Part 4 (2/2)
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.7 For the five-franc note she should subst.i.tute a young lady, which would raise the tone of the tragedy, and at the same time furnish an excellent plot. For the five-franc note she should subst.i.tute 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. Out 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 a.s.sented. 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 ingenue. ingenue.
”She is emanc.i.p.ated, 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!” k kThe last remark was made to a vendor 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 Aless...o...b..ldovinetti is fond of introducing into his pictures. That man had a decided feeling for landscape. Decidedly. But who looks at it today? Ah, the world is too much for us.”
Miss Bartlett had not heard of Aless...o...b..ldovinetti, 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. 8 8 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 carree,” partie carree,” l lsaid 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 a.s.sented.
”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.”9 ”Humiliating indeed,” said Miss Bartlett. ”Miss Honeychurch happened to be pa.s.sing 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 s.e.x 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 ill.u.s.trations 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.”
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