PART ONE
CHAPTER 1 THE BERTOLINI
CHAPTER 2 IN SANTA CROCE WITH NO BAEDEKER
CHAPTER 3 MUSIC, VIOLETS, AND THE LETTER “S”
CHAPTER 4 FOURTH CHAPTER
CHAPTER 5 POSSIBILITIES OF A PLEASANT OUTING
CHAPTER 6 THE REVEREND ARTHUR BEEBE, THE REVEREND CUTHBERT EAGER, MR. EMERSON, MR. GEORGE EMERSON, MISS ELEANOR LAVISH, MISS CHARLOTTE BARTLETT, AND MISS LUCY HONEYCHURCH DRIVE OUT IN CARRIAGES TO SEE A VIEW; ITALIANS DRIVE THEM
CHAPTER 7 THEY RETURN
PART TWO
CHAPTER 8 MEDIAEVAL
CHAPTER 9 LUCY AS A WORK OF ART
CHAPTER 10 CECIL AS A HUMOURIST
CHAPTER 11 IN MRS. VYSE’S WELL-APPOINTED FLAT
CHAPTER 12 TWELFTH CHAPTER
CHAPTER 13 HOW MISS BARTLETT’S BOILER WAS SO TIRESOME
CHAPTER 14 HOW LUCY FACED THE EXTERNAL SITUATION BRAVELY
CHAPTER 15 THE DISASTER WITHIN
CHAPTER 16 LYING TO GEORGE
CHAPTER 17 LYING TO CECIL
CHAPTER 18 LYING TO MR. BEEBE, MRS. HONEYCHURCH, FREDDY, AND THE SERVANTS
CHAPTER 19 LYING TO MR. EMERSON
CHAPTER 20 THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES
內容試閱:
Miss Bartlett was unequal to the bath. All her barbed civilities came forth wrong end first. Young Mr. Emerson scored a notable triumph to the delight of Mr. Beebe and to the secret delight of Lucy.
“Poor young man!” said Miss Bartlett, as soon as he had gone. “How angry he is with his father about the rooms! It is all he can do to keep polite.”
“In half an hour or so your rooms will be ready,” said Mr. Beebe. Then looking rather thoughtfully at the two cousins, he retired to his own rooms, to write up his philosophic diary.
“Oh, dear!” breathed the little old lady, and shuddered as if all the winds of heaven had entered the apartment. “Gentlemen sometimes do not realize – ” Her voice faded away, but Miss Bartlett seemed to understand and a conversation developed, in which gentlemen who did not thoroughly realize played a principal part. Lucy, not realizing either, was reduced to literature. Taking up Baedeker’s Handbook to Northern Italy, she committed to memory the most important dates of Florentine History. For she was determined to enjoy herself on the morrow. Thus the half-hour crept profitably away, and at last Miss Bartlett rose with a sigh, and said:
“I think one might venture now. No, Lucy, do not stir. I will superintend the move.”
“How you do do everything,” said Lucy.
“Naturally, dear. It is my affair.”
“But I would like to help you.”
“No, dear.”
Charlotte’s energy! And her unselfishness! She had been thus all her life, but really, on this Italian tour, she was surpassing herself. So Lucy felt, or strove to feel. And yet – there was a rebellious spirit in her which wondered whether the acceptance might not have been less delicate and more beautiful. At all events, she entered her own room without any feeling of joy.
“I want to explain,” said Miss Bartlett, “why it is that I have taken the largest room. Naturally, of course, I should have given it to you; but I happen to know that it belongs to the young man, and I was sure your mother would not like it.”
Lucy was bewildered.
“If you are to accept a favour it is more suitable you should be under an obligation to his father than to him. I am a woman of the world, in my small way, and I know where things lead to. However, Mr. Beebe is a guarantee of a sort that they will not presume on this.”
“Mother wouldn’t mind, I’m sure,” said Lucy, but again had the sense of larger and unsuspected issues.
Miss Bartlett only sighed, and enveloped her in a protecting embrace as she wished her good-night. It gave Lucy the sensation of a fog, and when she reached her own room she opened the window and breathed the clean night air, thinking of the kind old man who had enabled her to see the lights dancing in the Arno and the cypresses of San Miniato, and the foot-hills of the Apennines, black against the rising moon.
Miss Bartlett, in her room, fastened the window-shutters and locked the door, and then made a tour of the apartment to see where the cupboards led, and whether there were any oubliettes or secret entrances. It was then that she saw, pinned up over the washstand, a sheet of paper on which was scrawled an enormous note of interrogation. Nothing more.
“What does it mean?” she thought, and she examined it carefully by the light of a candle. Meaningless at first, it gradually became menacing, obnoxious, portentous with evil. She was seized with an impulse to destroy it, but fortunately remembered that she had no right to do so, since it must be the property of young Mr. Emerson. So she unpinned it carefully, and put it between two pieces of blotting-paper to keep it clean for him. Then she completed her inspection of the room, sighed heavily according to her habit, and went to bed.