Howards End

Howards End

by E. M. Forster

Chapter 1

One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.

Howards End,

Tuesday.

Dearest Meg,

It isn’t going to be what we expected. It is old and little, and

altogether delightful—red brick. We can scarcely pack in as it is, and

the dear knows what will happen when Paul (younger son) arrives

tomorrow. From hall you go right or left into dining-room or

drawing-room. Hall itself is practically a room. You open another door

in it, and there are the stairs going up in a sort of tunnel to the

first-floor. Three bedrooms in a row there, and three attics in a row

above. That isn’t all the house really, but it’s all that one

notices—nine windows as you look up from the front garden.

Then there’s a very big wych-elm—to the left as you look up—leaning a

little over the house, and standing on the boundary between the garden

and meadow. I quite love that tree already. Also ordinary elms, oaks—no

nastier than ordinary oaks—pear-trees, apple-trees, and a vine. No

silver birches, though. However, I must get on to my host and hostess.

I only wanted to show that it isn’t the least what we expected. Why did

we settle that their house would be all gables and wiggles, and their

garden all gamboge-coloured paths? I believe simply because we

associate them with expensive hotels—Mrs. Wilcox trailing in beautiful

dresses down long corridors, Mr. Wilcox bullying porters, etc. We

females are that unjust.

I shall be back Saturday; will let you know train later. They are as

angry as I am that you did not come too; really Tibby is too tiresome,

he starts a new mortal disease every month. How could he have got hay

fever in London? and even if he could, it seems hard that you should

give up a visit to hear a schoolboy sneeze. Tell him that Charles

Wilcox (the son who is here) has hay fever too, but he’s brave, and

gets quite cross when we inquire after it. Men like the Wilcoxes would

do Tibby a power of good. But you won’t agree, and I’d better change

the subject.

This long letter is because I’m writing before breakfast. Oh, the

beautiful vine leaves! The house is covered with a vine. I looked out

earlier, and Mrs. Wilcox was already in the garden. She evidently loves

it. No wonder she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the large red

poppies come out. Then she walked off the lawn to the meadow, whose

corner to the right I can just see. Trail, trail, went her long dress

over the sopping grass, and she came back with her hands full of the

hay that was cut yesterday—I suppose for rabbits or something, as she

kept on smelling it. The air here is delicious. Later on I heard the

noise of croquet balls, and looked out again, and it was Charles Wilcox

practising; they are keen on all games. Presently he started sneezing

and had to stop. Then I hear more clicketing, and it is Mr. Wilcox

practising, and then, ‘a-tissue, a-tissue’: he has to stop too. Then

Evie comes out, and does some calisthenic exercises on a machine that

is tacked on to a greengage-tree—they put everything to use—and then

she says ‘a-tissue,’ and in she goes. And finally Mrs. Wilcox

reappears, trail, trail, still smelling hay and looking at the flowers.

I inflict all this on you because once you said that life is sometimes

life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish

t’other from which, and up to now I have always put that down as ‘Meg’s

clever nonsense.’ But this morning, it really does seem not life but a

play, and it did amuse me enormously to watch the W’s. Now Mrs. Wilcox

has come in.

I am going to wear [omission]. Last night Mrs. Wilcox wore an

[omission], and Evie [omission]. So it isn’t exactly a go-as-you-please

place, and if you shut your eyes it still seems the wiggly hotel that

we expected. Not if you open them. The dog-roses are too sweet. There

is a great hedge of them over the lawn—magnificently tall, so that they

fall down in garlands, and nice and thin at the bottom, so that you can

see ducks through it and a cow. These belong to the farm, which is the

only house near us. There goes the breakfast gong. Much love. Modified

love to Tibby. Love to Aunt Juley; how good of her to come and keep you

company, but what a bore. Burn this. Will write again Thursday.

_Helen_

Howards End,

Friday.

Dearest Meg,

I am having a glorious time. I like them all. Mrs. Wilcox, if quieter

than in Germany, is sweeter than ever, and I never saw anything like

her steady unselfishness, and the best of it is that the others do not

take advantage of her. They are the very happiest, jolliest family that

you can imagine. I do really feel that we are making friends. The fun

of it is that they think me a noodle, and say so—at least Mr. Wilcox

does—and when that happens, and one doesn’t mind, it’s a pretty sure

test, isn’t it? He says the most horrid things about women’s suffrage

so nicely, and when I said I believed in equality he just folded his

arms and gave me such a setting down as I’ve never had. Meg, shall we

ever learn to talk less? I never felt so ashamed of myself in my life.

I couldn’t point to a time when men had been equal, nor even to a time

when the wish to be equal had made them happier in other ways. I

couldn’t say a word. I had just picked up the notion that equality is

good from some book—probably from poetry, or you. Anyhow, it’s been

knocked into pieces, and, like all people who are really strong, Mr.

Wilcox did it without hurting me. On the other hand, I laugh at them

for catching hay fever. We live like fighting-cocks, and Charles takes

us out every day in the motor—a tomb with trees in it, a hermit’s

house, a wonderful road that was made by the Kings of Mercia—tennis—a

cricket match—bridge—and at night we squeeze up in this lovely house.

The whole clan’s here now—it’s like a rabbit warren. Evie is a dear.

They want me to stop over Sunday—I suppose it won’t matter if I do.

Marvellous weather and the view’s marvellous—views westward to the high

ground. Thank you for your letter. Burn this.

Your affectionate

Helen

Howards End,

Sunday.

Dearest, dearest Meg,—I do not know what you will say: Paul and I are

in love—the younger son who only came here Wednesday.

Chapter 2

Margaret glanced at her sister’s note and pushed it over the

breakfast-table to her aunt. There was a moment’s hush, and then the

flood-gates opened.

“I can tell you nothing, Aunt Juley. I know no more than you do. We

met—we only met the father and mother abroad last spring. I know so

little that I didn’t even know their son’s name. It’s all so—” She

waved her hand and laughed a little.

“In that case it is far too sudden.”

“Who knows, Aunt Juley, who knows?”

“But, Margaret dear, I mean we mustn’t be unpractical now that we’ve

come to facts. It is too sudden, surely.”

“Who knows!”

“But Margaret dear—”

“I’ll go for her other letters,” said Margaret. “No, I won’t, I’ll

finish my breakfast. In fact, I haven’t them. We met the Wilcoxes on an

awful expedition that we made from Heidelberg to Speyer. Helen and I

had got it into our heads that there was a grand old cathedral at

Speyer—the Archbishop of Speyer was one of the seven electors—you

know—‘Speyer, Maintz, and Köln.’ Those three sees once commanded the

Rhine Valley and got it the name of Priest Street.”

“I still feel quite uneasy about this business, Margaret.”

“The train crossed by a bridge of boats, and at first sight it looked

quite fine. But oh, in five minutes we had seen the whole thing. The

cathedral had been ruined, absolutely ruined, by restoration; not an

inch left of the original structure. We wasted a whole day, and came

across the Wilcoxes as we were eating our sandwiches in the public

gardens. They too, poor things, had been taken in—they were actually

stopping at Speyer—and they rather liked Helen insisting that they must

fly with us to Heidelberg. As a matter of fact, they did come on next

day. We all took some drives together. They knew us well enough to ask

Helen to come and see them—at least, I was asked too, but Tibby’s

illness prevented me, so last Monday she went alone. That’s all. You

know as much as I do now. It’s a young man out the unknown. She was to

have come back Saturday, but put off till Monday, perhaps on account

of—I don’t know.

She broke off, and listened to the sounds of a London morning. Their

house was in Wickham Place, and fairly quiet, for a lofty promontory of

buildings separated it from the main thoroughfare. One had the sense of

a backwater, or rather of an estuary, whose waters flowed in from the

invisible sea, and ebbed into a profound silence while the waves

without were still beating. Though the promontory consisted of

flats—expensive, with cavernous entrance halls, full of concierges and

palms—it fulfilled its purpose, and gained for the older houses

opposite a certain measure of peace. These, too, would be swept away in

time, and another promontory would rise upon their site, as humanity

piled itself higher and higher on the precious soil of London.

Mrs. Munt had her own method of interpreting her nieces. She decided

that Margaret was a little hysterical, and was trying to gain time by a

torrent of talk. Feeling very diplomatic, she lamented the fate of

Speyer, and declared that never, never should she be so misguided as to

visit it, and added of her own accord that the principles of

restoration were ill understood in Germany. “The Germans,” she said,

“are too thorough, and this is all very well sometimes, but at other

times it does not do.”

“Exactly,” said Margaret; “Germans are too thorough.” And her eyes

began to shine.

“Of course I regard you Schlegels as English,” said Mrs. Munt

hastily—“English to the backbone.”

Margaret leaned forward and stroked her hand.

“And that reminds me—Helen’s letter—”

“Oh, yes, Aunt Juley, I am thinking all right about Helen’s letter. I

know—I must go down and see her. I am thinking about her all right. I

am meaning to go down.”

“But go with some plan,” said Mrs. Munt, admitting into her kindly

voice a note of exasperation. “Margaret, if I may interfere, don’t be

taken by surprise. What do you think of the Wilcoxes? Are they our

sort? Are they likely people? Could they appreciate Helen, who is to my

mind a very special sort of person? Do they care about Literature and

Art? That is most important when you come to think of it. Literature

and Art. Most important. How old would the son be? She says ‘younger

son.’ Would he be in a position to marry? Is he likely to make Helen

happy? Did you gather—”

“I gathered nothing.”

They began to talk at once.

“Then in that case—”

“In that case I can make no plans, don’t you see.”

“On the contrary—”

“I hate plans. I hate lines of action. Helen isn’t a baby.”

“Then in that case, my dear, why go down?”

Margaret was silent. If her aunt could not see why she must go down,

she was not going to tell her. She was not going to say “I love my dear

sister; I must be near her at this crisis of her life.” The affections

are more reticent than the passions, and their expression more subtle.

If she herself should ever fall in love with a man, she, like Helen,

would proclaim it from the house-tops, but as she only loved a sister

she used the voiceless language of sympathy.

“I consider you odd girls,” continued Mrs. Munt, “and very wonderful

girls, and in many ways far older than your years. But—you won’t be

offended?—frankly I feel you are not up to this business. It requires

an older person. Dear, I have nothing to call me back to Swanage.” She

spread out her plump arms. “I am all at your disposal. Let me go down

to this house whose name I forget instead of you.”

“Aunt Juley”—she jumped up and kissed her—“I must, must go to Howards

End myself. You don’t exactly understand, though I can never thank you

properly for offering.”

“I do understand,” retorted Mrs. Munt, with immense confidence. “I go

down in no spirit of interference, but to make inquiries. Inquiries are

necessary. Now, I am going to be rude. You would say the wrong thing;

to a certainty you would. In your anxiety for Helen’s happiness you

would offend the whole of these Wilcoxes by asking one of your

impetuous questions—not that one minds offending them.”

“I shall ask no questions. I have it in Helen’s writing that she and a

man are in love. There is no question to ask as long as she keeps to

that. All the rest isn’t worth a straw. A long engagement if you like,

but inquiries, questions, plans, lines of action—no, Aunt Juley, no.”

Away she hurried, not beautiful, not supremely brilliant, but filled

with something that took the place of both qualities—something best

described as a profound vivacity, a continual and sincere response to

all that she encountered in her path through life.

“If Helen had written the same to me about a shop-assistant or a

penniless clerk—”

“Dear Margaret, do come into the library and shut the door. Your good

maids are dusting the banisters.”

“—or if she had wanted to marry the man who calls for Carter Paterson,

I should have said the same.” Then, with one of those turns that

convinced her aunt that she was not mad really and convinced observers

of another type that she was not a barren theorist, she added: “Though

in the case of Carter Paterson I should want it to be a very long

engagement indeed, I must say.”

“I should think so,” said Mrs. Munt; “and, indeed, I can scarcely

follow you. Now, just imagine if you said anything of that sort to the

Wilcoxes. I understand it, but most good people would think you mad.

Imagine how disconcerting for Helen! What is wanted is a person who

will go slowly, slowly in this business, and see how things are and

where they are likely to lead to.”

Margaret was down on this.

“But you implied just now that the engagement must be broken off.”

“I think probably it must; but slowly.”

“Can you break an engagement off slowly?” Her eyes lit up. “What’s an

engagement made of, do you suppose? I think it’s made of some hard

stuff, that may snap, but can’t break. It is different to the other

ties of life. They stretch or bend. They admit of degree. They’re

different.”

“Exactly so. But won’t you let me just run down to Howards House, and

save you all the discomfort? I will really not interfere, but I do so

thoroughly understand the kind of thing you Schlegels want that one

quiet look round will be enough for me.”

Margaret again thanked her, again kissed her, and then ran upstairs to

see her brother.

He was not so well.

The hay fever had worried him a good deal all night. His head ached,

his eyes were wet, his mucous membrane, he informed her, was in a most

unsatisfactory condition. The only thing that made life worth living

was the thought of Walter Savage Landor, from whose _Imaginary

Conversations_ she had promised to read at frequent intervals during

the day.

It was rather difficult. Something must be done about Helen. She must

be assured that it is not a criminal offence to love at first sight. A

telegram to this effect would be cold and cryptic, a personal visit

seemed each moment more impossible. Now the doctor arrived, and said

that Tibby was quite bad. Might it really be best to accept Aunt

Juley’s kind offer, and to send her down to Howards End with a note?

Certainly Margaret was impulsive. She did swing rapidly from one

decision to another. Running downstairs into the library, she

cried—“Yes, I have changed my mind; I do wish that you would go.”

There was a train from King’s Cross at eleven. At half-past ten Tibby,

with rare self-effacement, fell asleep, and Margaret was able to drive

her aunt to the station.

“You will remember, Aunt Juley, not to be drawn into discussing the

engagement. Give my letter to Helen, and say whatever you feel

yourself, but do keep clear of the relatives. We have scarcely got

their names straight yet, and besides, that sort of thing is so

uncivilized and wrong.

“So uncivilized?” queried Mrs. Munt, fearing that she was losing the

point of some brilliant remark.

“Oh, I used an affected word. I only meant would you please only talk

the thing over with Helen.”

“Only with Helen.”

“Because—” But it was no moment to expound the personal nature of love.

Even Margaret shrank from it, and contented herself with stroking her

good aunt’s hand, and with meditating, half sensibly and half

poetically, on the journey that was about to begin from King’s Cross.

Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, she had strong

feelings about the various railway termini. They are our gates to the

glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and

sunshine, to them alas! we return. In Paddington all Cornwall is latent

and the remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street lie

fenlands and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of

Euston; Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo. Italians realize

this, as is natural; those of them who are so unfortunate as to serve

as waiters in Berlin call the Anhalt Bahnhof the Stazione d’Italia,

because by it they must return to their homes. And he is a chilly

Londoner who does not endow his stations with some personality, and

extend to them, however shyly, the emotions of fear and love.

To Margaret—I hope that it will not set the reader against her—the

station of King’s Cross had always suggested Infinity. Its very

situation—withdrawn a little behind the facile splendours of St.

Pancras—implied a comment on the materialism of life. Those two great

arches, colourless, indifferent, shouldering between them an unlovely

clock, were fit portals for some eternal adventure, whose issue might

be prosperous, but would certainly not be expressed in the ordinary

language of prosperity. If you think this ridiculous, remember that it

is not Margaret who is telling you about it; and let me hasten to add

that they were in plenty of time for the train; that Mrs. Munt, though

she took a second-class ticket, was put by the guard into a first (only

two seconds on the train, one smoking and the other babies—one cannot

be expected to travel with babies); and that Margaret, on her return to

Wickham Place, was confronted with the following telegram:

All over. Wish I had never written. Tell no one.

—Helen

But Aunt Juley was gone—gone irrevocably, and no power on earth could

stop her.

Chapter 3

Most complacently did Mrs. Munt rehearse her mission. Her nieces were

independent young women, and it was not often that she was able to help

them. Emily’s daughters had never been quite like other girls. They had

been left motherless when Tibby was born, when Helen was five and

Margaret herself but thirteen. It was before the passing of the

Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill, so Mrs. Munt could without impropriety

offer to go and keep house at Wickham Place. But her brother-in-law,

who was peculiar and a German, had referred the question to Margaret,

who with the crudity of youth had answered, “No, they could manage much

better alone.” Five years later Mr. Schlegel had died too, and Mrs.

Munt had repeated her offer. Margaret, crude no longer, had been

grateful and extremely nice, but the substance of her answer had been

the same. “I must not interfere a third time,” thought Mrs. Munt.

However, of course she did. She learnt, to her horror, that Margaret,

now of age, was taking her money out of the old safe investments and

putting it into Foreign Things, which always smash. Silence would have

been criminal. Her own fortune was invested in Home Rails, and most

ardently did she beg her niece to imitate her. “Then we should be

together, dear.” Margaret, out of politeness, invested a few hundreds

in the Nottingham and Derby Railway, and though the Foreign Things did

admirably and the Nottingham and Derby declined with the steady dignity

of which only Home Rails are capable, Mrs. Munt never ceased to

rejoice, and to say, “I did manage that, at all events. When the smash

comes poor Margaret will have a nest-egg to fall back upon.” This year

Helen came of age, and exactly the same thing happened in Helen’s case;

she also would shift her money out of Consols, but she, too, almost

without being pressed, consecrated a fraction of it to the Nottingham

and Derby Railway. So far so good, but in social matters their aunt had

accomplished nothing. Sooner or later the girls would enter on the

process known as throwing themselves away, and if they had delayed

hitherto, it was only that they might throw themselves more vehemently

in the future. They saw too many people at Wickham Place—unshaven

musicians, an actress even, German cousins (one knows what foreigners

are), acquaintances picked up at Continental hotels (one knows what

they are too). It was interesting, and down at Swanage no one

appreciated culture more than Mrs. Munt; but it was dangerous, and

disaster was bound to come. How right she was, and how lucky to be on

the spot when the disaster came!

The train sped northward, under innumerable tunnels. It was only an

hour’s journey, but Mrs. Munt had to raise and lower the window again

and again. She passed through the South Welwyn Tunnel, saw light for a

moment, and entered the North Welwyn Tunnel, of tragic fame. She

traversed the immense viaduct, whose arches span untroubled meadows and

the dreamy flow of Tewin Water. She skirted the parks of politicians.

At times the Great North Road accompanied her, more suggestive of

infinity than any railway, awakening, after a nap of a hundred years,

to such life as is conferred by the stench of motor-cars, and to such

culture as is implied by the advertisements of antibilious pills. To

history, to tragedy, to the past, to the future, Mrs. Munt remained

equally indifferent; hers but to concentrate on the end of her journey,

and to rescue poor Helen from this dreadful mess.

The station for Howards End was at Hilton, one of the large villages

that are strung so frequently along the North Road, and that owe their

size to the traffic of coaching and pre-coaching days. Being near

London, it had not shared in the rural decay, and its long High Street

had budded out right and left into residential estates. For about a

mile a series of tiled and slated houses passed before Mrs. Munt’s

inattentive eyes, a series broken at one point by six Danish tumuli

that stood shoulder to shoulder along the highroad, tombs of soldiers.

Beyond these tumuli habitations thickened, and the train came to a

standstill in a tangle that was almost a town.

The station, like the scenery, like Helen’s letters, struck an

indeterminate note. Into which country will it lead, England or

Suburbia? It was new, it had island platforms and a subway, and the

superficial comfort exacted by business men. But it held hints of local

life, personal intercourse, as even Mrs. Munt was to discover.

“I want a house,” she confided to the ticket boy. “Its name is Howards

Lodge. Do you know where it is?”

“Mr. Wilcox!” the boy called.

A young man in front of them turned round.

“She’s wanting Howards End.”

There was nothing for it but to go forward, though Mrs. Munt was too

much agitated even to stare at the stranger. But remembering that there

were two brothers, she had the sense to say to him, “Excuse me asking,

but are you the younger Mr. Wilcox or the elder?”

“The younger. Can I do anything for you?”

“Oh, well”—she controlled herself with difficulty. “Really. Are you?

I—” She moved away from the ticket boy and lowered her voice. “I am

Miss Schlegel’s aunt. I ought to introduce myself, oughtn’t I? My name

is Mrs. Munt.”

She was conscious that he raised his cap and said quite coolly, “Oh,

rather; Miss Schlegel is stopping with us. Did you want to see her?”

“Possibly—”

“I’ll call you a cab. No; wait a mo—” He thought. “Our motor’s here.

I’ll run you up in it.”

“That is very kind—”

“Not at all, if you’ll just wait till they bring out a parcel from the

office. This way.”

“My niece is not with you by any chance?”

“No; I came over with my father. He has gone on north in your train.

You’ll see Miss Schlegel at lunch. You’re coming up to lunch, I hope?”

“I should like to come _up_,” said Mrs. Munt, not committing herself to

nourishment until she had studied Helen’s lover a little more. He

seemed a gentleman, but had so rattled her round that her powers of

observation were numbed. She glanced at him stealthily. To a feminine

eye there was nothing amiss in the sharp depressions at the corners of

his mouth, nor in the rather box-like construction of his forehead. He

was dark, clean-shaven and seemed accustomed to command.

“In front or behind? Which do you prefer? It may be windy in front.”

“In front if I may; then we can talk.”

“But excuse me one moment—I can’t think what they’re doing with that

parcel.” He strode into the booking-office and called with a new voice:

“Hi! hi, you there! Are you going to keep me waiting all day? Parcel

for Wilcox, Howards End. Just look sharp!” Emerging, he said in quieter

tones: “This station’s abominably organized; if I had my way, the whole

lot of ’em should get the sack. May I help you in?”

“This is very good of you,” said Mrs. Munt, as she settled herself into

a luxurious cavern of red leather, and suffered her person to be padded

with rugs and shawls. She was more civil than she had intended, but

really this young man was very kind. Moreover, she was a little afraid

of him: his self-possession was extraordinary. “Very good indeed,” she

repeated, adding: “It is just what I should have wished.”

“Very good of you to say so,” he replied, with a slight look of

surprise, which, like most slight looks, escaped Mrs. Munt’s attention.

“I was just tooling my father over to catch the down train.”

“You see, we heard from Helen this morning.”

Young Wilcox was pouring in petrol, starting his engine, and performing

other actions with which this story has no concern. The great car began

to rock, and the form of Mrs. Munt, trying to explain things, sprang

agreeably up and down among the red cushions. “The mater will be very

glad to see you,” he mumbled. “Hi! I say. Parcel for Howards End. Bring

it out. Hi!”

A bearded porter emerged with the parcel in one hand and an entry book

in the other. With the gathering whir of the motor these ejaculations

mingled: “Sign, must I? Why the—should I sign after all this bother?

Not even got a pencil on you? Remember next time I report you to the

station-master. My time’s of value, though yours mayn’t be. Here”—here

being a tip.

“Extremely sorry, Mrs. Munt.”

“Not at all, Mr. Wilcox.”

“And do you object to going through the village? It is rather a longer

spin, but I have one or two commissions.”

“I should love going through the village. Naturally I am very anxious

to talk things over with you.”

As she said this she felt ashamed, for she was disobeying Margaret’s

instructions. Only disobeying them in the letter, surely. Margaret had

only warned her against discussing the incident with outsiders. Surely

it was not “uncivilized or wrong” to discuss it with the young man

himself, since chance had thrown them together.

A reticent fellow, he made no reply. Mounting by her side, he put on

gloves and spectacles, and off they drove, the bearded porter—life is a

mysterious business—looking after them with admiration.

The wind was in their faces down the station road, blowing the dust

into Mrs. Munt’s eyes. But as soon as they turned into the Great North

Road she opened fire. “You can well imagine,” she said, “that the news

was a great shock to us.”

“What news?”

“Mr. Wilcox,” she said frankly. “Margaret has told me

everything—everything. I have seen Helen’s letter.”

He could not look her in the face, as his eyes were fixed on his work;

he was travelling as quickly as he dared down the High Street. But he

inclined his head in her direction, and said, “I beg your pardon; I

didn’t catch.”

“About Helen. Helen, of course. Helen is a very exceptional person—I am

sure you will let me say this, feeling towards her as you do—indeed,

all the Schlegels are exceptional. I come in no spirit of interference,

but it was a great shock.”

They drew up opposite a draper’s. Without replying, he turned round in

his seat, and contemplated the cloud of dust that they had raised in

their passage through the village. It was settling again, but not all

into the road from which he had taken it. Some of it had percolated

through the open windows, some had whitened the roses and gooseberries

of the wayside gardens, while a certain proportion had entered the

lungs of the villagers. “I wonder when they’ll learn wisdom and tar the

roads,” was his comment. Then a man ran out of the draper’s with a roll

of oilcloth, and off they went again.

“Margaret could not come herself, on account of poor Tibby, so I am

here to represent her and to have a good talk.”

“I’m sorry to be so dense,” said the young man, again drawing up

outside a shop. “But I still haven’t quite understood.”

“Helen, Mr. Wilcox—my niece and you.”

He pushed up his goggles and gazed at her, absolutely bewildered.

Horror smote her to the heart, for even she began to suspect that they

were at cross-purposes, and that she had commenced her mission by some

hideous blunder.

“Miss Schlegel and myself.” he asked, compressing his lips.

“I trust there has been no misunderstanding,” quavered Mrs. Munt. “Her

letter certainly read that way.”

“What way?”

“That you and she—” She paused, then drooped her eyelids.

“I think I catch your meaning,” he said stickily. “What an

extraordinary mistake!”

“Then you didn’t the least—” she stammered, getting blood-red in the

face, and wishing she had never been born.

“Scarcely, as I am already engaged to another lady.” There was a

moment’s silence, and then he caught his breath and exploded with, “Oh,

good God! Don’t tell me it’s some silliness of Paul’s.”

“But you are Paul.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why did you say so at the station?”

“I said nothing of the sort.”

“I beg your pardon, you did.”

“I beg your pardon, I did not. My name is Charles.”

“Younger” may mean son as opposed to father, or second brother as

opposed to first. There is much to be said for either view, and later

on they said it. But they had other questions before them now.

“Do you mean to tell me that Paul—”

But she did not like his voice. He sounded as if he was talking to a

porter, and, certain that he had deceived her at the station, she too

grew angry.

“Do you mean to tell me that Paul and your niece—”

Mrs. Munt—such is human nature—determined that she would champion the

lovers. She was not going to be bullied by a severe young man. “Yes,

they care for one another very much indeed,” she said. “I dare say they

will tell you about it by-and-by. We heard this morning.”

And Charles clenched his fist and cried, “The idiot, the idiot, the

little fool!”

Mrs. Munt tried to divest herself of her rugs. “If that is your

attitude, Mr. Wilcox, I prefer to walk.”

“I beg you will do no such thing. I’ll take you up this moment to the

house. Let me tell you the thing’s impossible, and must be stopped.”

Mrs. Munt did not often lose her temper, and when she did it was only

to protect those whom she loved. On this occasion she blazed out. “I

quite agree, sir. The thing is impossible, and I will come up and stop

it. My niece is a very exceptional person, and I am not inclined to sit

still while she throws herself away on those who will not appreciate

her.”

Charles worked his jaws.

“Considering she has only known your brother since Wednesday, and only

met your father and mother at a stray hotel—”

“Could you possibly lower your voice? The shopman will overhear.”

“Esprit de classe”—if one may coin the phrase—was strong in Mrs. Munt.

She sat quivering while a member of the lower orders deposited a metal

funnel, a saucepan, and a garden squirt beside the roll of oilcloth.

“Right behind?”

“Yes, sir.” And the lower orders vanished in a cloud of dust.

“I warn you: Paul hasn’t a penny; it’s useless.”

“No need to warn us, Mr. Wilcox, I assure you. The warning is all the

other way. My niece has been very foolish, and I shall give her a good

scolding and take her back to London with me.”

“He has to make his way out in Nigeria. He couldn’t think of marrying

for years and when he does it must be a woman who can stand the

climate, and is in other ways—Why hasn’t he told us? Of course he’s

ashamed. He knows he’s been a fool. And so he has—a damned fool.”

She grew furious.

“Whereas Miss Schlegel has lost no time in publishing the news.”

“If I were a man, Mr. Wilcox, for that last remark I’d box your ears.

You’re not fit to clean my niece’s boots, to sit in the same room with

her, and you dare—you actually dare—I decline to argue with such a

person.”

“All I know is, she’s spread the thing and he hasn’t, and my father’s

away and I—”

“And all that I know is—”

“Might I finish my sentence, please?”

“No.”

Charles clenched his teeth and sent the motor swerving all over the

lane.

She screamed.

So they played the game of Capping Families, a round of which is always

played when love would unite two members of our race. But they played

it with unusual vigour, stating in so many words that Schlegels were

better than Wilcoxes, Wilcoxes better than Schlegels. They flung

decency aside. The man was young, the woman deeply stirred; in both a

vein of coarseness was latent. Their quarrel was no more surprising

than are most quarrels—inevitable at the time, incredible afterwards.

But it was more than usually futile. A few minutes, and they were

enlightened. The motor drew up at Howards End, and Helen, looking very

pale, ran out to meet her aunt.

“Aunt Juley, I have just had a telegram from Margaret; I—I meant to

stop your coming. It isn’t—it’s over.”

The climax was too much for Mrs. Munt. She burst into tears.

“Aunt Juley dear, don’t. Don’t let them know I’ve been so silly. It

wasn’t anything. Do bear up for my sake.”

“Paul,” cried Charles Wilcox, pulling his gloves off.

“Don’t let them know. They are never to know.”

“Oh, my darling Helen—”

“Paul! Paul!”

A very young man came out of the house.

“Paul, is there any truth in this?”

“I didn’t—I don’t—”

“Yes or no, man; plain question, plain answer. Did or didn’t Miss

Schlegel—”

“Charles dear,” said a voice from the garden. “Charles, dear Charles,

one doesn’t ask plain questions. There aren’t such things.”

They were all silent. It was Mrs. Wilcox.

She approached just as Helen’s letter had described her, trailing

noiselessly over the lawn, and there was actually a wisp of hay in her

hands. She seemed to belong not to the young people and their motor,

but to the house, and to the tree that overshadowed it. One knew that

she worshipped the past, and that the instinctive wisdom the past can

alone bestow had descended upon her—that wisdom to which we give the

clumsy name of aristocracy. High born she might not be. But assuredly

she cared about her ancestors, and let them help her. When she saw

Charles angry, Paul frightened, and Mrs. Munt in tears, she heard her

ancestors say, “Separate those human beings who will hurt each other

most. The rest can wait.” So she did not ask questions. Still less did

she pretend that nothing had happened, as a competent society hostess

would have done. She said, “Miss Schlegel, would you take your aunt up

to your room or to my room, whichever you think best. Paul, do find

Evie, and tell her lunch for six, but I’m not sure whether we shall all

be downstairs for it.” And when they had obeyed her, she turned to her

elder son, who still stood in the throbbing stinking car, and smiled at

him with tenderness, and without a word, turned away from him towards

her flowers.

“Mother,” he called, “are you aware that Paul has been playing the fool

again?”

“It’s all right, dear. They have broken off the engagement.”

“Engagement—!”

“They do not love any longer, if you prefer it put that way,” said Mrs.

Wilcox, stooping down to smell a rose.

Chapter 4

Helen and her aunt returned to Wickham Place in a state of collapse,

and for a little time Margaret had three invalids on her hands. Mrs.

Munt soon recovered. She possessed to a remarkable degree the power of

distorting the past, and before many days were over she had forgotten

the part played by her own imprudence in the catastrophe. Even at the

crisis she had cried, “Thank goodness, poor Margaret is saved this!”

which during the journey to London evolved into, “It had to be gone

through by someone,” which in its turn ripened into the permanent form

of “The one time I really did help Emily’s girls was over the Wilcox

business.” But Helen was a more serious patient. New ideas had burst

upon her like a thunder clap, and by them and by her reverberations she

had been stunned.

The truth was that she had fallen in love, not with an individual, but

with a family.

Before Paul arrived she had, as it were, been tuned up into his key.

The energy of the Wilcoxes had fascinated her, had created new images

of beauty in her responsive mind. To be all day with them in the open

air, to sleep at night under their roof, had seemed the supreme joy of

life, and had led to that abandonment of personality that is a possible

prelude to love. She had liked giving in to Mr. Wilcox, or Evie, or

Charles; she had liked being told that her notions of life were

sheltered or academic; that Equality was nonsense, Votes for Women

nonsense, Socialism nonsense, Art and Literature, except when conducive

to strengthening the character, nonsense. One by one the Schlegel

fetiches had been overthrown, and, though professing to defend them,

she had rejoiced. When Mr. Wilcox said that one sound man of business

did more good to the world than a dozen of your social reformers, she

had swallowed the curious assertion without a gasp, and had leant back

luxuriously among the cushions of his motor-car. When Charles said,

“Why be so polite to servants? they don’t understand it,” she had not

given the Schlegel retort of, “If they don’t understand it, I do.” No;

she had vowed to be less polite to servants in the future. “I am

swathed in cant,” she thought, “and it is good for me to be stripped of

it.” And all that she thought or did or breathed was a quiet

preparation for Paul. Paul was inevitable. Charles was taken up with

another girl, Mr. Wilcox was so old, Evie so young, Mrs. Wilcox so

different. Round the absent brother she began to throw the halo of

Romance, to irradiate him with all the splendour of those happy days,

to feel that in him she should draw nearest to the robust ideal. He and

she were about the same age, Evie said. Most people thought Paul

handsomer than his brother. He was certainly a better shot, though not

so good at golf. And when Paul appeared, flushed with the triumph of

getting through an examination, and ready to flirt with any pretty

girl, Helen met him halfway, or more than halfway, and turned towards

him on the Sunday evening.

He had been talking of his approaching exile in Nigeria, and he should

have continued to talk of it, and allowed their guest to recover. But

the heave of her bosom flattered him. Passion was possible, and he

became passionate. Deep down in him something whispered, “This girl

would let you kiss her; you might not have such a chance again.”

That was “how it happened,” or, rather, how Helen described it to her

sister, using words even more unsympathetic than my own. But the poetry

of that kiss, the wonder of it, the magic that there was in life for

hours after it—who can describe that? It is so easy for an Englishman

to sneer at these chance collisions of human beings. To the insular

cynic and the insular moralist they offer an equal opportunity. It is

so easy to talk of “passing emotion,” and how to forget how vivid the

emotion was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at root

a good one. We recognize that emotion is not enough, and that men and

women are personalities capable of sustained relations, not mere

opportunities for an electrical discharge. Yet we rate the impulse too

highly. We do not admit that by collisions of this trivial sort the

doors of heaven may be shaken open. To Helen, at all events, her life

was to bring nothing more intense than the embrace of this boy who

played no part in it. He had drawn her out of the house, where there

was danger of surprise and light; he had led her by a path he knew,

until they stood under the column of the vast wych-elm. A man in the

darkness, he had whispered “I love you” when she was desiring love. In

time his slender personality faded, the scene that he had evoked

endured. In all the variable years that followed she never saw the like

of it again.

“I understand,” said Margaret—“at least, I understand as much as ever

is understood of these things. Tell me now what happened on the Monday

morning.”

“It was over at once.”

“How, Helen?”

