The Values Clash Trap — A Room with a View

Sunday, and the garden is empty except for a red book lying in the sun on the gravel. Indoors the ladies are hooking each other into their church clothes. The men will not go. Minnie asks whether she must. Charlotte, at least, is one for church. Lucy steps out in a new cerise dress that has failed, a garnet at her throat and the ruby engagement ring on her finger. She frowns at the Weald the way a child frowns when trying not to cry. Her mother tells her not to stand there like a flamingo, and to pick the book up before it warps. It is Under a Loggia, the novel Cecil has been reading. Lucy no longer reads novels. Only this morning she mixed up two Italian painters, and he asked whether she was forgetting her Italy already.

After church they call on the Emersons. Old Mr Emerson tells Mrs Honeychurch to choose a place where she will not do much harm, and to stand in it facing the sunshine. George has been in good spirits. Freddy, he says, started life with that philosophy. He himself tried the Note of Interrogation first. He does not mind tennis on Sunday. His father thinks the walk rather far, and Lucy says the old man wants to give the house up to the Miss Alans. George puts an arm round his father's neck. Charlotte, safe in the carriage, gives a formal bow, the pension table all over again. George does not bow back. He blushes, says he will come up to tennis if he can, and goes indoors. Lucy raises her voice and hopes he will. Then she murmurs to her cousin that the old man has not been told. All the way home the horses' hoofs beat it: he has not told his father, to whom he tells everything. It was not an exploit. He did not laugh at her when she had gone. She lifts a hand to her cheek. He does not love her. How terrible if he did.

At Windy Corner he plays to win, and he does win. Cecil will not play. The novel is so bad that he reads it aloud. Three split infinitives. Then a murder, and really everyone must listen. The scene is laid in Florence. Sunset, Leonora speeding under Orcagna's Loggia. Lucy laughs. The author, Joseph Emery Prank, is Miss Lavish, publishing under another name. George looks up from the grass beside her knee. Of course he remembers Miss Lavish. He saw her the day he arrived, and she told him Lucy lived here. Lucy asks if he was pleased, meaning pleased to see Miss Lavish, and then sees she might mean something else. His ears redden. He speaks of a day when he and his mother saw as far as Hindhead. That is the mother who, according to Mr Eager, was murdered in the sight of God. Cecil, coat still off after tennis, shuts the book with a bang. Lucy tells George to go and find balls, then says of course he need not, and asks Cecil to read the funny passage about the view.

She finds the chapter and thinks she has gone mad. Leonora sits alone. The season is spring. A golden haze, the towers of Florence, a bank carpeted with violets. Antonio steals up and enfolds her in his manly arms. Miss Lavish has printed their afternoon for Cecil to read and for George to hear. Lucy's voice stays steady. They should go in to tea. She leads, Cecil follows, George comes last. She thinks the disaster has been avoided. In the shrubbery Cecil remembers the book and goes back for it. George, who loves her, blunders against her in the narrow path. "No," she gasps, and for the second time he kisses her. As if no more were possible, he slips back. Cecil rejoins her. They reach the upper lawn alone.