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<h2> Chapter V: Possibilities of a Pleasant Outing </h2>
<p>It was a family saying that "you never knew which way Charlotte Bartlett
would turn." She was perfectly pleasant and sensible over Lucy's
adventure, found the abridged account of it quite adequate, and paid
suitable tribute to the courtesy of Mr. George Emerson. She and Miss
Lavish had had an adventure also. They had been stopped at the Dazio
coming back, and the young officials there, who seemed impudent and
desoeuvre, had tried to search their reticules for provisions. It might
have been most unpleasant. Fortunately Miss Lavish was a match for any
one.</p>
<p>For good or for evil, Lucy was left to face her problem alone. None of her
friends had seen her, either in the Piazza or, later on, by the
embankment. Mr. Beebe, indeed, noticing her startled eyes at dinner-time,
had again passed to himself the remark of "Too much Beethoven." But he
only supposed that she was ready for an adventure, not that she had
encountered it. This solitude oppressed her; she was accustomed to have
her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was
too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.</p>
<p>At breakfast next morning she took decisive action. There were two plans
between which she had to choose. Mr. Beebe was walking up to the Torre del
Gallo with the Emersons and some American ladies. Would Miss Bartlett and
Miss Honeychurch join the party? Charlotte declined for herself; she had
been there in the rain the previous afternoon. But she thought it an
admirable idea for Lucy, who hated shopping, changing money, fetching
letters, and other irksome duties—all of which Miss Bartlett must
accomplish this morning and could easily accomplish alone.</p>
<p>"No, Charlotte!" cried the girl, with real warmth. "It's very kind of Mr.
Beebe, but I am certainly coming with you. I had much rather."</p>
<p>"Very well, dear," said Miss Bartlett, with a faint flush of pleasure that
called forth a deep flush of shame on the cheeks of Lucy. How abominably
she behaved to Charlotte, now as always! But now she should alter. All
morning she would be really nice to her.</p>
<p>She slipped her arm into her cousin's, and they started off along the
Lung' Arno. The river was a lion that morning in strength, voice, and
colour. Miss Bartlett insisted on leaning over the parapet to look at it.
She then made her usual remark, which was "How I do wish Freddy and your
mother could see this, too!"</p>
<p>Lucy fidgeted; it was tiresome of Charlotte to have stopped exactly where
she did.</p>
<p>"Look, Lucia! Oh, you are watching for the Torre del Gallo party. I feared
you would repent you of your choice."</p>
<p>Serious as the choice had been, Lucy did not repent. Yesterday had been a
muddle—queer and odd, the kind of thing one could not write down
easily on paper—but she had a feeling that Charlotte and her
shopping were preferable to George Emerson and the summit of the Torre del
Gallo. Since she could not unravel the tangle, she must take care not to
re-enter it. She could protest sincerely against Miss Bartlett's
insinuations.</p>
<p>But though she had avoided the chief actor, the scenery unfortunately
remained. Charlotte, with the complacency of fate, led her from the river
to the Piazza Signoria. She could not have believed that stones, a Loggia,
a fountain, a palace tower, would have such significance. For a moment she
understood the nature of ghosts.</p>
<p>The exact site of the murder was occupied, not by a ghost, but by Miss
Lavish, who had the morning newspaper in her hand. She hailed them
briskly. The dreadful catastrophe of the previous day had given her an
idea which she thought would work up into a book.</p>
<p>"Oh, let me congratulate you!" said Miss Bartlett. "After your despair of
yesterday! What a fortunate thing!"</p>
<p>"Aha! Miss Honeychurch, come you here I am in luck. Now, you are to tell
me absolutely everything that you saw from the beginning." Lucy poked at
the ground with her parasol.</p>
<p>"But perhaps you would rather not?"</p>
<p>"I'm sorry—if you could manage without it, I think I would rather
not."</p>
<p>The elder ladies exchanged glances, not of disapproval; it is suitable
that a girl should feel deeply.</p>
<p>"It is I who am sorry," said Miss Lavish "literary hacks are shameless