“I was still happy while I dressed, but as I came downstairs I got

nervous, and when I went into the dining-room I knew it was no good.

There was Evie—I can’t explain—managing the tea-urn, and Mr. Wilcox

reading the _Times_.”

“Was Paul there?”

“Yes; and Charles was talking to him about Stocks and Shares, and he

looked frightened.”

By slight indications the sisters could convey much to each other.

Margaret saw horror latent in the scene, and Helen’s next remark did

not surprise her.

“Somehow, when that kind of man looks frightened it is too awful. It is

all right for us to be frightened, or for men of another sort—father,

for instance; but for men like that! When I saw all the others so

placid, and Paul mad with terror in case I said the wrong thing, I felt

for a moment that the whole Wilcox family was a fraud, just a wall of

newspapers and motor-cars and golf-clubs, and that if it fell I should

find nothing behind it but panic and emptiness.”

“I don’t think that. The Wilcoxes struck me as being genuine people,

particularly the wife.”

“No, I don’t really think that. But Paul was so broad-shouldered; all

kinds of extraordinary things made it worse, and I knew that it would

never do—never. I said to him after breakfast, when the others were

practising strokes, ‘We rather lost our heads,’ and he looked better at

once, though frightfully ashamed. He began a speech about having no

money to marry on, but it hurt him to make it, and I—stopped him. Then

he said, ‘I must beg your pardon over this, Miss Schlegel; I can’t

think what came over me last night.’ And I said, ‘Nor what over me;

never mind.’ And then we parted—at least, until I remembered that I had

written straight off to tell you the night before, and that frightened

him again. I asked him to send a telegram for me, for he knew you would

be coming or something; and he tried to get hold of the motor, but

Charles and Mr. Wilcox wanted it to go to the station; and Charles

offered to send the telegram for me, and then I had to say that the

telegram was of no consequence, for Paul said Charles might read it,

and though I wrote it out several times, he always said people would

suspect something. He took it himself at last, pretending that he must

walk down to get cartridges, and, what with one thing and the other, it

was not handed in at the Post Office until too late. It was the most

terrible morning. Paul disliked me more and more, and Evie talked

cricket averages till I nearly screamed. I cannot think how I stood her

all the other days. At last Charles and his father started for the

station, and then came your telegram warning me that Aunt Juley was

coming by that train, and Paul—oh, rather horrible—said that I had

muddled it. But Mrs. Wilcox knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Everything; though we neither of us told her a word, and had known all

along, I think.”

“Oh, she must have overheard you.”

“I suppose so, but it seemed wonderful. When Charles and Aunt Juley

drove up, calling each other names, Mrs. Wilcox stepped in from the

garden and made everything less terrible. Ugh! but it has been a

disgusting business. To think that—” She sighed.

“To think that because you and a young man meet for a moment, there

must be all these telegrams and anger,” supplied Margaret.

Helen nodded.

“I’ve often thought about it, Helen. It’s one of the most interesting

things in the world. The truth is that there is a great outer life that

you and I have never touched—a life in which telegrams and anger count.

Personal relations, that we think supreme, are not supreme there. There

love means marriage settlements, death, death duties. So far I’m clear.

But here my difficulty. This outer life, though obviously horrid, often

seems the real one—there’s grit in it. It does breed character. Do

personal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?”

“Oh, Meg, that’s what I felt, only not so clearly, when the Wilcoxes

were so competent, and seemed to have their hands on all the ropes.”

“Don’t you feel it now?”

“I remember Paul at breakfast,” said Helen quietly. “I shall never

forget him. He had nothing to fall back upon. I know that personal

relations are the real life, for ever and ever.

“Amen!”

So the Wilcox episode fell into the background, leaving behind it

memories of sweetness and horror that mingled, and the sisters pursued

the life that Helen had commended. They talked to each other and to

other people, they filled the tall thin house at Wickham Place with

those whom they liked or could befriend. They even attended public

meetings. In their own fashion they cared deeply about politics, though

not as politicians would have us care; they desired that public life

should mirror whatever is good in the life within. Temperance,

tolerance, and sexual equality were intelligible cries to them; whereas

they did not follow our Forward Policy in Thibet with the keen

attention that it merits, and would at times dismiss the whole British

Empire with a puzzled, if reverent, sigh. Not out of them are the shows

of history erected: the world would be a grey, bloodless place were it

entirely composed of Miss Schlegels. But the world being what it is,

perhaps they shine out in it like stars.

A word on their origin. They were not “English to the backbone,” as

their aunt had piously asserted. But, on the other band, they were not

“Germans of the dreadful sort.” Their father had belonged to a type

that was more prominent in Germany fifty years ago than now. He was not

the aggressive German, so dear to the English journalist, nor the

domestic German, so dear to the English wit. If one classed him at all

it would be as the countryman of Hegel and Kant, as the idealist,

inclined to be dreamy, whose Imperialism was the Imperialism of the

air. Not that his life had been inactive. He had fought like blazes

against Denmark, Austria, France. But he had fought without visualizing

the results of victory. A hint of the truth broke on him after Sedan,

when he saw the dyed moustaches of Napoleon going grey; another when he

entered Paris, and saw the smashed windows of the Tuileries. Peace

came—it was all very immense, one had turned into an Empire—but he knew

that some quality had vanished for which not all Alsace-Lorraine could

compensate him. Germany a commercial Power, Germany a naval Power,

Germany with colonies here and a Forward Policy there, and legitimate

aspirations in the other place, might appeal to others, and be fitly

served by them; for his own part, he abstained from the fruits of

victory, and naturalized himself in England. The more earnest members

of his family never forgave him, and knew that his children, though

scarcely English of the dreadful sort, would never be German to the

backbone. He had obtained work in one of our provincial Universities,

and there married Poor Emily (or Die Engländerin as the case may be),

and as she had money, they proceeded to London, and came to know a good

many people. But his gaze was always fixed beyond the sea. It was his

hope that the clouds of materialism obscuring the Fatherland would part

in time, and the mild intellectual light re-emerge. “Do you imply that

we Germans are stupid, Uncle Ernst?” exclaimed a haughty and

magnificent nephew. Uncle Ernst replied, “To my mind. You use the

intellect, but you no longer care about it. That I call stupidity.” As

the haughty nephew did not follow, he continued, “You only care about

the’ things that you can use, and therefore arrange them in the

following order: Money, supremely useful; intellect, rather useful;

imagination, of no use at all. No”—for the other had protested—“your

Pan-Germanism is no more imaginative than is our Imperialism over here.

It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think

that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than

one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as

heaven. That is not imagination. No, it kills it. When their poets over

here try to celebrate bigness they are dead at once, and naturally.

Your poets too are dying, your philosophers, your musicians, to whom

Europe has listened for two hundred years. Gone. Gone with the little

courts that nurtured them—gone with Esterhaz and Weimar. What? What’s

that? Your Universities? Oh, yes, you have learned men, who collect

more facts than do the learned men of England. They collect facts, and

facts, and empires of facts. But which of them will rekindle the light

within?”

To all this Margaret listened, sitting on the haughty nephew’s knee.

It was a unique education for the little girls. The haughty nephew

would be at Wickham Place one day, bringing with him an even haughtier

wife, both convinced that Germany was appointed by God to govern the

world. Aunt Juley would come the next day, convinced that Great Britain

had been appointed to the same post by the same authority. Were both

these loud-voiced parties right? On one occasion they had met, and

Margaret with clasped hands had implored them to argue the subject out

in her presence. Whereat they blushed, and began to talk about the

weather. “Papa” she cried—she was a most offensive child—“why will they

not discuss this most clear question?” Her father, surveying the

parties grimly, replied that he did not know. Putting her head on one

side, Margaret then remarked, “To me one of two things is very clear;

either God does not know his own mind about England and Germany, or

else these do not know the mind of God.” A hateful little girl, but at

thirteen she had grasped a dilemma that most people travel through life

without perceiving. Her brain darted up and down; it grew pliant and

strong. Her conclusion was, that any human being lies nearer to the

unseen than any organization, and from this she never varied.

Helen advanced along the same lines, though with a more irresponsible

tread. In character she resembled her sister, but she was pretty, and

so apt to have a more amusing time. People gathered round her more

readily, especially when they were new acquaintances, and she did enjoy

a little homage very much. When their father died and they ruled alone

at Wickham Place, she often absorbed the whole of the company, while

Margaret—both were tremendous talkers—fell flat. Neither sister

bothered about this. Helen never apologized afterwards, Margaret did

not feel the slightest rancour. But looks have their influence upon

character. The sisters were alike as little girls, but at the time of

the Wilcox episode their methods were beginning to diverge; the younger

was rather apt to entice people, and, in enticing them, to be herself

enticed; the elder went straight ahead, and accepted an occasional

failure as part of the game.

Little need be premised about Tibby. He was now an intelligent man of

sixteen, but dyspeptic and difficile.

Chapter 5

It will be generally admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the

most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All

sorts and conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs.

Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come—of course, not so as

to disturb the others—; or like Helen, who can see heroes and

shipwrecks in the music’s flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the

music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and

holds the full score open on his knee; or like their cousin, Fräulein

Mosebach, who remembers all the time that Beethoven is “echt Deutsch”;

or like Fräulein Mosebach’s young man, who can remember nothing but

Fräulein Mosebach: in any case, the passion of your life becomes more

vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two

shillings. It is cheap, even if you hear it in the Queen’s Hall,

dreariest music-room in London, though not as dreary as the Free Trade

Hall, Manchester; and even if you sit on the extreme left of that hall,

so that the brass bumps at you before the rest of the orchestra

arrives, it is still cheap.

“Who is Margaret talking to?” said Mrs. Munt, at the conclusion of the

first movement. She was again in London on a visit to Wickham Place.

Helen looked down the long line of their party, and said that she did

not know.

“Would it be some young man or other whom she takes an interest in?”

“I expect so,” Helen replied. Music enwrapped her, and she could not

enter into the distinction that divides young men whom one takes an

interest in from young men whom one knows.

“You girls are so wonderful in always having—Oh dear! one mustn’t

talk.”

For the Andante had begun—very beautiful, but bearing a family likeness

to all the other beautiful Andantes that Beethoven had written, and, to

Helen’s mind, rather disconnecting the heroes and shipwrecks of the

first movement from the heroes and goblins of the third. She heard the

tune through once, and then her attention wandered, and she gazed at

the audience, or the organ, or the architecture. Much did she censure

the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen’s Hall,

inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow

pantaloons, on which the October sunlight struck. “How awful to marry a

man like those Cupids!” thought Helen. Here Beethoven started

decorating his tune, so she heard him through once more, and then she

smiled at her cousin Frieda. But Frieda, listening to Classical Music,

could not respond. Herr Liesecke, too, looked as if wild horses could

not make him inattentive; there were lines across his forehead, his

lips were parted, his pince-nez at right angles to his nose, and he had

laid a thick, white hand on either knee. And next to her was Aunt

Juley, so British, and wanting to tap. How interesting that row of

people was! What diverse influences had gone to the making! Here

Beethoven, after humming and hawing with great sweetness, said

“Heigho,” and the Andante came to an end. Applause, and a round of

“wunderschöning” and “prachtvolleying” from the German contingent.

Margaret started talking to her new young man; Helen said to her aunt:

“Now comes the wonderful movement: first of all the goblins, and then a

trio of elephants dancing;” and Tibby implored the company generally to

look out for the transitional passage on the drum.

“On the what, dear?”

“On the _drum_, Aunt Juley.”

“No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the

goblins and they come back,” breathed Helen, as the music started with

a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end. Others

followed him. They were not aggressive creatures; it was that that made

them so terrible to Helen. They merely observed in passing that there

was no such thing as splendour or heroism in the world. After the

interlude of elephants dancing, they returned and made the observation

for the second time. Helen could not contradict them, for, once at all

events, she had felt the same, and had seen the reliable walls of youth

collapse. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! The goblins were

right.

Her brother raised his finger: it was the transitional passage on the

drum.

For, as if things were going too far, Beethoven took hold of the

goblins and made them do what he wanted. He appeared in person. He gave

them a little push, and they began to walk in major key instead of in a

minor, and then—he blew with his mouth and they were scattered! Gusts

of splendour, gods and demigods contending with vast swords, colour and

fragrance broadcast on the field of battle, magnificent victory,

magnificent death! Oh, it all burst before the girl, and she even

stretched out her gloved hands as if it was tangible. Any fate was

titanic; any contest desirable; conqueror and conquered would alike be

applauded by the angels of the utmost stars.

And the goblins—they had not really been there at all? They were only

the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief? One healthy human impulse would

dispel them? Men like the Wilcoxes, or President Roosevelt, would say

yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins really had been there. They

might return—and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might

boil over—and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard

the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity,

walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness!

Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall.

Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the ramparts up.

He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were

scattered. He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the

youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings

of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion. But

the goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and

that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.

Helen pushed her way out during the applause. She desired to be alone.

The music summed up to her all that had happened or could happen in her

career. She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be

superseded. The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have

no other meaning, and life could have no other meaning. She pushed

right out of the building, and walked slowly down the outside

staircase, breathing the autumnal air, and then she strolled home.

“Margaret,” called Mrs. Munt, “is Helen all right?”

“Oh yes.”

“She is always going away in the middle of a programme,” said Tibby.

“The music has evidently moved her deeply,” said Fräulein Mosebach.

“Excuse me,” said Margaret’s young man, who had for some time been

preparing a sentence, “but that lady has, quite inadvertently, taken my

umbrella.”

“Oh, good gracious me!—I am so sorry. Tibby, run after Helen.”

“I shall miss the Four Serious Songs if I do.”

“Tibby love, you must go.”

“It isn’t of any consequence,” said the young man, in truth a little

uneasy about his umbrella.

“But of course it is. Tibby! Tibby!”

Tibby rose to his feet, and wilfully caught his person on the backs of

the chairs. By the time he had tipped up the seat and had found his

hat, and had deposited his full score in safety, it was “too late” to

go after Helen. The Four Serious Songs had begun, and one could not

move during their performance.

“My sister is so careless,” whispered Margaret.

“Not at all,” replied the young man; but his voice was dead and cold.

“If you would give me your address—”

“Oh, not at all, not at all;” and he wrapped his greatcoat over his

knees.

Then the Four Serious Songs rang shallow in Margaret’s ears. Brahms,

for all his grumbling and grizzling, had never guessed what it felt

like to be suspected of stealing an umbrella. For this fool of a young

man thought that she and Helen and Tibby had been playing the

confidence trick on him, and that if he gave his address they would

break into his rooms some midnight or other and steal his walkingstick

too. Most ladies would have laughed, but Margaret really minded, for it

gave her a glimpse into squalor. To trust people is a luxury in which

only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. As soon as

Brahms had grunted himself out, she gave him her card and said, “That

is where we live; if you preferred, you could call for the umbrella

after the concert, but I didn’t like to trouble you when it has all

been our fault.”

His face brightened a little when he saw that Wickham Place was W. It

was sad to see him corroded with suspicion, and yet not daring to be

impolite, in case these well-dressed people were honest after all. She

took it as a good sign that he said to her, “It’s a fine programme this

afternoon, is it not?” for this was the remark with which he had

originally opened, before the umbrella intervened.

“The Beethoven’s fine,” said Margaret, who was not a female of the

encouraging type. “I don’t like the Brahms, though, nor the Mendelssohn

that came first—and ugh! I don’t like this Elgar that’s coming.”

“What, what?” called Herr Liesecke, overhearing. “The _Pomp and

Circumstance_ will not be fine?”

“Oh, Margaret, you tiresome girl!” cried her aunt. “Here have I been

persuading Herr Liesecke to stop for _Pomp and Circumstance_, and you

are undoing all my work. I am so anxious for him to hear what we are

doing in music. Oh, you mustn’t run down our English composers,

Margaret.”

“For my part, I have heard the composition at Stettin,” said Fräulein

Mosebach. “On two occasions. It is dramatic, a little.”

“Frieda, you despise English music. You know you do. And English art.

And English Literature, except Shakespeare and he’s a German. Very

well, Frieda, you may go.”

The lovers laughed and glanced at each other. Moved by a common

impulse, they rose to their feet and fled from _Pomp and Circumstance_.

“We have this call to play in Finsbury Circus, it is true,” said Herr

Liesecke, as he edged past her and reached the gangway just as the

music started.

“Margaret—” loudly whispered by Aunt Juley. “Margaret, Margaret!

Fräulein Mosebach has left her beautiful little bag behind her on the

seat.”

Sure enough, there was Frieda’s reticule, containing her address book,

her pocket dictionary, her map of London, and her money.

“Oh, what a bother—what a family we are! Fr-Frieda!”

“Hush!” said all those who thought the music fine.

“But it’s the number they want in Finsbury Circus—”

“Might I—couldn’t I—” said the suspicious young man, and got very red.

“Oh, I would be so grateful.”

He took the bag—money clinking inside it—and slipped up the gangway

with it. He was just in time to catch them at the swing-door, and he

received a pretty smile from the German girl and a fine bow from her

cavalier. He returned to his seat up-sides with the world. The trust

that they had reposed in him was trivial, but he felt that it cancelled

his mistrust for them, and that probably he would not be “had” over his

umbrella. This young man had been “had” in the past—badly, perhaps

overwhelmingly—and now most of his energies went in defending himself

against the unknown. But this afternoon—perhaps on account of music—he

perceived that one must slack off occasionally, or what is the good of

being alive? Wickham Place, W., though a risk, was as safe as most

things, and he would risk it.

So when the concert was over and Margaret said, “We live quite near; I

am going there now. Could you walk around with me, and we’ll find your

umbrella?” he said, “Thank you,” peaceably, and followed her out of the

Queen’s Hall. She wished that he was not so anxious to hand a lady

downstairs, or to carry a lady’s programme for her—his class was near

enough her own for its manners to vex her. But she found him

interesting on the whole—every one interested the Schlegels on the

whole at that time—and while her lips talked culture, her heart was

planning to invite him to tea.

“How tired one gets after music!” she began.

“Do you find the atmosphere of Queen’s Hall oppressive?”

“Yes, horribly.”

“But surely the atmosphere of Covent Garden is even more oppressive.”

“Do you go there much?”

“When my work permits, I attend the gallery for, the Royal Opera.”

Helen would have exclaimed, “So do I. I love the gallery,” and thus

have endeared herself to the young man. Helen could do these things.

But Margaret had an almost morbid horror of “drawing people out,” of

“making things go.” She had been to the gallery at Covent Garden, but

she did not “attend” it, preferring the more expensive seats; still

less did she love it. So she made no reply.

“This year I have been three times—to _Faust_, _Tosca_, and—” Was it

“Tannhouser” or “Tannhoyser”? Better not risk the word.

Margaret disliked _Tosca_ and _Faust_. And so, for one reason and

another, they walked on in silence, chaperoned by the voice of Mrs.

Munt, who was getting into difficulties with her nephew.

“I do in a _way_ remember the passage, Tibby, but when every instrument

is so beautiful, it is difficult to pick out one thing rather than

another. I am sure that you and Helen take me to the very nicest

concerts. Not a dull note from beginning to end. I only wish that our

German friends would have stayed till it finished.”

“But surely you haven’t forgotten the drum steadily beating on the low

C, Aunt Juley?” came Tibby’s voice. “No one could. It’s unmistakable.”

“A specially loud part?” hazarded Mrs. Munt. “Of course I do not go in

for being musical,” she added, the shot failing. “I only care for

music—a very different thing. But still I will say this for myself—I do

know when I like a thing and when I don’t. Some people are the same

about pictures. They can go into a picture gallery—Miss Conder can—and

say straight off what they feel, all round the wall. I never could do

that. But music is so different to pictures, to my mind. When it comes

to music I am as safe as houses, and I assure you, Tibby, I am by no

means pleased by everything. There was a thing—something about a faun

in French—which Helen went into ecstasies over, but I thought it most

tinkling and superficial, and said so, and I held to my opinion too.”

“Do you agree?” asked Margaret. “Do you think music is so different to

pictures?”

“I—I should have thought so, kind of,” he said.

“So should I. Now, my sister declares they’re just the same. We have

great arguments over it. She says I’m dense; I say she’s sloppy.”

Getting under way, she cried: “Now, doesn’t it seem absurd to you? What

is the good of the Arts if they are interchangeable? What is the good

of the ear if it tells you the same as the eye? Helen’s one aim is to

translate tunes into the language of painting, and pictures into the

language of music. It’s very ingenious, and she says several pretty

things in the process, but what’s gained, I’d like to know? Oh, it’s

all rubbish, radically false. If Monet’s really Debussy, and Debussy’s

really Monet, neither gentleman is worth his salt—that’s my opinion.

Evidently these sisters quarrelled.

“Now, this very symphony that we’ve just been having—she won’t let it

alone. She labels it with meanings from start to finish; turns it into

literature. I wonder if the day will ever return when music will be

treated as music. Yet I don’t know. There’s my brother—behind us. He

treats music as music, and oh, my goodness! He makes me angrier than

anyone, simply furious. With him I daren’t even argue.”

An unhappy family, if talented.

“But, of course, the real villain is Wagner. He has done more than any

man in the nineteenth century towards the muddling of arts. I do feel

that music is in a very serious state just now, though extraordinarily

interesting. Every now and then in history there do come these terrible

geniuses, like Wagner, who stir up all the wells of thought at once.

For a moment it’s splendid. Such a splash as never was. But

afterwards—such a lot of mud; and the wells—as it were, they

communicate with each other too easily now, and not one of them will

run quite clear. That’s what Wagner’s done.”

Her speeches fluttered away from the young man like birds. If only he

could talk like this, he would have caught the world. Oh to acquire

culture! Oh, to pronounce foreign names correctly! Oh, to be well

informed, discoursing at ease on every subject that a lady started! But

it would take one years. With an hour at lunch and a few shattered

hours in the evening, how was it possible to catch up with leisured

women, who had been reading steadily from childhood? His brain might be

full of names, he might have even heard of Monet and Debussy; the

trouble was that he could not string them together into a sentence, he

could not make them “tell,” he could not quite forget about his stolen

umbrella. Yes, the umbrella was the real trouble. Behind Monet and

Debussy the umbrella persisted, with the steady beat of a drum. “I

suppose my umbrella will be all right,” he was thinking. “I don’t

really mind about it. I will think about music instead. I suppose my

umbrella will be all right.” Earlier in the afternoon he had worried

about seats. Ought he to have paid as much as two shillings? Earlier

still he had wondered, “Shall I try to do without a programme?” There

had always been something to worry him ever since he could remember,

always something that distracted him in the pursuit of beauty. For he

did pursue beauty, and therefore, Margaret’s speeches did flutter away

from him like birds.

Margaret talked ahead, occasionally saying, “Don’t you think so? don’t

you feel the same?” And once she stopped, and said “Oh, do interrupt

me!” which terrified him. She did not attract him, though she filled

him with awe. Her figure was meagre, her face seemed all teeth and

eyes, her references to her sister and brother were uncharitable. For

all her cleverness and culture, she was probably one of those soulless,

atheistical women who have been so shown up by Miss Corelli. It was

surprising (and alarming) that she should suddenly say, “I do hope that

you’ll come in and have some tea.”

“I do hope that you’ll come in and have some tea. We should be so glad.

I have dragged you so far out of your way.”

They had arrived at Wickham Place. The sun had set, and the backwater,

in deep shadow, was filling with a gentle haze. To the right of the

fantastic skyline of the flats towered black against the hues of

evening; to the left the older houses raised a square-cut, irregular

parapet against the grey. Margaret fumbled for her latchkey. Of course

she had forgotten it. So, grasping her umbrella by its ferrule, she

leant over the area and tapped at the dining-room window.

“Helen! Let us in!”

“All right,” said a voice.

“You’ve been taking this gentleman’s umbrella.”

“Taken a what?” said Helen, opening the door. “Oh, what’s that? Do come

in! How do you do?”

“Helen, you must not be so ramshackly. You took this gentleman’s

umbrella away from Queen’s Hall, and he has had the trouble of coming

for it.”

“Oh, I am so sorry!” cried Helen, all her hair flying. She had pulled

off her hat as soon as she returned, and had flung herself into the big

dining-room chair. “I do nothing but steal umbrellas. I am so very

sorry! Do come in and choose one. Is yours a hooky or a nobbly? Mine’s

a nobbly—at least, I _think_ it is.”

The light was turned on, and they began to search the hall, Helen, who

had abruptly parted with the Fifth Symphony, commenting with shrill

little cries.

“Don’t you talk, Meg! You stole an old gentleman’s silk top-hat. Yes,

she did, Aunt Juley. It is a positive fact. She thought it was a muff.

Oh, heavens! I’ve knocked the In and Out card down. Where’s Frieda?

Tibby, why don’t you ever—No, I can’t remember what I was going to say.

That wasn’t it, but do tell the maids to hurry tea up. What about this

umbrella?” She opened it. “No, it’s all gone along the seams. It’s an

appalling umbrella. It must be mine.”

But it was not.

He took it from her, murmured a few words of thanks, and then fled,

with the lilting step of the clerk.

“But if you will stop—” cried Margaret. “Now, Helen, how stupid you’ve

been!”

“Whatever have I done?”

“Don’t you see that you’ve frightened him away? I meant him to stop to

tea. You oughtn’t to talk about stealing or holes in an umbrella. I saw

his nice eyes getting so miserable. No, it’s not a bit of good now.”

For Helen had darted out into the street, shouting, “Oh, do stop!”

“I dare say it is all for the best,” opined Mrs. Munt. “We know nothing

about the young man, Margaret, and your drawing-room is full of very

tempting little things.”

But Helen cried: “Aunt Juley, how can you! You make me more and more

ashamed. I’d rather he _had_ been a thief and taken all the apostle

spoons than that I—Well, I must shut the front-door, I suppose. One

more failure for Helen.”

“Yes, I think the apostle spoons could have gone as rent,” said

Margaret. Seeing that her aunt did not understand, she added: “You

remember ‘rent.’ It was one of father’s words—Rent to the ideal, to his

own faith in human nature. You remember how he would trust strangers,

and if they fooled him he would say, ‘It’s better to be fooled than to

be suspicious’—that the confidence trick is the work of man, but the

want-of-confidence-trick is the work of the devil.”

“I remember something of the sort now,” said Mrs. Munt, rather tartly,

for she longed to add, “It was lucky that your father married a wife

with money.” But this was unkind, and she contented herself with, “Why,

he might have stolen the little Ricketts picture as well.”

“Better that he had,” said Helen stoutly.

“No, I agree with Aunt Juley,” said Margaret. “I’d rather mistrust

people than lose my little Ricketts. There are limits.”

Their brother, finding the incident commonplace, had stolen upstairs to

see whether there were scones for tea. He warmed the teapot—almost too

deftly—rejected the Orange Pekoe that the parlour-maid had provided,

poured in five spoonfuls of a superior blend, filled up with really

boiling water, and now called to the ladies to be quick or they would

lose the aroma.

“All right, Auntie Tibby,” called Helen, while Margaret, thoughtful

again, said: “In a way, I wish we had a real boy in the house—the kind

of boy who cares for men. It would make entertaining so much easier.”

“So do I,” said her sister. “Tibby only cares for cultured females

singing Brahms.” And when they joined him she said rather sharply: “Why

didn’t you make that young man welcome, Tibby? You must do the host a

little, you know. You ought to have taken his hat and coaxed him into

stopping, instead of letting him be swamped by screaming women.”

Tibby sighed, and drew a long strand of hair over his forehead.

“Oh, it’s no good looking superior. I mean what I say.”

“Leave Tibby alone!” said Margaret, who could not bear her brother to

be scolded.

“Here’s the house a regular hen-coop!” grumbled Helen.

“Oh, my dear!” protested Mrs. Munt. “How can you say such dreadful

things! The number of men you get here has always astonished me. If

there is any danger it’s the other way round.”

“Yes, but it’s the wrong sort of men, Helen means.”

“No, I don’t,” corrected Helen. “We get the right sort of man, but the

wrong side of him, and I say that’s Tibby’s fault. There ought to be a

something about the house—an—I don’t know what.”

“A touch of the W.’s, perhaps?”

Helen put out her tongue.

“Who are the W.’s?” asked Tibby.

“The W.’s are things I and Meg and Aunt Juley know about and you don’t,

so there!”

“I suppose that ours is a female house,” said Margaret, “and one must

just accept it. No, Aunt Juley, I don’t mean that this house is full of

women. I am trying to say something much more clever. I mean that it

was irrevocably feminine, even in father’s time. Now I’m sure you

understand! Well, I’ll give you another example. It’ll shock you, but I

don’t care. Suppose Queen Victoria gave a dinner-party, and that the

guests had been Leighton, Millais, Swinburne, Rossetti, Meredith,

Fitzgerald, etc. Do you suppose that the atmosphere of that dinner

would have been artistic? Heavens no! The very chairs on which they sat

would have seen to that. So with our house—it must be feminine, and all

we can do is to see that it isn’t effeminate. Just as another house

that I can mention, but I won’t, sounded irrevocably masculine, and all

its inmates can do is to see that it isn’t brutal.”

“That house being the W.’s house, I presume,” said Tibby.

“You’re not going to be told about the W.’s, my child,” Helen cried,

“so don’t you think it. And on the other hand, I don’t the least mind

if you find out, so don’t you think you’ve done anything clever, in

either case. Give me a cigarette.”

“You do what you can for the house,” said Margaret. “The drawing-room

reeks of smoke.”

“If you smoked too, the house might suddenly turn masculine. Atmosphere

is probably a question of touch and go. Even at Queen Victoria’s

dinner-party—if something had been just a little different—perhaps if

she’d worn a clinging Liberty tea-gown instead of a magenta satin—”

“With an Indian shawl over her shoulders—”

“Fastened at the bosom with a Cairngorm-pin—”

Bursts of disloyal laughter—you must remember that they are half

German—greeted these suggestions, and Margaret said pensively, “How

inconceivable it would be if the Royal Family cared about Art.” And the

conversation drifted away and away, and Helen’s cigarette turned to a

spot in the darkness, and the great flats opposite were sown with

lighted windows, which vanished and were relit again, and vanished

incessantly. Beyond them the thoroughfare roared gently—a tide that

could never be quiet, while in the east, invisible behind the smokes of

Wapping, the moon was rising.

“That reminds me, Margaret. We might have taken that young man into the

dining-room, at all events. Only the majolica plate—and that is so

firmly set in the wall. I am really distressed that he had no tea.”

For that little incident had impressed the three women more than might

be supposed. It remained as a goblin football, as a hint that all is

not for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and that beneath

these superstructures of wealth and art there wanders an ill-fed boy,

who has recovered his umbrella indeed, but who has left no address

behind him, and no name.

Chapter 6

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only

to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with

gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are

gentlefolk.

The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of gentility. He was

not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people whom he knew

had dropped in, and counted no more. He knew that he was poor, and

would admit it: he would have died sooner than confess any inferiority

to the rich. This may be splendid of him. But he was inferior to most

rich people, there is not the least doubt of it. He was not as

courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy,

nor as lovable. His mind and his body had been alike underfed, because

he was poor, and because he was modern they were always craving better

food. Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured

civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his

rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel

of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings,

and proclaiming, “All men are equal—all men, that is to say, who

possess umbrellas,” and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he

slipped into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of

Democracy are inaudible.

As he walked away from Wickham Place, his first care was to prove that

he was as good as the Miss Schlegels. Obscurely wounded in his pride,

he tried to wound them in return. They were probably not ladies. Would

real ladies have asked him to tea? They were certainly ill-natured and

cold. At each step his feeling of superiority increased. Would a real

lady have talked about stealing an umbrella? Perhaps they were thieves

after all, and if he had gone into the house they could have clapped a

chloroformed handkerchief over his face. He walked on complacently as

far as the Houses of Parliament. There an empty stomach asserted

itself, and told him he was a fool.

“Evening, Mr. Bast.”

“Evening, Mr. Dealtry.”

“Nice evening.”

“Evening.”

Mr. Dealtry, a fellow clerk, passed on, and Leonard stood wondering

whether he would take the tram as far as a penny would take him, or

whether he would walk. He decided to walk—it is no good giving in, and

he had spent money enough at Queen’s Hall—and he walked over

Westminster Bridge, in front of St. Thomas’s Hospital, and through the

immense tunnel that passes under the South-Western main line at

Vauxhall. In the tunnel he paused and listened to the roar of the

trains. A sharp pain darted through his head, and he was conscious of

the exact form of his eye sockets. He pushed on for another mile, and

did not slacken speed until he stood at the entrance of a road called

Camelia Road, which was at present his home.

Here he stopped again, and glanced suspiciously to right and left, like

a rabbit that is going to bolt into its hole. A block of flats,

constructed with extreme cheapness, towered on either hand. Farther

down the road two more blocks were being built, and beyond these an old

house was being demolished to accommodate another pair. It was the kind

of scene that may be observed all over London, whatever the

locality—bricks and mortar rising and falling with the restlessness of

the water in a fountain, as the city receives more and more men upon

her soil. Camelia Road would soon stand out like a fortress, and

command, for a little, an extensive view. Only for a little. Plans were

out for the erection of flats in Magnolia Road also. And again a few

years, and all the flats in either road might be pulled down, and new

buildings, of a vastness at present unimaginable, might arise where

they had fallen.

“Evening, Mr. Bast.”

“Evening, Mr. Cunningham.”

“Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in Manchester.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in Manchester,”

repeated Mr. Cunningham, tapping the Sunday paper, in which the

calamity in question had just been announced to him.

“Ah, yes,” said Leonard, who was not going to let on that he had not

bought a Sunday paper.

“If this kind of thing goes on the population of England will be

stationary in 1960.”

“You don’t say so.”

“I call it a very serious thing, eh?”

“Good-evening, Mr. Cunningham.”

“Good-evening, Mr. Bast.”

Then Leonard entered Block B of the flats, and turned, not upstairs,

but down, into what is known to house agents as a semi-basement, and to

other men as a cellar. He opened the door, and cried “Hullo!” with the

pseudo-geniality of the Cockney. There was no reply. “Hullo!” he

repeated. The sitting-room was empty, though the electric light had

been left burning. A look of relief came over his face, and he flung

himself into the armchair.

The sitting-room contained, besides the armchair, two other chairs, a

piano, a three-legged table, and a cosy corner. Of the walls, one was

occupied by the window, the other by a draped mantelshelf bristling

with Cupids. Opposite the window was the door, and beside the door a

bookcase, while over the piano there extended one of the masterpieces

of Maud Goodman. It was an amorous and not unpleasant little hole when

the curtains were drawn, and the lights turned on, and the gas-stove

unlit. But it struck that shallow makeshift note that is so often heard

in the modem dwelling-place. It had been too easily gained, and could

be relinquished too easily.

As Leonard was kicking off his boots he jarred the three-legged table,

and a photograph frame, honourably poised upon it, slid sideways, fell

off into the fireplace, and smashed. He swore in a colourless sort of

way, and picked the photograph up. It represented a young lady called

Jacky, and had been taken at the time when young ladies called Jacky

were often photographed with their mouths open. Teeth of dazzling

whiteness extended along either of Jacky’s jaws, and positively

weighted her head sideways, so large were they and so numerous. Take my

word for it, that smile was simply stunning, and it is only you and I

who will be fastidious, and complain that true joy begins in the eyes,

and that the eyes of Jacky did not accord with her smile, but were

anxious and hungry.

