第 二 章 · 第2章

In Santa Croce with No Baedeker

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright

bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are

not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini

sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too,

to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar

fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees

and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling

against the embankment of the road.

Over the river men were at work with spades and sieves on the sandy

foreshore, and on the river was a boat, also diligently employed for

some mysterious end. An electric tram came rushing underneath the

window. No one was inside it, except one tourist; but its platforms

were overflowing with Italians, who preferred to stand. Children tried

to hang on behind, and the conductor, with no malice, spat in their

faces to make them let go. Then soldiers appeared—good-looking,

undersized men—wearing each a knapsack covered with mangy fur, and a

great-coat which had been cut for some larger soldier. Beside them

walked officers, looking foolish and fierce, and before them went

little boys, turning somersaults in time with the band. The tramcar

became entangled in their ranks, and moved on painfully, like a

caterpillar in a swarm of ants. One of the little boys fell down, and

some white bullocks came out of an archway. Indeed, if it had not been

for the good advice of an old man who was selling button-hooks, the

road might never have got clear.

Over such trivialities as these many a valuable hour may slip away, and

the traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of

Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing

but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it. So it was as

well that Miss Bartlett should tap and come in, and having commented on

Lucy’s leaving the door unlocked, and on her leaning out of the window

before she was fully dressed, should urge her to hasten herself, or the

best of the day would be gone. By the time Lucy was ready her cousin

had done her breakfast, and was listening to the clever lady among the

crumbs.

A conversation then ensued, on not unfamiliar lines. Miss Bartlett was,

after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had better spend the

morning settling in; unless Lucy would at all like to go out? Lucy

would rather like to go out, as it was her first day in Florence, but,

of course, she could go alone. Miss Bartlett could not allow this. Of

course she would accompany Lucy everywhere. Oh, certainly not; Lucy

would stop with her cousin. Oh, no! that would never do. Oh, yes!

At this point the clever lady broke in.

“If it is Mrs. Grundy who is troubling you, I do assure you that you

can neglect the good person. Being English, Miss Honeychurch will be

perfectly safe. Italians understand. A dear friend of mine, Contessa

Baroncelli, has two daughters, and when she cannot send a maid to

school with them, she lets them go in sailor-hats instead. Every one

takes them for English, you see, especially if their hair is strained

tightly behind.”

Miss Bartlett was unconvinced by the safety of Contessa Baroncelli’s

daughters. She was determined to take Lucy herself, her head not being

so very bad. The clever lady then said that she was going to spend a

long morning in Santa Croce, and if Lucy would come too, she would be

delighted.

“I will take you by a dear dirty back way, Miss Honeychurch, and if you

bring me luck, we shall have an adventure.”

Lucy said that this was most kind, and at once opened the Baedeker, to

see where Santa Croce was.

“Tut, tut! Miss Lucy! I hope we shall soon emancipate you from

Baedeker. He does but touch the surface of things. As to the true

Italy—he does not even dream of it. The true Italy is only to be found

by patient observation.”

This sounded very interesting, and Lucy hurried over her breakfast, and

started with her new friend in high spirits. Italy was coming at last.

The Cockney Signora and her works had vanished like a bad dream.

Miss Lavish—for that was the clever lady’s name—turned to the right

along the sunny Lung’ Arno. How delightfully warm! But a wind down the

side streets cut like a knife, didn’t it? Ponte alle

Grazie—particularly interesting, mentioned by Dante. San

Miniato—beautiful as well as interesting; the crucifix that kissed a

murderer—Miss Honeychurch would remember the story. The men on the

river were fishing. (Untrue; but then, so is most information.) Then

Miss Lavish darted under the archway of the white bullocks, and she

stopped, and she cried:

“A smell! a true Florentine smell! Every city, let me teach you, has

its own smell.”

“Is it a very nice smell?” said Lucy, who had inherited from her mother

a distaste to dirt.