creatures. I believe there's no secret of the human heart into which we
wouldn't pry."</p>
<p>She marched cheerfully to the fountain and back, and did a few
calculations in realism. Then she said that she had been in the Piazza
since eight o'clock collecting material. A good deal of it was unsuitable,
but of course one always had to adapt. The two men had quarrelled over a
five-franc note. For the five-franc note she should substitute a young
lady, which would raise the tone of the tragedy, and at the same time
furnish an excellent plot.</p>
<p>"What is the heroine's name?" asked Miss Bartlett.</p>
<p>"Leonora," said Miss Lavish; her own name was Eleanor.</p>
<p>"I do hope she's nice."</p>
<p>That desideratum would not be omitted.</p>
<p>"And what is the plot?"</p>
<p>Love, murder, abduction, revenge, was the plot. But it all came while the
fountain plashed to the satyrs in the morning sun.</p>
<p>"I hope you will excuse me for boring on like this," Miss Lavish
concluded. "It is so tempting to talk to really sympathetic people. Of
course, this is the barest outline. There will be a deal of local
colouring, descriptions of Florence and the neighbourhood, and I shall
also introduce some humorous characters. And let me give you all fair
warning: I intend to be unmerciful to the British tourist."</p>
<p>"Oh, you wicked woman," cried Miss Bartlett. "I am sure you are thinking
of the Emersons."</p>
<p>Miss Lavish gave a Machiavellian smile.</p>
<p>"I confess that in Italy my sympathies are not with my own countrymen. It
is the neglected Italians who attract me, and whose lives I am going to
paint so far as I can. For I repeat and I insist, and I have always held
most strongly, that a tragedy such as yesterday's is not the less tragic
because it happened in humble life."</p>
<p>There was a fitting silence when Miss Lavish had concluded. Then the
cousins wished success to her labours, and walked slowly away across the
square.</p>
<p>"She is my idea of a really clever woman," said Miss Bartlett. "That last
remark struck me as so particularly true. It should be a most pathetic
novel."</p>
<p>Lucy assented. At present her great aim was not to get put into it. Her
perceptions this morning were curiously keen, and she believed that Miss
Lavish had her on trial for an ingenue.</p>
<p>"She is emancipated, but only in the very best sense of the word,"
continued Miss Bartlett slowly. "None but the superficial would be shocked
at her. We had a long talk yesterday. She believes in justice and truth
and human interest. She told me also that she has a high opinion of the
destiny of woman—Mr. Eager! Why, how nice! What a pleasant
surprise!"</p>
<p>"Ah, not for me," said the chaplain blandly, "for I have been watching you
and Miss Honeychurch for quite a little time."</p>
<p>"We were chatting to Miss Lavish."</p>
<p>His brow contracted.</p>
<p>"So I saw. Were you indeed? Andate via! sono occupato!" The last remark
was made to a vender of panoramic photographs who was approaching with a
courteous smile. "I am about to venture a suggestion. Would you and Miss
Honeychurch be disposed to join me in a drive some day this week—a
drive in the hills? We might go up by Fiesole and back by Settignano.
There is a point on that road where we could get down and have an hour's
ramble on the hillside. The view thence of Florence is most beautiful—far
better than the hackneyed view of Fiesole. It is the view that Alessio
Baldovinetti is fond of introducing into his pictures. That man had a
decided feeling for landscape. Decidedly. But who looks at it to-day? Ah,
the world is too much for us."</p>
<p>Miss Bartlett had not heard of Alessio Baldovinetti, but she knew that Mr.
Eager was no commonplace chaplain. He was a member of the residential
colony who had made Florence their home. He knew the people who never
walked about with Baedekers, who had learnt to take a siesta after lunch,
who took drives the pension tourists had never heard of, and saw by
private influence galleries which were closed to them. Living in delicate
seclusion, some in furnished flats, others in Renaissance villas on
Fiesole's slope, they read, wrote, studied, and exchanged ideas, thus
attaining to that intimate knowledge, or rather perception, of Florence
which is denied to all who carry in their pockets the coupons of Cook.</p>
<p>Therefore an invitation from the chaplain was something to be proud of.