Leonard tried to pull out the fragments of glass, and cut his fingers

and swore again. A drop of blood fell on the frame, another followed,

spilling over on to the exposed photograph. He swore more vigorously,

and dashed to the kitchen, where he bathed his hands. The kitchen was

the same size as the sitting room; through it was a bedroom. This

completed his home. He was renting the flat furnished: of all the

objects that encumbered it none were his own except the photograph

frame, the Cupids, and the books.

“Damn, damn, damnation!” he murmured, together with such other words as

he had learnt from older men. Then he raised his hand to his forehead

and said, “Oh, damn it all—” which meant something different. He pulled

himself together. He drank a little tea, black and silent, that still

survived upon an upper shelf. He swallowed some dusty crumbs of cake.

Then he went back to the sitting-room, settled himself anew, and began

to read a volume of Ruskin.

“Seven miles to the north of Venice—”

How perfectly the famous chapter opens! How supreme its command of

admonition and of poetry! The rich man is speaking to us from his

gondola.

“Seven miles to the north of Venice the banks of sand which nearer the

city rise little above low-water mark attain by degrees a higher level,

and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and

there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.”

Leonard was trying to form his style on Ruskin: he understood him to be

the greatest master of English Prose. He read forward steadily,

occasionally making a few notes.

“Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession, and

first (for of the shafts enough has been said already), what is very

peculiar to this church—its luminousness.”

Was there anything to be learnt from this fine sentence? Could he adapt

it to the needs of daily life? Could he introduce it, with

modifications, when he next wrote a letter to his brother, the

lay-reader? For example—

“Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession, and

first (for of the absence of ventilation enough has been said already),

what is very peculiar to this flat—its obscurity.”

Something told him that the modifications would not do; and that

something, had he known it, was the spirit of English Prose. “My flat

is dark as well as stuffy.” Those were the words for him.

And the voice in the gondola rolled on, piping melodiously of Effort

and Self-Sacrifice, full of high purpose, full of beauty, full even of

sympathy and the love of men, yet somehow eluding all that was actual

and insistent in Leonard’s life. For it was the voice of one who had

never been dirty or hungry, and had not guessed successfully what dirt

and hunger are.

Leonard listened to it with reverence. He felt that he was being done

good to, and that if he kept on with Ruskin, and the Queen’s Hall

Concerts, and some pictures by Watts, he would one day push his head

out of the grey waters and see the universe. He believed in sudden

conversion, a belief which may be right, but which is peculiarly

attractive to a half-baked mind. It is the bias of much popular

religion: in the domain of business it dominates the Stock Exchange,

and becomes that “bit of luck” by which all successes and failures are

explained. “If only I had a bit of luck, the whole thing would come

straight. . . . He’s got a most magnificent place down at Streatham and

a 20 h.-p. Fiat, but then, mind you, he’s had luck. . . . I’m sorry the

wife’s so late, but she never has any luck over catching trains.”

Leonard was superior to these people; he did believe in effort and in a

steady preparation for the change that he desired. But of a heritage

that may expand gradually, he had no conception: he hoped to come to

Culture suddenly, much as the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus. Those

Miss Schlegels had come to it; they had done the trick; their hands

were upon the ropes, once and for all. And meanwhile, his flat was

dark, as well as stuffy.

Presently there was a noise on the staircase. He shut up Margaret’s

card in the pages of Ruskin, and opened the door. A woman entered, of

whom it is simplest to say that she was not respectable. Her appearance

was awesome. She seemed all strings and bell-pulls—ribbons, chains,

bead necklaces that clinked and caught—and a boa of azure feathers hung

round her neck, with the ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound with a

double row of pearls, her arms were bare to the elbows, and might again

be detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat, which was

flowery, resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we sowed

with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which germinated here yes,

and there no. She wore it on the back of her head. As for her hair, or

rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went

down her back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a

lighter destiny, rippled around her forehead. The face—the face does

not signify. It was the face of the photograph, but older, and the

teeth were not so numerous as the photographer had suggested, and

certainly not so white. Yes, Jacky was past her prime, whatever that

prime may have been. She was descending quicker than most women into

the colourless years, and the look in her eyes confessed it.

“What ho!” said Leonard, greeting that apparition with much spirit, and

helping it off with its boa.

Jacky, in husky tones, replied, “What ho!”

“Been out?” he asked. The question sounds superfluous, but it cannot

have been really, for the lady answered, “No,” adding, “Oh, I am so

tired.”

“You tired?”

“Eh?”

“I’m tired,” said he, hanging the boa up.

“Oh, Len, I am so tired.”

“I’ve been to that classical concert I told you about,” said Leonard.

“What’s that?”

“I came back as soon as it was over.”

“Any one been round to our place?” asked Jacky.

“Not that I’ve seen. I met Mr. Cunningham outside, and we passed a few

remarks.”

“What, not Mr. Cunningham?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, you mean Mr. Cunningham.”

“Yes. Mr. Cunningham.”

“I’ve been out to tea at a lady friend’s.”

Her secret being at last given to the world, and the name of the

lady-friend being even adumbrated, Jacky made no further experiments in

the difficult and tiring art of conversation. She never had been a

great talker. Even in her photographic days she had relied upon her

smile and her figure to attract, and now that she was—

“On the shelf,

On the shelf,

Boys, boys, I’m on the shelf,”

she was not likely to find her tongue. Occasional bursts of song (of

which the above is an example) still issued from her lips, but the

spoken word was rare.

She sat down on Leonard’s knee, and began to fondle him. She was now a

massive woman of thirty-three, and her weight hurt him, but he could

not very well say anything. Then she said, “Is that a book you’re

reading?” and he said, “That’s a book,” and drew it from her

unreluctant grasp. Margaret’s card fell out of it. It fell face

downwards, and he murmured, “Bookmarker.”

“Len—”

“What is it?” he asked, a little wearily, for she only had one topic of

conversation when she sat upon his knee.

“You do love me?”

“Jacky, you know that I do. How can you ask such questions!”

“But you do love me, Len, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

A pause. The other remark was still due.

“Len—”

“Well? What is it?”

“Len, you will make it all right?”

“I can’t have you ask me that again,” said the boy, flaring up into a

sudden passion. “I’ve promised to marry you when I’m of age, and that’s

enough. My word’s my word. I’ve promised to marry you as soon as ever

I’m twenty-one, and I can’t keep on being worried. I’ve worries enough.

It isn’t likely I’d throw you over, let alone my word, when I’ve spent

all this money. Besides, I’m an Englishman, and I never go back on my

word. Jacky, do be reasonable. Of course I’ll marry you. Only do stop

badgering me.”

“When’s your birthday, Len?”

“I’ve told you again and again, the eleventh of November next. Now get

off my knee a bit; someone must get supper, I suppose.”

Jacky went through to the bedroom, and began to see to her hat. This

meant blowing at it with short sharp puffs. Leonard tidied up the

sitting-room, and began to prepare their evening meal. He put a penny

into the slot of the gas-meter, and soon the flat was reeking with

metallic fumes. Somehow he could not recover his temper, and all the

time he was cooking he continued to complain bitterly.

“It really is too bad when a fellow isn’t trusted. It makes one feel so

wild, when I’ve pretended to the people here that you’re my wife—all

right, you shall be my wife—and I’ve bought you the ring to wear, and

I’ve taken this flat furnished, and it’s far more than I can afford,

and yet you aren’t content, and I’ve also not told the truth when I’ve

written home.” He lowered his voice. “He’d stop it.” In a tone of

horror, that was a little luxurious, he repeated: “My brother’d stop

it. I’m going against the whole world, Jacky.

“That’s what I am, Jacky. I don’t take any heed of what anyone says. I

just go straight forward, I do. That’s always been my way. I’m not one

of your weak knock-kneed chaps. If a woman’s in trouble, I don’t leave

her in the lurch. That’s not my street. No, thank you.

“I’ll tell you another thing too. I care a good deal about improving

myself by means of Literature and Art, and so getting a wider outlook.

For instance, when you came in I was reading Ruskin’s _Stones of

Venice_. I don’t say this to boast, but just to show you the kind of

man I am. I can tell you, I enjoyed that classical concert this

afternoon.”

To all his moods Jacky remained equally indifferent. When supper was

ready—and not before—she emerged from the bedroom, saying: “But you do

love me, don’t you?”

They began with a soup square, which Leonard had just dissolved in some

hot water. It was followed by the tongue—a freckled cylinder of meat,

with a little jelly at the top, and a great deal of yellow fat at the

bottom—ending with another square dissolved in water (jelly:

pineapple), which Leonard had prepared earlier in the day. Jacky ate

contentedly enough, occasionally looking at her man with those anxious

eyes, to which nothing else in her appearance corresponded, and which

yet seemed to mirror her soul. And Leonard managed to convince his

stomach that it was having a nourishing meal.

After supper they smoked cigarettes and exchanged a few statements. She

observed that her “likeness” had been broken. He found occasion to

remark, for the second time, that he had come straight back home after

the concert at Queen’s Hall. Presently she sat upon his knee. The

inhabitants of Camelia Road tramped to and fro outside the window, just

on a level with their heads, and the family in the flat on the

ground-floor began to sing, “Hark, my soul, it is the Lord.”

“That tune fairly gives me the hump,” said Leonard.

Jacky followed this, and said that, for her part, she thought it a

lovely tune.

“No; I’ll play you something lovely. Get up, dear, for a minute.”

He went to the piano and jingled out a little Grieg. He played badly

and vulgarly, but the performance was not without its effect, for Jacky

said she thought she’d be going to bed. As she receded, a new set of

interests possessed the boy, and he began to think of what had been

said about music by that odd Miss Schlegel—the one that twisted her

face about so when she spoke. Then the thoughts grew sad and envious.

There was the girl named Helen, who had pinched his umbrella, and the

German girl who had smiled at him pleasantly, and Herr someone, and

Aunt someone, and the brother—all, all with their hands on the ropes.

They had all passed up that narrow, rich staircase at Wickham Place, to

some ample room, whither he could never follow them, not if he read for

ten hours a day. Oh, it was not good, this continual aspiration. Some

are born cultured; the rest had better go in for whatever comes easy.

To see life steadily and to see it whole was not for the likes of him.

From the darkness beyond the kitchen a voice called, “Len?”

“You in bed?” he asked, his forehead twitching.

“M’m.”

“All right.”

Presently she called him again.

“I must clean my boots ready for the morning,” he answered.

Presently she called him again.

“I rather want to get this chapter done.”

“What?”

He closed his ears against her.

“What’s that?”

“All right, Jacky, nothing; I’m reading a book.”

“What?”

“What?” he answered, catching her degraded deafness.

Presently she called him again.

Ruskin had visited Torcello by this time, and was ordering his

gondoliers to take him to Murano. It occurred to him, as he glided over

the whispering lagoons, that the power of Nature could not be shortened

by the folly, nor her beauty altogether saddened by the misery, of such

as Leonard.

Chapter 7

“Oh, Margaret,” cried her aunt next morning, “such a most unfortunate

thing has happened. I could not get you alone.”

The most unfortunate thing was not very serious. One of the flats in

the ornate block opposite had been taken furnished by the Wilcox

family, “coming up, no doubt, in the hope of getting into London

society.” That Mrs. Munt should be the first to discover the misfortune

was not remarkable, for she was so interested in the flats, that she

watched their every mutation with unwearying care. In theory she

despised them—they took away that old-world look—they cut off the

sun—flats house a flashy type of person. But if the truth had been

known, she found her visits to Wickham Place twice as amusing since

Wickham Mansions had arisen, and would in a couple of days learn more

about them than her nieces in a couple of months, or her nephew in a

couple of years. She would stroll across and make friends with the

porters, and inquire what the rents were, exclaiming for example:

“What! a hundred and twenty for a basement? You’ll never get it!” And

they would answer: “One can but try, madam.” The passenger lifts, the

provision lifts, the arrangement for coals (a great temptation for a

dishonest porter), were all familiar matters to her, and perhaps a

relief from the politico-economical-æsthetic atmosphere that reigned at

the Schlegels’.

Margaret received the information calmly, and did not agree that it

would throw a cloud over poor Helen’s life.

“Oh, but Helen isn’t a girl with no interests,” she explained. “She has

plenty of other things and other people to think about. She made a

false start with the Wilcoxes, and she’ll be as willing as we are to

have nothing more to do with them.”

“For a clever girl, dear, how very oddly you do talk. Helen’ll _have_

to have something more to do with them, now that they’re all opposite.

She may meet that Paul in the street. She cannot very well not bow.”

“Of course she must bow. But look here; let’s do the flowers. I was

going to say, the will to be interested in him has died, and what else

matters? I look on that disastrous episode (over which you were so

kind) as the killing of a nerve in Helen. It’s dead, and she’ll never

be troubled with it again. The only things that matter are the things

that interest one. Bowing, even calling and leaving cards, even a

dinner-party—we can do all those things to the Wilcoxes, if they find

it agreeable; but the other thing, the one important thing—never again.

Don’t you see?”

Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a most

questionable statement—that any emotion, any interest once vividly

aroused, can wholly die.

“I also have the honour to inform you that the Wilcoxes are bored with

us. I didn’t tell you at the time—it might have made you angry, and you

had enough to worry you—but I wrote a letter to Mrs. W., and apologized

for the trouble that Helen had given them. She didn’t answer it.”

“How very rude!”

“I wonder. Or was it sensible?”

“No, Margaret, most rude.”

“In either case one can class it as reassuring.”

Mrs. Munt sighed. She was going back to Swanage on the morrow, just as

her nieces were wanting her most. Other regrets crowded upon her: for

instance, how magnificently she would have cut Charles if she had met

him face to face. She had already seen him, giving an order to the

porter—and very common he looked in a tall hat. But unfortunately his

back was turned to her, and though she had cut his back, she could not

regard this as a telling snub.

“But you will be careful, won’t you?” she exhorted.

“Oh, certainly. Fiendishly careful.”

“And Helen must be careful, too,”

“Careful over what?” cried Helen, at that moment coming into the room

with her cousin.

“Nothing,” said Margaret, seized with a momentary awkwardness.

“Careful over what, Aunt Juley?”

Mrs. Munt assumed a cryptic air. “It is only that a certain family,

whom we know by name but do not mention, as you said yourself last

night after the concert, have taken the flat opposite from the

Mathesons—where the plants are in the balcony.”

Helen began some laughing reply, and then disconcerted them all by

blushing. Mrs. Munt was so disconcerted that she exclaimed, “What,

Helen, you don’t mind them coming, do you?” and deepened the blush to

crimson.

“Of course I don’t mind,” said Helen a little crossly. “It is that you

and Meg are both so absurdly grave about it, when there’s nothing to be

grave about at all.”

“I’m not grave,” protested Margaret, a little cross in her turn.

“Well, you look grave; doesn’t she, Frieda?”

“I don’t feel grave, that’s all I can say; you’re going quite on the

wrong tack.”

“No, she does not feel grave,” echoed Mrs. Munt. “I can bear witness to

that. She disagrees—”

“Hark!” interrupted Fräulein Mosebach. “I hear Bruno entering the

hall.”

For Herr Liesecke was due at Wickham Place to call for the two younger

girls. He was not entering the hall—in fact, he did not enter it for

quite five minutes. But Frieda detected a delicate situation, and said

that she and Helen had much better wait for Bruno down below, and leave

Margaret and Mrs. Munt to finish arranging the flowers. Helen

acquiesced. But, as if to prove that the situation was not delicate

really, she stopped in the doorway and said:

“Did you say the Mathesons’ flat, Aunt Juley? How wonderful you are! I

never knew that the woman who laced too tightly’s name was Matheson.”

“Come, Helen,” said her cousin.

“Go, Helen,” said her aunt; and continued to Margaret almost in the

same breath: “Helen cannot deceive me. She does mind.”

“Oh, hush!” breathed Margaret. “Frieda’ll hear you, and she can be so

tiresome.”

“She minds,” persisted Mrs. Munt, moving thoughtfully about the room,

and pulling the dead chrysanthemums out of the vases. “I knew she’d

mind—and I’m sure a girl ought to! Such an experience! Such awful

coarse-grained people! I know more about them than you do, which you

forget, and if Charles had taken you that motor drive—well, you’d have

reached the house a perfect wreck. Oh, Margaret, you don’t know what

you are in for. They’re all bottled up against the drawing-room window.

There’s Mrs. Wilcox—I’ve seen her. There’s Paul. There’s Evie, who is a

minx. There’s Charles—I saw him to start with. And who would an elderly

man with a moustache and a copper-coloured face be?”

“Mr. Wilcox, possibly.”

“I knew it. And there’s Mr. Wilcox.”

“It’s a shame to call his face copper colour,” complained Margaret. “He

has a remarkably good complexion for a man of his age.”

Mrs. Munt, triumphant elsewhere, could afford to concede Mr. Wilcox his

complexion. She passed on from it to the plan of campaign that her

nieces should pursue in the future. Margaret tried to stop her.

“Helen did not take the news quite as I expected, but the Wilcox nerve

is dead in her really, so there’s no need for plans.”

“It’s as well to be prepared.”

“No—it’s as well not to be prepared.”

“Because—”

Her thought drew being from the obscure borderland. She could not

explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all

the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense

of joy. It is necessary to prepare for an examination, or a

dinner-party, or a possible fall in the price of stock: those who

attempt human relations must adopt another method, or fail. “Because

I’d sooner risk it,” was her lame conclusion.

“But imagine the evenings,” exclaimed her aunt, pointing to the

Mansions with the spout of the watering-can. “Turn the electric light

on here or there, and it’s almost the same room. One evening they may

forget to draw their blinds down, and you’ll see them; and the next,

you yours, and they’ll see you. Impossible to sit out on the balconies.

Impossible to water the plants, or even speak. Imagine going out of the

front-door, and they come out opposite at the same moment. And yet you

tell me that plans are unnecessary, and you’d rather risk it.”

“I hope to risk things all my life.”

“Oh, Margaret, most dangerous.”

“But after all,” she continued with a smile, “there’s never any great

risk as long as you have money.”

“Oh, shame! What a shocking speech!”

“Money pads the edges of things,” said Miss Schlegel. “God help those

who have none.”

“But this is something quite new!” said Mrs. Munt, who collected new

ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by

those that are portable.

“New for me; sensible people have acknowledged it for years. You and I

and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm

beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It’s only when we

see someone near us tottering that we realize all that an independent

income means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the fire,

I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that

the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin.”

“I call that rather cynical.”

“So do I. But Helen and I, we ought to remember, when we are tempted to

criticize others, that we are standing on these islands, and that most

of the others, are down below the surface of the sea. The poor cannot

always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever

escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can. Imagine the

tragedy last June, if Helen and Paul Wilcox had been poor people, and

couldn’t invoke railways and motor-cars to part them.”

“That’s more like Socialism,” said Mrs. Munt suspiciously.

“Call it what you like. I call it going through life with one’s hand

spread open on the table. I’m tired of these rich people who pretend to

be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money

that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six

hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon

eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are

renewed—from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the

thoughts of six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we

don’t want to steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea

people do want to steal them, and do steal them sometimes, and that

what’s a joke up here is down there reality—”

“There they go—there goes Fräulein Mosebach. Really, for a German she

does dress charmingly. Oh—!”

“What is it?”

“Helen was looking up at the Wilcoxes’ flat.”

“Why shouldn’t she?”

“I beg your pardon, I interrupted you. What was it you were saying

about reality?”

“I had worked round to myself, as usual,” answered Margaret in tones

that were suddenly preoccupied.

“Do tell me this, at all events. Are you for the rich or for the poor?”

“Too difficult. Ask me another. Am I for poverty or for riches? For

riches. Hurrah for riches!”

“For riches!” echoed Mrs. Munt, having, as it were, at last secured her

nut.

“Yes. For riches. Money for ever!”

“So am I, and so, I am afraid, are most of my acquaintances at Swanage,

but I am surprised that you agree with us.”

“Thank you so much, Aunt Juley. While I have talked theories, you have

done the flowers.”

“Not at all, dear. I wish you would let me help you in more important

things.”

“Well, would you be very kind? Would you come round with me to the

registry office? There’s a housemaid who won’t say yes but doesn’t say

no.”

On their way thither they too looked up at the Wilcoxes’ flat. Evie was

in the balcony, “staring most rudely,” according to Mrs. Munt. Oh yes,

it was a nuisance, there was no doubt of it. Helen was proof against a

passing encounter but—Margaret began to lose confidence. Might it

reawake the dying nerve if the family were living close against her

eyes? And Frieda Mosebach was stopping with them for another fortnight,

and Frieda was sharp, abominably sharp, and quite capable of remarking,

“You love one of the young gentlemen opposite, yes?” The remark would

be untrue, but of the kind which, if stated often enough, may become

true; just as the remark, “England and Germany are bound to fight,”

renders war a little more likely each time that it is made, and is

therefore made the more readily by the gutter press of either nation.

Have the private emotions also their gutter press? Margaret thought so,

and feared that good Aunt Juley and Frieda were typical specimens of

it. They might, by continual chatter, lead Helen into a repetition of

the desires of June. Into a repetition—they could not do more; they

could not lead her into lasting love. They were—she saw it

clearly—Journalism; her father, with all his defects and

wrong-headedness, had been Literature, and had he lived, he would have

persuaded his daughter rightly.

The registry office was holding its morning reception. A string of

carriages filled the street. Miss Schlegel waited her turn, and finally

had to be content with an insidious “temporary,” being rejected by

genuine housemaids on the ground of her numerous stairs. Her failure

depressed her, and though she forgot the failure, the depression

remained. On her way home she again glanced up at the Wilcoxes’ flat,

and took the rather matronly step of speaking about the matter to

Helen.

“Helen, you must tell me whether this thing worries you.”

“If what?” said Helen, who was washing her hands for lunch.

“The W.’s coming.”

“No, of course not.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Then she admitted that she was a little worried on Mrs.

Wilcox’s account; she implied that Mrs. Wilcox might reach backward

into deep feelings, and be pained by things that never touched the

other members of that clan. “I shan’t mind if Paul points at our house

and says, ‘There lives the girl who tried to catch me.’ But she might.”

“If even that worries you, we could arrange something. There’s no

reason we should be near people who displease us or whom we displease,

thanks to our money. We might even go away for a little.”

“Well, I am going away. Frieda’s just asked me to Stettin, and I shan’t

be back till after the New Year. Will that do? Or must I fly the

country altogether? Really, Meg, what has come over you to make such a

fuss?”

“Oh, I’m getting an old maid, I suppose. I thought I minded nothing,

but really I—I should be bored if you fell in love with the same man

twice and”—she cleared her throat—“you did go red, you know, when Aunt

Juley attacked you this morning. I shouldn’t have referred to it

otherwise.”

But Helen’s laugh rang true, as she raised a soapy hand to heaven and

swore that never, nowhere and nohow, would she again fall in love with

any of the Wilcox family, down to its remotest collaterals.

Chapter 8

The friendship between Margaret and Mrs. Wilcox, which was to develop

so quickly and with such strange results, may perhaps have had its

beginnings at Speyer, in the spring. Perhaps the elder lady, as she

gazed at the vulgar, ruddy cathedral, and listened to the talk of Helen

and her husband, may have detected in the other and less charming of

the sisters a deeper sympathy, a sounder judgment. She was capable of

detecting such things. Perhaps it was she who had desired the Miss

Schlegels to be invited to Howards End, and Margaret whose presence she

had particularly desired. All this is speculation: Mrs. Wilcox has left

few clear indications behind her. It is certain that she came to call

at Wickham Place a fortnight later, the very day that Helen was going

with her cousin to Stettin.

“Helen!” cried Fräulein Mosebach in awestruck tones (she was now in her

cousin’s confidence)—“his mother has forgiven you!” And then,

remembering that in England the new-comer ought not to call before she

is called upon, she changed her tone from awe to disapproval, and

opined that Mrs. Wilcox was “keine Dame.”

“Bother the whole family!” snapped Margaret. “Helen, stop giggling and

pirouetting, and go and finish your packing. Why can’t the woman leave

us alone?”

“I don’t know what I shall do with Meg,” Helen retorted, collapsing

upon the stairs. “She’s got Wilcox and Box upon the brain. Meg, Meg, I

don’t love the young gentleman; I don’t love the young gentleman, Meg,

Meg. Can a body speak plainer?”

“Most certainly her love has died,” asserted Fräulein Mosebach.

“Most certainly it has, Frieda, but that will not prevent me from being

bored with the Wilcoxes if I return the call.”

Then Helen simulated tears, and Fräulein Mosebach, who thought her

extremely amusing, did the same. “Oh, boo hoo! boo hoo hoo! Meg’s going

to return the call, and I can’t. ’Cos why? ’Cos I’m going to

German-eye.”

“If you are going to Germany, go and pack; if you aren’t, go and call

on the Wilcoxes instead of me.”

“But, Meg, Meg, I don’t love the young gentleman; I don’t love the

young—0 lud, who’s that coming down the stairs? I vow ’tis my brother.

O crimini!”

A male—even such a male as Tibby—was enough to stop the foolery. The

barrier of sex, though decreasing among the civilized, is still high,

and higher on the side of women. Helen could tell her sister all, and

her cousin much about Paul; she told her brother nothing. It was not

prudishness, for she now spoke of “the Wilcox ideal” with laughter, and

even with a growing brutality. Nor was it precaution, for Tibby seldom

repeated any news that did not concern himself. It was rather the

feeling that she betrayed a secret into the camp of men, and that,

however trivial it was on this side of the barrier, it would become

important on that. So she stopped, or rather began to fool on other

subjects, until her long-suffering relatives drove her upstairs.

Fräulein Mosebach followed her, but lingered to say heavily over the

banisters to Margaret, “It is all right—she does not love the young

man—he has not been worthy of her.”

“Yes, I know; thanks very much.”

“I thought I did right to tell you.”

“Ever so many thanks.”

“What’s that?” asked Tibby. No one told him, and he proceeded into the

dining-room, to eat Elvas plums.

That evening Margaret took decisive action. The house was very quiet,

and the fog—we are in November now—pressed against the windows like an

excluded ghost. Frieda and Helen and all their luggage had gone. Tibby,

who was not feeling well, lay stretched on a sofa by the fire. Margaret

sat by him, thinking. Her mind darted from impulse to impulse, and

finally marshalled them all in review. The practical person, who knows

what he wants at once, and generally knows nothing else, will excuse

her of indecision. But this was the way her mind worked. And when she

did act, no one could accuse her of indecision then. She hit out as

lustily as if she had not considered the matter at all. The letter that

she wrote Mrs. Wilcox glowed with the native hue of resolution. The

pale cast of thought was with her a breath rather than a tarnish, a

breath that leaves the colours all the more vivid when it has been

wiped away.

Dear Mrs. Wilcox,

I have to write something discourteous. It would be better if we did

not meet. Both my sister and my aunt have given displeasure to your

family, and, in my sister’s case, the grounds for displeasure might

recur. As far as I know, she no longer occupies her thoughts with your

son. But it would not be fair, either to her or to you, if they met,

and it is therefore right that our acquaintance which began so

pleasantly, should end.

I fear that you will not agree with this; indeed, I know that you will

not, since you have been good enough to call on us. It is only an

instinct on my part, and no doubt the instinct is wrong. My sister

would, undoubtedly, say that it is wrong. I write without her

knowledge, and I hope that you will not associate her with my

discourtesy.

Believe me,

Yours truly,

M. J. Schlegel

Margaret sent this letter round by post. Next morning she received the

following reply by hand:

Dear Miss Schlegel,

You should not have written me such a letter. I called to tell you that

Paul has gone abroad.

Ruth Wilcox

Margaret’s cheeks burnt. She could not finish her breakfast. She was on

fire with shame. Helen had told her that the youth was leaving England,

but other things had seemed more important, and she had forgotten. All

her absurd anxieties fell to the ground, and in their place arose the

certainty that she had been rude to Mrs. Wilcox. Rudeness affected

Margaret like a bitter taste in the mouth. It poisoned life. At times

it is necessary, but woe to those who employ it without due need. She

flung on a hat and shawl, just like a poor woman, and plunged into the

fog, which still continued. Her lips were compressed, the letter

remained in her hand, and in this state she crossed the street, entered

the marble vestibule of the flats, eluded the concierges, and ran up

the stairs till she reached the second-floor.

She sent in her name, and to her surprise was shown straight into Mrs.

Wilcox’s bedroom.

“Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, I have made the baddest blunder. I am more, more

ashamed and sorry than I can say.”

Mrs. Wilcox bowed gravely. She was offended, and did not pretend to the

contrary. She was sitting up in bed, writing letters on an invalid

table that spanned her knees. A breakfast tray was on another table

beside her. The light of the fire, the light from the window, and the

light of a candle-lamp, which threw a quivering halo round her hands,

combined to create a strange atmosphere of dissolution.

“I knew he was going to India in November, but I forgot.”

“He sailed on the 17th for Nigeria, in Africa.”

“I knew—I know. I have been too absurd all through. I am very much

ashamed.”

Mrs. Wilcox did not answer.

“I am more sorry than I can say, and I hope that you will forgive me.”

“It doesn’t matter, Miss Schlegel. It is good of you to have come round

so promptly.”

“It does matter,” cried Margaret. “I have been rude to you; and my

sister is not even at home, so there was not even that excuse.

“Indeed?”

“She has just gone to Germany.”

“She gone as well,” murmured the other. “Yes, certainly, it is quite

safe—safe, absolutely, now.”

“You’ve been worrying too!” exclaimed Margaret, getting more and more

excited, and taking a chair without invitation. “How perfectly

extraordinary! I can see that you have. You felt as I do; Helen mustn’t

meet him again.”

“I did think it best.”

“Now why?”

“That’s a most difficult question,” said Mrs. Wilcox, smiling, and a

little losing her expression of annoyance. “I think you put it best in

your letter—it was an instinct, which may be wrong.”

“It wasn’t that your son still—”

“Oh no; he often—my Paul is very young, you see.”

“Then what was it?”

She repeated: “An instinct which may be wrong.”

“In other words, they belong to types that can fall in love, but

couldn’t live together. That’s dreadfully probable. I’m afraid that in

nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another.”

“These are indeed ‘other words,’” said Mrs. Wilcox.” I had nothing so

coherent in my head. I was merely alarmed when I knew that my boy cared

for your sister.”

“Ah, I have always been wanting to ask you. How did you know? Helen was

so surprised when our aunt drove up, and you stepped forward and

arranged things. Did Paul tell you?”

“There is nothing to be gained by discussing that,” said Mrs. Wilcox

after a moment’s pause.

“Mrs. Wilcox, were you very angry with us last June? I wrote you a

letter and you didn’t answer it.”

“I was certainly against taking Mrs. Matheson’s flat. I knew it was

opposite your house.”

“But it’s all right now?”

“I think so.”

“You only think? You aren’t sure? I do love these little muddles tidied

up?”

“Oh yes, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Wilcox, moving with uneasiness beneath

the clothes. “I always sound uncertain over things. It is my way of

speaking.”

“That’s all right, and I’m sure too.”

Here the maid came in to remove the breakfast-tray. They were

interrupted, and when they resumed conversation it was on more normal

lines.

“I must say good-bye now—you will be getting up.”

“No—please stop a little longer—I am taking a day in bed. Now and then

I do.”

“I thought of you as one of the early risers.”

“At Howards End—yes; there is nothing to get up for in London.”

“Nothing to get up for?” cried the scandalized Margaret. “When there

are all the autumn exhibitions, and Ysaye playing in the afternoon! Not

to mention people.”

“The truth is, I am a little tired. First came the wedding, and then

Paul went off, and, instead of resting yesterday, I paid a round of

calls.”

“A wedding?”

“Yes; Charles, my elder son, is married.”

“Indeed!”

“We took the flat chiefly on that account, and also that Paul could get

his African outfit. The flat belongs to a cousin of my husband’s, and

she most kindly offered it to us. So before the day came we were able

to make the acquaintance of Dolly’s people, which we had not yet done.”

Margaret asked who Dolly’s people were.

“Fussell. The father is in the Indian army—retired; the brother is in

the army. The mother is dead.”

So perhaps these were the “chinless sunburnt men” whom Helen had espied

one afternoon through the window. Margaret felt mildly interested in

the fortunes of the Wilcox family. She had acquired the habit on

Helen’s account, and it still clung to her. She asked for more

information about Miss Dolly Fussell that was, and was given it in

even, unemotional tones. Mrs. Wilcox’s voice, though sweet and

compelling, had little range of expression. It suggested that pictures,

concerts, and people are all of small and equal value. Only once had it

quickened—when speaking of Howards End.

“Charles and Albert Fussell have known one another some time. They

belong to the same club, and are both devoted to golf. Dolly plays golf

too, though I believe not so well, and they first met in a mixed

foursome. We all like her, and are very much pleased. They were married

on the 11th, a few days before Paul sailed. Charles was very anxious to

have his brother as best man, so he made a great point of having it on

the 11th. The Fussells would have preferred it after Christmas, but

they were very nice about it. There is Dolly’s photograph—in that

double frame.”

“Are you quite certain that I’m not interrupting, Mrs. Wilcox?”

“Yes, quite.”

“Then I will stay. I’m enjoying this.”

Dolly’s photograph was now examined. It was signed “For dear Mims,”

which Mrs. Wilcox interpreted as “the name she and Charles had settled

that she should call me.” Dolly looked silly, and had one of those

triangular faces that so often prove attractive to a robust man. She

was very pretty. From her Margaret passed to Charles, whose features

prevailed opposite. She speculated on the forces that had drawn the two

together till God parted them. She found time to hope that they would

be happy.

“They have gone to Naples for their honeymoon.”

“Lucky people!”

“I can hardly imagine Charles in Italy.”

“Doesn’t he care for travelling?”

“He likes travel, but he does see through foreigners so. What he enjoys

most is a motor tour in England, and I think that would have carried

the day if the weather had not been so abominable. His father gave him

a car of his own for a wedding present, which for the present is being

stored at Howards End.”

“I suppose you have a garage there?”

“Yes. My husband built a little one only last month, to the west of the

house, not far from the wych-elm, in what used to be the paddock for

the pony.”

The last words had an indescribable ring about them.

“Where’s the pony gone?” asked Margaret after a pause.

“The pony? Oh, dead, ever so long ago.” “The wych-elm I remember. Helen

spoke of it as a very splendid tree.”

“It is the finest wych-elm in Hertfordshire. Did your sister tell you

about the teeth?”

“No.”

“Oh, it might interest you. There are pigs’ teeth stuck into the trunk,

about four feet from the ground. The country people put them in long

ago, and they think that if they chew a piece of the bark, it will cure

the toothache. The teeth are almost grown over now, and no one comes to

the tree.”

“I should. I love folklore and all festering superstitions.”

“Do you think that the tree really did cure toothache, if one believed

in it?”

“Of course it did. It would cure anything—once.”