“One doesn’t come to Italy for niceness,” was the retort; “one comes

for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!” bowing right and left. “Look at

that adorable wine-cart! How the driver stares at us, dear, simple

soul!”

So Miss Lavish proceeded through the streets of the city of Florence,

short, fidgety, and playful as a kitten, though without a kitten’s

grace. It was a treat for the girl to be with any one so clever and so

cheerful; and a blue military cloak, such as an Italian officer wears,

only increased the sense of festivity.

“Buon giorno! Take the word of an old woman, Miss Lucy: you will never

repent of a little civility to your inferiors. _That_ is the true

democracy. Though I am a real Radical as well. There, now you’re

shocked.”

“Indeed, I’m not!” exclaimed Lucy. “We are Radicals, too, out and out.

My father always voted for Mr. Gladstone, until he was so dreadful

about Ireland.”

“I see, I see. And now you have gone over to the enemy.”

“Oh, please—! If my father was alive, I am sure he would vote Radical

again now that Ireland is all right. And as it is, the glass over our

front door was broken last election, and Freddy is sure it was the

Tories; but mother says nonsense, a tramp.”

“Shameful! A manufacturing district, I suppose?”

“No—in the Surrey hills. About five miles from Dorking, looking over

the Weald.”

Miss Lavish seemed interested, and slackened her trot.

“What a delightful part; I know it so well. It is full of the very

nicest people. Do you know Sir Harry Otway—a Radical if ever there

was?”

“Very well indeed.”

“And old Mrs. Butterworth the philanthropist?”

“Why, she rents a field of us! How funny!”

Miss Lavish looked at the narrow ribbon of sky, and murmured: “Oh, you

have property in Surrey?”

“Hardly any,” said Lucy, fearful of being thought a snob. “Only thirty

acres—just the garden, all downhill, and some fields.”

Miss Lavish was not disgusted, and said it was just the size of her

aunt’s Suffolk estate. Italy receded. They tried to remember the last

name of Lady Louisa someone, who had taken a house near Summer Street

the other year, but she had not liked it, which was odd of her. And

just as Miss Lavish had got the name, she broke off and exclaimed:

“Bless us! Bless us and save us! We’ve lost the way.”

Certainly they had seemed a long time in reaching Santa Croce, the

tower of which had been plainly visible from the landing window. But

Miss Lavish had said so much about knowing her Florence by heart, that

Lucy had followed her with no misgivings.

“Lost! lost! My dear Miss Lucy, during our political diatribes we have

taken a wrong turning. How those horrid Conservatives would jeer at us!

What are we to do? Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is

what _I_ call an adventure.”

Lucy, who wanted to see Santa Croce, suggested, as a possible solution,

that they should ask the way there.

“Oh, but that is the word of a craven! And no, you are not, not, _not_

to look at your Baedeker. Give it to me; I shan’t let you carry it. We

will simply drift.”

Accordingly they drifted through a series of those grey-brown streets,

neither commodious nor picturesque, in which the eastern quarter of the

city abounds. Lucy soon lost interest in the discontent of Lady Louisa,

and became discontented herself. For one ravishing moment Italy

appeared. She stood in the Square of the Annunziata and saw in the

living terra-cotta those divine babies whom no cheap reproduction can

ever stale. There they stood, with their shining limbs bursting from

the garments of charity, and their strong white arms extended against

circlets of heaven. Lucy thought she had never seen anything more

beautiful; but Miss Lavish, with a shriek of dismay, dragged her

forward, declaring that they were out of their path now by at least a

mile.

The hour was approaching at which the continental breakfast begins, or

rather ceases, to tell, and the ladies bought some hot chestnut paste

out of a little shop, because it looked so typical. It tasted partly of

the paper in which it was wrapped, partly of hair oil, partly of the

great unknown. But it gave them strength to drift into another Piazza,

large and dusty, on the farther side of which rose a black-and-white

façade of surpassing ugliness. Miss Lavish spoke to it dramatically. It

was Santa Croce. The adventure was over.

