he cried, "it's all right about the rooms. I'm
so glad. Mr. Emerson was talking about it in the smoking-room,
and knowing what I did, I encouraged him to make the offer again.
He has let me come and ask you. He would be so pleased."
"Oh, Charlotte," cried Lucy to her cousin, "we must have the
rooms now. The old man is just as nice and kind as he can be."
Miss Bartlett was silent.
"I fear," said Mr. Beebe, after a pause, "that I have been
officious. I must apologize for my interference."
Gravely displeased, he turned to go. Not till then did Miss
Bartlett reply: "My own wishes, dearest Lucy, are unimportant in
comparison with yours. It would be hard indeed if I stopped you
doing as you liked at Florence, when I am only here through your
kindness. If you wish me to turn these gentlemen out of their
rooms, I will do it. Would you then, Mr. Beebe, kindly tell Mr.
Emerson that I accept his kind offer, and then conduct him to me,
in order that I may thank him personally?"
She raised her voice as she spoke; it was heard all over the
drawing-room, and silenced the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. The
clergyman, inwardly cursing the female sex, bowed, and departed
with her message.
"Remember, Lucy, I alone am implicated in this. I do not wish the
acceptance to come from you. Grant me that, at all events."
Mr. Beebe was back, saying rather nervously:
"Mr. Emerson is engaged, but here is his son instead."
The young man gazed down on the three ladies, who felt seated on
the floor, so low were their chairs.
"My father," he said, "is in his bath, so you cannot thank him
personally. But any message given by you to me will be given by
me to him as soon as he comes out."
Miss Bartlett was unequal to the bath. All her barbed civilities
came forth wrong end first. Young Mr. Emerson scored a notable
triumph to the delight of Mr. Beebe and to the secret delight of
Lucy.
"Poor young man!" said Miss Bartlett, as soon as he had gone.
"How angry he is with his father about the rooms! It is all he
can do to keep polite."
"In half an hour or so your rooms will be ready," said Mr. Beebe.
Then looking rather thoughtfully at the two cousins, he retired
to his own rooms, to write up his philosophic diary.
"Oh, dear!" breathed the little old lady, and shuddered as if all
the winds of heaven had entered the apartment. "Gentlemen
sometimes do not realize--" Her voice faded away, but Miss
Bartlett seemed to understand and a conversation developed, in
which gentlemen who did not thoroughly realize played a principal
part. Lucy, not realizing either, was reduced to literature.
Taking up Baedeker's Handbook to Northern Italy, she committed to
memory the most important dates of Florentine History. For she
was determined to enjoy herself on the morrow. Thus the half-hour
crept profitably away, and at last Miss Bartlett rose with a
sigh, and said:
"I think one might venture now. No, Lucy, do not stir. I will
superintend the move."
"How you do do everything," said Lucy.
"Naturally, dear. It is my affair."
"But I would like to help you."
"No, dear."
Charlotte's energy! And her unselfishness! She had been thus all
her life, but really, on this Italian tour, she was surpassing
herself. So Lucy felt, or strove to feel. And yet--there was a
rebellious spirit in her which wondered whether the acceptance
might not have been less delicate and more beautiful. At all
events, she entered her own room without any feeling of joy.
"I want to explain," said Miss Bartlett, "why it is that I have
taken the largest room. Naturally, of course, I should have given
it to you; but I happen to know that it belongs to the young man,
and I was sure your mother would not like it."
Lucy was bewildered.
"If you are to accept a favour it is more suitable you should be
under an obligation to his father than to him. I am a woman of
the world, in my small way, and I know where things lead to. How-
ever, Mr. Beebe is a guarantee of a sort that they will not
presume on this."
"Mother wouldn't mind I'm sure," said Lucy, but again had the
sense of larger and unsuspected issues.
Miss Bartlett only sighed, and enveloped her in a protecting
embrace as she wished her good-night. It gave Lucy the sensation
of a fog, and when she reached her own room she opened the window
and breathed the clean night air, thinking of the kind old man
who had enabled her to see the lights dancing in the Arno and the
cypresses of San Miniato, and the foot-hills of the Apennines,
black against the rising moon.
Miss Bartlett, in her room, fastened the window-shutters and
locked the door, and then made a tour of the apartment to see
where the cupboards led, and whether there were any oubliettes or
secret entrances. It was then that she saw, pinned up over the
washstand, a sheet of paper on which was scrawled an enormous
note of interrogation. Nothing more.
"What does it mean?" she thought, and she examined it carefully
by the light of a candle. Meaningless at first, it gradually
became menacing, obnoxious, portentous with evil. She was seized
with an impulse to destroy it, but fortunately remembered that
she had no right to do so, since it must be the property of young
Mr. Emerson. So she unpinned it carefully, and put it between two
pieces of blotting-paper to keep it clean for him. Then she
completed her inspection of the room, sighed heavily according to
her habit, and went to bed.