Between the two sections of his flock he was often the only link, and it
was his avowed custom to select those of his migratory sheep who seemed
worthy, and give them a few hours in the pastures of the permanent. Tea at
a Renaissance villa? Nothing had been said about it yet. But if it did
come to that—how Lucy would enjoy it!</p>
<p>A few days ago and Lucy would have felt the same. But the joys of life
were grouping themselves anew. A drive in the hills with Mr. Eager and
Miss Bartlett—even if culminating in a residential tea-party—was
no longer the greatest of them. She echoed the raptures of Charlotte
somewhat faintly. Only when she heard that Mr. Beebe was also coming did
her thanks become more sincere.</p>
<p>"So we shall be a partie carree," said the chaplain. "In these days of
toil and tumult one has great needs of the country and its message of
purity. Andate via! andate presto, presto! Ah, the town! Beautiful as it
is, it is the town."</p>
<p>They assented.</p>
<p>"This very square—so I am told—witnessed yesterday the most
sordid of tragedies. To one who loves the Florence of Dante and Savonarola
there is something portentous in such desecration—portentous and
humiliating."</p>
<p>"Humiliating indeed," said Miss Bartlett. "Miss Honeychurch happened to be
passing through as it happened. She can hardly bear to speak of it." She
glanced at Lucy proudly.</p>
<p>"And how came we to have you here?" asked the chaplain paternally.</p>
<p>Miss Bartlett's recent liberalism oozed away at the question. "Do not
blame her, please, Mr. Eager. The fault is mine: I left her unchaperoned."</p>
<p>"So you were here alone, Miss Honeychurch?" His voice suggested
sympathetic reproof but at the same time indicated that a few harrowing
details would not be unacceptable. His dark, handsome face drooped
mournfully towards her to catch her reply.</p>
<p>"Practically."</p>
<p>"One of our pension acquaintances kindly brought her home," said Miss
Bartlett, adroitly concealing the sex of the preserver.</p>
<p>"For her also it must have been a terrible experience. I trust that
neither of you was at all—that it was not in your immediate
proximity?"</p>
<p>Of the many things Lucy was noticing to-day, not the least remarkable was
this: the ghoulish fashion in which respectable people will nibble after
blood. George Emerson had kept the subject strangely pure.</p>
<p>"He died by the fountain, I believe," was her reply.</p>
<p>"And you and your friend—"</p>
<p>"Were over at the Loggia."</p>
<p>"That must have saved you much. You have not, of course, seen the
disgraceful illustrations which the gutter Press—This man is a
public nuisance; he knows that I am a resident perfectly well, and yet he
goes on worrying me to buy his vulgar views."</p>
<p>Surely the vendor of photographs was in league with Lucy—in the
eternal league of Italy with youth. He had suddenly extended his book
before Miss Bartlett and Mr. Eager, binding their hands together by a long
glossy ribbon of churches, pictures, and views.</p>
<p>"This is too much!" cried the chaplain, striking petulantly at one of Fra
Angelico's angels. She tore. A shrill cry rose from the vendor. The book
it seemed, was more valuable than one would have supposed.</p>
<p>"Willingly would I purchase—" began Miss Bartlett.</p>
<p>"Ignore him," said Mr. Eager sharply, and they all walked rapidly away
from the square.</p>
<p>But an Italian can never be ignored, least of all when he has a grievance.
His mysterious persecution of Mr. Eager became relentless; the air rang
with his threats and lamentations. He appealed to Lucy; would not she
intercede? He was poor—he sheltered a family—the tax on bread.
He waited, he gibbered, he was recompensed, he was dissatisfied, he did
not leave them until he had swept their minds clean of all thoughts
whether pleasant or unpleasant.</p>
<p>Shopping was the topic that now ensued. Under the chaplain's guidance they
selected many hideous presents and mementoes—florid little
picture-frames that seemed fashioned in gilded pastry; other little
frames, more severe, that stood on little easels, and were carven out of
oak; a blotting book of vellum; a Dante of the same material; cheap mosaic
brooches, which the maids, next Christmas, would never tell from real;
pins, pots, heraldic saucers, brown art-photographs; Eros and Psyche in
alabaster; St. Peter to match—all of which would have cost less in
London.</p>
<p>This successful morning left no pleasant impressions on Lucy. She had been
a little frightened, both by Miss Lavish and by Mr. Eager, she knew not
why. And as they frightened her, she had, strangely enough, ceased to
respect them. She doubted that Miss Lavish was a great artist. She doubted
that Mr. Eager was as full of spirituality and culture as she had been led
to suppose. They were tried by some new test, and they were found wanting.
As for Charlotte—as for Charlotte she was exactly the same. It might
be possible to be nice to her; it was impossible to love her.</p>
<p>"The son of a labourer; I happen to know it for a fact. A mechanic of some
sort himself when he was young; then he took to writing for the
Socialistic Press. I came across him at Brixton."</p>
<p>They were talking about the Emersons.</p>
<p>"How wonderfully people rise in these days!" sighed Miss Bartlett,
fingering a model of the leaning Tower of Pisa.</p>
<p>"Generally," replied Mr. Eager, "one has only sympathy for their success.
