A Room With A View

by E.M. Forster

It is so difficult—at least, I find it difficult—to understand people who speak the truth.”

Of course, it contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values she was capable of feeling what was proper. But who was to tell her which they were? She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date.

There was no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful,

She watched the tourists; their noses were as red as their Baedekers, so cold was Santa Croce.

The child’s legs had become as melting wax. Each time that old Mr. Emerson and Lucy set it erect it collapsed with a roar.

By some mysterious virtue, which mothers alone possess, she stiffened the little boy’s back-bone and imparted strength to his knees.

Built by faith indeed! That simply means the workmen weren’t paid properly.

“He will try to be kind.” “I hope we all try,” said she, smiling nervously. “Because we think it improves our characters. But he is kind to people because he loves them; and they find him out, and are offended, or frightened.”

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.

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.

“literary hacks are shameless creatures. I believe there’s no secret of the human heart into which we wouldn’t pry.”

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.

The party sprang about from tuft to tuft of grass, their anxiety to keep together being only equalled by their desire to go different directions.

She addressed herself to the drivers, who were sprawling in the carriages, perfuming the cushions with cigars.

From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.

“Exploits?” cried Lucy, wincing under the horrible plural.

Or shall I cross that out, too?” “Cross it out, too,” said Freddy. Mrs. Honeychurch left it in.

“I have no profession,” said Cecil. “It is another example of my decadence. My attitude—quite an indefensible one—is that so long as I am no trouble to any one I have a right to do as I like. I know I ought to be getting money out of people, or devoting myself to things I don’t care a straw about, but somehow, I’ve not been able to begin.”

He longed to hint to her that not here lay her vocation; that a woman’s power and charm reside in mystery, not in muscular rant. But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars the beautiful creature, but shows that she is alive.

Life, so far as she troubled to conceive it, was a circle of rich, pleasant people, with identical interests and identical foes.

“Well, if they are coming—No, Minnie, not Saturn.” Saturn was a tennis-ball whose skin was partially unsewn. When in motion his orb was encircled by a ring.

“Saturn’s all right for bumble-puppy,” cried Freddy, joining them. “Minnie, don’t you listen to her.” “Saturn doesn’t bounce.” “Saturn bounces enough.” “No, he doesn’t.” “Well; he bounces better than the Beautiful White Devil.”

Lucy fell, the Beautiful White Devil rolled from her hand.

I’m always right. I’m quite uneasy at being always right so often.”

“CECIL?” exclaimed Lucy.

Mrs. Vyse was a nice woman, but her personality, like many another’s, had been swamped by London, for it needs a strong head to live among many people.

“It is Fate that I am here,” persisted George. “But you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”

“Water’s wonderful!” cried Freddy, prancing in. “Water’s water,” murmured George.

The three gentlemen rotated in the pool breast high, after the fashion of the nymphs in Gotterdammerung.

George, the world-weary George, shouted to Freddy that he had hooked a fish. “And me, I’ve swallowed one,” answered he of the bracken. “I’ve swallowed a pollywog. It wriggleth in my tummy. I shall die—Emerson you beast, you’ve got on my bags.”

she reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gestures mean nothing, or mean too much.

She had bowed—but to whom? To gods, to heroes, to the nonsense of school-girls! She had bowed across the rubbish that cumbers the world.

Miss Bartlett, indeed, though not in word, had taught the girl that this our life contains nothing satisfactory. Lucy, though she disliked the teacher, regarded the teaching as profound, and applied it to her lover.

He seized her by the elbows and humorously danced her up and down the passage. She pretended not to mind, but she could have screamed with temper.

“Her WHAT?”

Mrs. Honeychurch might have flamed out. She did not. She said: “Come here, old lady—thank you for putting away my bonnet—kiss me.”

So the grittiness went out of life. It generally did at Windy Corner. At the last minute, when the social machine was clogged hopelessly, one member or other of the family poured in a drop of oil.

Of course, the wish was due to nerves, which love to play such perverse tricks upon us. Once she had suffered from “things that came out of nothing and meant she didn’t know what.” Now Cecil had explained psychology to her one wet afternoon, and all the troubles of youth in an unknown world could be dismissed.

It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, “She loves young Emerson.” A reader in Lucy’s place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?

I rather mistrust young men who slip into life gracefully.”

“I never notice much difference in views.” “What do you mean?” “Because they’re all alike. Because all that matters in them is distance and air.” “H’m!” said Cecil, uncertain whether the remark was striking or not.

It was a blustering day, and the wind had taken and broken the dahlias.

He was used to these nervous old maids and to the exaggerated importance that they attach to words. A rector lives in a web of petty secrets, and confidences and warnings, and the wiser he is the less he will regard them.

Mrs. Honeychurch, now helped by Freddy, still wrestled with the lives of her flowers.

“I love weather like this,” said Freddy. Mr. Beebe passed into it.

Was it possible that she had muddled things away? Quite possible. Other people had.

“Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror—on the things that I might have avoided.

Life’ wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.’

“How dare you!” gasped Lucy, with the roaring of waters in her ears. “Oh, how like a man!—I mean, to suppose that a woman is always thinking about a man.” “But you are.”

I hate the word now, because of all the cant with which superstition has wrapped it round. But we have souls. I cannot say how they came nor whither they go, but we have them, and I see you ruining yours.