Comfortable Betrayal — A Room with a View

Charlotte accepts, and of course she will be a nuisance, and she begs for an inferior spare room, something with no view. George may come to tennis on the Sunday week. Lucy faces the outside of this. If images rise, she calls them nerves. Cecil explained psychology to her one wet afternoon, and the troubles of youth can be dismissed. At the Rectory, standing between Mr Beebe and Cecil, she speaks temperately of Italy and George replies. His voice moves her. She wishes to remain near him, and calls that wish nerves too. Afterwards Mr Beebe says George will work off his crudities, and that he mistrusts young men who slip into life gracefully. Lucy says he laughs more. He is waking up.

Charlotte is due at the South-Eastern station at Dorking and arrives at the London and Brighton, then hires a cab. Freddy and his friend Mr Floyd have to stop tennis and entertain her for an hour. She rises from tea to say she will never forgive herself, and she insists on paying. Her purse holds sovereigns and pennies. Cecil, whom Freddy owes fifteen shillings, takes the pound so they need not toss for it. For a moment he is happy, playing at nonsense. Then he looks at Lucy, whose smile is marred by the fuss, and thinks of January, when he will rescue her from this twaddle. Minnie Beebe does not see why Mr Vyse should have the quid, or why the driver's shilling was forgotten. Lucy takes the sovereign back. They will start again from the beginning.

Out of earshot Charlotte stops wailing and asks, quite briskly, whether Lucy has told him about him yet. Lucy says no, and could bite her tongue for understanding at once. She promised. In the drawing-room, in front of the photograph of St John ascending, Charlotte says it would be dreadful if Mr Vyse heard from some other source. The driver looked through the bushes with a violet between his teeth. Old Mr Emerson is certain to know. Lucy says Cecil would laugh. She knows he wants her untouched. First Charlotte said do not tell. Now she says tell. Which is it? Through the window Cecil is turning the pages of a new library novel. Once a cad, always a cad, Charlotte says. Lucy answers that George lost his head. She fell into those violets, and it makes an enormous difference when beautiful things are suddenly behind a person. He does not admire her one straw. He is a clerk in the General Manager's office at one of the big railways, not a porter, and he runs down at weekends. His father had to do with journalism, is rheumatic, and has retired. Freddy has asked him for Sunday, so Charlotte can judge. They should not talk about this silly Italian business. Lucy thinks it a good speech. Her mother comes in, explanations start, and Lucy escapes, the images throbbing a little more vividly.