The desire for education and for social advance—in these things
there is something not wholly vile. There are some working men whom one
would be very willing to see out here in Florence—little as they
would make of it."</p>
<p>"Is he a journalist now?" Miss Bartlett asked, "He is not; he made an
advantageous marriage."</p>
<p>He uttered this remark with a voice full of meaning, and ended with a
sigh.</p>
<p>"Oh, so he has a wife."</p>
<p>"Dead, Miss Bartlett, dead. I wonder—yes I wonder how he has the
effrontery to look me in the face, to dare to claim acquaintance with me.
He was in my London parish long ago. The other day in Santa Croce, when he
was with Miss Honeychurch, I snubbed him. Let him beware that he does not
get more than a snub."</p>
<p>"What?" cried Lucy, flushing.</p>
<p>"Exposure!" hissed Mr. Eager.</p>
<p>He tried to change the subject; but in scoring a dramatic point he had
interested his audience more than he had intended. Miss Bartlett was full
of very natural curiosity. Lucy, though she wished never to see the
Emersons again, was not disposed to condemn them on a single word.</p>
<p>"Do you mean," she asked, "that he is an irreligious man? We know that
already."</p>
<p>"Lucy, dear—" said Miss Bartlett, gently reproving her cousin's
penetration.</p>
<p>"I should be astonished if you knew all. The boy—an innocent child
at the time—I will exclude. God knows what his education and his
inherited qualities may have made him."</p>
<p>"Perhaps," said Miss Bartlett, "it is something that we had better not
hear."</p>
<p>"To speak plainly," said Mr. Eager, "it is. I will say no more." For the
first time Lucy's rebellious thoughts swept out in words—for the
first time in her life.</p>
<p>"You have said very little."</p>
<p>"It was my intention to say very little," was his frigid reply.</p>
<p>He gazed indignantly at the girl, who met him with equal indignation. She
turned towards him from the shop counter; her breast heaved quickly. He
observed her brow, and the sudden strength of her lips. It was intolerable
that she should disbelieve him.</p>
<p>"Murder, if you want to know," he cried angrily. "That man murdered his
wife!"</p>
<p>"How?" she retorted.</p>
<p>"To all intents and purposes he murdered her. That day in Santa Croce—did
they say anything against me?"</p>
<p>"Not a word, Mr. Eager—not a single word."</p>
<p>"Oh, I thought they had been libelling me to you. But I suppose it is only
their personal charms that makes you defend them."</p>
<p>"I'm not defending them," said Lucy, losing her courage, and relapsing
into the old chaotic methods. "They're nothing to me."</p>
<p>"How could you think she was defending them?" said Miss Bartlett, much
discomfited by the unpleasant scene. The shopman was possibly listening.</p>
<p>"She will find it difficult. For that man has murdered his wife in the
sight of God."</p>
<p>The addition of God was striking. But the chaplain was really trying to
qualify a rash remark. A silence followed which might have been
impressive, but was merely awkward. Then Miss Bartlett hastily purchased
the Leaning Tower, and led the way into the street.</p>
<p>"I must be going," said he, shutting his eyes and taking out his watch.</p>
<p>Miss Bartlett thanked him for his kindness, and spoke with enthusiasm of
the approaching drive.</p>
<p>"Drive? Oh, is our drive to come off?"</p>
<p>Lucy was recalled to her manners, and after a little exertion the
complacency of Mr. Eager was restored.</p>
<p>"Bother the drive!" exclaimed the girl, as soon as he had departed. "It is
just the drive we had arranged with Mr. Beebe without any fuss at all. Why
should he invite us in that absurd manner? We might as well invite him. We
are each paying for ourselves."</p>
<p>Miss Bartlett, who had intended to lament over the Emersons, was launched
by this remark into unexpected thoughts.</p>
<p>"If that is so, dear—if the drive we and Mr. Beebe are going with
Mr. Eager is really the same as the one we are going with Mr. Beebe, then
I foresee a sad kettle of fish."</p>
<p>"How?"</p>
<p>"Because Mr. Beebe has asked Eleanor Lavish to come, too."</p>
<p>"That will mean another carriage."</p>
<p>"Far worse. Mr. Eager does not like Eleanor. She knows it herself. The
truth must be told; she is too unconventional for him."</p>
<p>They were now in the newspaper-room at the English bank. Lucy stood by the
central table, heedless of Punch and the Graphic, trying to answer, or at
all events to formulate the questions rioting in her brain. The well-known
world had broken up, and there emerged Florence, a magic city where people
thought and did the most extraordinary things. Murder, accusations of
murder, A lady clinging to one man and being rude to another—were
these the daily incidents of her streets? Was there more in her frank
beauty than met the eye—the power, perhaps, to evoke passions, good
and bad, and to bring them speedily to a fulfillment?</p>
<p>Happy Charlotte, who, though greatly troubled over things that did not
matter, seemed oblivious to things that did; who could conjecture with
admirable delicacy "where things might lead to," but apparently lost sight
of the goal as she approached it. Now she was crouching in the corner
trying to extract a circular note from a kind of linen nose-bag which hung
in chaste concealment round her neck. She had been told that this was the
only safe way to carry money in Italy; it must only be broached within the
walls of the English bank. As she groped she murmured: "Whether it is Mr.
