A Room With A View | Page 5

But he came
forward pleasantly enough and accepted the chair into which he was
beckoned by Lucy.
"I AM so glad to see you," said the girl, who was in a state of spiritual
starvation, and would have been glad to see the waiter if her cousin had
permitted it. "Just fancy how small the world is. Summer Street, too,
makes it so specially funny."
"Miss Honeychurch lives in the parish of Summer Street," said Miss
Bartlett, filling up the gap, "and she happened to tell me in the course
of conversation that you have just accepted the living--"
"Yes, I heard from mother so last week. She didn't know that I knew
you at Tunbridge Wells; but I wrote back at once, and I said: 'Mr.
Beebe is--'"
"Quite right," said the clergyman. "I move into the Rectory at Summer
Street next June. I am lucky to be appointed to such a charming
neighbourhood."
"Oh, how glad I am! The name of our house is Windy Corner." Mr.
Beebe bowed.
"There is mother and me generally, and my brother, though it's not
often we get him to ch-- The church is rather far off, I mean."
"Lucy, dearest, let Mr. Beebe eat his dinner."
"I am eating it, thank you, and enjoying it."

He preferred to talk to Lucy, whose playing he remembered, rather than
to Miss Bartlett, who probably remembered his sermons. He asked the
girl whether she knew Florence well, and was informed at some length
that she had never been there before. It is delightful to advise a
newcomer, and he was first in the field. "Don't neglect the country
round," his advice concluded. "The first fine afternoon drive up to
Fiesole, and round by Settignano, or something of that sort."
"No!" cried a voice from the top of the table. "Mr. Beebe, you are
wrong. The first fine afternoon your ladies must go to Prato."
"That lady looks so clever," whispered Miss Bartlett to her cousin. "We
are in luck."
And, indeed, a perfect torrent of information burst on them. People told
them what to see, when to see it, how to stop the electric trams, how to
get rid of the beggars, how much to give for a vellum blotter, how
much the place would grow upon them. The Pension Bertolini had
decided, almost enthusiastically, that they would do. Whichever way
they looked, kind ladies smiled and shouted at them. And above all rose
the voice of the clever lady, crying: "Prato! They must go to Prato. That
place is too sweetly squalid for words. I love it; I revel in shaking off
the trammels of respectability, as you know."
The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then
returned moodily to his plate. Obviously he and his father did not do.
Lucy, in the midst of her success, found time to wish they did. It gave
her no extra pleasure that any one should be left in the cold; and when
she rose to go, she turned back and gave the two outsiders a nervous
little bow.
The father did not see it; the son acknowledged it, not by another bow,
but by raising his eyebrows and smiling; he seemed to be smiling
across something.
She hastened after her cousin, who had already disappeared through the
curtains--curtains which smote one in the face, and seemed heavy with
more than cloth. Beyond them stood the unreliable Signora, bowing
good-evening to her guests, and supported by 'Enery, her little boy, and
Victorier, her daughter. It made a curious little scene, this attempt of
the Cockney to convey the grace and geniality of the South. And even
more curious was the drawing-room, which attempted to rival the solid
comfort of a Bloomsbury boarding-house. Was this really Italy?

Miss Bartlett was already seated on a tightly stuffed arm-chair, which
had the colour and the contours of a tomato. She was talking to Mr.
Beebe, and as she spoke, her long narrow head drove backwards and
forwards, slowly, regularly, as though she were demolishing some
invisible obstacle. "We are most grateful to you," she was saying. "The
first evening means so much. When you arrived we were in for a
peculiarly mauvais quart d'heure."
He expressed his regret.
"Do you, by any chance, know the name of an old man who sat
opposite us at dinner?"
"Emerson."
"Is he a friend of yours?"
"We are friendly--as one is in pensions."
"Then I will say no more."
He pressed her very slightly, and she said more.
"I am, as it were," she concluded, "the chaperon of my young cousin,
Lucy, and it would be a serious thing if I put her under an obligation to
people of whom we know nothing. His manner was somewhat
unfortunate. I hope