“Stop a minute; let those two people go on, or I shall have to speak to

them. I do detest conventional intercourse. Nasty! they are going into

the church, too. Oh, the Britisher abroad!”

“We sat opposite them at dinner last night. They have given us their

rooms. They were so very kind.”

“Look at their figures!” laughed Miss Lavish. “They walk through my

Italy like a pair of cows. It’s very naughty of me, but I would like to

set an examination paper at Dover, and turn back every tourist who

couldn’t pass it.”

“What would you ask us?”

Miss Lavish laid her hand pleasantly on Lucy’s arm, as if to suggest

that she, at all events, would get full marks. In this exalted mood

they reached the steps of the great church, and were about to enter it

when Miss Lavish stopped, squeaked, flung up her arms, and cried:

“There goes my local-colour box! I must have a word with him!”

And in a moment she was away over the Piazza, her military cloak

flapping in the wind; nor did she slacken speed till she caught up an

old man with white whiskers, and nipped him playfully upon the arm.

Lucy waited for nearly ten minutes. Then she began to get tired. The

beggars worried her, the dust blew in her eyes, and she remembered that

a young girl ought not to loiter in public places. She descended slowly

into the Piazza with the intention of rejoining Miss Lavish, who was

really almost too original. But at that moment Miss Lavish and her

local-colour box moved also, and disappeared down a side street, both

gesticulating largely. Tears of indignation came to Lucy’s eyes partly

because Miss Lavish had jilted her, partly because she had taken her

Baedeker. How could she find her way home? How could she find her way

about in Santa Croce? Her first morning was ruined, and she might never

be in Florence again. A few minutes ago she had been all high spirits,

talking as a woman of culture, and half persuading herself that she was

full of originality. Now she entered the church depressed and

humiliated, not even able to remember whether it was built by the

Franciscans or the Dominicans. Of course, it must be a wonderful

building. But how like a barn! And how very cold! Of course, it

contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values

she was capable of feeling what was proper. But who was to tell her

which they were? She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be

enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date. There was

no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved

the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one

that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.

Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of

acquiring information, she began to be happy. She puzzled out the

Italian notices—the notices that forbade people to introduce dogs into

the church—the notice that prayed people, in the interest of health and

out of respect to the sacred edifice in which they found themselves,

not to spit. She watched the tourists; their noses were as red as their

Baedekers, so cold was Santa Croce. She beheld the horrible fate that

overtook three Papists—two he-babies and a she-baby—who began their

career by sousing each other with the Holy Water, and then proceeded to

the Machiavelli memorial, dripping but hallowed. Advancing towards it

very slowly and from immense distances, they touched the stone with

their fingers, with their handkerchiefs, with their heads, and then

retreated. What could this mean? They did it again and again. Then Lucy

realized that they had mistaken Machiavelli for some saint, hoping to

acquire virtue. Punishment followed quickly. The smallest he-baby

stumbled over one of the sepulchral slabs so much admired by Mr.

Ruskin, and entangled his feet in the features of a recumbent bishop.

Protestant as she was, Lucy darted forward. She was too late. He fell

heavily upon the prelate’s upturned toes.

“Hateful bishop!” exclaimed the voice of old Mr. Emerson, who had

darted forward also. “Hard in life, hard in death. Go out into the

sunshine, little boy, and kiss your hand to the sun, for that is where

you ought to be. Intolerable bishop!”

The child screamed frantically at these words, and at these dreadful

people who picked him up, dusted him, rubbed his bruises, and told him

not to be superstitious.

“Look at him!” said Mr. Emerson to Lucy. “Here’s a mess: a baby hurt,

cold, and frightened! But what else can you expect from a church?”

The child’s legs had become as melting wax. Each time that old Mr.