“Certainly I remember cases—you see I lived at Howards End long, long

before Mr. Wilcox knew it. I was born there.”

The conversation again shifted. At the time it seemed little more than

aimless chatter. She was interested when her hostess explained that

Howards End was her own property. She was bored when too minute an

account was given of the Fussell family, of the anxieties of Charles

concerning Naples, of the movements of Mr. Wilcox and Evie, who were

motoring in Yorkshire. Margaret could not bear being bored. She grew

inattentive, played with the photograph frame, dropped it, smashed

Dolly’s glass, apologized, was pardoned, cut her finger thereon, was

pitied, and finally said she must be going—there was all the

housekeeping to do, and she had to interview Tibby’s riding-master.

Then the curious note was struck again.

“Good-bye, Miss Schlegel, good-bye. Thank you for coming. You have

cheered me up.”

“I’m so glad!”

“I—I wonder whether you ever think about yourself.”

“I think of nothing else,” said Margaret, blushing, but letting her

hand remain in that of the invalid.

“I wonder. I wondered at Heidelberg.”

“_I’m_ sure!”

“I almost think—”

“Yes?” asked Margaret, for there was a long pause—a pause that was

somehow akin to the flicker of the fire, the quiver of the reading-lamp

upon their hands, the white blur from the window; a pause of shifting

and eternal shadows.

“I almost think you forget you’re a girl.”

Margaret was startled and a little annoyed. “I’m twenty-nine,” she

remarked. “That not so wildly girlish.”

Mrs. Wilcox smiled.

“What makes you say that? Do you mean that I have been gauche and

rude?”

A shake of the head. “I only meant that I am fifty-one, and that to me

both of you—Read it all in some book or other; I cannot put things

clearly.”

“Oh, I’ve got it—inexperience. I’m no better than Helen, you mean, and

yet I presume to advise her.”

“Yes. You have got it. Inexperience is the word.”

“Inexperience,” repeated Margaret, in serious yet buoyant tones. “Of

course, I have everything to learn—absolutely everything—just as much

as Helen. Life’s very difficult and full of surprises. At all events,

I’ve got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead,

to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged—well,

one can’t do all these things at once, worse luck, because they’re so

contradictory. It’s then that proportion comes in—to live by

proportion. Don’t _begin_ with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let

proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have

failed, and a deadlock—Gracious me, I’ve started preaching!”

“Indeed, you put the difficulties of life splendidly,” said Mrs.

Wilcox, withdrawing her hand into the deeper shadows. “It is just what

I should have liked to say about them myself.”

Chapter 9

Mrs. Wilcox cannot be accused of giving Margaret much information about

life. And Margaret, on the other hand, has made a fair show of modesty,

and has pretended to an inexperience that she certainly did not feel.

She had kept house for over ten years; she had entertained, almost with

distinction; she had brought up a charming sister, and was bringing up

a brother. Surely, if experience is attainable, she had attained it.

Yet the little luncheon-party that she gave in Mrs. Wilcox’s honour was

not a success. The new friend did not blend with the “one or two

delightful people” who had been asked to meet her, and the atmosphere

was one of polite bewilderment. Her tastes were simple, her knowledge

of culture slight, and she was not interested in the New English Art

Club, nor in the dividing-line between Journalism and Literature, which

was started as a conversational hare. The delightful people darted

after it with cries of joy, Margaret leading them, and not till the

meal was half over did they realize that the principal guest had taken

no part in the chase. There was no common topic. Mrs. Wilcox, whose

life had been spent in the service of husband and sons, had little to

say to strangers who had never shared it, and whose age was half her

own. Clever talk alarmed her, and withered her delicate imaginings; it

was the social counterpart of a motorcar, all jerks, and she was a

wisp of hay, a flower. Twice she deplored the weather, twice criticized

the train service on the Great Northern Railway. They vigorously

assented, and rushed on, and when she inquired whether there was any

news of Helen, her hostess was too much occupied in placing Rothenstein

to answer. The question was repeated: “I hope that your sister is safe

in Germany by now.” Margaret checked herself and said, “Yes, thank you;

I heard on Tuesday.” But the demon of vociferation was in her, and the

next moment she was off again.

“Only on Tuesday, for they live right away at Stettin. Did you ever

know any one living at Stettin?”

“Never,” said Mrs. Wilcox gravely, while her neighbour, a young man low

down in the Education Office, began to discuss what people who lived at

Stettin ought to look like. Was there such a thing as Stettininity?

Margaret swept on.

“People at Stettin drop things into boats out of overhanging

warehouses. At least, our cousins do, but aren’t particularly rich. The

town isn’t interesting, except for a clock that rolls its eyes, and the

view of the Oder, which truly is something special. Oh, Mrs. Wilcox,

you would love the Oder! The river, or rather rivers—there seem to be

dozens of them—are intense blue, and the plain they run through an

intensest green.”

“Indeed! That sounds like a most beautiful view, Miss Schlegel.”

“So I say, but Helen, who will muddle things, says no, it’s like music.

The course of the Oder is to be like music. It’s obliged to remind her

of a symphonic poem. The part by the landing-stage is in B minor, if I

remember rightly, but lower down things get extremely mixed. There is a

slodgy theme in several keys at once, meaning mud-banks, and another

for the navigable canal, and the exit into the Baltic is in C sharp

major, pianissimo.”

“What do the overhanging warehouses make of that?” asked the man,

laughing.

“They make a great deal of it,” replied Margaret, unexpectedly rushing

off on a new track. “I think it’s affectation to compare the Oder to

music, and so do you, but the overhanging warehouses of Stettin take

beauty seriously, which we don’t, and the average Englishman doesn’t,

and despises all who do. Now don’t say ‘Germans have no taste,’ or I

shall scream. They haven’t. But—but—such a tremendous but!—they take

poetry seriously. They do take poetry seriously.

“Is anything gained by that?”

“Yes, yes. The German is always on the lookout for beauty. He may miss

it through stupidity, or misinterpret it, but he is always asking

beauty to enter his life, and I believe that in the end it will come.

At Heidelberg I met a fat veterinary surgeon whose voice broke with

sobs as he repeated some mawkish poetry. So easy for me to laugh—I, who

never repeat poetry, good or bad, and cannot remember one fragment of

verse to thrill myself with. My blood boils—well, I’m half German, so

put it down to patriotism—when I listen to the tasteful contempt of the

average islander for things Teutonic, whether they’re Böcklin or my

veterinary surgeon. ‘Oh, Böcklin,’ they say; ‘he strains after beauty,

he peoples Nature with gods too consciously.’ Of course Böcklin

strains, because he wants something—beauty and all the other intangible

gifts that are floating about the world. So his landscapes don’t come

off, and Leader’s do.”

“I am not sure that I agree. Do you?” said he, turning to Mrs. Wilcox.

She replied: “I think Miss Schlegel puts everything splendidly”; and a

chill fell on the conversation.

“Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, say something nicer than that. It’s such a snub to be

told you put things splendidly.”

“I do not mean it as a snub. Your last speech interested me so much.

Generally people do not seem quite to like Germany. I have long wanted

to hear what is said on the other side.”

“The other side? Then you do disagree. Oh, good! Give us your side.”

“I have no side. But my husband”—her voice softened, the chill

increased—“has very little faith in the Continent, and our children

have all taken after him.”

“On what grounds? Do they feel that the Continent is in bad form?”

Mrs. Wilcox had no idea; she paid little attention to grounds. She was

not intellectual, nor even alert, and it was odd that, all the same,

she should give the idea of greatness. Margaret, zigzagging with her

friends over Thought and Art, was conscious of a personality that

transcended their own and dwarfed their activities. There was no

bitterness in Mrs. Wilcox; there was not even criticism; she was

lovable, and no ungracious or uncharitable word had passed her lips.

Yet she and daily life were out of focus: one or the other must show

blurred. And at lunch she seemed more out of focus than usual, and

nearer the line that divides life from a life that may be of greater

importance.

“You will admit, though, that the Continent—it seems silly to speak of

‘the Continent,’ but really it is all more like itself than any part of

it is like England. England is unique. Do have another jelly first. I

was going to say that the Continent, for good or for evil, is

interested in ideas. Its Literature and Art have what one might call

the kink of the unseen about them, and this persists even through

decadence and affectation. There is more liberty of action in England,

but for liberty of thought go to bureaucratic Prussia. People will

there discuss with humility vital questions that we here think

ourselves too good to touch with tongs.”

“I do not want to go to Prussia” said Mrs. Wilcox—“not even to see

that interesting view that you were describing. And for discussing with

humility I am too old. We never discuss anything at Howards End.”

“Then you ought to!” said Margaret. “Discussion keeps a house alive. It

cannot stand by bricks and mortar alone.”

“It cannot stand without them,” said Mrs. Wilcox, unexpectedly catching

on to the thought, and rousing, for the first and last time, a faint

hope in the breasts of the delightful people. “It cannot stand without

them, and I sometimes think—But I cannot expect your generation to

agree, for even my daughter disagrees with me here.”

“Never mind us or her. Do say!”

“I sometimes think that it is wiser to leave action and discussion to

men.”

There was a little silence.

“One admits that the arguments against the suffrage are extraordinarily

strong,” said a girl opposite, leaning forward and crumbling her bread.

“Are they? I never follow any arguments. I am only too thankful not to

have a vote myself.”

“We didn’t mean the vote, though, did we?” supplied Margaret. “Aren’t

we differing on something much wider, Mrs. Wilcox? Whether women are to

remain what they have been since the dawn of history; or whether, since

men have moved forward so far, they too may move forward a little now.

I say they may. I would even admit a biological change.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“I must be getting back to my overhanging warehouse,” said the man.

“They’ve turned disgracefully strict.”

Mrs. Wilcox also rose.

“Oh, but come upstairs for a little. Miss Quested plays. Do you like

MacDowell? Do you mind him only having two noises? If you must really

go, I’ll see you out. Won’t you even have coffee?”

They left the dining-room, closing the door behind them, and as Mrs.

Wilcox buttoned up her jacket, she said: “What an interesting life you

all lead in London!”

“No, we don’t,” said Margaret, with a sudden revulsion. “We lead the

lives of gibbering monkeys. Mrs. Wilcox—really—We have something quiet

and stable at the bottom. We really have. All my friends have. Don’t

pretend you enjoyed lunch, for you loathed it, but forgive me by coming

again, alone, or by asking me to you.”

“I am used to young people,” said Mrs. Wilcox, and with each word she

spoke the outlines of known things grew dim. “I hear a great deal of

chatter at home, for we, like you, entertain a great deal. With us it

is more sport and politics, but—I enjoyed my lunch very much, Miss

Schlegel, dear, and am not pretending, and only wish I could have

joined in more. For one thing, I’m not particularly well just today.

For another, you younger people move so quickly that it dazes me.

Charles is the same, Dolly the same. But we are all in the same boat,

old and young. I never forget that.”

They were silent for a moment. Then, with a newborn emotion, they shook

hands. The conversation ceased suddenly when Margaret re-entered the

dining-room: her friends had been talking over her new friend, and had

dismissed her as uninteresting.

Chapter 10

Several days passed.

Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people—there are many of

them—who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests

and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling round them.

Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a

definite name for such behaviour—flirting—and if carried far enough it

is punishable by law. But no law—not public opinion even—punishes those

who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict,

the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable.

Was she one of these?

Margaret feared so at first, for, with a Londoner’s impatience, she

wanted everything to be settled up immediately. She mistrusted the

periods of quiet that are essential to true growth. Desiring to book

Mrs. Wilcox as a friend, she pressed on the ceremony, pencil, as it

were, in hand, pressing the more because the rest of the family were

away, and the opportunity seemed favourable. But the elder woman would

not be hurried. She refused to fit in with the Wickham Place set, or to

reopen discussion of Helen and Paul, whom Margaret would have utilized

as a short-cut. She took her time, or perhaps let time take her, and

when the crisis did come all was ready.

The crisis opened with a message: would Miss Schlegel come shopping?

Christmas was nearing, and Mrs. Wilcox felt behind-hand with the

presents. She had taken some more days in bed, and must make up for

lost time. Margaret accepted, and at eleven o’clock one cheerless

morning they started out in a brougham.

“First of all,” began Margaret, “we must make a list and tick off the

people’s names. My aunt always does, and this fog may thicken up any

moment. Have you any ideas?”

“I thought we would go to Harrod’s or the Haymarket Stores,” said Mrs.

Wilcox rather hopelessly. “Everything is sure to be there. I am not a

good shopper. The din is so confusing, and your aunt is quite right—one

ought to make a list. Take my notebook, then, and write your own name

at the top of the page.”

“Oh, hooray!” said Margaret, writing it. “How very kind of you to start

with me!” But she did not want to receive anything expensive. Their

acquaintance was singular rather than intimate, and she divined that

the Wilcox clan would resent any expenditure on outsiders; the more

compact families do. She did not want to be thought a second Helen, who

would snatch presents since she could not snatch young men, nor to be

exposed, like a second Aunt Juley, to the insults of Charles. A certain

austerity of demeanour was best, and she added: “I don’t really want a

Yuletide gift, though. In fact, I’d rather not.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve odd ideas about Christmas. Because I have all that money

can buy. I want more people, but no more things.”

“I should like to give you something worth your acquaintance, Miss

Schlegel, in memory of your kindness to me during my lonely fortnight.

It has so happened that I have been left alone, and you have stopped me

from brooding. I am too apt to brood.”

“If that is so,” said Margaret, “if I have happened to be of use to

you, which I didn’t know, you cannot pay me back with anything

tangible.”

“ I suppose not, but one would like to. Perhaps I shall think of

something as we go about.”

Her name remained at the head of the list, but nothing was written

opposite it. They drove from shop to shop. The air was white, and when

they alighted it tasted like cold pennies. At times they passed through

a clot of grey. Mrs. Wilcox’s vitality was low that morning, and it was

Margaret who decided on a horse for this little girl, a golliwog for

that, for the rector’s wife a copper warming-tray. “We always give the

servants money.” “Yes, do you, yes, much easier,” replied Margaret, but

felt the grotesque impact of the unseen upon the seen, and saw issuing

from a forgotten manger at Bethlehem this torrent of coins and toys.

Vulgarity reigned. Public-houses, besides their usual exhortation

against temperance reform, invited men to “Join our Christmas goose

club”—one bottle of gin, etc., or two, according to subscription. A

poster of a woman in tights heralded the Christmas pantomime, and

little red devils, who had come in again that year, were prevalent upon

the Christmas-cards. Margaret was no morbid idealist. She did not wish

this spate of business and self-advertisement checked. It was only the

occasion of it that struck her with amazement annually. How many of

these vacillating shoppers and tired shop-assistants realized that it

was a divine event that drew them together? She realized it, though

standing outside in the matter. She was not a Christian in the accepted

sense; she did not believe that God had ever worked among us as a young

artisan. These people, or most of them, believed it, and if pressed,

would affirm it in words. But the visible signs of their belief were

Regent Street or Drury Lane, a little mud displaced, a little money

spent, a little food cooked, eaten, and forgotten. Inadequate. But in

public who shall express the unseen adequately? It is private life that

holds out the mirror to infinity; personal intercourse, and that alone,

that ever hints at a personality beyond our daily vision.

“No, I do like Christmas on the whole,” she announced. “In its clumsy

way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But oh, it is clumsier every

year.”

“Is it? I am only used to country Christmases.”

“We are usually in London, and play the game with vigour—carols at the

Abbey, clumsy midday meal, clumsy dinner for the maids, followed by

Christmas-tree and dancing of poor children, with songs from Helen. The

drawing-room does very well for that. We put the tree in the

powder-closet, and draw a curtain when the candles are lighted, and

with the looking-glass behind it looks quite pretty. I wish we might

have a powder-closet in our next house. Of course, the tree has to be

very small, and the presents don’t hang on it. No; the presents reside

in a sort of rocky landscape made of crumpled brown paper.”

“You spoke of your ‘next house,’ Miss Schlegel. Then are you leaving

Wickham Place?”

“Yes, in two or three years, when the lease expires. We must.”

“Have you been there long?”

“All our lives.”

“You will be very sorry to leave it.”

“I suppose so. We scarcely realize it yet. My father—” She broke off,

for they had reached the stationery department of the Haymarket Stores,

and Mrs. Wilcox wanted to order some private greeting cards.

“If possible, something distinctive,” she sighed. At the counter she

found a friend, bent on the same errand, and conversed with her

insipidly, wasting much time. “My husband and our daughter are

motoring.”

“Bertha too? Oh, fancy, what a coincidence!” Margaret, though not

practical, could shine in such company as this. While they talked, she

went through a volume of specimen cards, and submitted one for Mrs.

Wilcox’s inspection. Mrs. Wilcox was delighted—so original, words so

sweet; she would order a hundred like that, and could never be

sufficiently grateful. Then, just as the assistant was booking the

order, she said: “Do you know, I’ll wait. On second thoughts, I’ll

wait. There’s plenty of time still, isn’t there, and I shall be able to

get Evie’s opinion.”

They returned to the carriage by devious paths; when they were in, she

said, “But couldn’t you get it renewed?”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Margaret.

“The lease, I mean.”

“Oh, the lease! Have you been thinking of that all the time? How very

kind of you!”

“Surely something could be done.”

“No; values have risen too enormously. They mean to pull down Wickham

Place, and build flats like yours.”

“But how horrible!”

“Landlords are horrible.”

Then she said vehemently: “It is monstrous, Miss Schlegel; it isn’t

right. I had no idea that this was hanging over you. I do pity you from

the bottom of my heart. To be parted from your house, your father’s

house—it oughtn’t to be allowed. It is worse than dying. I would rather

die than—Oh, poor girls! Can what they call civilization be right, if

people mayn’t die in the room where they were born? My dear, I am so

sorry—”

Margaret did not know what to say. Mrs. Wilcox had been overtired by

the shopping, and was inclined to hysteria.

“Howards End was nearly pulled down once. It would have killed me.”

“Howards End must be a very different house to ours. We are fond of

ours, but there is nothing distinctive about it. As you saw, it is an

ordinary London house. We shall easily find another.”

“So you think.”

“Again my lack of experience, I suppose!” said Margaret, easing away

from the subject. “I can’t say anything when you take up that line,

Mrs. Wilcox. I wish I could see myself as you see me—foreshortened into

a backfisch. Quite the ingénue. Very charming—wonderfully well read for

my age, but incapable—”

Mrs. Wilcox would not be deterred. “Come down with me to Howards End

now,” she said, more vehemently than ever. “I want you to see it. You

have never seen it. I want to hear what you say about it, for you do

put things so wonderfully.”

Margaret glanced at the pitiless air and then at the tired face of her

companion. “Later on I should love it,” she continued, “but it’s hardly

the weather for such an expedition, and we ought to start when we’re

fresh. Isn’t the house shut up, too?”

She received no answer. Mrs. Wilcox appeared to be annoyed.

“Might I come some other day?”

Mrs. Wilcox bent forward and tapped the glass. “Back to Wickham Place,

please!” was her order to the coachman. Margaret had been snubbed.

“A thousand thanks, Miss Schlegel, for all your help.”

“Not at all.”

“It is such a comfort to get the presents off my mind—the

Christmas-cards especially. I do admire your choice.”

It was her turn to receive no answer. In her turn Margaret became

annoyed.

“My husband and Evie will be back the day after tomorrow. That is why I

dragged you out shopping today. I stayed in town chiefly to shop, but

got through nothing, and now he writes that they must cut their tour

short, the weather is so bad, and the police-traps have been so

bad—nearly as bad as in Surrey. Ours is such a careful chauffeur, and

my husband feels it particularly hard that they should be treated like

road-hogs.”

“Why?”

“Well, naturally he—he isn’t a road-hog.”

“He was exceeding the speed-limit, I conclude. He must expect to suffer

with the lower animals.”

Mrs. Wilcox was silenced. In growing discomfort they drove homewards.

The city seemed Satanic, the narrower streets oppressing like the

galleries of a mine. No harm was done by the fog to trade, for it lay

high, and the lighted windows of the shops were thronged with

customers. It was rather a darkening of the spirit which fell back upon

itself, to find a more grievous darkness within. Margaret nearly spoke

a dozen times, but something throttled her. She felt petty and awkward,

and her meditations on Christmas grew more cynical. Peace? It may bring

other gifts, but is there a single Londoner to whom Christmas is

peaceful? The craving for excitement and for elaboration has ruined

that blessing. Goodwill? Had she seen any example of it in the hordes

of purchasers? Or in herself. She had failed to respond to this

invitation merely because it was a little queer and imaginative—she,

whose birthright it was to nourish imagination! Better to have

accepted, to have tired themselves a little by the journey, than coldly

to reply, “Might I come some other day?” Her cynicism left her. There

would be no other day. This shadowy woman would never ask her again.

They parted at the Mansions. Mrs. Wilcox went in after due civilities,

and Margaret watched the tall, lonely figure sweep up the hall to the

lift. As the glass doors closed on it she had the sense of an

imprisonment. The beautiful head disappeared first, still buried in the

muff, the long trailing skirt followed. A woman of undefinable rarity

was going up heaven-ward, like a specimen in a bottle. And into what a

heaven—a vault as of hell, sooty black, from which soots descended!

At lunch her brother, seeing her inclined for silence, insisted on

talking. Tibby was not ill-natured, but from babyhood something drove

him to do the unwelcome and the unexpected. Now he gave her a long

account of the day-school that he sometimes patronized. The account was

interesting, and she had often pressed him for it before, but she could

not attend now, for her mind was focussed on the invisible. She

discerned that Mrs. Wilcox, though a loving wife and mother, had only

one passion in life—her house—and that the moment was solemn when she

invited a friend to share this passion with her. To answer “another

day” was to answer as a fool. “Another day” will do for brick and

mortar, but not for the Holy of Holies into which Howards End had been

transfigured. Her own curiosity was slight. She had heard more than

enough about it in the summer. The nine windows, the vine, and the

wych-elm had no pleasant connections for her, and she would have

preferred to spend the afternoon at a concert. But imagination

triumphed. While her brother held forth she determined to go, at

whatever cost, and to compel Mrs. Wilcox to go, too. When lunch was

over she stepped over to the flats.

Mrs. Wilcox had just gone away for the night.

Margaret said that it was of no consequence, hurried downstairs, and

took a hansom to King’s Cross. She was convinced that the escapade was

important, though it would have puzzled her to say why. There was a

question of imprisonment and escape, and though she did not know the

time of the train, she strained her eyes for the St. Pancras’ clock.

Then the clock of King’s Cross swung into sight, a second moon in that

infernal sky, and her cab drew up at the station. There was a train for

Hilton in five minutes. She took a ticket, asking in her agitation for

a single. As she did so, a grave and happy voice saluted her and

thanked her.

“I will come if I still may,” said Margaret, laughing nervously.

“You are coming to sleep, dear, too. It is in the morning that my house

is most beautiful. You are coming to stop. I cannot show you my meadow

properly except at sunrise. These fogs”—she pointed at the station

roof—“never spread far. I dare say they are sitting in the sun in

Hertfordshire, and you will never repent joining them.

“I shall never repent joining you.”

“It is the same.”

They began the walk up the long platform. Far at its end stood the

train, breasting the darkness without. They never reached it. Before

imagination could triumph, there were cries of “Mother! Mother!” and a

heavy-browed girl darted out of the cloak-room and seized Mrs. Wilcox

by the arm.

“Evie!” she gasped. “Evie, my pet—”

The girl called, “Father! I say! look who’s here.”

“Evie, dearest girl, why aren’t you in Yorkshire?”

“No—motor smash—changed plans—Father’s coming.”

“Why, Ruth!” cried Mr. Wilcox, joining them. “What in the name of all

that’s wonderful are you doing here, Ruth?”

Mrs. Wilcox had recovered herself.

“Oh, Henry dear!—here’s a lovely surprise—but let me introduce—but I

think you know Miss Schlegel.”

“Oh, yes,” he replied, not greatly interested. “But how’s yourself,

Ruth?”

“Fit as a fiddle,” she answered gaily.

“So are we and so was our car, which ran A-1 as far as Ripon, but there

a wretched horse and cart which a fool of a driver—”

“Miss Schlegel, our little outing must be for another day.”

“I was saying that this fool of a driver, as the policeman himself

admits—”

“Another day, Mrs. Wilcox. Of course.”

“—But as we’ve insured against third party risks, it won’t so much

matter—”

“—Cart and car being practically at right angles—”

The voices of the happy family rose high. Margaret was left alone. No

one wanted her. Mrs. Wilcox walked out of King’s Cross between her

husband and her daughter, listening to both of them.

Chapter 11

The funeral was over. The carriages rolled away through the soft mud,

and only the poor remained. They approached to the newly-dug shaft and

looked their last at the coffin, now almost hidden beneath the

spadefuls of clay. It was their moment. Most of them were women from

the dead woman’s district, to whom black garments had been served out

by Mr. Wilcox’s orders. Pure curiosity had brought others. They

thrilled with the excitement of a death, and of a rapid death, and

stood in groups or moved between the graves, like drops of ink. The son

of one of them, a wood-cutter, was perched high above their heads,

pollarding one of the churchyard elms. From where he sat he could see

the village of Hilton, strung upon the North Road, with its accreting

suburbs; the sunset beyond, scarlet and orange, winking at him beneath

brows of grey; the church; the plantations; and behind him an unspoilt

country of fields and farms. But he, too, was rolling the event

luxuriously in his mouth. He tried to tell his mother down below all

that he had felt when he saw the coffin approaching: how he could not

leave his work, and yet did not like to go on with it; how he had

almost slipped out of the tree, he was so upset; the rooks had cawed,

and no wonder—it was as if rooks knew too. His mother claimed the

prophetic power herself—she had seen a strange look about Mrs. Wilcox

for some time. London had done the mischief, said others. She had been

a kind lady; her grandmother had been kind, too—a plainer person, but

very kind. Ah, the old sort was dying out! Mr. Wilcox, he was a kind

gentleman. They advanced to the topic again and again, dully, but with

exaltation. The funeral of a rich person was to them what the funeral

of Alcestis or Ophelia is to the educated. It was Art; though remote

from life, it enhanced life’s values, and they witnessed it avidly.

The grave-diggers, who had kept up an undercurrent of disapproval—they

disliked Charles; it was not a moment to speak of such things, but they

did not like Charles Wilcox—the grave-diggers finished their work and

piled up the wreaths and crosses above it. The sun set over Hilton: the

grey brows of the evening flushed a little, and were cleft with one

scarlet frown. Chattering sadly to each other, the mourners passed

through the lych-gate and traversed the chestnut avenues that led down

to the village. The young wood-cutter stayed a little longer, poised

above the silence and swaying rhythmically. At last the bough fell

beneath his saw. With a grunt, he descended, his thoughts dwelling no

longer on death, but on love, for he was mating. He stopped as he

passed the new grave; a sheaf of tawny chrysanthemums had caught his

eye. “They didn’t ought to have coloured flowers at buryings,” he

reflected. Trudging on a few steps, he stopped again, looked furtively

at the dusk, turned back, wrenched a chrysanthemum from the sheaf, and

hid it in his pocket.

After him came silence absolute. The cottage that abutted on the

churchyard was empty, and no other house stood near. Hour after hour

the scene of the interment remained without an eye to witness it.

Clouds drifted over it from the west; or the church may have been a

ship, high-prowed, steering with all its company towards infinity.

Towards morning the air grew colder, the sky clearer, the surface of

the earth hard and sparkling above the prostrate dead. The wood-cutter,

returning after a night of joy, reflected: “They lilies, they

chrysants; it’s a pity I didn’t take them all.”

Up at Howards End they were attempting breakfast. Charles and Evie sat

in the dining-room, with Mrs. Charles. Their father, who could not bear

to see a face, breakfasted upstairs. He suffered acutely. Pain came

over him in spasms, as if it was physical, and even while he was about

to eat, his eyes would fill with tears, and he would lay down the

morsel untasted.

He remembered his wife’s even goodness during thirty years. Not

anything in detail—not courtship or early raptures—but just the

unvarying virtue, that seemed to him a woman’s noblest quality. So many

women are capricious, breaking into odd flaws of passion or frivolity.

Not so his wife. Year after year, summer and winter, as bride and

mother, she had been the same, he had always trusted her. Her

tenderness! Her innocence! The wonderful innocence that was hers by the

gift of God. Ruth knew no more of worldly wickedness and wisdom than

did the flowers in her garden, or the grass in her field. Her idea of

business—“Henry, why do people who have enough money try to get more

money?” Her idea of politics—“I am sure that if the mothers of various

nations could meet, there would be no more wars.” Her idea of

religion—ah, this had been a cloud, but a cloud that passed. She came

of Quaker stock, and he and his family, formerly Dissenters, were now

members of the Church of England. The rector’s sermons had at first

repelled her, and she had expressed a desire for “a more inward light,”

adding, “not so much for myself as for baby” (Charles). Inward light

must have been granted, for he heard no complaints in later years. They

brought up their three children without dispute. They had never

disputed.

She lay under the earth now. She had gone, and as if to make her going

the more bitter, had gone with a touch of mystery that was all unlike

her. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew of it?” he had moaned, and her

faint voice had answered: “I didn’t want to, Henry—I might have been

wrong—and every one hates illnesses.” He had been told of the horror by

a strange doctor, whom she had consulted during his absence from town.

Was this altogether just? Without fully explaining, she had died. It

was a fault on her part, and—tears rushed into his eyes—what a little

fault! It was the only time she had deceived him in those thirty years.

He rose to his feet and looked out of the window, for Evie had come in

with the letters, and he could meet no one’s eye. Ah yes—she had been a

good woman—she had been steady. He chose the word deliberately. To him

steadiness included all praise.

He himself, gazing at the wintry garden, is in appearance a steady man.

His face was not as square as his son’s, and, indeed, the chin, though

firm enough in outline, retreated a little, and the lips, ambiguous,

were curtained by a moustache. But there was no external hint of

weakness. The eyes, if capable of kindness and goodfellowship, if ruddy

for the moment with tears, were the eyes of one who could not be

driven. The forehead, too, was like Charles’s. High and straight, brown

and polished, merging abruptly into temples and skull, it has the

effect of a bastion that protected his head from the world. At times it

had the effect of a blank wall. He had dwelt behind it, intact and

happy, for fifty years.

“The post’s come, Father,” said Evie awkwardly.

“Thanks. Put it down.”

“Has the breakfast been all right?”

“Yes, thanks.”

The girl glanced at him and at it with constraint. She did not know

what to do.

“Charles says do you want the _Times_?”

“No, I’ll read it later.”

“Ring if you want anything, Father, won’t you?”

“I’ve all I want.”

Having sorted the letters from the circulars, she went back to the

dining-room.

“Father’s eaten nothing,” she announced, sitting down with wrinkled

brows behind the tea-urn—

Charles did not answer, but after a moment he ran quickly upstairs,

opened the door, and said: “Look here, Father, you must eat, you know”;

and having paused for a reply that did not come, stole down again.

“He’s going to read his letters first, I think,” he said evasively; “I

dare say he will go on with his breakfast afterwards.” Then he took up

the _Times_, and for some time there was no sound except the clink of

cup against saucer and of knife on plate.

Poor Mrs. Charles sat between her silent companions, terrified at the

course of events, and a little bored. She was a rubbishy little

creature, and she knew it. A telegram had dragged her from Naples to

the death-bed of a woman whom she had scarcely known. A word from her

husband had plunged her into mourning. She desired to mourn inwardly as

well, but she wished that Mrs. Wilcox, since fated to die, could have

died before the marriage, for then less would have been expected of

her. Crumbling her toast, and too nervous to ask for the butter, she

remained almost motionless, thankful only for this, that her

father-in-law was having his breakfast upstairs.

At last Charles spoke. “They had no business to be pollarding those

elms yesterday,” he said to his sister.

“No indeed.”

“I must make a note of that,” he continued. “I am surprised that the

rector allowed it.”

“Perhaps it may not be the rector’s affair.”

“Whose else could it be?”

“The lord of the manor.”

“Impossible.”

“Butter, Dolly?”

“Thank you, Evie dear. Charles—”

“Yes, dear?”

“I didn’t know one could pollard elms. I thought one only pollarded

willows.”

“Oh no, one can pollard elms.”

“Then why oughtn’t the elms in the churchyard to be pollarded?”

Charles frowned a little, and turned again to his sister. “Another

point. I must speak to Chalkeley.”

“Yes, rather; you must complain to Chalkeley.”

“It’s no good him saying he is not responsible for those men. He is

responsible.”

“Yes, rather.”

Brother and sister were not callous. They spoke thus, partly because

they desired to keep Chalkeley up to the mark—a healthy desire in its

way—partly because they avoided the personal note in life. All Wilcoxes

did. It did not seem to them of supreme importance. Or it may be as

Helen supposed: they realized its importance, but were afraid of it.

Panic and emptiness, could one glance behind. They were not callous,

and they left the breakfast-table with aching hearts. Their mother

never had come in to breakfast. It was in the other rooms, and

especially in the garden, that they felt her loss most. As Charles went

out to the garage, he was reminded at every step of the woman who had

loved him and whom he could never replace. What battles he had fought

against her gentle conservatism! How she had disliked improvements, yet

how loyally she had accepted them when made! He and his father—what

trouble they had had to get this very garage! With what difficulty had

they persuaded her to yield them to the paddock for it—the paddock that

she loved more dearly than the garden itself! The vine—she had got her

way about the vine. It still encumbered the south wall with its

unproductive branches. And so with Evie, as she stood talking to the

cook. Though she could take up her mother’s work inside the house, just

as the man could take it up without, she felt that something unique had

fallen out of her life. Their grief, though less poignant than their

father’s, grew from deeper roots, for a wife may be replaced; a mother

never.

Charles would go back to the office. There was little to do at Howards

End. The contents of his mother’s will had been long known to them.

There were no legacies, no annuities, none of the posthumous bustle

with which some of the dead prolong their activities. Trusting her

husband, she had left him everything without reserve. She was quite a

poor woman—the house had been all her dowry, and the house would come

to Charles in time. Her water-colours Mr. Wilcox intended to reserve

for Paul, while Evie would take the jewellery and lace. How easily she

slipped out of life! Charles thought the habit laudable, though he did

not intend to adopt it himself, whereas Margaret would have seen in it

an almost culpable indifference to earthly fame. Cynicism—not the

superficial cynicism that snarls and sneers, but the cynicism that can

go with courtesy and tenderness—that was the note of Mrs. Wilcox’s

will. She wanted not to vex people. That accomplished, the earth might

freeze over her for ever.

No, there was nothing for Charles to wait for. He could not go on with

his honeymoon, so he would go up to London and work—he felt too

miserable hanging about. He and Dolly would have the furnished flat

while his father rested quietly in the country with Evie. He could also

keep an eye on his own little house, which was being painted and

decorated for him in one of the Surrey suburbs, and in which he hoped

to install himself soon after Christmas. Yes, he would go up after

lunch in his new motor, and the town servants, who had come down for

the funeral, would go up by train.

He found his father’s chauffeur in the garage, said, “Morning” without

looking at the man’s face, and, bending over the car, continued:

“Hullo! my new car’s been driven!”

“Has it, sir?”

