A Room with a View - E. M. Forster [24]
“Who is she?” he asked the vicar afterwards.
“Cousin of one of my parishioners. I do not consider her choice of a piece happy. Beethoven is so usually simple and direct in his appeal that it is sheer perversity to choose a thing like that, which, if anything, disturbs.”
“Introduce me.”
“She will be delighted. She and Miss Bartlett are full of the praises of your sermon.”
“My sermon?” cried Mr. Beebe. “Why ever did she listen to it?”
When he was introduced he understood why, for Miss Honeychurch, disjoined from her music-stool, was only a young lady with a quantity of dark hair and a very pretty, pale, undeveloped face. She loved going to concerts, she loved stopping with her cousin, she loved iced coffee and meringues. He did not doubt that she loved his sermon also. But before he left Tunbridge Wells he made a remark to the vicar, which he now made to Lucy herself when she closed the little piano and moved dreamily towards him:
“If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting—both for us and for her.”
Lucy at once re-entered daily life.
“Oh, what a funny thing! Some one said just the same to mother, and she said she trusted I should never live a duet.”
“Doesn’t Mrs. Honeychurch like music?”
“She doesn’t mind it. But she doesn’t like one to get excited over anything; she thinks I am silly about it. She thinks—I can’t make out. Once, you know, I said that I liked my own playing better than any one’s. She has never got over it. Of course, I didn’t mean that I played well; I only meant—”
“Of course,” said he, wondering why she bothered to explain.
“Music—” said Lucy, as if attempting some generality. She could not complete it, and looked out absently upon Italy in the wet. The whole life of the South was disorganized, and the most graceful nation in Europe had turned into formless lumps of clothes. The street and the river were dirty yellow, the bridge was dirty grey, and the hills were dirty purple. Somewhere in their folds were concealed Miss Lavish and Miss Bartlett, who had chosen this afternoon to visit the Torre del Gallo.
“What about music?” said Mr. Beebe.
“Poor Charlotte will be sopped,” was Lucy’s reply.
The expedition was typical of Miss Bartlett, who would return cold, tired, hungry, and angelic, with a ruined skirt, a pulpy Baedeker, and a tickling cough in her throat. On another day, when the whole world was singing and the air ran into the mouth like wine, she would refuse to stir from the drawing-room, saying that she was an old thing, and no fit companion for a hearty girl.
“Miss Lavish has led your cousin astray. She hopes to find the true Italy in the wet I believe.”
“Miss Lavish is so original,” murmured Lucy. This was a stock remark, the supreme achievement of the Pension Bertolini in the way of definition. Miss Lavish was so original. Mr. Beebe had his doubts, but they would have been put down to clerical narrowness. For that, and for other reasons, he held his peace.
“Is it true,” continued Lucy in awe-struck tones, “that Miss Lavish is writing a book?”
“They do say so.”
“What is it about?”
“It will be a novel,” replied Mr. Beebe, “dealing with modern Italy. Let me refer you for an account to Miss Catharine Alan, who uses words herself more admirably than any one I know.”
“I wish Miss Lavish would tell me herself. We started such friends. But I don