Emerson and Lucy set it erect it collapsed with a roar. Fortunately an

Italian lady, who ought to have been saying her prayers, came to the

rescue. By some mysterious virtue, which mothers alone possess, she

stiffened the little boy’s back-bone and imparted strength to his

knees. He stood. Still gibbering with agitation, he walked away.

“You are a clever woman,” said Mr. Emerson. “You have done more than

all the relics in the world. I am not of your creed, but I do believe

in those who make their fellow-creatures happy. There is no scheme of

the universe—”

He paused for a phrase.

“Niente,” said the Italian lady, and returned to her prayers.

“I’m not sure she understands English,” suggested Lucy.

In her chastened mood she no longer despised the Emersons. She was

determined to be gracious to them, beautiful rather than delicate, and,

if possible, to erase Miss Bartlett’s civility by some gracious

reference to the pleasant rooms.

“That woman understands everything,” was Mr. Emerson’s reply. “But what

are you doing here? Are you doing the church? Are you through with the

church?”

“No,” cried Lucy, remembering her grievance. “I came here with Miss

Lavish, who was to explain everything; and just by the door—it is too

bad!—she simply ran away, and after waiting quite a time, I had to come

in by myself.”

“Why shouldn’t you?” said Mr. Emerson.

“Yes, why shouldn’t you come by yourself?” said the son, addressing the

young lady for the first time.

“But Miss Lavish has even taken away Baedeker.”

“Baedeker?” said Mr. Emerson. “I’m glad it’s _that_ you minded. It’s

worth minding, the loss of a Baedeker. _That’s_ worth minding.”

Lucy was puzzled. She was again conscious of some new idea, and was not

sure whither it would lead her.

“If you’ve no Baedeker,” said the son, “you’d better join us.” Was this

where the idea would lead? She took refuge in her dignity.

“Thank you very much, but I could not think of that. I hope you do not

suppose that I came to join on to you. I really came to help with the

child, and to thank you for so kindly giving us your rooms last night.

I hope that you have not been put to any great inconvenience.”

“My dear,” said the old man gently, “I think that you are repeating

what you have heard older people say. You are pretending to be touchy;

but you are not really. Stop being so tiresome, and tell me instead

what part of the church you want to see. To take you to it will be a

real pleasure.”

Now, this was abominably impertinent, and she ought to have been

furious. But it is sometimes as difficult to lose one’s temper as it is

difficult at other times to keep it. Lucy could not get cross. Mr.

Emerson was an old man, and surely a girl might humour him. On the

other hand, his son was a young man, and she felt that a girl ought to

be offended with him, or at all events be offended before him. It was

at him that she gazed before replying.

“I am not touchy, I hope. It is the Giottos that I want to see, if you

will kindly tell me which they are.”

The son nodded. With a look of sombre satisfaction, he led the way to

the Peruzzi Chapel. There was a hint of the teacher about him. She felt

like a child in school who had answered a question rightly.

The chapel was already filled with an earnest congregation, and out of

them rose the voice of a lecturer, directing them how to worship

Giotto, not by tactful valuations, but by the standards of the spirit.

“Remember,” he was saying, “the facts about this church of Santa Croce;

how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism, before

any taint of the Renaissance had appeared. Observe how Giotto in these

frescoes—now, unhappily, ruined by restoration—is untroubled by the

snares of anatomy and perspective. Could anything be more majestic,

more pathetic, beautiful, true? How little, we feel, avails knowledge

and technical cleverness against a man who truly feels!”

“No!” exclaimed Mr. Emerson, in much too loud a voice for church.

“Remember nothing of the sort! Built by faith indeed! That simply means

the workmen weren’t paid properly. And as for the frescoes, I see no

truth in them. Look at that fat man in blue! He must weigh as much as I

do, and he is shooting into the sky like an air balloon.”

He was referring to the fresco of the “Ascension of St. John.” Inside,

the lecturer’s voice faltered, as well it might. The audience shifted

uneasily, and so did Lucy. She was sure that she ought not to be with

these men; but they had cast a spell over her. They were so serious and

so strange that she could not remember how to behave.

