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

very big ‘ought.’ Whatever Harriet and I do the issue is the same. Why, I can see the splendour of it⁠—even the humour. Gino sitting up here on the mountaintop with his cub. We come and ask for it. He welcomes us. We ask for it again. He is equally pleasant. I’m agreeable to spend the whole week bargaining with him. But I know that at the end of it I shall descend empty-handed to the plains. It might be finer of me to make up my mind. But I’m not a fine character. And nothing hangs on it.”

“Perhaps I am extreme,” she said humbly. “I’ve been trying to run you, just like your mother. I feel you ought to fight it out with Harriet. Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that ‘nothing hangs on it,’ it sounds like blasphemy. There’s never any knowing⁠—(how am I to put it?)⁠—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won’t have things hanging on it forever.”

He assented, but her remark had only an aesthetic value. He was not prepared to take it to his heart. All the afternoon he rested⁠—worried, but not exactly despondent. The thing would jog out somehow. Probably Miss Abbott was right. The baby had better stop where it was loved. And that, probably, was what the fates had decreed. He felt little interest in the matter, and he was sure that he had no influence.

It was not surprising, therefore, that the interview at the Caffè Garibaldi came to nothing. Neither of them took it very seriously. And before long Gino had discovered how things lay, and was ragging his companion hopelessly. Philip tried to look offended, but in the end he had to laugh. “Well, you are right,” he said. “This affair is being managed by the ladies.”

“Ah, the ladies⁠—the ladies!” cried the other, and then he roared like a millionaire for two cups of black coffee, and insisted on treating his friend, as a sign that their strife was over.

“Well, I have done my best,” said Philip, dipping a long slice of sugar into his cup, and watching the brown liquid ascend into it. “I shall face my mother with a good conscience. Will you bear me witness that I’ve done my best?”

“My poor fellow, I will!” He laid a sympathetic hand on Philip’s knee.

“And that I have⁠—” The sugar was now impregnated with coffee, and he bent forward to swallow it. As he did so his eyes swept the opposite of the Piazza, and he saw there, watching them, Harriet. “Mia sorella!” he exclaimed. Gino, much amused, laid his hand upon the little table, and beat the marble humorously with his fists. Harriet turned away and began gloomily to inspect the Palazzo Pubblico.

“Poor Harriet!” said Philip, swallowing the sugar. “One more wrench and it will all be over for her; we are leaving this evening.”

Gino was sorry for this. “Then you will not be here this evening as you promised us. All three leaving?”

“All three,” said Philip, who had not revealed the secession of Miss Abbott; “by the night train; at least, that is my sister’s plan. So I’m afraid I shan’t be here.”

They watched the departing figure of Harriet, and then entered upon the final civilities. They shook each other warmly by both hands. Philip was to come again next year, and to write beforehand. He was to be introduced to Gino’s wife, for he was told of the marriage now. He was to be godfather to his next baby. As for Gino, he would remember some time that Philip liked vermouth. He begged him to give his love to Irma. Mrs. Herriton⁠—should he send her his sympathetic regards? No; perhaps that would hardly do.

So the two young men parted with a good deal of genuine affection. For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or⁠—to put the thing less cynically⁠—we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice. Philip, at all events, lived more graciously in Italian, the very phrases of which entice one to be happy and kind. It was horrible to think of the English of Harriet, whose every word would be as hard, as distinct, and as unfinished as a lump of coal.

Harriet, however, talked little. She had seen enough to know that her brother had failed again, and with unwonted dignity she accepted the situation. She did her packing, she wrote up her diary, she made a brown paper cover for the new Baedeker. Philip, finding her so amenable, tried to discuss their future plans. But she only said that they would sleep in Florence, and told him to telegraph for rooms. They had supper alone. Miss Abbott did not come down. The landlady told them that Signor Carella had called on Miss Abbott to say goodbye, but she, though in, had not been able to see him. She also told them that it had begun to rain. Harriet sighed, but indicated to her brother that he was not responsible.

The carriages came round at a quarter past eight. It was not raining much, but the night was extraordinarily dark, and one of the drivers wanted to go slowly to the station. Miss Abbott came down and said that she was ready, and would start at once.

“Yes, do,” said Philip, who was standing in the hall. “Now that we have quarrelled we scarcely want to travel in procession all the way down the hill. Well, goodbye; it’s all over at last; another scene in my pageant has shifted.”

“Goodbye; it’s been a great pleasure to see you. I hope that won’t shift, at all events.” She gripped his hand.

“You sound despondent,” he said, laughing. “Don’t forget that you return victorious.”

“I suppose I do,” she replied, more despondently than ever, and got into the carriage. He concluded that she was thinking of her