A Room With a View by E. M. Forster (top fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

Santa Croce. Charlotte was most annoyed at finding me practically alone, and so I couldn’t help being a little annoyed with Miss Lavish.”

“The two ladies, at all events, have made it up.”

He was interested in the sudden friendship between women so apparently dissimilar as Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish. They were always in each other’s company, with Lucy a slighted third. Miss Lavish he believed he understood, but Miss Bartlett might reveal unknown depths of strangeness, though not perhaps, of meaning. Was Italy deflecting her from the path of prim chaperon, which he had assigned to her at Tunbridge Wells? All his life he had loved to study maiden ladies; they were his specialty, and his profession had provided him with ample opportunities for the work. Girls like Lucy were charming to look at, but Mr. Beebe was, from rather profound reasons, somewhat chilly in his attitude towards the other sex, and preferred to be interested rather than enthralled.

Lucy, for the third time, said that poor Charlotte would be sopped. The Arno was rising in flood, washing away the traces of the little carts upon the foreshore. But in the south-west there had appeared a dull haze of yellow, which might mean better weather if it did not mean worse. She opened the window to inspect, and a cold blast entered the room, drawing a plaintive cry from Miss Catharine Alan, who entered at the same moment by the door.

“Oh, dear Miss Honeychurch, you will catch a chill! And Mr. Beebe here besides. Who would suppose this is Italy? There is my sister actually nursing the hot-water can; no comforts or proper provisions.”

She sidled towards them and sat down, self-conscious as she always was on entering a room which contained one man, or a man and one woman.

“I could hear your beautiful playing, Miss Honeychurch, though I was in my room with the door shut. Doors shut; indeed, most necessary. No one has the least idea of privacy in this country. And one person catches it from another.”

Lucy answered suitably. Mr. Beebe was not able to tell the ladies of his adventure at Modena, where the chambermaid burst in upon him in his bath, exclaiming cheerfully, “Fa niente, sono vecchia.” He contented himself with saying: “I quite agree with you, Miss Alan. The Italians are a most unpleasant people. They pry everywhere, they see everything, and they know what we want before we know it ourselves. We are at their mercy. They read our thoughts, they foretell our desires. From the cabdriver down to⁠—to Giotto, they turn us inside out, and I resent it. Yet in their heart of hearts they are⁠—how superficial! They have no conception of the intellectual life. How right is Signora Bertolini, who exclaimed to me the other day: ‘Ho, Mr. Beebe, if you knew what I suffer over the children’s edjucaishion. Hi won’t ’ave my little Victorier taught by a hignorant Italian what can’t explain nothink!’ ”

Miss Alan did not follow, but gathered that she was being mocked in an agreeable way. Her sister was a little disappointed in Mr. Beebe, having expected better things from a clergyman whose head was bald and who wore a pair of russet whiskers. Indeed, who would have supposed that tolerance, sympathy, and a sense of humour would inhabit that militant form?

In the midst of her satisfaction she continued to sidle, and at last the cause was disclosed. From the chair beneath her she extracted a gunmetal cigarette-case, on which were powdered in turquoise the initials “E. L.”

“That belongs to Lavish.” said the clergyman. “A good fellow, Lavish, but I wish she’d start a pipe.”

“Oh, Mr. Beebe,” said Miss Alan, divided between awe and mirth. “Indeed, though it is dreadful for her to smoke, it is not quite as dreadful as you suppose. She took to it, practically in despair, after her life’s work was carried away in a landslip. Surely that makes it more excusable.”

“What was that?” asked Lucy.

Mr. Beebe sat back complacently, and Miss Alan began as follows: “It was a novel⁠—and I am afraid, from what I can gather, not a very nice novel. It is so sad when people who have abilities misuse them, and I must say they nearly always do. Anyhow, she left it almost finished in the Grotto of the Calvary at the Capuccini Hotel at Amalfi while she went for a little ink. She said: ‘Can I have a little ink, please?’ But you know what Italians are, and meanwhile the Grotto fell roaring on to the beach, and the saddest thing of all is that she cannot remember what she has written. The poor thing was very ill after it, and so got tempted into cigarettes. It is a great secret, but I am glad to say that she is writing another novel. She told Teresa and Miss Pole the other day that she had got up all the local colour⁠—this novel is to be about modern Italy; the other was historical⁠—but that she could not start till she had an idea. First she tried Perugia for an inspiration, then she came here⁠—this must on no account get round. And so cheerful through it all! I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.”

Miss Alan was always thus being charitable against her better judgement. A delicate pathos perfumed her disconnected remarks, giving them unexpected beauty, just as in the decaying autumn woods there sometimes rise odours reminiscent of spring. She felt she had made almost too many allowances, and apologized hurriedly for her toleration.

“All the same, she is a little too⁠—I hardly like to say unwomanly, but she behaved most strangely when the Emersons arrived.”

Mr. Beebe smiled as Miss Alan plunged into an anecdote which he knew she would be unable to finish in the presence of a gentleman.

“I don’t know, Miss Honeychurch, if you have noticed that Miss Pole, the lady who has so much yellow hair, takes lemonade. That old Mr. Emerson, who