“Now, did this happen, or didn’t it? Yes or no?”

George replied:

“It happened like this, if it happened at all. I would rather go up to

heaven by myself than be pushed by cherubs; and if I got there I should

like my friends to lean out of it, just as they do here.”

“You will never go up,” said his father. “You and I, dear boy, will lie

at peace in the earth that bore us, and our names will disappear as

surely as our work survives.”

“Some of the people can only see the empty grave, not the saint,

whoever he is, going up. It did happen like that, if it happened at

all.”

“Pardon me,” said a frigid voice. “The chapel is somewhat small for two

parties. We will incommode you no longer.”

The lecturer was a clergyman, and his audience must be also his flock,

for they held prayer-books as well as guide-books in their hands. They

filed out of the chapel in silence. Amongst them were the two little

old ladies of the Pension Bertolini—Miss Teresa and Miss Catherine

Alan.

“Stop!” cried Mr. Emerson. “There’s plenty of room for us all. Stop!”

The procession disappeared without a word.

Soon the lecturer could be heard in the next chapel, describing the

life of St. Francis.

“George, I do believe that clergyman is the Brixton curate.”

George went into the next chapel and returned, saying “Perhaps he is. I

don’t remember.”

“Then I had better speak to him and remind him who I am. It’s that Mr.

Eager. Why did he go? Did we talk too loud? How vexatious. I shall go

and say we are sorry. Hadn’t I better? Then perhaps he will come back.”

“He will not come back,” said George.

But Mr. Emerson, contrite and unhappy, hurried away to apologize to the

Rev. Cuthbert Eager. Lucy, apparently absorbed in a lunette, could hear

the lecture again interrupted, the anxious, aggressive voice of the old

man, the curt, injured replies of his opponent. The son, who took every

little contretemps as if it were a tragedy, was listening also.

“My father has that effect on nearly everyone,” he informed her. “He

will try to be kind.”

“I hope we all try,” said she, smiling nervously.

“Because we think it improves our characters. But he is kind to people

because he loves them; and they find him out, and are offended, or

frightened.”

“How silly of them!” said Lucy, though in her heart she sympathized; “I

think that a kind action done tactfully—”

“Tact!”

He threw up his head in disdain. Apparently she had given the wrong

answer. She watched the singular creature pace up and down the chapel.

For a young man his face was rugged, and—until the shadows fell upon

it—hard. Enshadowed, it sprang into tenderness. She saw him once again

at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, carrying a burden of

acorns. Healthy and muscular, he yet gave her the feeling of greyness,

of tragedy that might only find solution in the night. The feeling soon

passed; it was unlike her to have entertained anything so subtle. Born

of silence and of unknown emotion, it passed when Mr. Emerson returned,

and she could re-enter the world of rapid talk, which was alone

familiar to her.

“Were you snubbed?” asked his son tranquilly.

“But we have spoilt the pleasure of I don’t know how many people. They

won’t come back.”

“...full of innate sympathy...quickness to perceive good in

others...vision of the brotherhood of man...” Scraps of the lecture on

St. Francis came floating round the partition wall.

“Don’t let us spoil yours,” he continued to Lucy. “Have you looked at

those saints?”

“Yes,” said Lucy. “They are lovely. Do you know which is the tombstone

that is praised in Ruskin?”

He did not know, and suggested that they should try to guess it.

George, rather to her relief, refused to move, and she and the old man

wandered not unpleasantly about Santa Croce, which, though it is like a

barn, has harvested many beautiful things inside its walls. There were

also beggars to avoid and guides to dodge round the pillars, and an old

lady with her dog, and here and there a priest modestly edging to his

Mass through the groups of tourists. But Mr. Emerson was only half

interested. He watched the lecturer, whose success he believed he had

impaired, and then he anxiously watched his son.

“Why will he look at that fresco?” he said uneasily. “I saw nothing in

it.”

