A Room with a View - E. M. Forster [61]
“Oh, yes,” he grumbled. “And you will be satisfied, too, for they’re friends of Cecil; so”—with elaborate irony—“you and the other country families will be able to call in perfect safety.”
“Cecil?” exclaimed Lucy.
“Don’t be rude, dear,” said his mother placidly. “Lucy, don’t screech. It’s a new bad habit you’re getting into.”
“But has Cecil—”
“Friends of Cecil’s,” he repeated, “‘and so really dee-sire-rebel. Ahem! Honeychurch, I have just telegraphed to them.’”
She got up from the grass.
It was hard on Lucy. Mr. Beebe sympathized with her very much. While she believed that her snub about the Miss Alans came from Sir Harry Otway, she had borne it like a good girl. She might well “screech” when she heard that it came partly from her lover. Mr. Vyse was a tease—something worse than a tease: he took a malicious pleasure in thwarting people. The clergyman, knowing this, looked at Miss Honeychurch with more than his usual kindness.
When she exclaimed, “But Cecil’s Emersons—they can’t possibly be the same ones—there is that—” he did not consider that the exclamation was strange, but saw in it an opportunity of diverting the conversation while she recovered her composure. He diverted it as follows:
“The Emersons who were at Florence, do you mean? No, I don’t suppose it will prove to be them. It is probably a long cry from them to friends of Mr. Vyse’s. Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch, the oddest people! The queerest people! For our part we liked them, didn’t we?” He appealed to Lucy. “There was a great scene over some violets. They picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans who have failed to come to Cissie Villa. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine’s great stories. ‘My dear sister loves flowers,’ it began. They found the whole room a mass of blue—vases and jugs—and the story ends with ‘So ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful.’ It is all very difficult. Yes, I always connect those Florentine Emersons with violets.”
“Fiasco’s done you this time,” remarked Freddy, not seeing that his sister’s face was very red. She could not recover herself. Mr. Beebe saw it, and continued to divert the conversation.
“These particular Emersons consisted of a father and a son—the son a goodly, if not a good young man; not a fool, I fancy, but very immature—pessimism, et cetera. Our special joy was the father-such a sentimental darling, and people declared he had murdered his wife.”
In his normal state Mr. Beebe would never have repeated such gossip, but he was trying to shelter Lucy in her little trouble. He repeated any rubbish that came into his head.
“Murdered his wife?” said Mrs. Honeychurch. “Lucy, don’t desert us—go on playing bumble-puppy. Really, the Pension Bertolini must have been the oddest place. That’s the second murderer I’ve heard of as being there. Whatever was Charlotte doing to stop? By-the-by, we really must ask Charlotte here some time.”
Mr. Beebe could recall no second murderer. He suggested that his hostess was mistaken. At the hint of opposition she warmed. She was perfectly sure that there had been a second tourist of whom the same story had been told. The name escaped her. What was the name? Oh, what was the name? She clasped her knees for the name. Something in Thackeray. She struck her matronly forehead. 13
Lucy asked her brother whether Cecil was in.
“Oh, don’t go!” he cried, and tried to catch her by the ankles.
“I must go,” she said gravely. “Don’t be silly. You always overdo it when you play.”
As she left them her mother’s shout of “Harris!” shivered the tranquil air, and reminded her that she had told a lie and had never put it right. Such a senseless lie, too, yet it shattered her nerves and made her connect these Emersons, friends of Cecil’s, with a pair of nondescript tourists. Hitherto truth had come to her naturally. She saw that for the future she must be more vigilant, and be—absolutely truthful? Well, at all events, she must not tell lies. She hurried up the garden, still flushed with shame. A word