Chapter V

Possibilities of a Pleasant Outing

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 _désœuvré_, had tried to search their reticules for provisions. It

might have been most unpleasant. Fortunately Miss Lavish was a match

for any one.

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.

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!”

Lucy fidgeted; it was tiresome of Charlotte to have stopped exactly

where she did.

“Look, Lucia! Oh, you are watching for the Torre del Gallo party. I

feared you would repent you of your choice.”

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.

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.

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.

“Oh, let me congratulate you!” said Miss Bartlett. “After your despair

of yesterday! What a fortunate thing!”

“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.

“But perhaps you would rather not?”

“I’m sorry—if you could manage without it, I think I would rather not.”

The elder ladies exchanged glances, not of disapproval; it is suitable

that a girl should feel deeply.

“It is I who am sorry,” said Miss Lavish. “We literary hacks are

shameless creatures. I believe there’s no secret of the human heart

into which we wouldn’t pry.”

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.

“What is the heroine’s name?” asked Miss Bartlett.

“Leonora,” said Miss Lavish; her own name was Eleanor.

“I do hope she’s nice.”

That desideratum would not be omitted.

“And what is the plot?”

Love, murder, abduction, revenge, was the plot. But it all came while

the fountain plashed to the satyrs in the morning sun.

“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.”

“Oh, you wicked woman,” cried Miss Bartlett. “I am sure you are

thinking of the Emersons.”

Miss Lavish gave a Machiavellian smile.

“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.”

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.

“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.”

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 _ingenué_.

“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!”

“Ah, not for me,” said the chaplain blandly, “for I have been watching

you and Miss Honeychurch for quite a little time.”

“We were chatting to Miss Lavish.”

His brow contracted.

“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.”

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.

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!

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.

“So we shall be a _partie carrée_,” 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.”

They assented.

“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.”

“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.

“And how came we to have you here?” asked the chaplain paternally.

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.”

“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.

“Practically.”

“One of our pension acquaintances kindly brought her home,” said Miss

Bartlett, adroitly concealing the sex of the preserver.

“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?”

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.

“He died by the fountain, I believe,” was her reply.

“And you and your friend—”

“Were over at the Loggia.”

“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.”

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.

“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