“I like Giotto,” she replied. “It is so wonderful what they say about

his tactile values. Though I like things like the Della Robbia babies

better.”

“So you ought. A baby is worth a dozen saints. And my baby’s worth the

whole of Paradise, and as far as I can see he lives in Hell.”

Lucy again felt that this did not do.

“In Hell,” he repeated. “He’s unhappy.”

“Oh, dear!” said Lucy.

“How can he be unhappy when he is strong and alive? What more is one to

give him? And think how he has been brought up—free from all the

superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the

name of God. With such an education as that, I thought he was bound to

grow up happy.”

She was no theologian, but she felt that here was a very foolish old

man, as well as a very irreligious one. She also felt that her mother

might not like her talking to that kind of person, and that Charlotte

would object most strongly.

“What are we to do with him?” he asked. “He comes out for his holiday

to Italy, and behaves—like that; like the little child who ought to

have been playing, and who hurt himself upon the tombstone. Eh? What

did you say?”

Lucy had made no suggestion. Suddenly he said:

“Now don’t be stupid over this. I don’t require you to fall in love

with my boy, but I do think you might try and understand him. You are

nearer his age, and if you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible.

You might help me. He has known so few women, and you have the time.

You stop here several weeks, I suppose? But let yourself go. You are

inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself

go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand,

and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By

understanding George you may learn to understand yourself. It will be

good for both of you.”

To this extraordinary speech Lucy found no answer.

“I only know what it is that’s wrong with him; not why it is.”

“And what is it?” asked Lucy fearfully, expecting some harrowing tale.

“The old trouble; things won’t fit.”

“What things?”

“The things of the universe. It is quite true. They don’t.”

“Oh, Mr. Emerson, whatever do you mean?”

In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting

poetry, he said:

“‘From far, from eve and morning,

And yon twelve-winded sky,

The stuff of life to knit me

Blew hither: here am I’

George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We know that

we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life

is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But

why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and

work and rejoice. I don’t believe in this world sorrow.”

Miss Honeychurch assented.

“Then make my boy think like us. Make him realize that by the side of

the everlasting Why there is a Yes—a transitory Yes if you like, but a

Yes.”

Suddenly she laughed; surely one ought to laugh. A young man melancholy

because the universe wouldn’t fit, because life was a tangle or a wind,

or a Yes, or something!

“I’m very sorry,” she cried. “You’ll think me unfeeling, but—but—” Then

she became matronly. “Oh, but your son wants employment. Has he no

particular hobby? Why, I myself have worries, but I can generally

forget them at the piano; and collecting stamps did no end of good for

my brother. Perhaps Italy bores him; you ought to try the Alps or the

Lakes.”

The old man’s face saddened, and he touched her gently with his hand.

This did not alarm her; she thought that her advice had impressed him

and that he was thanking her for it. Indeed, he no longer alarmed her

at all; she regarded him as a kind thing, but quite silly. Her feelings

were as inflated spiritually as they had been an hour ago esthetically,

before she lost Baedeker. The dear George, now striding towards them

over the tombstones, seemed both pitiable and absurd. He approached,

his face in the shadow. He said:

“Miss Bartlett.”

“Oh, good gracious me!” said Lucy, suddenly collapsing and again seeing

the whole of life in a new perspective. “Where? Where?”

“In the nave.”

“I see. Those gossiping little Miss Alans must have—” She checked

herself.

“Poor girl!” exploded Mr. Emerson. “Poor girl!”

She could not let this pass, for it was just what she was feeling

herself.

“Poor girl? I fail to understand the point of that remark. I think

myself a very fortunate girl, I assure you. I’m thoroughly happy, and

having a splendid time. Pray don’t waste time mourning over _me_.

There’s enough sorrow in the world, isn’t there, without trying to

invent it. Good-bye. Thank you both so much for all your kindness. Ah,

yes! there does come my cousin. A delightful morning! Santa Croce is a

wonderful church.”

She joined her cousin.