Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (best free ereader TXT) 📕

knowing who is who in Italy. The guest of the evening was a private soldier. He shared the honour now with Philip. The two had to stand side by side in the front, and exchange compliments, whilst Gino presided, courteous, but delightfully familiar. Philip would have a spasm of horror at the muddle he had made. But the spasm would pass, and again he would be enchanted by the kind, cheerful voices, the laughter that was never vapid, and the light caress of the arm across his back.

He could not get away till the play was nearly finished, and Edgardo was singing amongst the tombs of ancestors. His new friends hoped to see him at the Garibaldi tomorrow evening. He promised; then he remembered that if they kept to Harriet’s plan he would have left Monteriano. “At ten o’clock, then,” he said to Gino. “I want to speak to you alone. At ten.”

“Certainly!” laughed the other.

Miss Abbott was sitting up for him when he got back. Harriet, it seemed, had gone straight to bed.

“That was he, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes, rather.”

“I suppose you didn’t settle anything?”

“Why, no; how could I? The fact is⁠—well, I got taken by surprise, but after all, what does it matter? There’s no earthly reason why we shouldn’t do the business pleasantly. He’s a perfectly charming person, and so are his friends. I’m his friend now⁠—his long-lost brother. What’s the harm? I tell you, Miss Abbott, it’s one thing for England and another for Italy. There we plan and get on high moral horses. Here we find what asses we are, for things go off quite easily, all by themselves. My hat, what a night! Did you ever see a really purple sky and really silver stars before? Well, as I was saying, it’s absurd to worry; he’s not a porky father. He wants that baby as little as I do. He’s been ragging my dear mother⁠—just as he ragged me eighteen months ago, and I’ve forgiven him. Oh, but he has a sense of humour!”

Miss Abbott, too, had a wonderful evening, nor did she ever remember such stars or such a sky. Her head, too, was full of music, and that night when she opened the window her room was filled with warm, sweet air. She was bathed in beauty within and without; she could not go to bed for happiness. Had she ever been so happy before? Yes, once before, and here, a night in March, the night Gino and Lilia had told her of their love⁠—the night whose evil she had come now to undo.

She gave a sudden cry of shame. “This time⁠—the same place⁠—the same thing”⁠—and she began to beat down her happiness, knowing it to be sinful. She was here to fight against this place, to rescue a little soul⁠—who was innocent as yet. She was here to champion morality and purity, and the holy life of an English home. In the spring she had sinned through ignorance; she was not ignorant now. “Help me!” she cried, and shut the window as if there was magic in the encircling air. But the tunes would not go out of her head, and all night long she was troubled by torrents of music, and by applause and laughter, and angry young men who shouted the distich out of Baedeker:⁠—

Poggibonizzi, fatti in là
Che Monteriano si fa città!

Poggibonsi was revealed to her as they sang⁠—a joyless, straggling place, full of people who pretended. When she woke up she knew that it had been Sawston.

VII

At about nine o’clock next morning Perfetta went out onto the loggia, not to look at the view, but to throw some dirty water at it. “Scusi tanto!” she wailed, for the water spattered a tall young lady who had for some time been tapping at the lower door.

“Is Signor Carella in?” the young lady asked. It was no business of Perfetta’s to be shocked, and the style of the visitor seemed to demand the reception room. Accordingly she opened its shutters, dusted a round patch on one of the horsehair chairs, and bade the lady do herself the inconvenience of sitting down. Then she ran into Monteriano and shouted up and down its streets until such time as her young master should hear her.

The reception room was sacred to the dead wife. Her shiny portrait hung upon the wall⁠—similar, doubtless, in all respects to the one which would be pasted on her tombstone. A little piece of black drapery had been tacked above the frame to lend a dignity to woe. But two of the tacks had fallen out, and the effect was now rakish, as of a drunkard’s bonnet. A coon song lay open on the piano, and of the two tables one supported Baedeker’s Central Italy, the other Harriet’s inlaid box. And over everything there lay a deposit of heavy white dust, which was only blown off one moment to thicken on another. It is well to be remembered with love. It is not so very dreadful to be forgotten entirely. But if we shall resent anything on earth at all, we shall resent the consecration of a deserted room.

Miss Abbott did not sit down, partly because the antimacassars might harbour fleas, partly because she had suddenly felt faint, and was glad to cling onto the funnel of the stove. She struggled with herself, for she had need to be very calm; only if she was very calm might her behaviour be justified. She had broken faith with Philip and Harriet: she was going to try for the baby before they did. If she failed she could scarcely look them in the face again.

“Harriet and her brother,” she reasoned, “don’t realize what is before them. She would bluster and be rude; he would be pleasant and take it as a joke. Both of them⁠—even if they offered money⁠—would fail. But I begin to understand the man’s