“Yes,” said Charles, getting rather red; “and whoever’s driven it

hasn’t cleaned it properly, for there’s mud on the axle. Take it off.”

The man went for the cloths without a word. He was a chauffeur as ugly

as sin—not that this did him disservice with Charles, who thought charm

in a man rather rot, and had soon got rid of the little Italian beast

with whom they had started.

“Charles—” His bride was tripping after him over the hoar-frost, a

dainty black column, her little face and elaborate mourning hat forming

the capital thereof.

“One minute, I’m busy. Well, Crane, who’s been driving it, do you

suppose?”

“Don’t know, I’m sure, sir. No one’s driven it since I’ve been back,

but, of course, there’s the fortnight I’ve been away with the other car

in Yorkshire.”

The mud came off easily.

“Charles, your father’s down. Something’s happened. He wants you in the

house at once. Oh, Charles!”

“Wait, dear, wait a minute. Who had the key to the garage while you

were away, Crane?”

“The gardener, sir.”

“Do you mean to tell me that old Penny can drive a motor?”

“No, sir; no one’s had the motor out, sir.”

“Then how do you account for the mud on the axle?”

“I can’t, of course, say for the time I’ve been in Yorkshire. No more

mud now, sir.”

Charles was vexed. The man was treating him as a fool, and if his heart

had not been so heavy he would have reported him to his father. But it

was not a morning for complaints. Ordering the motor to be round after

lunch, he joined his wife, who had all the while been pouring out some

incoherent story about a letter and a Miss Schlegel.

“Now, Dolly, I can attend to you. Miss Schlegel? What does she want?”

When people wrote a letter Charles always asked what they wanted. Want

was to him the only cause of action. And the question in this case was

correct, for his wife replied, “She wants Howards End.”

“Howards End? Now, Crane, just don’t forget to put on the Stepney

wheel.”

“No, sir.”

“Now, mind you don’t forget, for I—Come, little woman.” When they were

out of the chauffeur’s sight he put his arm around her waist and

pressed her against him. All his affection and half his attention—it

was what he granted her throughout their happy married life.

“But you haven’t listened, Charles—”

“What’s wrong?”

“I keep on telling you—Howards End. Miss Schlegels got it.”

“Got what?” asked Charles, unclasping her. “What the dickens are you

talking about?”

“Now, Charles, you promised not to say those naughty—”

“Look here, I’m in no mood for foolery. It’s no morning for it either.”

“I tell you—I keep on telling you—Miss Schlegel—she’s got it—your

mother’s left it to her—and you’ve all got to move out!”

“_Howards End?_”

“_Howards End!_” she screamed, mimicking him, and as she did so Evie

came dashing out of the shrubbery.

“Dolly, go back at once! My father’s much annoyed with you.

Charles”—she hit herself wildly—“come in at once to Father. He’s had a

letter that’s too awful.”

Charles began to run, but checked himself, and stepped heavily across

the gravel path. There the house was—the nine windows, the unprolific

vine. He exclaimed, “Schlegels again!” and as if to complete chaos,

Dolly said, “Oh no, the matron of the nursing home has written instead

of her.”

“Come in, all three of you!” cried his father, no longer inert. “Dolly,

why have you disobeyed me?”

“Oh, Mr. Wilcox—”

“I told you not to go out to the garage. I’ve heard you all shouting in

the garden. I won’t have it. Come in.”

He stood in the porch, transformed, letters in his hand.

“Into the dining-room, every one of you. We can’t discuss private

matters in the middle of all the servants. Here, Charles, here; read

these. See what you make.”

Charles took two letters, and read them as he followed the procession.

The first was a covering note from the matron. Mrs. Wilcox had desired

her, when the funeral should be over, to forward the enclosed. The

enclosed—it was from his mother herself. She had written: “To my

husband: I should like Miss Schlegel (Margaret) to have Howards End.”

“I suppose we’re going to have a talk about this?” he remarked,

ominously calm.

“Certainly. I was coming out to you when Dolly—”

“Well, let’s sit down.”

“Come, Evie, don’t waste time, sit down.”

In silence they drew up to the breakfast-table. The events of

yesterday—indeed, of this morning—suddenly receded into a past so

remote that they seemed scarcely to have lived in it. Heavy breathings

were heard. They were calming themselves. Charles, to steady them

further, read the enclosure out loud: “A note in my mother’s

handwriting, in an envelope addressed to my father, sealed. Inside: ‘I

should like Miss Schlegel (Margaret) to have Howards End.’ No date, no

signature. Forwarded through the matron of that nursing home. Now, the

question is—”

Dolly interrupted him. “But I say that note isn’t legal. Houses ought

to be done by a lawyer, Charles, surely.”

Her husband worked his jaw severely. Little lumps appeared in front of

either ear—a symptom that she had not yet learnt to respect, and she

asked whether she might see the note. Charles looked at his father for

permission, who said abstractedly, “Give it her.” She seized it, and at

once exclaimed: “Why, it’s only in pencil! I said so. Pencil never

counts.”

“We know that it is not legally binding, Dolly,” said Mr. Wilcox,

speaking from out of his fortress. “We are aware of that. Legally, I

should be justified in tearing it up and throwing it into the fire. Of

course, my dear, we consider you as one of the family, but it will be

better if you do not interfere with what you do not understand.”

Charles, vexed both with his father and his wife, then repeated: “The

question is—” He had cleared a space of the breakfast-table from plates

and knives, so that he could draw patterns on the tablecloth. “The

question is whether Miss Schlegel, during the fortnight we were all

away, whether she unduly—” He stopped.

“I don’t think that,” said his father, whose nature was nobler than his

son’s.

“Don’t think what?”

“That she would have—that it is a case of undue influence. No, to my

mind the question is the—the invalid’s condition at the time she

wrote.”

“My dear father, consult an expert if you like, but I don’t admit it is

my mother’s writing.”

“Why, you just said it was!” cried Dolly.

“Never mind if I did,” he blazed out; “and hold your tongue.”

The poor little wife coloured at this, and, drawing her handkerchief

from her pocket, shed a few tears. No one noticed her. Evie was

scowling like an angry boy. The two men were gradually assuming the

manner of the committee-room. They were both at their best when serving

on committees. They did not make the mistake of handling human affairs

in the bulk, but disposed of them item by item, sharply. Calligraphy

was the item before them now, and on it they turned their well-trained

brains. Charles, after a little demur, accepted the writing as genuine,

and they passed on to the next point. It is the best—perhaps the

only—way of dodging emotion. They were the average human article, and

had they considered the note as a whole it would have driven them

miserable or mad. Considered item by item, the emotional content was

minimized, and all went forward smoothly. The clock ticked, the coals

blazed higher, and contended with the white radiance that poured in

through the windows. Unnoticed, the sun occupied his sky, and the

shadows of the tree stems, extraordinarily solid, fell like trenches of

purple across the frosted lawn. It was a glorious winter morning.

Evie’s fox terrier, who had passed for white, was only a dirty grey dog

now, so intense was the purity that surrounded him. He was discredited,

but the blackbirds that he was chasing glowed with Arabian darkness,

for all the conventional colouring of life had been altered. Inside,

the clock struck ten with a rich and confident note. Other clocks

confirmed it, and the discussion moved towards its close.

To follow it is unnecessary. It is rather a moment when the commentator

should step forward. Ought the Wilcoxes to have offered their home to

Margaret? I think not. The appeal was too flimsy. It was not legal; it

had been written in illness, and under the spell of a sudden

friendship; it was contrary to the dead woman’s intentions in the past,

contrary to her very nature, so far as that nature was understood by

them. To them Howards End was a house: they could not know that to her

it had been a spirit, for which she sought a spiritual heir.

And—pushing one step farther in these mists—may they not have decided

even better than they supposed? Is it credible that the possessions of

the spirit can be bequeathed at all? Has the soul offspring? A wych-elm

tree, a vine, a wisp of hay with dew on it—can passion for such things

be transmitted where there is no bond of blood? No; the Wilcoxes are

not to be blamed. The problem is too terrific, and they could not even

perceive a problem. No; it is natural and fitting that after due debate

they should tear the note up and throw it on to their dining-room fire.

The practical moralist may acquit them absolutely. He who strives to

look deeper may acquit them—almost. For one hard fact remains. They did

neglect a personal appeal. The woman who had died did say to them, “Do

this,” and they answered, “We will not.”

The incident made a most painful impression on them. Grief mounted into

the brain and worked there disquietingly. Yesterday they had lamented:

“She was a dear mother, a true wife: in our absence she neglected her

health and died.” Today they thought: “She was not as true, as dear, as

we supposed.” The desire for a more inward light had found expression

at last, the unseen had impacted on the seen, and all that they could

say was “Treachery.” Mrs. Wilcox had been treacherous to the family, to

the laws of property, to her own written word. How did she expect

Howards End to be conveyed to Miss Schlegel? Was her husband, to whom

it legally belonged, to make it over to her as a free gift? Was the

said Miss Schlegel to have a life interest in it, or to own it

absolutely? Was there to be no compensation for the garage and other

improvements that they had made under the assumption that all would be

theirs some day? Treacherous! treacherous and absurd! When we think the

dead both treacherous and absurd, we have gone far towards reconciling

ourselves to their departure. That note, scribbled in pencil, sent

through the matron, was unbusinesslike as well as cruel, and decreased

at once the value of the woman who had written it.

“Ah, well!” said Mr. Wilcox, rising from the table. “I shouldn’t have

thought it possible.”

“Mother couldn’t have meant it,” said Evie, still frowning.

“No, my girl, of course not.”

“Mother believed so in ancestors too—it isn’t like her to leave

anything to an outsider, who’d never appreciate.”

“The whole thing is unlike her,” he announced. “If Miss Schlegel had

been poor, if she had wanted a house, I could understand it a little.

But she has a house of her own. Why should she want another? She

wouldn’t have any use of Howards End.”

“That time may prove,” murmured Charles.

“How?” asked his sister.

“Presumably she knows—mother will have told her. She got twice or three

times into the nursing home. Presumably she is awaiting developments.”

“What a horrid woman!” And Dolly, who had recovered, cried, “Why, she

may be coming down to turn us out now!”

Charles put her right. “I wish she would,” he said ominously. “I could

then deal with her.”

“So could I,” echoed his father, who was feeling rather in the cold.

Charles had been kind in undertaking the funeral arrangements and in

telling him to eat his breakfast, but the boy as he grew up was a

little dictatorial, and assumed the post of chairman too readily. “I

could deal with her, if she comes, but she won’t come. You’re all a bit

hard on Miss Schlegel.”

“That Paul business was pretty scandalous, though.”

“I want no more of the Paul business, Charles, as I said at the time,

and besides, it is quite apart from this business. Margaret Schlegel

has been officious and tiresome during this terrible week, and we have

all suffered under her, but upon my soul she’s honest. She’s not in

collusion with the matron. I’m absolutely certain of it. Nor was she

with the doctor. I’m equally certain of that. She did not hide anything

from us, for up to that very afternoon she was as ignorant as we are.

She, like ourselves, was a dupe—” He stopped for a moment. “You see,

Charles, in her terrible pain your poor mother put us all in false

positions. Paul would not have left England, you would not have gone to

Italy, nor Evie and I into Yorkshire, if only we had known. Well, Miss

Schlegel’s position has been equally false. Take all in all, she has

not come out of it badly.”

Evie said: “But those chrysanthemums—”

“Or coming down to the funeral at all—” echoed Dolly.

“Why shouldn’t she come down? She had the right to, and she stood far

back among the Hilton women. The flowers—certainly we should not have

sent such flowers, but they may have seemed the right thing to her,

Evie, and for all you know they may be the custom in Germany.”

“Oh, I forget she isn’t really English,” cried Evie. “That would

explain a lot.”

“She’s a cosmopolitan,” said Charles, looking at his watch. “I admit

I’m rather down on cosmopolitans. My fault, doubtless. I cannot stand

them, and a German cosmopolitan is the limit. I think that’s about all,

isn’t it? I want to run down and see Chalkeley. A bicycle will do. And,

by the way, I wish you’d speak to Crane some time. I’m certain he’s had

my new car out.”

“Has he done it any harm?”

“No.”

“In that case I shall let it pass. It’s not worth while having a row.”

Charles and his father sometimes disagreed. But they always parted with

an increased regard for one another, and each desired no doughtier

comrade when it was necessary to voyage for a little past the emotions.

So the sailors of Ulysses voyaged past the Sirens, having first stopped

one another’s ears with wool.

Chapter 12

Charles need not have been anxious. Miss Schlegel had never heard of

his mother’s strange request. She was to hear of it in after years,

when she had built up her life differently, and it was to fit into

position as the headstone of the corner. Her mind was bent on other

questions now, and by her also it would have been rejected as the

fantasy of an invalid.

She was parting from these Wilcoxes for the second time. Paul and his

mother, ripple and great wave, had flowed into her life and ebbed out

of it for ever. The ripple had left no traces behind: the wave had

strewn at her feet fragments torn from the unknown. A curious seeker,

she stood for a while at the verge of the sea that tells so little, but

tells a little, and watched the outgoing of this last tremendous tide.

Her friend had vanished in agony, but not, she believed, in

degradation. Her withdrawal had hinted at other things besides disease

and pain. Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane

frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle course, which only rarer

natures can pursue. She had kept proportion. She had told a little of

her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her

heart—almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that

we ought to die—neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer

who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the

shore that he must leave.

The last word—whatever it would be—had certainly not been said in

Hilton churchyard. She had not died there. A funeral is not death, any

more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy

devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would

register the quick motions of man. In Margaret’s eyes Mrs. Wilcox had

escaped registration. She had gone out of life vividly, her own way,

and no dust was so truly dust as the contents of that heavy coffin,

lowered with ceremonial until it rested on the dust of the earth, no

flowers so utterly wasted as the chrysanthemums that the frost must

have withered before morning. Margaret had once said she “loved

superstition.” It was not true. Few women had tried more earnestly to

pierce the accretions in which body and soul are enwrapped. The death

of Mrs. Wilcox had helped her in her work. She saw a little more

clearly than hitherto what a human being is, and to what he may aspire.

Truer relationships gleamed. Perhaps the last word would be hope—hope

even on this side of the grave.

Meanwhile, she could take an interest in the survivors. In spite of her

Christmas duties, in spite of her brother, the Wilcoxes continued to

play a considerable part in her thoughts. She had seen so much of them

in the final week. They were not “her sort,” they were often suspicious

and stupid, and deficient where she excelled; but collision with them

stimulated her, and she felt an interest that verged into liking, even

for Charles. She desired to protect them, and often felt that they

could protect her, excelling where she was deficient. Once past the

rocks of emotion, they knew so well what to do, whom to send for; their

hands were on all the ropes, they had grit as well as grittiness, and

she valued grit enormously. They led a life that she could not attain

to—the outer life of “telegrams and anger,” which had detonated when

Helen and Paul had touched in June, and had detonated again the other

week. To Margaret this life was to remain a real force. She could not

despise it, as Helen and Tibby affected to do. It fostered such virtues

as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no

doubt, but they have formed our civilization. They form character, too;

Margaret could not doubt it: they keep the soul from becoming sloppy.

How dare Schlegels despise Wilcoxes, when it takes all sorts to make a

world?

“Don’t brood too much,” she wrote to Helen, “on the superiority of the

unseen to the seen. It’s true, but to brood on it is mediaeval. Our

business is not to contrast the two, but to reconcile them.”

Helen replied that she had no intention of brooding on such a dull

subject. What did her sister take her for? The weather was magnificent.

She and the Mosebachs had gone tobogganing on the only hill that

Pomerania boasted. It was fun, but overcrowded, for the rest of

Pomerania had gone there too. Helen loved the country, and her letter

glowed with physical exercise and poetry. She spoke of the scenery,

quiet, yet august; of the snow-clad fields, with their scampering herds

of deer; of the river and its quaint entrance into the Baltic Sea; of

the Oderberge, only three hundred feet high, from which one slid all

too quickly back into the Pomeranian plains, and yet these Oderberge

were real mountains, with pine-forests, streams, and views complete.

“It isn’t size that counts so much as the way things are arranged.” In

another paragraph she referred to Mrs. Wilcox sympathetically, but the

news had not bitten into her. She had not realized the accessories of

death, which are in a sense more memorable than death itself. The

atmosphere of precautions and recriminations, and in the midst a human

body growing more vivid because it was in pain; the end of that body in

Hilton churchyard; the survival of something that suggested hope, vivid

in its turn against life’s workaday cheerfulness;—all these were lost

to Helen, who only felt that a pleasant lady could now be pleasant no

longer. She returned to Wickham Place full of her own affairs—she had

had another proposal—and Margaret, after a moment’s hesitation, was

content that this should be so.

The proposal had not been a serious matter. It was the work of Fräulein

Mosebach, who had conceived the large and patriotic notion of winning

back her cousins to the Fatherland by matrimony. England had played

Paul Wilcox, and lost; Germany played Herr Förstmeister someone—Helen

could not remember his name.

Herr Förstmeister lived in a wood, and standing on the summit of the

Oderberge, he had pointed out his house to Helen, or rather, had

pointed out the wedge of pines in which it lay. She had exclaimed, “Oh,

how lovely! That’s the place for me!” and in the evening Frieda

appeared in her bedroom. “I have a message, dear Helen,” etc., and so

she had, but had been very nice when Helen laughed; quite understood—a

forest too solitary and damp—quite agreed, but Herr Förstmeister

believed he had assurance to the contrary. Germany had lost, but with

good-humour; holding the manhood of the world, she felt bound to win.

“And there will even be someone for Tibby,” concluded Helen. “There

now, Tibby, think of that; Frieda is saving up a little girl for you,

in pig-tails and white worsted stockings, but the feet of the stockings

are pink, as if the little girl had trodden in strawberries. I’ve

talked too much. My head aches. Now you talk.”

Tibby consented to talk. He too was full of his own affairs, for he had

just been up to try for a scholarship at Oxford. The men were down, and

the candidates had been housed in various colleges, and had dined in

hall. Tibby was sensitive to beauty, the experience was new, and he

gave a description of his visit that was almost glowing. The august and

mellow University, soaked with the richness of the western counties

that it has served for a thousand years, appealed at once to the boy’s

taste: it was the kind of thing he could understand, and he understood

it all the better because it was empty. Oxford is—Oxford: not a mere

receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to

love it rather than to love one another: such at all events was to be

its effect on Tibby. His sisters sent him there that he might make

friends, for they knew that his education had been cranky, and had

severed him from other boys and men. He made no friends. His Oxford

remained Oxford empty, and he took into life with him, not the memory

of a radiance, but the memory of a colour scheme.

It pleased Margaret to hear her brother and sister talking. They did

not get on overwell as a rule. For a few moments she listened to them,

feeling elderly and benign. Then something occurred to her, and she

interrupted:

“Helen, I told you about poor Mrs. Wilcox; that sad business?”

“Yes.”

“I have had a correspondence with her son. He was winding up the

estate, and wrote to ask me whether his mother had wanted me to have

anything. I thought it good of him, considering I knew her so little. I

said that she had once spoken of giving me a Christmas present, but we

both forgot about it afterwards.”

“I hope Charles took the hint.”

“Yes—that is to say, her husband wrote later on, and thanked me for

being a little kind to her, and actually gave me her silver

vinaigrette. Don’t you think that is extraordinarily generous? It has

made me like him very much. He hopes that this will not be the end of

our acquaintance, but that you and I will go and stop with Evie some

time in the future. I like Mr. Wilcox. He is taking up his

work—rubber—it is a big business. I gather he is launching out rather.

Charles is in it, too. Charles is married—a pretty little creature, but

she doesn’t seem wise. They took on the flat, but now they have gone

off to a house of their own.”

Helen, after a decent pause, continued her account of Stettin. How

quickly a situation changes! In June she had been in a crisis; even in

November she could blush and be unnatural; now it was January, and the

whole affair lay forgotten. Looking back on the past six months,

Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its

difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by

historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead

nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that

never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength

that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not

that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared

and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is

duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a

good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through

life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been

handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the

way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the

essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a

romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.

Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more

cautious, than she had been in the past.

Chapter 13

Over two years passed, and the Schlegel household continued to lead its

life of cultured but not ignoble ease, still swimming gracefully on the

grey tides of London. Concerts and plays swept past them, money had

been spent and renewed, reputations won and lost, and the city herself,

emblematic of their lives, rose and fell in a continual flux, while her

shallows washed more widely against the hills of Surrey and over the

fields of Hertfordshire. This famous building had arisen, that was

doomed. Today Whitehall had been transformed: it would be the turn of

Regent Street tomorrow. And month by month the roads smelt more

strongly of petrol, and were more difficult to cross, and human beings

heard each other speak with greater difficulty, breathed less of the

air, and saw less of the sky. Nature withdrew: the leaves were falling

by midsummer; the sun shone through dirt with an admired obscurity.

To speak against London is no longer fashionable. The Earth as an

artistic cult has had its day, and the literature of the near future

will probably ignore the country and seek inspiration from the town.

One can understand the reaction. Of Pan and the elemental forces, the

public has heard a little too much—they seem Victorian, while London is

Georgian—and those who care for the earth with sincerity may wait long

ere the pendulum swings back to her again. Certainly London fascinates.

One visualizes it as a tract of quivering grey, intelligent without

purpose, and excitable without love; as a spirit that has altered

before it can be chronicled; as a heart that certainly beats, but with

no pulsation of humanity. It lies beyond everything: Nature, with all

her cruelty, comes nearer to us than do these crowds of men. A friend

explains himself: the earth is explicable—from her we came, and we must

return to her. But who can explain Westminster Bridge Road or Liverpool

Street in the morning—the city inhaling—or the same thoroughfares in

the evening—the city exhaling her exhausted air? We reach in

desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the

universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human

face. London is religion’s opportunity—not the decorous religion of

theologians, but anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would

be tolerable if a man of our own sort—not anyone pompous or

tearful—were caring for us up in the sky.

The Londoner seldom understands his city until it sweeps him, too, away

from his moorings, and Margaret’s eyes were not opened until the lease

of Wickham Place expired. She had always known that it must expire, but

the knowledge only became vivid about nine months before the event.

Then the house was suddenly ringed with pathos. It had seen so much

happiness. Why had it to be swept away? In the streets of the city she

noted for the first time the architecture of hurry, and heard the

language of hurry on the mouths of its inhabitants—clipped words,

formless sentences, potted expressions of approval or disgust. Month by

month things were stepping livelier, but to what goal? The population

still rose, but what was the quality of the men born? The particular

millionaire who owned the freehold of Wickham Place, and desired to

erect Babylonian flats upon it—what right had he to stir so large a

portion of the quivering jelly? He was not a fool—she had heard him

expose Socialism—but true insight began just where his intelligence

ended, and one gathered that this was the case with most millionaires.

What right had such men—But Margaret checked herself. That way lies

madness. Thank goodness she, too, had some money, and could purchase a

new home.

Tibby, now in his second year at Oxford, was down for the Easter

vacation, and Margaret took the opportunity of having a serious talk

with him. Did he at all know where he wanted to live? Tibby didn’t know

that he did know. Did he at all know what he wanted to do? He was

equally uncertain, but when pressed remarked that he should prefer to

be quite free of any profession. Margaret was not shocked, but went on

sewing for a few minutes before she replied:

“I was thinking of Mr. Vyse. He never strikes me as particularly

happy.”

“Ye-es,” said Tibby, and then held his mouth open in a curious quiver,

as if he, too, had thoughts of Mr. Vyse, had seen round, through, over,

and beyond Mr. Vyse, had weighed Mr. Vyse, grouped him, and finally

dismissed him as having no possible bearing on the subject under

discussion. That bleat of Tibby’s infuriated Helen. But Helen was now

down in the dining-room preparing a speech about political economy. At

times her voice could be heard declaiming through the floor.

“But Mr. Vyse is rather a wretched, weedy man, don’t you think? Then

there’s Guy. That was a pitiful business. Besides”—shifting to the

general—” every one is the better for some regular work.”

Groans.

“I shall stick to it,” she continued, smiling. “I am not saying it to

educate you; it is what I really think. I believe that in the last

century men have developed the desire for work, and they must not

starve it. It’s a new desire. It goes with a great deal that’s bad, but

in itself it’s good, and I hope that for women, too, ‘not to work’ will

soon become as shocking as ‘not to be married’ was a hundred years

ago.”

“I have no experience of this profound desire to which you allude,”

enunciated Tibby.

“Then we’ll leave the subject till you do. I’m not going to rattle you

round. Take your time. Only do think over the lives of the men you like

most, and see how they’ve arranged them.”

“I like Guy and Mr. Vyse most,” said Tibby faintly, and leant so far

back in his chair that he extended in a horizontal line from knees to

throat.

“And don’t think I’m not serious because I don’t use the traditional

arguments—making money, a sphere awaiting you, and so on—all of which

are, for various reasons, cant.” She sewed on. “I’m only your sister. I

haven’t any authority over you, and I don’t want to have any. Just to

put before you what I think the truth. You see”—she shook off the

pince-nez to which she had recently taken—“in a few years we shall be

the same age practically, and I shall want you to help me. Men are so

much nicer than women.”

“Labouring under such a delusion, why do you not marry?”

“I sometimes jolly well think I would if I got the chance.”

“Has nobody arst you?”

“Only ninnies.”

“Do people ask Helen?”

“Plentifully.”

“Tell me about them.”

“No.”

“Tell me about your ninnies, then.”

“They were men who had nothing better to do,” said his sister, feeling

that she was entitled to score this point. “So take warning: you must

work, or else you must pretend to work, which is what I do. Work, work,

work if you’d save your soul and your body. It is honestly a necessity,

dear boy. Look at the Wilcoxes, look at Mr. Pembroke. With all their

defects of temper and understanding, such men give me more pleasure

than many who are better equipped and I think it is because they have

worked regularly and honestly.

“Spare me the Wilcoxes,” he moaned.

“I shall not. They are the right sort.”

“Oh, goodness me, Meg!” he protested, suddenly sitting up, alert and

angry. Tibby, for all his defects, had a genuine personality.

“Well, they’re as near the right sort as you can imagine.”

“No, no—oh, no!”

“I was thinking of the younger son, whom I once classed as a ninny, but

who came back so ill from Nigeria. He’s gone out there again, Evie

Wilcox tells me—out to his duty.”

“Duty” always elicited a groan.

“He doesn’t want the money, it is work he wants, though it is beastly

work—dull country, dishonest natives, an eternal fidget over fresh

water and food. A nation who can produce men of that sort may well be

proud. No wonder England has become an Empire.”

“_Empire!_”

“I can’t bother over results,” said Margaret, a little sadly. “They are

too difficult for me. I can only look at the men. An Empire bores me,

so far, but I can appreciate the heroism that builds it up. London

bores me, but what thousands of splendid people are labouring to make

London—”

“What it is,” he sneered.

“What it is, worse luck. I want activity without civilization. How

paradoxical! Yet I expect that is what we shall find in heaven.”

“And I,” said Tibby, “want civilization without activity, which, I

expect, is what we shall find in the other place.”

“You needn’t go as far as the other place, Tibbi-kins, if you want

that. You can find it at Oxford.”

“Stupid—”

“If I’m stupid, get me back to the house-hunting. I’ll even live in

Oxford if you like—North Oxford. I’ll live anywhere except Bournemouth,

Torquay, and Cheltenham. Oh yes, or Ilfracombe and Swanage and

Tunbridge Wells and Surbiton and Bedford. There on no account.”

“London, then.”

“I agree, but Helen rather wants to get away from London. However,

there’s no reason we shouldn’t have a house in the country and also a

flat in town, provided we all stick together and contribute. Though of

course—Oh, how one does maunder on, and to think, to think of the

people who are really poor. How do they live? Not to move about the

world would kill me.”

As she spoke, the door was flung open, and Helen burst in in a state of

extreme excitement.

“Oh, my dears, what do you think? You’ll never guess. A woman’s been

here asking me for her husband. Her _what?_” (Helen was fond of

supplying her own surprise.) “Yes, for her husband, and it really is

so.”

“Not anything to do with Bracknell?” cried Margaret, who had lately

taken on an unemployed of that name to clean the knives and boots.

“I offered Bracknell, and he was rejected. So was Tibby. (Cheer up,

Tibby!) It’s no one we know. I said, ‘Hunt, my good woman; have a good

look round, hunt under the tables, poke up the chimney, shake out the

antimacassars. Husband? husband?’ Oh, and she so magnificently dressed

and tinkling like a chandelier.”

“Now, Helen, what did happen really?”

“What I say. I was, as it were, orating my speech. Annie opens the door

like a fool, and shows a female straight in on me, with my mouth open.

Then we began—very civilly. ‘I want my husband, what I have reason to

believe is here.’ No—how unjust one is. She said ‘whom,’ not ‘what.’

She got it perfectly. So I said, ‘Name, please?’ and she said, ‘Lan,

Miss,’ and there we were.

“Lan?”

“Lan or Len. We were not nice about our vowels. Lanoline.”

“But what an extraordinary—”

“I said, ‘My good Mrs. Lanoline, we have some grave misunderstanding

here. Beautiful as I am, my modesty is even more remarkable than my

beauty, and never, never has Mr. Lanoline rested his eyes on mine.’”

“I hope you were pleased,” said Tibby.

“Of course,” Helen squeaked. “A perfectly delightful experience. Oh,

Mrs. Lanoline’s a dear—she asked for a husband as if he was an

umbrella. She mislaid him Saturday afternoon—and for a long time

suffered no inconvenience. But all night, and all this morning her

apprehensions grew. Breakfast didn’t seem the same—no, no more did

lunch, and so she strolled up to 2, Wickham Place as being the most

likely place for the missing article.”

“But how on earth—”

“Don’t begin how on earthing. ‘I know what I know,’ she kept repeating,

not uncivilly, but with extreme gloom. In vain I asked her what she did

know. Some knew what others knew, and others didn’t, and if they

didn’t, then others again had better be careful. Oh dear, she was

incompetent! She had a face like a silkworm, and the dining-room reeks

of orris-root. We chatted pleasantly a little about husbands, and I

wondered where hers was too, and advised her to go to the police. She

thanked me. We agreed that Mr. Lanoline’s a notty, notty man, and

hasn’t no business to go on the lardy-da. But I think she suspected me

up to the last. Bags I writing to Aunt Juley about this. Now, Meg,

remember—bags I.”

“Bag it by all means,” murmured Margaret, putting down her work. “I’m

not sure that this is so funny, Helen. It means some horrible volcano

smoking somewhere, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think so—she doesn’t really mind. The admirable creature isn’t

capable of tragedy.”

“Her husband may be, though,” said Margaret, moving to the window.

“Oh, no, not likely. No one capable of tragedy could have married Mrs.

Lanoline.”

“Was she pretty?”

“Her figure may have been good once.”

The flats, their only outlook, hung like an ornate curtain between

Margaret and the welter of London. Her thoughts turned sadly to

house-hunting. Wickham Place had been so safe. She feared,

fantastically, that her own little flock might be moving into turmoil

and squalor, into nearer contact with such episodes as these.

“Tibby and I have again been wondering where we’ll live next

September,” she said at last.

“Tibby had better first wonder what he’ll do,” retorted Helen; and that

topic was resumed, but with acrimony. Then tea came, and after tea

Helen went on preparing her speech, and Margaret prepared one, too, for

they were going out to a discussion society on the morrow. But her

thoughts were poisoned. Mrs. Lanoline had risen out of the abyss, like

a faint smell, a goblin football, telling of a life where love and

hatred had both decayed.

Chapter 14

The mystery, like so many mysteries, was explained. Next day, just as

they were dressed to go out to dinner, a Mr. Bast called. He was a

clerk in the employment of the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company. Thus

much from his card. He had come “about the lady yesterday.” Thus much

from Annie, who had shown him into the dining-room.

“Cheers, children!” cried Helen. “It’s Mrs. Lanoline.”

Tibby was interested. The three hurried downstairs, to find, not the

gay dog they expected, but a young man, colourless, toneless, who had

already the mournful eyes above a drooping moustache that are so common

in London, and that haunt some streets of the city like accusing

presences. One guessed him as the third generation, grandson to the

shepherd or ploughboy whom civilization had sucked into the town; as

one of the thousands who have lost the life of the body and failed to

reach the life of the spirit. Hints of robustness survived in him, more

than a hint of primitive good looks, and Margaret, noting the spine

that might have been straight, and the chest that might have broadened,

wondered whether it paid to give up the glory of the animal for a tail

coat and a couple of ideas. Culture had worked in her own case, but

during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the

majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between

the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are

wrecked in trying to cross it. She knew this type very well—the vague

aspirations, the mental dishonesty, the familiarity with the outsides

of books. She knew the very tones in which he would address her. She

was only unprepared for an example of her own visiting-card.

“You wouldn’t remember giving me this, Miss Schlegel?” said he,

uneasily familiar.

“No; I can’t say I do.”

“Well, that was how it happened, you see.”

“Where did we meet, Mr. Bast? For the minute I don’t remember.”

“It was a concert at the Queen’s Hall. I think you will recollect,” he

added pretentiously, “when I tell you that it included a performance of

the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven.”

“We hear the Fifth practically every time it’s done, so I’m not sure—do

you remember, Helen?”

“Was it the time the sandy cat walked round the balustrade?”

He thought not.

“Then I don’t remember. That’s the only Beethoven I ever remember

specially.”

“And you, if I may say so, took away my umbrella, inadvertently of

course.”

“Likely enough,” Helen laughed, “for I steal umbrellas even oftener

than I hear Beethoven. Did you get it back?”

“Yes, thank you, Miss Schlegel.”

“The mistake arose out of my card, did it?” interposed Margaret.

“Yes, the mistake arose—it was a mistake.”

“The lady who called here yesterday thought that you were calling too,

and that she could find you?” she continued, pushing him forward, for,

though he had promised an explanation, he seemed unable to give one.

“That’s so, calling too—a mistake.”

“Then why—?” began Helen, but Margaret laid a hand on her arm.

“I said to my wife,” he continued more rapidly—“I said to Mrs. Bast, ‘I

have to pay a call on some friends,’ and Mrs. Bast said to me, ‘Do go.’

While I was gone, however, she wanted me on important business, and

thought I had come here, owing to the card, and so came after me, and I

beg to tender my apologies, and hers as well, for any inconvenience we

may have inadvertently caused you.”

“No inconvenience,” said Helen; “but I still don’t understand.”

An air of evasion characterized Mr. Bast. He explained again, but was

obviously lying, and Helen didn’t see why he should get off. She had

the cruelty of youth. Neglecting her sister’s pressure, she said, “I

still don’t understand. When did you say you paid this call?”

“Call? What call?” said he, staring as if her question had been a

foolish one, a favourite device of those in mid-stream.

“This afternoon call.”

“In the afternoon, of course!” he replied, and looked at Tibby to see

how the repartee went. But Tibby, himself a repartee, was

unsympathetic, and said, “Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon?”

“S-Saturday.”

“Really!” said Helen; “and you were still calling on Sunday, when your

wife came here. A long visit.”

“I don’t call that fair,” said Mr. Bast, going scarlet and handsome.