Beebe who forgot to tell Mr. Eager, or Mr. Eager who forgot when he told
us, or whether they have decided to leave Eleanor out altogether—which
they could scarcely do—but in any case we must be prepared. It is
you they really want; I am only asked for appearances. You shall go with
the two gentlemen, and I and Eleanor will follow behind. A one-horse
carriage would do for us. Yet how difficult it is!"</p>
<p>"It is indeed," replied the girl, with a gravity that sounded sympathetic.</p>
<p>"What do you think about it?" asked Miss Bartlett, flushed from the
struggle, and buttoning up her dress.</p>
<p>"I don't know what I think, nor what I want."</p>
<p>"Oh, dear, Lucy! I do hope Florence isn't boring you. Speak the word, and,
as you know, I would take you to the ends of the earth to-morrow."</p>
<p>"Thank you, Charlotte," said Lucy, and pondered over the offer.</p>
<p>There were letters for her at the bureau—one from her brother, full
of athletics and biology; one from her mother, delightful as only her
mother's letters could be. She had read in it of the crocuses which had
been bought for yellow and were coming up puce, of the new parlour-maid,
who had watered the ferns with essence of lemonade, of the semi-detached
cottages which were ruining Summer Street, and breaking the heart of Sir
Harry Otway. She recalled the free, pleasant life of her home, where she
was allowed to do everything, and where nothing ever happened to her. The
road up through the pine-woods, the clean drawing-room, the view over the
Sussex Weald—all hung before her bright and distinct, but pathetic
as the pictures in a gallery to which, after much experience, a traveller
returns.</p>
<p>"And the news?" asked Miss Bartlett.</p>
<p>"Mrs. Vyse and her son have gone to Rome," said Lucy, giving the news that
interested her least. "Do you know the Vyses?"</p>
<p>"Oh, not that way back. We can never have too much of the dear Piazza
Signoria."</p>
<p>"They're nice people, the Vyses. So clever—my idea of what's really
clever. Don't you long to be in Rome?"</p>
<p>"I die for it!"</p>
<p>The Piazza Signoria is too stony to be brilliant. It has no grass, no
flowers, no frescoes, no glittering walls of marble or comforting patches
of ruddy brick. By an odd chance—unless we believe in a presiding
genius of places—the statues that relieve its severity suggest, not
the innocence of childhood, nor the glorious bewilderment of youth, but
the conscious achievements of maturity. Perseus and Judith, Hercules and
Thusnelda, they have done or suffered something, and though they are
immortal, immortality has come to them after experience, not before. Here,
not only in the solitude of Nature, might a hero meet a goddess, or a
heroine a god.</p>
<p>"Charlotte!" cried the girl suddenly. "Here's an idea. What if we popped
off to Rome to-morrow—straight to the Vyses' hotel? For I do know
what I want. I'm sick of Florence. No, you said you'd go to the ends of
the earth! Do! Do!"</p>
<p>Miss Bartlett, with equal vivacity, replied:</p>
<p>"Oh, you droll person! Pray, what would become of your drive in the
hills?"</p>
<p>They passed together through the gaunt beauty of the square, laughing over
the unpractical suggestion.</p>
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