Growth Resistance Pattern — A Room with a View

Lucy had rehearsed the bow indoors. She would not shake hands. That would be just the proper thing. She had not rehearsed a happy George, greeting her with the shout of the morning star, among coats and collars and boots lying wounded on the grass. At Mrs Butterworth's, over tea, she thinks she bowed to gods, to heroes, to the nonsense of schoolgirls. Cecil does not want to be seen, or to hear why hydrangeas change colour at the seaside, or to join the good works. When he is cross he makes long clever answers where yes or no would do. Lucy soothes him and tinkers at the talk in a way that promises well for their married peace.

At home her mother asks whether anything is the matter with him. Until now she has held back. Since London, nothing pleases him. He winces when she speaks. He is upset by the drawing-room furniture Lucy's father bought, and he sat through Freddy's comic songs sneering and spoiling them. Lucy says he is not uncivil to people, only easily upset by ugly things. Her mother asks whether Freddy singing is a thing or a person. The defence Lucy had ready in London will not come. On the landing, where the pines hang close and there is no view of the sky, she sighs that she does not know what to do. Freddy bounds up. Those new people are topping. He wants them for Sunday tennis. She tells him not to, with all this muddle. He dances her up the passage until she could scream. Then her mother does not flame out. She asks for her bonnet to be put away, and for a kiss. For a moment mother, Windy Corner, and the Weald in the declining sun feel perfect. The grittiness goes, as it generally does here. Someone pours in a drop of oil. Cecil despises the method.

At dinner Freddy asks what Emerson is like, the clever sort or a decent chap. Lucy says she saw him in Florence and tells him to ask Cecil, who answers that George is the clever sort, like himself. Her mother wants Charlotte's letter. Lucy gets through the meal on the edge of a lie. An awful friend had bicycled through Summer Street, wondered about calling, and mercifully did not. She was a novelist. Mrs Honeychurch drops everything else to attack women who write books instead of minding their houses, while Cecil yawns and Freddy plays a counting game with plum stones. Then Mrs Honeychurch thinks they could squeeze Charlotte in while the Tunbridge Wells boiler is out. Lucy pleads that the house is already full: Freddy's friend, Cecil, and Minnie Beebe because of the diphtheria scare. She does not like Charlotte. Neither does Cecil. Her mother says the young will never guess what it feels like to grow old. Freddy remembers that Charlotte once boiled him an egg and forgot to take it off, and that he does not care for eggs. Cecil, easier now that the cooking is good, says Miss Bartlett must come, since she boils eggs so well. He frowns at the correction. Eggs, boilers, hydrangeas, maids. "May me and Lucy get down from our chairs?" he asks. "We don't want no dessert."