There was fight in his eyes.” I know what you mean, and it isn’t so.”

“Oh, don’t let us mind,” said Margaret, distressed again by odours from

the abyss.

“It was something else,” he asserted, his elaborate manner breaking

down. “I was somewhere else to what you think, so there!”

“It was good of you to come and explain,” she said. “The rest is

naturally no concern of ours.”

“Yes, but I want—I wanted—have you ever read _The Ordeal of Richard

Feverel?_”

Margaret nodded.

“It’s a beautiful book. I wanted to get back to the Earth, don’t you

see, like Richard does in the end. Or have you ever read Stevenson’s

_Prince Otto?_”

Helen and Tibby groaned gently.

“That’s another beautiful book. You get back to the Earth in that. I

wanted—” He mouthed affectedly. Then through the mists of his culture

came a hard fact, hard as a pebble. “I walked all the Saturday night,”

said Leonard. “I walked.” A thrill of approval ran through the sisters.

But culture closed in again. He asked whether they had ever read E. V.

Lucas’s _Open Road_.

Said Helen, “No doubt it’s another beautiful book, but I’d rather hear

about your road.”

“Oh, I walked.”

“How far?”

“I don’t know, nor for how long. It got too dark to see my watch.”

“Were you walking alone, may I ask?”

“Yes,” he said, straightening himself; “but we’d been talking it over

at the office. There’s been a lot of talk at the office lately about

these things. The fellows there said one steers by the Pole Star, and I

looked it up in the celestial atlas, but once out of doors everything

gets so mixed—”

“Don’t talk to me about the Pole Star,” interrupted Helen, who was

becoming interested. “I know its little ways. It goes round and round,

and you go round after it.”

“Well, I lost it entirely. First of all the street lamps, then the

trees, and towards morning it got cloudy.”

Tibby, who preferred his comedy undiluted, slipped from the room. He

knew that this fellow would never attain to poetry, and did not want to

hear him trying. Margaret and Helen remained. Their brother influenced

them more than they knew: in his absence they were stirred to

enthusiasm more easily.

“Where did you start from?” cried Margaret. “Do tell us more.”

“I took the Underground to Wimbledon. As I came out of the office I

said to myself, ‘I must have a walk once in a way. If I don’t take this

walk now, I shall never take it.’ I had a bit of dinner at Wimbledon,

and then—”

“But not good country there, is it?”

“It was gas-lamps for hours. Still, I had all the night, and being out

was the great thing. I did get into woods, too, presently.”

“Yes, go on,” said Helen.

“You’ve no idea how difficult uneven ground is when it’s dark.”

“Did you actually go off the roads?”

“Oh yes. I always meant to go off the roads, but the worst of it is

that it’s more difficult to find one’s way.”

“Mr. Bast, you’re a born adventurer,” laughed Margaret. “No

professional athlete would have attempted what you’ve done. It’s a

wonder your walk didn’t end in a broken neck. Whatever did your wife

say?”

“Professional athletes never move without lanterns and compasses,” said

Helen. “Besides, they can’t walk. It tires them. Go on.”

“I felt like R. L. S. You probably remember how in _Virginibus_—”

“Yes, but the wood. This ’ere wood. How did you get out of it?”

“I managed one wood, and found a road the other side which went a good

bit uphill. I rather fancy it was those North Downs, for the road went

off into grass, and I got into another wood. That was awful, with gorse

bushes. I did wish I’d never come, but suddenly it got light—just while

I seemed going under one tree. Then I found a road down to a station,

and took the first train I could back to London.”

“But was the dawn wonderful?” asked Helen.

With unforgettable sincerity he replied, “No.” The word flew again like

a pebble from the sling. Down toppled all that had seemed ignoble or

literary in his talk, down toppled tiresome R. L. S. and the “love of

the earth” and his silk top-hat. In the presence of these women Leonard

had arrived, and he spoke with a flow, an exultation, that he had

seldom known.

“The dawn was only grey, it was nothing to mention—”

“Just a grey evening turned upside down. I know.”

“—and I was too tired to lift up my head to look at it, and so cold

too. I’m glad I did it, and yet at the time it bored me more than I can

say. And besides—you can believe me or not as you choose—I was very

hungry. That dinner at Wimbledon—I meant it to last me all night like

other dinners. I never thought that walking would make such a

difference. Why, when you’re walking you want, as it were, a breakfast

and luncheon and tea during the night as well, and I’d nothing but a

packet of Woodbines. Lord, I did feel bad! Looking back, it wasn’t what

you may call enjoyment. It was more a case of sticking to it. I did

stick. I—I was determined. Oh, hang it all! what’s the good—I mean, the

good of living in a room for ever? There one goes on day after day,

same old game, same up and down to town, until you forget there is any

other game. You ought to see once in a way what’s going on outside, if

it’s only nothing particular after all.”

“I should just think you ought,” said Helen, sitting on the edge of the

table.

The sound of a lady’s voice recalled him from sincerity, and he said:

“Curious it should all come about from reading something of Richard

Jefferies.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Bast, but you’re wrong there. It didn’t. It came from

something far greater.”

But she could not stop him. Borrow was imminent after Jefferies—Borrow,

Thoreau, and sorrow. R. L. S. brought up the rear, and the outburst

ended in a swamp of books. No disrespect to these great names. The

fault is ours, not theirs. They mean us to use them for sign-posts, and

are not to blame if, in our weakness, we mistake the sign-post for the

destination. And Leonard had reached the destination. He had visited

the county of Surrey when darkness covered its amenities, and its cosy

villas had re-entered ancient night. Every twelve hours this miracle

happens, but he had troubled to go and see for himself. Within his

cramped little mind dwelt something that was greater than Jefferies’

books—the spirit that led Jefferies to write them; and his dawn, though

revealing nothing but monotones, was part of the eternal sunrise that

shows George Borrow Stonehenge.

“Then you don’t think I was foolish?” he asked, becoming again the

naïve and sweet-tempered boy for whom Nature had intended him.

“Heavens, no!” replied Margaret.

“Heaven help us if we do!” replied Helen.

“I’m very glad you say that. Now, my wife would never understand—not if

I explained for days.”

“No, it wasn’t foolish!” cried Helen, her eyes aflame. “You’ve pushed

back the boundaries; I think it splendid of you.”

“You’ve not been content to dream as we have—”

“Though we have walked, too—”

“I must show you a picture upstairs—”

Here the door-bell rang. The hansom had come to take them to their

evening party.

“Oh, bother, not to say dash—I had forgotten we were dining out; but

do, do, come round again and have a talk.”

“Yes, you must—do,” echoed Margaret.

Leonard, with extreme sentiment, replied: “No, I shall not. It’s better

like this.”

“Why better?” asked Margaret.

“No, it is better not to risk a second interview. I shall always look

back on this talk with you as one of the finest things in my life.

Really. I mean this. We can never repeat. It has done me real good, and

there we had better leave it.”

“That’s rather a sad view of life, surely.”

“Things so often get spoiled.”

“I know,” flashed Helen, “but people don’t.”

He could not understand this. He continued in a vein which mingled true

imagination and false. What he said wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t right,

and a false note jarred. One little twist, they felt, and the

instrument might be in tune. One little strain, and it might be silent

for ever. He thanked the ladies very much, but he would not call again.

There was a moment’s awkwardness, and then Helen said: “Go, then;

perhaps you know best; but never forget you’re better than Jefferies.”

And he went. Their hansom caught him up at the corner, passed with a

waving of hands, and vanished with its accomplished load into the

evening.

London was beginning to illuminate herself against the night. Electric

lights sizzled and jagged in the main thoroughfares, gas-lamps in the

side streets glimmered a canary gold or green. The sky was a crimson

battlefield of spring, but London was not afraid. Her smoke mitigated

the splendour, and the clouds down Oxford Street were a delicately

painted ceiling, which adorned while it did not distract. She has never

known the clear-cut armies of the purer air. Leonard hurried through

her tinted wonders, very much part of the picture. His was a grey life,

and to brighten it he had ruled off a few corners for romance. The Miss

Schlegels—or, to speak more accurately, his interview with them—were to

fill such a corner, nor was it by any means the first time that he had

talked intimately to strangers. The habit was analogous to a debauch,

an outlet, though the worst of outlets, for instincts that would not be

denied. Terrifying him, it would beat down his suspicions and prudence

until he was confiding secrets to people whom he had scarcely seen. It

brought him many fears and some pleasant memories. Perhaps the keenest

happiness he had ever known was during a railway journey to Cambridge,

where a decent-mannered undergraduate had spoken to him. They had got

into conversation, and gradually Leonard flung reticence aside, told

some of his domestic troubles, and hinted at the rest. The

undergraduate, supposing they could start a friendship, asked him to

“coffee after hall,” which he accepted, but afterwards grew shy, and

took care not to stir from the commercial hotel where he lodged. He did

not want Romance to collide with the Porphyrion, still less with Jacky,

and people with fuller, happier lives are slow to understand this. To

the Schlegels, as to the undergraduate, he was an interesting creature,

of whom they wanted to see more. But they to him were denizens of

Romance, who must keep to the corner he had assigned them, pictures

that must not walk out of their frames.

His behaviour over Margaret’s visiting-card had been typical. His had

scarcely been a tragic marriage. Where there is no money and no

inclination to violence tragedy cannot be generated. He could not leave

his wife, and he did not want to hit her. Petulance and squalor were

enough. Here “that card” had come in. Leonard, though furtive, was

untidy, and left it lying about. Jacky found it, and then began,

“What’s that card, eh?” “Yes, don’t you wish you knew what that card

was?” “Len, who’s Miss Schlegel?” etc. Months passed, and the card, now

as a joke, now as a grievance, was handed about, getting dirtier and

dirtier. It followed them when they moved from Cornelia Road to Tulse

Hill. It was submitted to third parties. A few inches of pasteboard, it

became the battlefield on which the souls of Leonard and his wife

contended. Why did he not say, “A lady took my umbrella, another gave

me this that I might call for my umbrella”? Because Jacky would have

disbelieved him? Partly, but chiefly because he was sentimental. No

affection gathered round the card, but it symbolized the life of

culture, that Jacky should never spoil. At night he would say to

himself, “Well, at all events, she doesn’t know about that card. Yah!

done her there!”

Poor Jacky! she was not a bad sort, and had a great deal to bear. She

drew her own conclusion—she was only capable of drawing one

conclusion—and in the fulness of time she acted upon it. All the Friday

Leonard had refused to speak to her, and had spent the evening

observing the stars. On the Saturday he went up, as usual, to town, but

he came not back Saturday night nor Sunday morning, nor Sunday

afternoon. The inconvenience grew intolerable, and though she was now

of a retiring habit, and shy of women, she went up to Wickham Place.

Leonard returned in her absence. The card, the fatal card, was gone

from the pages of Ruskin, and he guessed what had happened.

“Well?” he had exclaimed, greeting her with peals of laughter. “I know

where you’ve been, but you don’t know where I’ve been.”

Jacky sighed, said, “Len, I do think you might explain,” and resumed

domesticity.

Explanations were difficult at this stage, and Leonard was too silly—or

it is tempting to write, too sound a chap to attempt them. His

reticence was not entirely the shoddy article that a business life

promotes, the reticence that pretends that nothing is something, and

hides behind the _Daily Telegraph_. The adventurer, also, is reticent,

and it is an adventure for a clerk to walk for a few hours in darkness.

You may laugh at him, you who have slept nights on the veldt, with your

rifle beside you and all the atmosphere of adventure past. And you also

may laugh who think adventures silly. But do not be surprised if

Leonard is shy whenever he meets you, and if the Schlegels rather than

Jacky hear about the dawn.

That the Schlegels had not thought him foolish became a permanent joy.

He was at his best when he thought of them. It buoyed him as he

journeyed home beneath fading heavens. Somehow the barriers of wealth

had fallen, and there had been—he could not phrase it—a general

assertion of the wonder of the world. “My conviction,” says the mystic,

“gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it,” and they

had agreed that there was something beyond life’s daily grey. He took

off his top-hat and smoothed it thoughtfully. He had hitherto supposed

the unknown to be books, literature, clever conversation, culture. One

raised oneself by study, and got upsides with the world. But in that

quick interchange a new light dawned. Was that something” walking in

the dark among the surburban hills?

He discovered that he was going bareheaded down Regent Street. London

came back with a rush. Few were about at this hour, but all whom he

passed looked at him with a hostility that was the more impressive

because it was unconscious. He put his hat on. It was too big; his head

disappeared like a pudding into a basin, the ears bending outwards at

the touch of the curly brim. He wore it a little backwards, and its

effect was greatly to elongate the face and to bring out the distance

between the eyes and the moustache. Thus equipped, he escaped

criticism. No one felt uneasy as he titupped along the pavements, the

heart of a man ticking fast in his chest.

Chapter 15

The sisters went out to dinner full of their adventure, and when they

were both full of the same subject, there were few dinner-parties that

could stand up against them. This particular one, which was all ladies,

had more kick in it than most, but succumbed after a struggle. Helen at

one part of the table, Margaret at the other, would talk of Mr. Bast

and of no one else, and somewhere about the entree their monologues

collided, fell ruining, and became common property. Nor was this all.

The dinner-party was really an informal discussion club; there was a

paper after it, read amid coffee-cups and laughter in the drawing-room,

but dealing more or less thoughtfully with some topic of general

interest. After the paper came a debate, and in this debate Mr. Bast

also figured, appearing now as a bright spot in civilization, now as a

dark spot, according to the temperament of the speaker. The subject of

the paper had been, “How ought I to dispose of my money?” the reader

professing to be a millionaire on the point of death, inclined to

bequeath her fortune for the foundation of local art galleries, but

open to conviction from other sources. The various parts had been

assigned beforehand, and some of the speeches were amusing. The hostess

assumed the ungrateful role of “the millionaire’s eldest son,” and

implored her expiring parent not to dislocate Society by allowing such

vast sums to pass out of the family. Money was the fruit of

self-denial, and the second generation had a right to profit by the

self-denial of the first. What right had “Mr. Bast” to profit? The

National Gallery was good enough for the likes of him. After property

had had its say—a saying that is necessarily ungracious—the various

philanthropists stepped forward. Something must be done for “Mr. Bast”:

his conditions must be improved without impairing his independence; he

must have a free library, or free tennis-courts; his rent must be paid

in such a way that he did not know it was being paid; it must be made

worth his while to join the Territorials; he must be forcibly parted

from his uninspiring wife, the money going to her as compensation; he

must be assigned a Twin Star, some member of the leisured classes who

would watch over him ceaselessly (groans from Helen); he must be given

food but no clothes, clothes but no food, a third-return ticket to

Venice, without either food or clothes when he arrived there. In short,

he might be given anything and everything so long as it was not the

money itself.

And here Margaret interrupted.

“Order, order, Miss Schlegel!” said the reader of the paper. “You are

here, I understand, to advise me in the interests of the Society for

the Preservation of Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. I

cannot have you speaking out of your role. It makes my poor head go

round, and I think you forget that I am very ill.”

“Your head won’t go round if only you’ll listen to my argument,” said

Margaret. “Why not give him the money itself. You’re supposed to have

about thirty thousand a year.”

“Have I? I thought I had a million.”

“Wasn’t a million your capital? Dear me! we ought to have settled that.

Still, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve got, I order you to give as

many poor men as you can three hundred a year each.”

“But that would be pauperizing them,” said an earnest girl, who liked

the Schlegels, but thought them a little unspiritual at times.

“Not if you gave them so much. A big windfall would not pauperize a

man. It is these little driblets, distributed among too many, that do

the harm. Money’s educational. It’s far more educational than the

things it buys.” There was a protest. “In a sense,” added Margaret, but

the protest continued. “Well, isn’t the most civilized thing going, the

man who has learnt to wear his income properly?”

“Exactly what your Mr. Basts won’t do.”

“Give them a chance. Give them money. Don’t dole them out poetry-books

and railway-tickets like babies. Give them the wherewithal to buy these

things. When your Socialism comes it may be different, and we may think

in terms of commodities instead of cash. Till it comes give people

cash, for it is the warp of civilization, whatever the woof may be. The

imagination ought to play upon money and realize it vividly, for it’s

the—the second most important thing in the world. It is so sluffed over

and hushed up, there is so little clear thinking—oh, political economy,

of course, but so few of us think clearly about our own private

incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of

ten the result of independent means. Money: give Mr. Bast money, and

don’t bother about his ideals. He’ll pick up those for himself.”

She leant back while the more earnest members of the club began to

misconstrue her. The female mind, though cruelly practical in daily

life, cannot bear to hear ideals belittled in conversation, and Miss

Schlegel was asked however she could say such dreadful things, and what

it would profit Mr. Bast if he gained the whole world and lost his own

soul. She answered, “Nothing, but he would not gain his soul until he

had gained a little of the world.” Then they said, “No they did not

believe it,” and she admitted that an overworked clerk may save his

soul in the superterrestrial sense, where the effort will be taken for

the deed, but she denied that he will ever explore the spiritual

resources of this world, will ever know the rarer joys of the body, or

attain to clear and passionate intercourse with his fellows. Others had

attacked the fabric of Society-Property, Interest, etc.; she only fixed

her eyes on a few human beings, to see how, under present conditions,

they could be made happier. Doing good to humanity was useless: the

many-coloured efforts thereto spreading over the vast area like films

and resulting in an universal grey. To do good to one, or, as in this

case, to a few, was the utmost she dare hope for.

Between the idealists, and the political economists, Margaret had a bad

time. Disagreeing elsewhere, they agreed in disowning her, and in

keeping the administration of the millionaire’s money in their own

hands. The earnest girl brought forward a scheme of “personal

supervision and mutual help,” the effect of which was to alter poor

people until they became exactly like people who were not so poor. The

hostess pertinently remarked that she, as eldest son, might surely rank

among the millionaire’s legatees. Margaret weakly admitted the claim,

and another claim was at once set up by Helen, who declared that she

had been the millionaire’s housemaid for over forty years, overfed and

underpaid; was nothing to be done for her, so corpulent and poor? The

millionaire then read out her last will and testament, in which she

left the whole of her fortune to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then

she died. The serious parts of the discussion had been of higher merit

than the playful—in a men’s debate is the reverse more general?—but the

meeting broke up hilariously enough, and a dozen happy ladies dispersed

to their homes.

Helen and Margaret walked the earnest girl as far as Battersea Bridge

Station, arguing copiously all the way. When she had gone they were

conscious of an alleviation, and of the great beauty of the evening.

They turned back towards Oakley Street. The lamps and the plane-trees,

following the line of the embankment, struck a note of dignity that is

rare in English cities. The seats, almost deserted, were here and there

occupied by gentlefolk in evening dress, who had strolled out from the

houses behind to enjoy fresh air and the whisper of the rising tide.

There is something continental about Chelsea Embankment. It is an open

space used rightly, a blessing more frequent in Germany than here. As

Margaret and Helen sat down, the city behind them seemed to be a vast

theatre, an opera-house in which some endless trilogy was performing,

and they themselves a pair of satisfied subscribers, who did not mind

losing a little of the second act.

“Cold?”

“No.”

“Tired?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

The earnest girl’s train rumbled away over the bridge.

“I say, Helen—”

“Well?”

“Are we really going to follow up Mr. Bast?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think we won’t.”

“As you like.”

“It’s no good, I think, unless you really mean to know people. The

discussion brought that home to me. We got on well enough with him in a

spirit of excitement, but think of rational intercourse. We mustn’t

play at friendship. No, it’s no good.”

“There’s Mrs. Lanoline, too,” Helen yawned. “So dull.”

“Just so, and possibly worse than dull.”

“I should like to know how he got hold of your card.”

“But he said—something about a concert and an umbrella—”

“Then did the card see the wife—”

“Helen, come to bed.”

“No, just a little longer, it is so beautiful. Tell me; oh yes; did you

say money is the warp of the world?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the woof?”

“Very much what one chooses,” said Margaret. “It’s something that isn’t

money—one can’t say more.”

“Walking at night?”

“Probably.”

“For Tibby, Oxford?”

“It seems so.”

“For you?”

“Now that we have to leave Wickham Place, I begin to think it’s that.

For Mrs. Wilcox it was certainly Howards End.”

One’s own name will carry immense distances. Mr. Wilcox, who was

sitting with friends many seats away, heard his, rose to his feet, and

strolled along towards the speakers.

“It is sad to suppose that places may ever be more important than

people,” continued Margaret.

“Why, Meg? They’re so much nicer generally. I’d rather think of that

forester’s house in Pomerania than of the fat Herr Förstmeister who

lived in it.”

“I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The

more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one

of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for

a place.”

Here Mr. Wilcox reached them. It was several weeks since they had met.

“How do you do?” he cried. “I thought I recognized your voices.

Whatever are you both doing down here?”

His tones were protective. He implied that one ought not to sit out on

Chelsea Embankment without a male escort. Helen resented this, but

Margaret accepted it as part of the good man’s equipment.

“What an age it is since I’ve seen you, Mr. Wilcox. I met Evie in the

Tube, though, lately. I hope you have good news of your son.”

“Paul?” said Mr. Wilcox, extinguishing his cigarette, and sitting down

between them. “Oh, Paul’s all right. We had a line from Madeira. He’ll

be at work again by now.”

“Ugh—” said Helen, shuddering from complex causes.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Isn’t the climate of Nigeria too horrible?”

“Someone’s got to go,” he said simply. “England will never keep her

trade overseas unless she is prepared to make sacrifices. Unless we get

firm in West Africa, Ger—untold complications may follow. Now tell me

all your news.”

“Oh, we’ve had a splendid evening,” cried Helen, who always woke up at

the advent of a visitor. “We belong to a kind of club that reads

papers, Margaret and I—all women, but there is a discussion after. This

evening it was on how one ought to leave one’s money—whether to one’s

family, or to the poor, and if so how—oh, most interesting.”

The man of business smiled. Since his wife’s death he had almost

doubled his income. He was an important figure at last, a reassuring

name on company prospectuses, and life had treated him very well. The

world seemed in his grasp as he listened to the River Thames, which

still flowed inland from the sea. So wonderful to the girls, it held no

mysteries for him. He had helped to shorten its long tidal trough by

taking shares in the lock at Teddington, and if he and other

capitalists thought good, some day it could be shortened again. With a

good dinner inside him and an amiable but academic woman on either

flank, he felt that his hands were on all the ropes of life, and that

what he did not know could not be worth knowing.

“Sounds a most original entertainment!” he exclaimed, and laughed in

his pleasant way. “I wish Evie would go to that sort of thing. But she

hasn’t the time. She’s taken to breed Aberdeen terriers—jolly little

dogs.”

“I expect we’d better be doing the same, really.”

“We pretend we’re improving ourselves, you see,” said Helen a little

sharply, for the Wilcox glamour is not of the kind that returns, and

she had bitter memories of the days when a speech such as he had just

made would have impressed her favourably. “We suppose it is a good

thing to waste an evening once a fortnight over a debate, but, as my

sister says, it may be better to breed dogs.”

“Not at all. I don’t agree with your sister. There’s nothing like a

debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when

I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.”

“Quickness—?”

“Yes. Quickness in argument. Time after time I’ve missed scoring a

point because the other man has had the gift of the gab and I haven’t.

Oh, I believe in these discussions.”

The patronizing tone thought Margaret, came well enough from a man who

was old enough to be their father. She had always maintained that Mr.

Wilcox had a charm. In times of sorrow or emotion his inadequacy had

pained her, but it was pleasant to listen to him now, and to watch his

thick brown moustache and high forehead confronting the stars. But

Helen was nettled. The aim of _their_ debates she implied was Truth.

“Oh yes, it doesn’t much matter what subject you take,” said he.

Margaret laughed and said, “But this is going to be far better than the

debate itself.” Helen recovered herself and laughed too. “No, I won’t

go on,” she declared. “I’ll just put our special case to Mr. Wilcox.”

“About Mr. Bast? Yes, do. He’ll be more lenient to a special case.

“But, Mr. Wilcox, do first light another cigarette. It’s this. We’ve

just come across a young fellow, who’s evidently very poor, and who

seems interest—”

“What’s his profession?”

“Clerk.”

“What in?”

“Do you remember, Margaret?”

“Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company.”

“Oh yes; the nice people who gave Aunt Juley a new hearth-rug. He seems

interesting, in some ways very, and one wishes one could help him. He

is married to a wife whom he doesn’t seem to care for much. He likes

books, and what one may roughly call adventure, and if he had a

chance—But he is so poor. He lives a life where all the money is apt to

go on nonsense and clothes. One is so afraid that circumstances will be

too strong for him and that he will sink. Well, he got mixed up in our

debate. He wasn’t the subject of it, but it seemed to bear on his

point. Suppose a millionaire died, and desired to leave money to help

such a man. How should he be helped? Should he be given three hundred

pounds a year direct, which was Margaret’s plan? Most of them thought

this would pauperize him. Should he and those like him be given free

libraries? I said ‘No!’ He doesn’t want more books to read, but to read

books rightly. My suggestion was he should be given something every

year towards a summer holiday, but then there is his wife, and they

said she would have to go too. Nothing seemed quite right! Now what do

you think? Imagine that you were a millionaire, and wanted to help the

poor. What would you do?”

Mr. Wilcox, whose fortune was not so very far below the standard

indicated, laughed exuberantly. “My dear Miss Schlegel, I will not rush

in where your sex has been unable to tread. I will not add another plan

to the numerous excellent ones that have been already suggested. My

only contribution is this: let your young friend clear out of the

Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company with all possible speed.”

“Why?” said Margaret.

He lowered his voice. “This is between friends. It’ll be in the

Receiver’s hands before Christmas. It’ll smash,” he added, thinking

that she had not understood.

“Dear me, Helen, listen to that. And he’ll have to get another place!”

“_Will_ have? Let him leave the ship before it sinks. Let him get one

now.”

“Rather than wait, to make sure?”

“Decidedly.”

“Why’s that?”

Again the Olympian laugh, and the lowered voice. “Naturally the man

who’s in a situation when he applies stands a better chance, is in a

stronger position, than the man who isn’t. It looks as if he’s worth

something. I know by myself—(this is letting you into the State

secrets)—it affects an employer greatly. Human nature, I’m afraid.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” murmured Margaret, while Helen said, “Our

human nature appears to be the other way round. We employ people

because they’re unemployed. The boot man, for instance.”

“And how does he clean the boots?”

“Not well,” confessed Margaret.

“There you are!”

“Then do you really advise us to tell this youth—”

“I advise nothing,” he interrupted, glancing up and down the

Embankment, in case his indiscretion had been overheard. “I oughtn’t to

have spoken—but I happen to know, being more or less behind the scenes.

The Porphyrion’s a bad, bad concern—Now, don’t say I said so. It’s

outside the Tariff Ring.”

“Certainly I won’t say. In fact, I don’t know what that means.”

“I thought an insurance company never smashed,” was Helen’s

contribution. “Don’t the others always run in and save them?”

“You’re thinking of reinsurance,” said Mr. Wilcox mildly. “It is

exactly there that the Porphyrion is weak. It has tried to undercut,

has been badly hit by a long series of small fires, and it hasn’t been

able to reinsure. I’m afraid that public companies don’t save one

another for love.”

“‘Human nature,’ I suppose,” quoted Helen, and he laughed and agreed

that it was. When Margaret said that she supposed that clerks, like

every one else, found it extremely difficult to get situations in these

days, he replied, “Yes, extremely,” and rose to rejoin his friends. He

knew by his own office—seldom a vacant post, and hundreds of applicants

for it; at present no vacant post.

“And how’s Howards End looking?” said Margaret, wishing to change the

subject before they parted. Mr. Wilcox was a little apt to think one

wanted to get something out of him.

“It’s let.”

“Really. And you wandering homeless in long-haired Chelsea? How strange

are the ways of Fate!”

“No; it’s let unfurnished. We’ve moved.”

“Why, I thought of you both as anchored there for ever. Evie never told

me.”

“I dare say when you met Evie the thing wasn’t settled. We only moved a

week ago. Paul has rather a feeling for the old place, and we held on

for him to have his holiday there; but, really, it is impossibly small.

Endless drawbacks. I forget whether you’ve been up to it?”

“As far as the house, never.”

“Well, Howards End is one of those converted farms. They don’t really

do, spend what you will on them. We messed away with a garage all among

the wych-elm roots, and last year we enclosed a bit of the meadow and

attempted a mockery. Evie got rather keen on Alpine plants. But it

didn’t do—no, it didn’t do. You remember, or your sister will remember,

the farm with those abominable guinea-fowls, and the hedge that the old

woman never would cut properly, so that it all went thin at the bottom.

And, inside the house, the beams—and the staircase through a

door—picturesque enough, but not a place to live in.” He glanced over

the parapet cheerfully. “Full tide. And the position wasn’t right

either. The neighbourhood’s getting suburban. Either be in London or

out of it, I say; so we’ve taken a house in Ducie Street, close to

Sloane Street, and a place right down in Shropshire—Oniton Grange. Ever

heard of Oniton? Do come and see us—right away from everywhere, up

towards Wales.”

“What a change!” said Margaret. But the change was in her own voice,

which had become most sad. “I can’t imagine Howards End or Hilton

without you.”

“Hilton isn’t without us,” he replied. “Charles is there still.”

“Still?” said Margaret, who had not kept up with the Charles’. “But I

thought he was still at Epsom. They were furnishing that Christmas—one

Christmas. How everything alters! I used to admire Mrs. Charles from

our windows very often. Wasn’t it Epsom?”

“Yes, but they moved eighteen months ago. Charles, the good chap”—his

voice dropped—“thought I should be lonely. I didn’t want him to move,

but he would, and took a house at the other end of Hilton, down by the

Six Hills. He had a motor, too. There they all are, a very jolly

party—he and she and the two grandchildren.”

“I manage other people’s affairs so much better than they manage them

themselves,” said Margaret as they shook hands. “When you moved out of

Howards End, I should have moved Mr. Charles Wilcox into it. I should

have kept so remarkable a place in the family.”

“So it is,” he replied. “I haven’t sold it, and don’t mean to.”

“No; but none of you are there.”

“Oh, we’ve got a splendid tenant—Hamar Bryce, an invalid. If Charles

ever wanted it—but he won’t. Dolly is so dependent on modern

conveniences. No, we have all decided against Howards End. We like it

in a way, but now we feel that it is neither one thing nor the other.

One must have one thing or the other.”

“And some people are lucky enough to have both. You’re doing yourself

proud, Mr. Wilcox. My congratulations.”

“And mine,” said Helen.

“Do remind Evie to come and see us—two, Wickham Place. We shan’t be

there very long, either.”

“You, too, on the move?”

“Next September,” Margaret sighed.

“Every one moving! Good-bye.”

The tide had begun to ebb. Margaret leant over the parapet and watched

it sadly. Mr. Wilcox had forgotten his wife, Helen her lover; she

herself was probably forgetting. Every one moving. Is it worth while

attempting the past when there is this continual flux even in the

hearts of men?

Helen roused her by saying: “What a prosperous vulgarian Mr. Wilcox has

grown! I have very little use for him in these days. However, he did

tell us about the Porphyrion. Let us write to Mr. Bast as soon as ever

we get home, and tell him to clear out of it at once.”

“Do; yes, that’s worth doing. Let us.”

“Let’s ask him to tea.”

Chapter 16

Leonard accepted the invitation to tea next Saturday. But he was right;

the visit proved a conspicuous failure.

“Sugar?” said Margaret.

“Cake?” said Helen. “The big cake or the little deadlies? I’m afraid

you thought my letter rather odd, but we’ll explain—we aren’t odd,

really—not affected, really. We’re over-expressive: that’s all.”

As a lady’s lap-dog Leonard did not excel. He was not an Italian, still

less a Frenchman, in whose blood there runs the very spirit of

persiflage and of gracious repartee. His wit was the Cockney’s; it

opened no doors into imagination, and Helen was drawn up short by “The

more a lady has to say, the better,” administered waggishly.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Ladies brighten—”

“Yes, I know. The darlings are regular sunbeams. Let me give you a

plate.”

“How do you like your work?” interposed Margaret.

He, too, was drawn up short. He would not have these women prying into

his work. They were Romance, and so was the room to which he had at

last penetrated, with the queer sketches of people bathing upon its

walls, and so were the very tea-cups, with their delicate borders of

wild strawberries. But he would not let Romance interfere with his

life. There is the devil to pay then.

“Oh, well enough,” he answered.

“Your company is the Porphyrion, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s so”—becoming rather offended. “It’s funny how things get

round.”

“Why funny?” asked Helen, who did not follow the workings of his mind.

“It was written as large as life on your card, and considering we wrote

to you there, and that you replied on the stamped paper—”

“Would you call the Porphyrion one of the big Insurance Companies?”

pursued Margaret.

“It depends what you call big.”

“I mean by big, a solid, well-established concern, that offers a

reasonably good career to its employés.”

“I couldn’t say—some would tell you one thing and others another,” said

the employé uneasily. “For my own part”—he shook his head—“I only

believe half I hear. Not that even; it’s safer. Those clever ones come

to the worse grief, I’ve often noticed. Ah, you can’t be too careful.”

He drank, and wiped his moustache, which was going to be one of those

moustaches that always droop into tea-cups—more bother than they’re

worth, surely, and not fashionable either.

“I quite agree, and that’s why I was curious to know: is it a solid,

well-established concern?”

Leonard had no idea. He understood his own corner of the machine, but

nothing beyond it. He desired to confess neither knowledge nor

ignorance, and under these circumstances, another motion of the head

seemed safest. To him, as to the British public, the Porphyrion was the

Porphyrion of the advertisement—a giant, in the classical style, but

draped sufficiently, who held in one hand a burning torch, and pointed

with the other to St. Paul’s and Windsor Castle. A large sum of money

was inscribed below, and you drew your own conclusions. This giant

caused Leonard to do arithmetic and write letters, to explain the

regulations to new clients, and re-explain them to old ones. A giant

was of an impulsive morality—one knew that much. He would pay for Mrs.

Munt’s hearth-rug with ostentatious haste, a large claim he would

repudiate quietly, and fight court by court. But his true fighting

weight, his antecedents, his amours with other members of the

commercial Pantheon—all these were as uncertain to ordinary mortals as

were the escapades of Zeus. While the gods are powerful, we learn

little about them. It is only in the days of their decadence that a

strong light beats into heaven.

“We were told the Porphyrion’s no go,” blurted Helen. “We wanted to

tell you; that’s why we wrote.”

“A friend of ours did think that it is unsufficiently reinsured,” said

Margaret.

Now Leonard had his clue. He must praise the Porphyrion. “You can tell

your friend,” he said, “that he’s quite wrong.”

“Oh, good!”

The young man coloured a little. In his circle to be wrong was fatal.

The Miss Schlegels did not mind being wrong. They were genuinely glad

that they had been misinformed. To them nothing was fatal but evil.

“Wrong, so to speak,” he added.

“How ‘so to speak’?”

“I mean I wouldn’t say he’s right altogether.”

But this was a blunder. “Then he is right partly,” said the elder

woman, quick as lightning.

Leonard replied that every one was right partly, if it came to that.

“Mr. Bast, I don’t understand business, and I dare say my questions are

stupid, but can you tell me what makes a concern ‘right’ or ‘wrong’?”

Leonard sat back with a sigh.

“Our friend, who is also a business man, was so positive. He said

before Christmas—”

“And advised you to clear out of it,” concluded Helen. “But I don’t see

why he should know better than you do.”

Leonard rubbed his hands. He was tempted to say that he knew nothing

about the thing at all. But a commercial training was too strong for

him. Nor could he say it was a bad thing, for this would be giving it

away; nor yet that it was good, for this would be giving it away

equally. He attempted to suggest that it was something between the two,

with vast possibilities in either direction, but broke down under the

gaze of four sincere eyes. As yet he scarcely distinguished between the

two sisters. One was more beautiful and more lively, but “the Miss

Schlegels” still remained a composite Indian god, whose waving arms and

contradictory speeches were the product of a single mind.

“One can but see,” he remarked, adding, “as Ibsen says, ‘things

happen.’” He was itching to talk about books and make the most of his

romantic hour. Minute after minute slipped away, while the ladies, with

imperfect skill, discussed the subject of reinsurance or praised their

anonymous friend. Leonard grew annoyed—perhaps rightly. He made vague

remarks about not being one of those who minded their affairs being

talked over by others, but they did not take the hint. Men might have

shown more tact. Women, however tactful elsewhere, are heavy-handed

here. They cannot see why we should shroud our incomes and our

prospects in a veil. “How much exactly have you, and how much do you

expect to have next June?” And these were women with a theory, who held

that reticence about money matters is absurd, and that life would be

truer if each would state the exact size of the golden island upon

which he stands, the exact stretch of warp over which he throws the

woof that is not money. How can we do justice to the pattern otherwise?

And the precious minutes slipped away, and Jacky and squalor came

nearer. At last he could bear it no longer, and broke in, reciting the

names of books feverishly. There was a moment of piercing joy when

Margaret said, “So _you_ like Carlyle,” and then the door opened, and

“Mr. Wilcox, Miss Wilcox” entered, preceded by two prancing puppies.

“Oh, the dears! Oh, Evie, how too impossibly sweet!” screamed Helen,

falling on her hands and knees.

“We brought the little fellows round,” said Mr. Wilcox.

“I bred ’em myself.”

“Oh, really! Mr. Bast, come and play with puppies.”

“I’ve got to be going now,” said Leonard sourly.

“But play with puppies a little first.”

“This is Ahab, that’s Jezebel,” said Evie, who was one of those who

name animals after the less successful characters of Old Testament

history.

“I’ve got to be going.”

Helen was too much occupied with puppies to notice him.

“Mr. Wilcox, Mr. Ba—Must you be really? Good-bye!”

“Come again,” said Helen from the floor.

Then Leonard’s gorge arose. Why should he come again? What was the good

of it? He said roundly: “No, I shan’t; I knew it would be a failure.”

Most people would have let him go. “A little mistake. We tried knowing

another class—impossible.” But the Schlegels had never played with

life. They had attempted friendship, and they would take the

consequences. Helen retorted, “I call that a very rude remark. What do

you want to turn on me like that for?” and suddenly the drawing-room

re-echoed to a vulgar row.

“You ask me why I turn on you?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to have me here for?”

“To help you, you silly boy!” cried Helen. “And don’t shout.”

“I don’t want your patronage. I don’t want your tea. I was quite happy.

What do you want to unsettle me for?” He turned to Mr. Wilcox. “I put

it to this gentleman. I ask you, sir, am I to have my brain picked?”

Mr. Wilcox turned to Margaret with the air of humorous strength that he

could so well command. “Are we intruding, Miss Schlegel? Can we be of

any use or shall we go?”

But Margaret ignored him.

“I’m connected with a leading insurance company, sir. I receive what I

take to be an invitation from these—ladies” (he drawled the word). “I

come, and it’s to have my brain picked. I ask you, is it fair?”

“Highly unfair,” said Mr. Wilcox, drawing a gasp from Evie, who knew

that her father was becoming dangerous.

“There, you hear that? Most unfair, the gentleman says. There! Not

content with”—pointing at Margaret—“you can’t deny it.” His voice rose:

he was falling into the rhythm of a scene with Jacky. “But as soon as

I’m useful it’s a very different thing. ‘Oh yes, send for him.

Cross-question him. Pick his brains.’ Oh yes. Now, take me on the

whole, I’m a quiet fellow: I’m law-abiding, I don’t wish any

unpleasantness; but I—I—”

“You,” said Margaret—“you—you—”

Laughter from Evie, as at a repartee.

“You are the man who tried to walk by the Pole Star.”

More laughter.

“You saw the sunrise.”

Laughter.

“You tried to get away from the fogs that are stifling us all—away past

books and houses to the truth. You were looking for a real home.”

“I fail to see the connection,” said Leonard, hot with stupid anger.

“So do I.” There was a pause. “You were that last Sunday—you are this

today. Mr. Bast! I and my sister have talked you over. We wanted to

help you; we also supposed you might help us. We did not have you here

out of charity—which bores us—but because we hoped there would be a

connection between last Sunday and other days. What is the good of your

stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into

our daily lives? They have never entered into mine, but into yours, we

thought—Haven’t we all to struggle against life’s daily greyness,

against pettiness, against mechanical cheerfulness, against suspicion?

I struggle by remembering my friends; others I have known by

remembering some place—some beloved place or tree—we thought you one of

these.”

“Of course, if there’s been any misunderstanding,” mumbled Leonard,

“all I can do is to go. But I beg to state—” He paused. Ahab and

Jezebel danced at his boots and made him look ridiculous. “You were

picking my brain for official information—I can prove it—I—He blew his

nose and left them.

“Can I help you now?” said Mr. Wilcox, turning to Margaret. “May I have

one quiet word with him in the hall?”

“Helen, go after him—do anything—_anything_—to make the noodle

understand.”

Helen hesitated.

“But really—” said their visitor. “Ought she to?”

At once she went.

He resumed. “I would have chimed in, but I felt that you could polish

him off for yourselves—I didn’t interfere. You were splendid, Miss

Schlegel—absolutely splendid. You can take my word for it, but there

are very few women who could have managed him.”

“Oh yes,” said Margaret distractedly.

“Bowling him over with those long sentences was what fetched me,” cried

Evie.

“Yes, indeed,” chuckled her father; “all that part about ‘mechanical

cheerfulness’—oh, fine!”

“I’m very sorry,” said Margaret, collecting herself. “He’s a nice

creature really. I cannot think what set him off. It has been most

unpleasant for you.”

“Oh, _I_ didn’t mind.” Then he changed his mood. He asked if he might

speak as an old friend, and, permission given, said: “Oughtn’t you

really to be more careful?”

Margaret laughed, though her thoughts still strayed after Helen. “Do

you realize that it’s all your fault?” she said. “You’re responsible.”

“I?”

“This is the young man whom we were to warn against the Porphyrion. We

warn him, and—look!”

Mr. Wilcox was annoyed. “I hardly consider that a fair deduction,” he

said.

“Obviously unfair,” said Margaret. “I was only thinking how tangled

things are. It’s our fault mostly—neither yours nor his.”

“Not his?”

“No.”

“Miss Schlegel, you are too kind.”

“Yes, indeed,” nodded Evie, a little contemptuously.

“You behave much too well to people, and then they impose on you. I

know the world and that type of man, and as soon as I entered the room

I saw you had not been treating him properly. You must keep that type

at a distance. Otherwise they forget themselves. Sad, but true. They

aren’t our sort, and one must face the fact.”

“Ye-es.”

“Do admit that we should never have had the outburst if he was a

gentleman.”

“I admit it willingly,” said Margaret, who was pacing up and down the

room. “A gentleman would have kept his suspicions to himself.”

Mr. Wilcox watched her with a vague uneasiness.

“What did he suspect you of?”

“Of wanting to make money out of him.”

“Intolerable brute! But how were you to benefit?”

“Exactly. How indeed! Just horrible, corroding suspicion. One touch of

thought or of goodwill would have brushed it away. Just the senseless

fear that does make men intolerable brutes.”

“I come back to my original point. You ought to be more careful, Miss

Schlegel. Your servants ought to have orders not to let such people

in.”

She turned to him frankly. “Let me explain exactly why we like this

man, and want to see him again.”

“That’s your clever way of thinking. I shall never believe you like

him.”

“I do. Firstly, because he cares for physical adventure, just as you

do. Yes, you go motoring and shooting; he would like to go camping out.

Secondly, he cares for something special _in_ adventure. It is quickest

to call that special something poetry—”

“Oh, he’s one of that writer sort.”

“No—oh no! I mean he may be, but it would be loathsome stiff. His brain

is filled with the husks of books, culture—horrible; we want him to

wash out his brain and go to the real thing. We want to show him how he

may get upsides with life. As I said, either friends or the country,

some”—she hesitated—“either some very dear person or some very dear

place seems necessary to relieve life’s daily grey, and to show that it

is grey. If possible, one should have both.”

Some of her words ran past Mr. Wilcox. He let them run past. Others he

caught and criticized with admirable lucidity.

“Your mistake is this, and it is a very common mistake. This young

bounder has a life of his own. What right have you to conclude it is an

unsuccessful life, or, as you call it, ‘grey’?”

“Because—”

“One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys

and interests—wife, children, snug little home. That’s where we

practical fellows”—he smiled—“are more tolerant than you intellectuals.

We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well

elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after

his own affairs. I quite grant—I look at the faces of the clerks in my

own office, and observe them to be dull, but I don’t know what’s going

on beneath. So, by the way, with London. I have heard you rail against

London, Miss Schlegel, and it seems a funny thing to say but I was very

angry with you. What do you know about London? You only see

civilization from the outside. I don’t say in your case, but in too

many cases that attitude leads to morbidity, discontent, and

Socialism.”

She admitted the strength of his position, though it undermined

imagination. As he spoke, some outposts of poetry and perhaps of

sympathy fell ruining, and she retreated to what she called her “second

line”—to the special facts of the case.

“His wife is an old bore,” she said simply. “He never came home last

Saturday night because he wanted to be alone, and she thought he was

with us.”

“With _you?_”

“Yes.” Evie tittered. “He hasn’t got the cosy home that you assumed. He

needs outside interests.”

“Naughty young man!” cried the girl.

“Naughty?” said Margaret, who hated naughtiness more than sin. “When

you’re married, Miss Wilcox, won’t you want outside interests?”

“He has apparently got them,” put in Mr. Wilcox slyly.

“Yes, indeed, Father.”

“He was tramping in Surrey, if you mean that,” said Margaret, pacing

away rather crossly.

“Oh, I dare say!”

“Miss Wilcox, he was!”

“M-m-m-m!” from Mr. Wilcox, who thought the episode amusing, if risqué.

With most ladies he would not have discussed it, but he was trading on

Margaret’s reputation as an emanicipated woman.

“He said so, and about such a thing he wouldn’t lie.”

They both began to laugh.

“That’s where I differ from you. Men lie about their positions and

prospects, but not about a thing of that sort.”

He shook his head. “Miss Schlegel, excuse me, but I know the type.”

“I said before—he isn’t a type. He cares about adventures rightly. He’s

certain that our smug existence isn’t all. He’s vulgar and hysterical

and bookish, but I don’t think that sums him up. There’s manhood in him

as well. Yes, that’s what I’m trying to say. He’s a real man.”

As she spoke their eyes met, and it was as if Mr. Wilcox’s defences

fell. She saw back to the real man in him. Unwittingly she had touched

his emotions. A woman and two men—they had formed the magic triangle of

sex, and the male was thrilled to jealousy, in case the female was

attracted by another male. Love, say the ascetics, reveals our shameful

kinship with the beasts. Be it so: one can bear that; jealousy is the

real shame. It is jealousy, not love, that connects us with the

farmyard intolerably, and calls up visions of two angry cocks and a

complacent hen. Margaret crushed complacency down because she was

civilized. Mr. Wilcox, uncivilized, continued to feel anger long after

he had rebuilt his defences, and was again presenting a bastion to the

world.

“Miss Schlegel, you’re a pair of dear creatures, but you really _must_

be careful in this uncharitable world. What does your brother say?”

“I forget.”

“Surely he has some opinion?”

“He laughs, if I remember correctly.”

“He’s very clever, isn’t he?” said Evie, who had met and detested Tibby

at Oxford.

“Yes, pretty well—but I wonder what Helen’s doing.”

“She is very young to undertake this sort of thing,” said Mr. Wilcox.

Margaret went out into the landing. She heard no sound, and Mr. Bast’s

topper was missing from the hall.

“Helen!” she called.

“Yes!” replied a voice from the library.

“You in there?”

“Yes—he’s gone some time.”

Margaret went to her. “Why, you’re all alone,” she said.

“Yes—it’s all right, Meg—Poor, poor creature—”

“Come back to the Wilcoxes and tell me later—Mr. W. much concerned, and

slightly titillated.”

“Oh, I’ve no patience with him. I hate him. Poor dear Mr. Bast! he

wanted to talk literature, and we would talk business. Such a muddle of

a man, and yet so worth pulling through. I like him extraordinarily.”

“Well done,” said Margaret, kissing her, “but come into the

drawing-room now, and don’t talk about him to the Wilcoxes. Make light

of the whole thing.”

Helen came and behaved with a cheerfulness that reassured their

visitor—this hen at all events was fancy-free.

“He’s gone with my blessing,” she cried, “and now for puppies.”

As they drove away, Mr. Wilcox said to his daughter:

“I am really concerned at the way those girls go on. They are as clever

as you make ’em, but unpractical—God bless me! One of these days

they’ll go too far. Girls like that oughtn’t to live alone in London.

Until they marry, they ought to have someone to look after them. We

must look in more often—we’re better than no one. You like them, don’t

you, Evie?”

Evie replied: “Helen’s right enough, but I can’t stand the toothy one.

And I shouldn’t have called either of them girls.”

Evie had grown up handsome. Dark-eyed, with the glow of youth under

sunburn, built firmly and firm-lipped, she was the best the Wilcoxes

could do in the way of feminine beauty. For the present, puppies and

her father were the only things she loved, but the net of matrimony was

being prepared for her, and a few days later she was attracted to a Mr.

Percy Cahill, an uncle of Mrs. Charles, and he was attracted to her.

Chapter 17

The Age of Property holds bitter moments even for a proprietor. When a

move is imminent, furniture becomes ridiculous, and Margaret now lay

awake at nights wondering where, where on earth they and all their

belongings would be deposited in September next. Chairs, tables,

pictures, books, that had rumbled down to them through the generations,

must rumble forward again like a slide of rubbish to which she longed

to give the final push, and send toppling into the sea. But there were

all their father’s books—they never read them, but they were their

father’s, and must be kept. There was the marble-topped

chiffonier—their mother had set store by it, they could not remember

why. Round every knob and cushion in the house sentiment gathered, a

sentiment that was at times personal, but more often a faint piety to

the dead, a prolongation of rites that might have ended at the grave.

It was absurd, if you came to think of it; Helen and Tibby came to

think of it: Margaret was too busy with the house-agents. The feudal

ownership of land did bring dignity, whereas the modern ownership of

movables is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We are reverting to

the civilization of luggage, and historians of the future will note how

the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the

earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty.

The Schlegels were certainly the poorer for the loss of Wickham Place.

It had helped to balance their lives, and almost to counsel them. Nor

is their ground-landlord spiritually the richer. He has built flats on

its site, his motor-cars grow swifter, his exposures of Socialism more

trenchant. But he has spilt the precious distillation of the years, and

no chemistry of his can give it back to society again.

Margaret grew depressed; she was anxious to settle on a house before

they left town to pay their annual visit to Mrs. Munt. She enjoyed this

visit, and wanted to have her mind at ease for it. Swanage, though

dull, was stable, and this year she longed more than usual for its

fresh air and for the magnificent downs that guard it on the north. But

London thwarted her; in its atmosphere she could not concentrate.

London only stimulates, it cannot sustain; and Margaret, hurrying over

its surface for a house without knowing what sort of a house she

wanted, was paying for many a thrilling sensation in the past. She

could not even break loose from culture, and her time was wasted by

concerts which it would be a sin to miss, and invitations which it

would never do to refuse. At last she grew desperate; she resolved that

she would go nowhere and be at home to no one until she found a house,

and broke the resolution in half an hour.

Once she had humorously lamented that she had never been to Simpson’s

restaurant in the Strand. Now a note arrived from Miss Wilcox, asking

her to lunch there. Mr. Cahill was coming, and the three would have

such a jolly chat, and perhaps end up at the Hippodrome. Margaret had

no strong regard for Evie, and no desire to meet her fiancé, and she

was surprised that Helen, who had been far funnier about Simpson’s, had

not been asked instead. But the invitation touched her by its intimate

tone. She must know Evie Wilcox better than she supposed, and declaring

that she “simply must,” she accepted.

But when she saw Evie at the entrance of the restaurant, staring

fiercely at nothing after the fashion of athletic women, her heart

failed her anew. Miss Wilcox had changed perceptibly since her

engagement. Her voice was gruffer, her manner more downright, and she

was inclined to patronize the more foolish virgin. Margaret was silly

enough to be pained at this. Depressed at her isolation, she saw not

only houses and furniture, but the vessel of life itself slipping past

her, with people like Evie and Mr. Cahill on board.

There are moments when virtue and wisdom fail us, and one of them came

to her at Simpson’s in the Strand. As she trod the staircase, narrow,

but carpeted thickly, as she entered the eating-room, where saddles of

mutton were being trundled up to expectant clergymen, she had a strong,

if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never

come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and

literature, and where no one ever got married or succeeded in remaining

engaged. Then came a little surprise. “Father might be of the

party—yes, Father was.” With a smile of pleasure she moved forward to

greet him, and her feeling of loneliness vanished.

“I thought I’d get round if I could,” said he. “Evie told me of her

little plan, so I just slipped in and secured a table. Always secure a

table first. Evie, don’t pretend you want to sit by your old father,

because you don’t. Miss Schlegel, come in my side, out of pity. My

goodness, but you look tired! Been worrying round after your young

clerks?”

“No, after houses,” said Margaret, edging past him into the box. “I’m

hungry, not tired; I want to eat heaps.”

“That’s good. What’ll you have?”

“Fish pie,” said she, with a glance at the menu.

“Fish pie! Fancy coming for fish pie to Simpson’s. It’s not a bit the

thing to go for here.”

“Go for something for me, then,” said Margaret, pulling off her gloves.

Her spirits were rising, and his reference to Leonard Bast had warmed

her curiously.

“Saddle of mutton,” said he after profound reflection: “and cider to

drink. That’s the type of thing. I like this place, for a joke, once in

a way. It is so thoroughly Old English. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, who didn’t. The order was given, the joint rolled

up, and the carver, under Mr. Wilcox’s direction, cut the meat where it

was succulent, and piled their plates high. Mr. Cahill insisted on

sirloin, but admitted that he had made a mistake later on. He and Evie

soon fell into a conversation of the “No, I didn’t; yes, you did”

type—conversation which, though fascinating to those who are engaged in

it, neither desires nor deserves the attention of others.

“It’s a golden rule to tip the carver. Tip everywhere’s my motto.”

“Perhaps it does make life more human.”

“Then the fellows know one again. Especially in the East, if you tip,

they remember you from year’s end to year’s end.

“Have you been in the East?”

“Oh, Greece and the Levant. I used to go out for sport and business to

Cyprus; some military society of a sort there. A few piastres, properly

distributed, help to keep one’s memory green. But you, of course, think

this shockingly cynical. How’s your discussion society getting on? Any

new Utopias lately?”

“No, I’m house-hunting, Mr. Wilcox, as I’ve already told you once. Do

you know of any houses?”

“Afraid I don’t.”

“Well, what’s the point of being practical if you can’t find two

distressed females a house? We merely want a small house with large

rooms, and plenty of them.”

“Evie, I like that! Miss Schlegel expects me to turn house agent for

her!”

“What’s that, Father?

“I want a new home in September, and someone must find it. I can’t.”

“Percy, do you know of anything?”

“I can’t say I do,” said Mr. Cahill.

“How like you! You’re never any good.”

“Never any good. Just listen to her! Never any good. Oh, come!”

“Well, you aren’t. Miss Schlegel, is he?”

The torrent of their love, having splashed these drops at Margaret,

swept away on its habitual course. She sympathized with it now, for a

little comfort had restored her geniality. Speech and silence pleased

her equally, and while Mr. Wilcox made some preliminary inquiries about

cheese, her eyes surveyed the restaurant, and admired its

well-calculated tributes to the solidity of our past. Though no more

Old English than the works of Kipling, it had selected its

reminiscences so adroitly that her criticism was lulled, and the guests

whom it was nourishing for imperial purposes bore the outer semblance

of Parson Adams or Tom Jones. Scraps of their talk jarred oddly on the

ear. “Right you are! I’ll cable out to Uganda this evening,” came from

the table behind. “Their Emperor wants war; well, let him have it,” was

the opinion of a clergyman. She smiled at such incongruities. “Next

time,” she said to Mr. Wilcox, “you shall come to lunch with me at Mr.

Eustace Miles’s.”

“With pleasure.”

“No, you’d hate it,” she said, pushing her glass towards him for some

more cider. “It’s all proteids and body-buildings, and people come up

to you and beg your pardon, but you have such a beautiful aura.”

“A what?”

“Never heard of an aura? Oh, happy, happy man! I scrub at mine for

hours. Nor of an astral plane?”

He had heard of astral planes, and censured them.

“Just so. Luckily it was Helen’s aura, not mine, and she had to

chaperone it and do the politenesses. I just sat with my handkerchief

in my mouth till the man went.”

“Funny experiences seem to come to you two girls. No one’s ever asked

me about my—what d’ye call it? Perhaps I’ve not got one.”

“You’re bound to have one, but it may be such a terrible colour that no

one dares mention it.”

“Tell me, though, Miss Schlegel, do you really believe in the

supernatural and all that?”

“Too difficult a question.”

“Why’s that? Gruyère or Stilton?”

“Gruyère, please.”

“Better have Stilton.”

“Stilton. Because, though I don’t believe in auras, and think

Theosophy’s only a halfway-house—”

“—Yet there may be something in it all the same,” he concluded, with a

frown.

“Not even that. It may be halfway in the wrong direction. I can’t

explain. I don’t believe in all these fads, and yet I don’t like saying

that I don’t believe in them.”

He seemed unsatisfied, and said: “So you wouldn’t give me your word

that you _don’t_ hold with astral bodies and all the rest of it?”

“I could,” said Margaret, surprised that the point was of any

importance to him. “Indeed, I will. When I talked about scrubbing my

aura, I was only trying to be funny. But why do you want this settled?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now, Mr. Wilcox, you do know.”

“Yes, I am,” “No, you’re not,” burst from the lovers opposite. Margaret

was silent for a moment, and then changed the subject.

“How’s your house?”

“Much the same as when you honoured it last week.”

“I don’t mean Ducie Street. Howards End, of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“Can’t you turn out your tenant and let it to us? We’re nearly

demented.”

“Let me think. I wish I could help you. But I thought you wanted to be

in town. One bit of advice: fix your district, then fix your price, and

then don’t budge. That’s how I got both Ducie Street and Oniton. I said

to myself, ‘I mean to be exactly here,’ and I was, and Oniton’s a place

in a thousand.”

“But I do budge. Gentlemen seem to mesmerize houses—cow them with an

eye, and up they come, trembling. Ladies can’t. It’s the houses that

are mesmerizing me. I’ve no control over the saucy things. Houses are

alive. No?”

“I’m out of my depth,” he said, and added: “Didn’t you talk rather like

that to your office boy?”

“Did I?—I mean I did, more or less. I talk the same way to every one—or

try to.”

“Yes, I know. And how much do you suppose that he understood of it?”

“That’s his lookout. I don’t believe in suiting my conversation to my

company. One can doubtless hit upon some medium of exchange that seems

to do well enough, but it’s no more like the real thing than money is

like food. There’s no nourishment in it. You pass it to the lower

classes, and they pass it back to you, and this you call ‘social

intercourse’ or ‘mutual endeavour,’ when it’s mutual priggishness if

it’s anything. Our friends at Chelsea don’t see this. They say one

ought to be at all costs intelligible, and sacrifice—”

“Lower classes,” interrupted Mr. Wilcox, as it were thrusting his hand

into her speech. “Well, you do admit that there are rich and poor.

That’s something.”

Margaret could not reply. Was he incredibly stupid, or did he

understand her better than she understood herself?

“You do admit that, if wealth was divided up equally, in a few years

there would be rich and poor again just the same. The hard-working man

would come to the top, the wastrel sink to the bottom.”

“Every one admits that.”

“Your Socialists don’t.”

“My Socialists do. Yours mayn’t; but I strongly suspect yours of being

not Socialists, but ninepins, which you have constructed for your own

amusement. I can’t imagine any living creature who would bowl over

quite so easily.”

He would have resented this had she not been a woman. But women may say

anything—it was one of his holiest beliefs—and he only retorted, with a

gay smile: “I don’t care. You’ve made two damaging admissions, and I’m

heartily with you in both.”

In time they finished lunch, and Margaret, who had excused herself from

the Hippodrome, took her leave. Evie had scarcely addressed her, and

she suspected that the entertainment had been planned by the father. He

and she were advancing out of their respective families towards a more

intimate acquaintance. It had begun long ago. She had been his wife’s

friend, and, as such, he had given her that silver vinaigrette as a

memento. It was pretty of him to have given that vinaigrette, and he

had always preferred her to Helen—unlike most men. But the advance had

been astonishing lately. They had done more in a week than in two

years, and were really beginning to know each other.

She did not forget his promise to sample Eustace Miles, and asked him

as soon as she could secure Tibby as his chaperon. He came, and partook

of body-building dishes with humility.

Next morning the Schlegels left for Swanage. They had not succeeded in

finding a new home.

Chapter 18

As they were seated at Aunt Juley’s breakfast-table at The Bays,

parrying her excessive hospitality and enjoying the view of the bay, a

letter came for Margaret and threw her into perturbation. It was from

Mr. Wilcox. It announced an “important change” in his plans. Owing to

Evie’s marriage, he had decided to give up his house in Ducie Street,

and was willing to let it on a yearly tenancy. It was a businesslike

letter, and stated frankly what he would do for them and what he would

not do. Also the rent. If they approved, Margaret was to come up _at

once_—the words were underlined, as is necessary when dealing with

women—and to go over the house with him. If they disapproved, a wire

would oblige, as he should put it into the hands of an agent.

The letter perturbed, because she was not sure what it meant. If he

liked her, if he had manoeuvred to get her to Simpson’s, might this be

a manoeuvre to get her to London, and result in an offer of marriage?

She put it to herself as indelicately as possible, in the hope that her

brain would cry, “Rubbish, you’re a self-conscious fool!” But her brain

only tingled a little and was silent, and for a time she sat gazing at

the mincing waves, and wondering whether the news would seem strange to

the others.

As soon as she began speaking, the sound of her own voice reassured

her. There could be nothing in it. The replies also were typical, and

in the buff of conversation her fears vanished.

“You needn’t go though—” began her hostess.

“I needn’t, but hadn’t I better? It’s really getting rather serious. We

let chance after chance slip, and the end of it is we shall be bundled

out bag and baggage into the street. We don’t know what we _want_,

that’s the mischief with us—”

“No, we have no real ties,” said Helen, helping herself to toast.

“Shan’t I go up to town today, take the house if it’s the least

possible, and then come down by the afternoon train tomorrow, and start

enjoying myself. I shall be no fun to myself or to others until this

business is off my mind.”

“But you won’t do anything rash, Margaret?”

“There’s nothing rash to do.”

“Who _are_ the Wilcoxes?” said Tibby, a question that sounds silly, but

was really extremely subtle, as his aunt found to her cost when she

tried to answer it. “I don’t _manage_ the Wilcoxes; I don’t see where

they come _in_.”

“No more do I,” agreed Helen. “It’s funny that we just don’t lose sight

of them. Out of all our hotel acquaintances, Mr. Wilcox is the only one

who has stuck. It is now over three years, and we have drifted away

from far more interesting people in that time.

“Interesting people don’t get one houses.”

“Meg, if you start in your honest-English vein, I shall throw the

treacle at you.”

“It’s a better vein than the cosmopolitan,” said Margaret, getting up.

“Now, children, which is it to be? You know the Ducie Street house.

Shall I say yes or shall I say no? Tibby love—which? I’m specially

anxious to pin you both.”

“It all depends what meaning you attach to the word ‘possi—’”

“It depends on nothing of the sort. Say ‘yes.’”

“Say ‘no.’”

Then Margaret spoke rather seriously. “I think,” she said, “that our

race is degenerating. We cannot settle even this little thing; what

will it be like when we have to settle a big one?”

“It will be as easy as eating,” returned Helen.

“I was thinking of Father. How could he settle to leave Germany as he

did, when he had fought for it as a young man, and all his feelings and

friends were Prussian? How could he break loose with Patriotism and

begin aiming at something else? It would have killed me. When he was

nearly forty he could change countries and ideals—and we, at our age,

can’t change houses. It’s humiliating.”

“Your father may have been able to change countries,” said Mrs. Munt

with asperity, “and that may or may not be a good thing. But he could

change houses no better than you can, in fact, much worse. Never shall

I forget what poor Emily suffered in the move from Manchester.”

“I knew it,” cried Helen. “I told you so. It is the little things one

bungles at. The big, real ones are nothing when they come.”

“Bungle, my dear! You are too little to recollect—in fact, you weren’t

there. But the furniture was actually in the vans and on the move

before the lease for Wickham Place was signed, and Emily took train

with baby—who was Margaret then—and the smaller luggage for London,

without so much as knowing where her new home would be. Getting away

from that house may be hard, but it is nothing to the misery that we

all went through getting you into it.”

Helen, with her mouth full, cried: “And that’s the man who beat the

Austrians, and the Danes, and the French, and who beat the Germans that

were inside himself. And we’re like him.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Tibby. “Remember that I am cosmopolitan,

please.”

“Helen may be right.”

“Of course she’s right,” said Helen.

Helen might be right, but she did not go up to London. Margaret did

that. An interrupted holiday is the worst of the minor worries, and one

may be pardoned for feeling morbid when a business letter snatches one

away from the sea and friends. She could not believe that her father

had ever felt the same. Her eyes had been troubling her lately, so that

she could not read in the train, and it bored her to look at the

landscape, which she had seen but yesterday. At Southampton she “waved”

to Frieda: Frieda was on her way down to join them at Swanage, and Mrs.

Munt had calculated that their trains would cross. But Frieda was

looking the other way, and Margaret travelled on to town feeling

solitary and old-maidish. How like an old maid to fancy that Mr. Wilcox

was courting her! She had once visited a spinster—poor, silly, and

unattractive—whose mania it was that every man who approached her fell

in love. How Margaret’s heart had bled for the deluded thing! How she

had lectured, reasoned, and in despair acquiesced! “I may have been

deceived by the curate, my dear, but the young fellow who brings the

midday post really is fond of me, and has, as a matter fact—” It had

always seemed to her the most hideous corner of old age, yet she might

be driven into it herself by the mere pressure of virginity.

Mr. Wilcox met her at Waterloo himself. She felt certain that he was

not the same as usual; for one thing, he took offence at everything she

said.

“This is awfully kind of you,” she began, “but I’m afraid it’s not

going to do. The house has not been built that suits the Schlegel

family.”

“What! Have you come up determined not to deal?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly? In that case let’s be starting.”

She lingered to admire the motor, which was new and a fairer creature

than the vermilion giant that had borne Aunt Juley to her doom three

years before.

“Presumably it’s very beautiful,” she said. “How do you like it,

Crane?”

“Come, let’s be starting,” repeated her host. “How on earth did you

know that my chauffeur was called Crane?”

“Why, I know Crane: I’ve been for a drive with Evie once. I know that

you’ve got a parlourmaid called Milton. I know all sorts of things.”

“Evie!” he echoed in injured tones. “You won’t see her. She’s gone out

with Cahill. It’s no fun, I can tell you, being left so much alone.

I’ve got my work all day—indeed, a great deal too much of it—but when I

come home in the evening, I tell you, I can’t stand the house.”

“In my absurd way, I’m lonely too,” Margaret replied. “It’s

heart-breaking to leave one’s old home. I scarcely remember anything

before Wickham Place, and Helen and Tibby were born there. Helen says—”

“You, too, feel lonely?”

“Horribly. Hullo, Parliament’s back!”

Mr. Wilcox glanced at Parliament contemptuously. The more important

ropes of life lay elsewhere. “Yes, they are talking again.” said he.

“But you were going to say—”

“Only some rubbish about furniture. Helen says it alone endures while

men and houses perish, and that in the end the world will be a desert

of chairs and sofas—just imagine it!—rolling through infinity with no

one to sit upon them.”

“Your sister always likes her little joke.”

“She says ‘Yes,’ my brother says ‘No,’ to Ducie Street. It’s no fun

helping us, Mr. Wilcox, I assure you.”

“You are not as unpractical as you pretend. I shall never believe it.”

Margaret laughed. But she was—quite as unpractical. She could not

concentrate on details. Parliament, the Thames, the irresponsive

chauffeur, would flash into the field of house-hunting, and all demand

some comment or response. It is impossible to see modern life steadily

and see it whole, and she had chosen to see it whole. Mr. Wilcox saw

steadily. He never bothered over the mysterious or the private. The

Thames might run inland from the sea, the chauffeur might conceal all

passion and philosophy beneath his unhealthy skin. They knew their own

business, and he knew his.

Yet she liked being with him. He was not a rebuke, but a stimulus, and

banished morbidity. Some twenty years her senior, he preserved a gift

that she supposed herself to have already lost—not youth’s creative

power, but its self-confidence and optimism. He was so sure that it was

a very pleasant world. His complexion was robust, his hair had receded

but not thinned, the thick moustache and the eyes that Helen had

compared to brandy-balls had an agreeable menace in them, whether they

were turned towards the slums or towards the stars. Some day—in the

millennium—there may be no need for his type. At present, homage is due

to it from those who think themselves superior, and who possibly are.

“At all events you responded to my telegram promptly,” he remarked.

“Oh, even I know a good thing when I see it.”

“I’m glad you don’t despise the goods of this world.”

“Heavens, no! Only idiots and prigs do that.”

“I am glad, very glad,” he repeated, suddenly softening and turning to

her, as if the remark had pleased him. “There is so much cant talked in

would-be intellectual circles. I am glad you don’t share it.

Self-denial is all very well as a means of strengthening the character.

But I can’t stand those people who run down comforts. They have usually

some axe to grind. Can you?”

“Comforts are of two kinds,” said Margaret, who was keeping herself in

hand—“those we can share with others, like fire, weather, or music; and

those we can’t—food, for instance. It depends.”

“I mean reasonable comforts, of course. I shouldn’t like to think that

you—” He bent nearer; the sentence died unfinished. Margaret’s head

turned very stupid, and the inside of it seemed to revolve like the

beacon in a lighthouse. He did not kiss her, for the hour was half-past

twelve, and the car was passing by the stables of Buckingham Palace.

But the atmosphere was so charged with emotion that people only seemed

to exist on her account, and she was surprised that Crane did not

realize this, and turn round. Idiot though she might be, surely Mr.

Wilcox was more—how should one put it?—more psychological than usual.

Always a good judge of character for business purposes, he seemed this

afternoon to enlarge his field, and to note qualities outside neatness,

obedience, and decision.

“I want to go over the whole house,” she announced when they arrived.

“As soon as I get back to Swanage, which will be tomorrow afternoon,

I’ll talk it over once more with Helen and Tibby, and wire you ‘yes’ or

‘no.’”

“Right. The dining-room.” And they began their survey.

The dining-room was big, but over-furnished. Chelsea would have moaned

aloud. Mr. Wilcox had eschewed those decorative schemes that wince, and

relent, and refrain, and achieve beauty by sacrificing comfort and

pluck. After so much self-colour and self-denial, Margaret viewed with

relief the sumptuous dado, the frieze, the gilded wall-paper, amid

whose foliage parrots sang. It would never do with her own furniture,

but those heavy chairs, that immense side-board loaded with

presentation plate, stood up against its pressure like men. The room

suggested men, and Margaret, keen to derive the modern capitalist from

the warriors and hunters of the past, saw it as an ancient guest-hall,

where the lord sat at meat among his thanes. Even the Bible—the Dutch

Bible that Charles had brought back from the Boer War—fell into

position. Such a room admitted loot.

“Now the entrance-hall.”

The entrance-hall was paved.

“Here we fellows smoke.”

We fellows smoked in chairs of maroon leather. It was as if a motor-car

had spawned. “Oh, jolly!” said Margaret, sinking into one of them.

“You do like it?” he said, fixing his eyes on her upturned face, and

surely betraying an almost intimate note. “It’s all rubbish not making

oneself comfortable. Isn’t it?”

“Ye-es. Semi-rubbish. Are those Cruikshanks?”

“Gillrays. Shall we go on upstairs?”

“Does all this furniture come from Howards End?”

“The Howards End furniture has all gone to Oniton.”

“Does—However, I’m concerned with the house, not the furniture. How big

is this smoking-room?”

“Thirty by fifteen. No, wait a minute. Fifteen and a half.”

“Ah, well. Mr. Wilcox, aren’t you ever amused at the solemnity with

which we middle classes approach the subject of houses?”

They proceeded to the drawing-room. Chelsea managed better here. It was

sallow and ineffective. One could visualize the ladies withdrawing to

it, while their lords discussed life’s realities below, to the

accompaniment of cigars. Had Mrs. Wilcox’s drawing-room looked thus at

Howards End? Just as this thought entered Margaret’s brain, Mr. Wilcox

did ask her to be his wife, and the knowledge that she had been right

so overcame her that she nearly fainted.

But the proposal was not to rank among the world’s great love scenes.

“Miss Schlegel”—his voice was firm—“I have had you up on false

pretences. I want to speak about a much more serious matter than a

house.”

Margaret almost answered: “I know—”

“Could you be induced to share my—is it probable—”

“Oh, Mr. Wilcox!” she interrupted, holding the piano and averting her

eyes. “I see, I see. I will write to you afterwards if I may.”

He began to stammer. “Miss Schlegel—Margaret—you don’t understand.”

“Oh yes! Indeed, yes!” said Margaret.

“I am asking you to be my wife.”

So deep already was her sympathy, that when he said, “I am asking you

to be my wife,” she made herself give a little start. She must show

surprise if he expected it. An immense joy came over her. It was

indescribable. It had nothing to do with humanity, and most resembled

the all-pervading happiness of fine weather. Fine weather is due to the

sun, but Margaret could think of no central radiance here. She stood in

his drawing-room happy, and longing to give happiness. On leaving him

she realized that the central radiance had been love.

“You aren’t offended, Miss Schlegel?”

“How could I be offended?”

There was a moment’s pause. He was anxious to get rid of her, and she

knew it. She had too much intuition to look at him as he struggled for

possessions that money cannot buy. He desired comradeship and

affection, but he feared them, and she, who had taught herself only to

desire, and could have clothed the struggle with beauty, held back, and

hesitated with him.

“Good-bye,” she continued. “You will have a letter from me—I am going

back to Swanage tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“Good-bye, and it’s you I thank.”

“I may order the motor round, mayn’t I?”

“That would be most kind.”

“I wish I had written instead. Ought I to have written?”

“Not at all.”

“There’s just one question—”

She shook her head. He looked a little bewildered, and they parted.

They parted without shaking hands: she had kept the interview, for his

sake, in tints of the quietest grey. Yet she thrilled with happiness

ere she reached her own house. Others had loved her in the past, if one

may apply to their brief desires so grave a word, but those others had

been “ninnies”—young men who had nothing to do, old men who could find

nobody better. And she had often “loved,” too, but only so far as the

facts of sex demanded: mere yearnings for the masculine, to be

dismissed for what they were worth, with a smile. Never before had her

personality been touched. She was not young or very rich, and it amazed

her that a man of any standing should take her seriously. As she sat

trying to do accounts in her empty house, amidst beautiful pictures and

noble books, waves of emotion broke, as if a tide of passion was

flowing through the night air. She shook her head, tried to concentrate

her attention, and failed. In vain did she repeat: “But I’ve been

through this sort of thing before.” She had never been through it; the

big machinery, as opposed to the little, had been set in motion, and

the idea that Mr. Wilcox loved, obsessed her before she came to love

him in return.

She would come to no decision yet. “Oh, sir, this is so sudden”—that

prudish phrase exactly expressed her when her time came. Premonitions

are not preparation. She must examine more closely her own nature and

his; she must talk it over judicially with Helen. It had been a strange

love-scene—the central radiance unacknowledged from first to last. She,

in his place, would have said “Ich liebe dich,” but perhaps it was not

his habit to open the heart. He might have done it if she had pressed

him—as a matter of duty, perhaps; England expects every man to open his

heart once; but the effort would have jarred him, and never, if she

could avoid it, should he lose those defences that he had chosen to

raise against the world. He must never be bothered with emotional talk,

or with a display of sympathy. He was an elderly man now, and it would

be futile and impudent to correct him.

Mrs. Wilcox strayed in and out, ever a welcome ghost; surveying the

scene, thought Margaret, without one hint of bitterness.

Chapter 19

If one wanted to show a foreigner England, perhaps the wisest course

would be to take him to the final section of the Purbeck Hills, and

stand him on their summit, a few miles to the east of Corfe. Then

system after system of our island would roll together under his feet.

Beneath him is the valley of the Frome, and all the wild lands that

come tossing down from Dorchester, black and gold, to mirror their

gorse in the expanses of Poole. The valley of the Stour is beyond,

unaccountable stream, dirty at Blandford, pure at Wimborne—the Stour,

sliding out of fat fields, to marry the Avon beneath the tower of

Christchurch. The valley of the Avon—invisible, but far to the north

the trained eye may see Clearbury Ring that guards it, and the

imagination may leap beyond that on to Salisbury Plain itself, and

beyond the Plain to all the glorious downs of Central England. Nor is

Suburbia absent. Bournemouth’s ignoble coast cowers to the right,

heralding the pine-trees that mean, for all their beauty, red houses,

and the Stock Exchange, and extend to the gates of London itself. So

tremendous is the City’s trail! But the cliffs of Freshwater it shall

never touch, and the island will guard the Island’s purity till the end

of time. Seen from the west, the Wight is beautiful beyond all laws of

beauty. It is as if a fragment of England floated forward to greet the

foreigner—chalk of our chalk, turf of our turf, epitome of what will

follow. And behind the fragment lies Southampton, hostess to the

nations, and Portsmouth, a latent fire, and all around it, with double

and treble collision of tides, swirls the sea. How many villages appear

in this view! How many castles! How many churches, vanished or

triumphant! How many ships, railways, and roads! What incredible

variety of men working beneath that lucent sky to what final end! The

reason fails, like a wave on the Swanage beach; the imagination swells,

spreads, and deepens, until it becomes geographic and encircles

England.

So Frieda Mosebach, now Frau Architect Liesecke, and mother to her

husband’s baby, was brought up to these heights to be impressed, and,

after a prolonged gaze, she said that the hills were more swelling here

than in Pomerania, which was true, but did not seem to Mrs. Munt

apposite. Poole Harbour was dry, which led her to praise the absence of

muddy foreshore at Friedrich Wilhelms Bad, Rügen, where beech-trees

hang over the tideless Baltic, and cows may contemplate the brine.

Rather unhealthy Mrs. Munt thought this would be, water being safer

when it moved about.

“And your English lakes—Vindermere, Grasmere—are they, then,

unhealthy?”

“No, Frau Liesecke; but that is because they are fresh water, and

different. Salt water ought to have tides, and go up and down a great

deal, or else it smells. Look, for instance, at an aquarium.”

“An aquarium! Oh, _Meesis_ Munt, you mean to tell me that fresh

aquariums stink less than salt? Why, when Victor, my brother-in-law,

collected many tadpoles—”

“You are not to say ‘stink,’” interrupted Helen; “at least, you may say

it, but you must pretend you are being funny while you say it.”

“Then ‘smell.’ And the mud of your Pool down there—does it not smell,

or may I say ‘stink, ha, ha’?”

“There always has been mud in Poole Harbour,” said Mrs. Munt, with a

slight frown. “The rivers bring it down, and a most valuable

oyster-fishery depends upon it.”

“Yes, that is so,” conceded Frieda; and another international incident

was closed.

“‘Bournemouth is,’” resumed their hostess, quoting a local rhyme to

which she was much attached—” ‘Bournemouth is, Poole was, and Swanage

is to be the most important town of all and biggest of the three.’ Now,

Frau Liesecke, I have shown you Bournemouth, and I have shown you

Poole, so let us walk backward a little, and look down again at

Swanage.”

“Aunt Juley, wouldn’t that be Meg’s train?”

A tiny puff of smoke had been circling the harbour, and now was bearing

southwards towards them over the black and the gold.

“Oh, dearest Margaret, I do hope she won’t be overtired.”

“Oh, I do wonder—I do wonder whether she’s taken the house.”

“I hope she hasn’t been hasty.”

“So do I—oh, so do I.”

“Will it be as beautiful as Wickham Place?” Frieda asked.

“I should think it would. Trust Mr. Wilcox for doing himself proud. All

those Ducie Street houses are beautiful in their modern way, and I

can’t think why he doesn’t keep on with it. But it’s really for Evie

that he went there, and now that Evie’s going to be married—”

“Ah!”

“You’ve never seen Miss Wilcox, Frieda. How absurdly matrimonial you

are!”

“But sister to that Paul?”

“Yes.”

“And to that Charles,” said Mrs. Munt with feeling. “Oh, Helen, Helen,

what a time that was!”

Helen laughed. “Meg and I haven’t got such tender hearts. If there’s a

chance of a cheap house, we go for it.”

“Now look, Frau Liesecke, at my niece’s train. You see, it is coming

towards us—coming, coming; and, when it gets to Corfe, it will actually

go _through_ the downs, on which we are standing, so that, if we walk

over, as I suggested, and look down on Swanage, we shall see it coming

on the other side. Shall we?”

Frieda assented, and in a few minutes they had crossed the ridge and

exchanged the greater view for the lesser. Rather a dull valley lay

below, backed by the slope of the coastward downs. They were looking

across the Isle of Purbeck and on to Swanage, soon to be the most

important town of all, and ugliest of the three. Margaret’s train

reappeared as promised, and was greeted with approval by her aunt. It

came to a standstill in the middle distance, and there it had been

planned that Tibby should meet her, and drive her, and a tea-basket, up

to join them.

“You see,” continued Helen to her cousin, “the Wilcoxes collect houses

as your Victor collects tadpoles. They have, one, Ducie Street; two,

Howards End, where my great rumpus was; three, a country seat in

Shropshire; four, Charles has a house in Hilton; and five, another near

Epsom; and six, Evie will have a house when she marries, and probably a

pied-à-terre in the country—which makes seven. Oh yes, and Paul a hut

in Africa makes eight. I wish we could get Howards End. That was

something like a dear little house! Didn’t you think so, Aunt Juley?”

“ I had too much to do, dear, to look at it,” said Mrs. Munt, with a

gracious dignity. “I had everything to settle and explain, and Charles

Wilcox to keep in his place besides. It isn’t likely I should remember

much. I just remember having lunch in your bedroom.”

“Yes so do I. But, oh dear, dear, how dead it all seems! And in the

autumn there began this anti-Pauline movement—you, and Frieda, and Meg,

and Mrs. Wilcox, all obsessed with the idea that I might yet marry

Paul.”

“You yet may,” said Frieda despondently.

Helen shook her head. “The Great Wilcox Peril will never return. If I’m

certain of anything it’s of that.”

“One is certain of nothing but the truth of one’s own emotions.”

The remark fell damply on the conversation. But Helen slipped her arm

round her cousin, somehow liking her the better for making it. It was

not an original remark, nor had Frieda appropriated it passionately,

for she had a patriotic rather than a philosophic mind. Yet it betrayed

that interest in the universal which the average Teuton possesses and

the average Englishman does not. It was, however illogically, the good,

the beautiful, the true, as opposed to the respectable, the pretty, the

adequate. It was a landscape of Böcklin’s beside a landscape of

Leader’s, strident and ill-considered, but quivering into supernatural

life. It sharpened idealism, stirred the soul. It may have been a bad

preparation for what followed.

“Look!” cried Aunt Juley, hurrying away from generalities over the

narrow summit of the down. “Stand where I stand, and you will see the

pony-cart coming. I see the pony-cart coming.”

They stood and saw the pony-cart coming. Margaret and Tibby were

presently seen coming in it. Leaving the outskirts of Swanage, it drove

for a little through the budding lanes, and then began the ascent.

“Have you got the house?” they shouted, long before she could possibly

hear.

Helen ran down to meet her. The highroad passed over a saddle, and a

track went thence at right angles along the ridge of the down.

“Have you got the house?”

Margaret shook her head.

“Oh, what a nuisance! So we’re as we were?”

“Not exactly.”

She got out, looking tired.

“Some mystery,” said Tibby. “We are to be enlightened presently.”

Margaret came close up to her and whispered that she had had a proposal

of marriage from Mr. Wilcox.

Helen was amused. She opened the gate on to the downs so that her

brother might lead the pony through. “It’s just like a widower,” she

remarked. “They’ve cheek enough for anything, and invariably select one

of their first wife’s friends.”

Margaret’s face flashed despair.

“That type—” She broke off with a cry. “Meg, not anything wrong with

you?”

“Wait one minute,” said Margaret, whispering always.

“But you’ve never conceivably—you’ve never—” She pulled herself

together. “Tibby, hurry up through; I can’t hold this gate

indefinitely. Aunt Juley! I say, Aunt Juley, make the tea, will you,

and Frieda; we’ve got to talk houses, and I’ll come on afterwards.” And

then, turning her face to her sister’s, she burst into tears.

Margaret was stupefied. She heard herself saying, “Oh, really—” She

felt herself touched with a hand that trembled.

“Don’t,” sobbed Helen, “don’t, don’t, Meg, don’t!” She seemed incapable

of saying any other word. Margaret, trembling herself, led her forward

up the road, till they strayed through another gate on to the down.

“Don’t, don’t do such a thing! I tell you not to—don’t! I know—don’t!”

“What do you know?”

“Panic and emptiness,” sobbed Helen. “Don’t!”

Then Margaret thought, “Helen is a little selfish. I have never behaved

like this when there has seemed a chance of her marrying.” She said:

“But we would still see each other very often, and—”

“It’s not a thing like that,” sobbed Helen. And she broke right away

and wandered distractedly upwards, stretching her hands towards the

view and crying.

“What’s happened to you?” called Margaret, following through the wind

that gathers at sundown on the northern slopes of hills. “But it’s

stupid!” And suddenly stupidity seized her, and the immense landscape

was blurred. But Helen turned back.

“Meg—”

“I don’t know what’s happened to either of us,” said Margaret, wiping

her eyes. “We must both have gone mad.” Then Helen wiped hers, and they

even laughed a little.

“Look here, sit down.”

“All right; I’ll sit down if you’ll sit down.”

“There. (One kiss.) Now, whatever, whatever is the matter?”

“I do mean what I said. Don’t; it wouldn’t do.”

“Oh, Helen, stop saying ‘don’t’! It’s ignorant. It’s as if your head

wasn’t out of the slime. ‘Don’t’ is probably what Mrs. Bast says all

the day to Mr. Bast.”

Helen was silent.

“Well?”

“Tell me about it first, and meanwhile perhaps I’ll have got my head

out of the slime.”

“That’s better. Well, where shall I begin? When I arrived at

Waterloo—no, I’ll go back before that, because I’m anxious you should

know everything from the first. The ‘first’ was about ten days ago. It

was the day Mr. Bast came to tea and lost his temper. I was defending

him, and Mr. Wilcox became jealous about me, however slightly. I

thought it was the involuntary thing, which men can’t help any more

than we can. You know—at least, I know in my own case—when a man has

said to me, ‘So-and-so’s a pretty girl,’ I am seized with a momentary

sourness against So-and-so, and long to tweak her ear. It’s a tiresome

feeling, but not an important one, and one easily manages it. But it

wasn’t only this in Mr. Wilcox’s case, I gather now.”

“Then you love him?”

Margaret considered. “It is wonderful knowing that a real man cares for

you,” she said. “The mere fact of that grows more tremendous. Remember,

I’ve known and liked him steadily for nearly three years.

“But loved him?”

Margaret peered into her past. It is pleasant to analyze feelings while

they are still only feelings, and unembodied in the social fabric. With

her arm round Helen, and her eyes shifting over the view, as if this

county or that could reveal the secret of her own heart, she meditated

honestly, and said, “No.”

“But you will?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “of that I’m pretty sure. Indeed, I began the

moment he spoke to me.”

“And have settled to marry him?”

“I had, but am wanting a long talk about it now. What is it against

him, Helen? You must try and say.”

Helen, in her turn, looked outwards. “It is ever since Paul,” she said

finally.

“But what has Mr. Wilcox to do with Paul?”

“But he was there, they were all there that morning when I came down to

breakfast, and saw that Paul was frightened—the man who loved me

frightened and all his paraphernalia fallen, so that I knew it was

impossible, because personal relations are the important thing for ever

and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.”

She poured the sentence forth in one breath, but her sister understood

it, because it touched on thoughts that were familiar between them.

“That’s foolish. In the first place, I disagree about the outer life.

Well, we’ve often argued that. The real point is that there is the

widest gulf between my love-making and yours. Yours—was romance; mine

will be prose. I’m not running it down—a very good kind of prose, but

well considered, well thought out. For instance, I know all Mr.

Wilcox’s faults. He’s afraid of emotion. He cares too much about

success, too little about the past. His sympathy lacks poetry, and so

isn’t sympathy really. I’d even say”—she looked at the shining

lagoons—“that, spiritually, he’s not as honest as I am. Doesn’t that

satisfy you?”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Helen. “It makes me feel worse and worse. You

must be mad.”

Margaret made a movement of irritation.

“I don’t intend him, or any man or any woman, to be all my life—good

heavens, no! There are heaps of things in me that he doesn’t, and shall

never, understand.”

Thus she spoke before the wedding ceremony and the physical union,

before the astonishing glass shade had fallen that interposes between

married couples and the world. She was to keep her independence more

than do most women as yet. Marriage was to alter her fortunes rather

than her character, and she was not far wrong in boasting that she

understood her future husband. Yet he did alter her character—a little.

There was an unforeseen surprise, a cessation of the winds and odours

of life, a social pressure that would have her think conjugally.

“So with him,” she continued. “There are heaps of things in him—more

especially things that he does—that will always be hidden from me. He

has all those public qualities which you so despise and enable all

this—” She waved her hand at the landscape, which confirmed anything.

“If Wilcoxes hadn’t worked and died in England for thousands of years,

you and I couldn’t sit here without having our throats cut. There would

be no trains, no ships to carry us literary people about in, no fields

even. Just savagery. No—perhaps not even that. Without their spirit

life might never have moved out of protoplasm. More and more do I

refuse to draw my income and sneer at those who guarantee it. There are

times when it seems to me—”

“And to me, and to all women. So one kissed Paul.”

“That’s brutal,” said Margaret. “Mine is an absolutely different case.

I’ve thought things out.”

“It makes no difference thinking things out. They come to the same.”

“Rubbish!”

There was a long silence, during which the tide returned into Poole

Harbour. “One would lose something,” murmured Helen, apparently to

herself. The water crept over the mud-flats towards the gorse and the

blackened heather. Branksea Island lost its immense foreshores, and

became a sombre episode of trees. Frome was forced inward towards

Dorchester, Stour against Wimborne, Avon towards Salisbury, and over

the immense displacement the sun presided, leading it to triumph ere he

sank to rest. England was alive, throbbing through all her estuaries,

crying for joy through the mouths of all her gulls, and the north wind,

with contrary motion, blew stronger against her rising seas. What did

it mean? For what end are her fair complexities, her changes of soil,

her sinuous coast? Does she belong to those who have moulded her and

made her feared by other lands, or to those who have added nothing to

her power, but have somehow seen her, seen the whole island at once,

lying as a jewel in a silver sea, sailing as a ship of souls, with all

the brave world’s fleet accompanying her towards eternity?

Chapter 20

Margaret had often wondered at the disturbance that takes place in the

world’s waters, when Love, who seems so tiny a pebble, slips in. Whom

does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact

deluges a hundred shores. No doubt the disturbance is really the spirit

of the generations, welcoming the new generation, and chafing against

the ultimate Fate, who holds all the seas in the palm of her hand. But

Love cannot understand this. He cannot comprehend another’s infinity;

he is conscious only of his own—flying sunbeam, falling rose, pebble

that asks for one quiet plunge below the fretting interplay of space

and time. He knows that he will survive at the end of things, and be

gathered by Fate as a jewel from the slime, and be handed with

admiration round the assembly of the gods. “Men did produce this,” they

will say, and, saying, they will give men immortality. But

meanwhile—what agitations meanwhile! The foundations of Property and

Propriety are laid bare, twin rocks; Family Pride flounders to the

surface, puffing and blowing, and refusing to be comforted; Theology,

vaguely ascetic, gets up a nasty ground swell. Then the lawyers are

aroused—cold brood—and creep out of their holes. They do what they can;

they tidy up Property and Propriety, reassure Theology and Family

Pride. Half-guineas are poured on the troubled waters, the lawyers

creep back, and, if all has gone well, Love joins one man and woman

together in Matrimony.

Margaret had expected the disturbance, and was not irritated by it. For

a sensitive woman she had steady nerves, and could bear with the

incongruous and the grotesque; and, besides, there was nothing

excessive about her love-affair. Good-humour was the dominant note of

her relations with Mr. Wilcox, or, as I must now call him, Henry. Henry

did not encourage romance, and she was no girl to fidget for it. An

acquaintance had become a lover, might become a husband, but would

retain all that she had noted in the acquaintance; and love must

confirm an old relation rather than reveal a new one.

In this spirit she promised to marry him.

He was in Swanage on the morrow, bearing the engagement-ring. They

greeted one another with a hearty cordiality that impressed Aunt Juley.

Henry dined at The Bays, but he had engaged a bedroom in the principal

hotel: he was one of those men who knew the principal hotel by

instinct. After dinner he asked Margaret if she wouldn’t care for a

turn on the Parade. She accepted, and could not repress a little

tremor; it would be her first real love scene. But as she put on her

hat she burst out laughing. Love was so unlike the article served up in

books: the joy, though genuine, was different; the mystery an

unexpected mystery. For one thing, Mr. Wilcox still seemed a stranger.

For a time they talked about the ring; then she said:

“Do you remember the Embankment at Chelsea? It can’t be ten days ago.”

“Yes,” he said, laughing. “And you and your sister were head and ears

deep in some Quixotic scheme. Ah well!”

“I little thought then, certainly. Did you?”

“I don’t know about that; I shouldn’t like to say.”

“Why, was it earlier?” she cried. “Did you think of me this way

earlier! How extraordinarily interesting, Henry! Tell me.”

But Henry had no intention of telling. Perhaps he could not have told,

for his mental states became obscure as soon as he had passed through

them. He misliked the very word “interesting,” connoting it with wasted

energy and even with morbidity. Hard facts were enough for him.

“I didn’t think of it,” she pursued. “No; when you spoke to me in the

drawing-room, that was practically the first. It was all so different

from what it’s supposed to be. On the stage, or in books, a proposal

is—how shall I put it?—a full-blown affair, a kind of bouquet; it loses

its literal meaning. But in life a proposal really is a proposal—”

“By the way—”

“—a suggestion, a seed,” she concluded; and the thought flew away into

darkness.

“I was thinking, if you didn’t mind, that we ought to spend this

evening in a business talk; there will be so much to settle.”

“I think so too. Tell me, in the first place, how did you get on with

Tibby?”

“With your brother?”

“Yes, during cigarettes.”

“Oh, very well.”

“I am so glad,” she answered, a little surprised. “What did you talk

about? Me, presumably.”

“About Greece too.”

“Greece was a very good card, Henry. Tibby’s only a boy still, and one

has to pick and choose subjects a little. Well done.”

“I was telling him I have shares in a currant-farm near Calamata.

“What a delightful thing to have shares in! Can’t we go there for our

honeymoon?”

“What to do?”

“To eat the currants. And isn’t there marvellous scenery?”

“Moderately, but it’s not the kind of place one could possibly go to

with a lady.”

“Why not?”

“No hotels.”

“Some ladies do without hotels. Are you aware that Helen and I have

walked alone over the Apennines, with our luggage on our backs?”

“I wasn’t aware, and, if I can manage it, you will never do such a

thing again.”

She said more gravely: “You haven’t found time for a talk with Helen

yet, I suppose?”

“No.”

“Do, before you go. I am so anxious you two should be friends.”

“Your sister and I have always hit it off,” he said negligently. “But

we’re drifting away from our business. Let me begin at the beginning.

You know that Evie is going to marry Percy Cahill.”

“Dolly’s uncle.”

“Exactly. The girl’s madly in love with him. A very good sort of

fellow, but he demands—and rightly—a suitable provision with her. And

in the second place, you will naturally understand, there is Charles.

Before leaving town, I wrote Charles a very careful letter. You see, he

has an increasing family and increasing expenses, and the I. and W. A.

is nothing particular just now, though capable of development.

“Poor fellow!” murmured Margaret, looking out to sea, and not

understanding.

“Charles being the elder son, some day Charles will have Howards End;

but I am anxious, in my own happiness, not to be unjust to others.”

“Of course not,” she began, and then gave a little cry. “You mean

money. How stupid I am! Of course not!”

Oddly enough, he winced a little at the word. “Yes. Money, since you

put it so frankly. I am determined to be just to all—just to you, just

to them. I am determined that my children shall have no case against

me.”

“Be generous to them,” she said sharply. “Bother justice!”

“I am determined—and have already written to Charles to that effect—”

“But how much have you got?”

“What?”

“How much have you a year? I’ve six hundred.”

“My income?”

“Yes. We must begin with how much you have, before we can settle how

much you can give Charles. Justice, and even generosity, depend on

that.”

“I must say you’re a downright young woman,” he observed, patting her

arm and laughing a little. “What a question to spring on a fellow!”

“Don’t you know your income? Or don’t you want to tell it me?”

“I—”

“That’s all right”—now she patted him—“don’t tell me. I don’t want to

know. I can do the sum just as well by proportion. Divide your income

into ten parts. How many parts would you give to Evie, how many to

Charles, how many to Paul?”

“The fact is, my dear, I hadn’t any intention of bothering you with

details. I only wanted to let you know that—well, that something must

be done for the others, and you’ve understood me perfectly, so let’s

pass on to the next point.”

“Yes, we’ve settled that,” said Margaret, undisturbed by his strategic

blunderings. “Go ahead; give away all you can, bearing in mind I’ve a

clear six hundred. What a mercy it is to have all this money about

one!”

“We’ve none too much, I assure you; you’re marrying a poor man.

“Helen wouldn’t agree with me here,” she continued. “Helen daren’t

slang the rich, being rich herself, but she would like to. There’s an

odd notion, that I haven’t yet got hold of, running about at the back

of her brain, that poverty is somehow ‘real.’ She dislikes all

organization, and probably confuses wealth with the technique of

wealth. Sovereigns in a stocking wouldn’t bother her; cheques do. Helen

is too relentless. One can’t deal in her high-handed manner with the

world.”

“There’s this other point, and then I must go back to my hotel and

write some letters. What’s to be done now about the house in Ducie

Street?”

“Keep it on—at least, it depends. When do you want to marry me?”

She raised her voice, as too often, and some youths, who were also

taking the evening air, overheard her. “Getting a bit hot, eh?” said

one. Mr. Wilcox turned on them, and said sharply, “I say!” There was

silence. “Take care I don’t report you to the police.” They moved away

quietly enough, but were only biding their time, and the rest of the

conversation was punctuated by peals of ungovernable laughter.

Lowering his voice and infusing a hint of reproof into it, he said:

“Evie will probably be married in September. We could scarcely think of

anything before then.”

“The earlier the nicer, Henry. Females are not supposed to say such

things, but the earlier the nicer.”

“How about September for us too?” he asked, rather dryly.

“Right. Shall we go into Ducie Street ourselves in September? Or shall

we try to bounce Helen and Tibby into it? That’s rather an idea. They

are so unbusinesslike, we could make them do anything by judicious

management. Look here—yes. We’ll do that. And we ourselves could live

at Howards End or Shropshire.”

He blew out his cheeks. “Heavens! how you women do fly round! My head’s

in a whirl. Point by point, Margaret. Howards End’s impossible. I let

it to Hamar Bryce on a three years’ agreement last March. Don’t you

remember? Oniton. Well, that is much, much too far away to rely on

entirely. You will be able to be down there entertaining a certain

amount, but we must have a house within easy reach of Town. Only Ducie

Street has huge drawbacks. There’s a mews behind.”

Margaret could not help laughing. It was the first she had heard of the

mews behind Ducie Street. When she was a possible tenant it had

suppressed itself, not consciously, but automatically. The breezy

Wilcox manner, though genuine, lacked the clearness of vision that is

imperative for truth. When Henry lived in Ducie Street he remembered

the mews; when he tried to let he forgot it; and if anyone had remarked

that the mews must be either there or not, he would have felt annoyed,

and afterwards have found some opportunity of stigmatizing the speaker

as academic. So does my grocer stigmatize me when I complain of the

quality of his sultanas, and he answers in one breath that they are the

best sultanas, and how can I expect the best sultanas at that price? It

is a flaw inherent in the business mind, and Margaret may do well to be

tender to it, considering all that the business mind has done for

England.

“Yes, in summer especially, the mews is a serious nuisance. The smoking

room, too, is an abominable little den. The house opposite has been

taken by operatic people. Ducie Street’s going down, it’s my private

opinion.”

“How sad! It’s only a few years since they built those pretty houses.”

“Shows things are moving. Good for trade.”

“I hate this continual flux of London. It is an epitome of us at our

worst—eternal formlessness; all the qualities, good, bad, and

indifferent, streaming away—streaming, streaming for ever. That’s why I

dread it so. I mistrust rivers, even in scenery. Now, the sea—”

“High tide, yes.”

“Hoy toid”—from the promenading youths.

“And these are the men to whom we give the vote,” observed Mr. Wilcox,

omitting to add that they were also the men to whom he gave work as

clerks—work that scarcely encouraged them to grow into other men.

“However, they have their own lives and interests. Let’s get on.”

He turned as he spoke, and prepared to see her back to The Bays. The

business was over. His hotel was in the opposite direction, and if he

accompanied her his letters would be late for the post. She implored

him not to come, but he was obdurate.

“A nice beginning, if your aunt saw you slip in alone!”

“But I always do go about alone. Considering I’ve walked over the

Apennines, it’s common sense. You will make me so angry. I don’t the

least take it as a compliment.”

He laughed, and lit a cigar. “It isn’t meant as a compliment, my dear.

I just won’t have you going about in the dark. Such people about too!

It’s dangerous.”

“Can’t I look after myself? I do wish—”

“Come along, Margaret; no wheedling.”

A younger woman might have resented his masterly ways, but Margaret had

too firm a grip of life to make a fuss. She was, in her own way, as

masterly. If he was a fortress she was a mountain peak, whom all might

tread, but whom the snows made nightly virginal. Disdaining the heroic

outfit, excitable in her methods, garrulous, episodical, shrill, she

misled her lover much as she had misled her aunt. He mistook her

fertility for weakness. He supposed her “as clever as they make ’em,”

but no more, not realizing that she was penetrating to the depths of

his soul, and approving of what she found there.

And if insight were sufficient, if the inner life were the whole of

life, their happiness has been assured.

They walked ahead briskly. The parade and the road after it were well

lighted, but it was darker in Aunt Juley’s garden. As they were going

up by the side-paths, through some rhododendrons, Mr. Wilcox, who was

in front, said “Margaret” rather huskily, turned, dropped his cigar,

and took her in his arms.

She was startled, and nearly screamed, but recovered herself at once,

and kissed with genuine love the lips that were pressed against her

own. It was their first kiss, and when it was over he saw her safely to

the door and rang the bell for her, but disappeared into the night

before the maid answered it. On looking back, the incident displeased

her. It was so isolated. Nothing in their previous conversation had

heralded it, and, worse still, no tenderness had ensued. If a man

cannot lead up to passion he can at all events lead down from it, and

she had hoped, after her complaisance, for some interchange of gentle

words. But he had hurried away as if ashamed, and for an instant she

was reminded of Helen and Paul.

Chapter 21

Charles had just been scolding his Dolly. She deserved the scolding,

and had bent before it, but her head, though bloody, was unsubdued, and

her chirrupings began to mingle with his retreating thunder.

“You’ve woken the baby. I knew you would. (Rum-ti-foo, Rackety-tackety

Tompkin!) I’m not responsible for what Uncle Percy does, nor for

anybody else or anything, so there!”

“Who asked him while I was away? Who asked my sister down to meet him?

Who sent them out in the motor day after day?”

“Charles, that reminds me of some poem.”

“Does it indeed? We shall all be dancing to a very different music

presently. Miss Schlegel has fairly got us on toast.”

“I could simply scratch that woman’s eyes out, and to say it’s my fault

is most unfair.”

“It’s your fault, and five months ago you admitted it.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“Tootle, tootle, playing on the pootle!” exclaimed Dolly, suddenly

devoting herself to the child.

“It’s all very well to turn the conversation, but Father would never

have dreamt of marrying as long as Evie was there to make him

comfortable. But you must needs start match-making. Besides, Cahill’s

too old.”

“Of course, if you’re going to be rude to Uncle Percy—”

“Miss Schlegel always meant to get hold of Howards End, and, thanks to

you, she’s got it.”

“I call the way you twist things round and make them hang together most

unfair. You couldn’t have been nastier if you’d caught me flirting.

Could he, diddums?”

“We’re in a bad hole, and must make the best of it. I shall answer the

pater’s letter civilly. He’s evidently anxious to do the decent thing.

But I do not intend to forget these Schlegels in a hurry. As long as

they’re on their best behaviour—Dolly, are you listening?—we’ll behave,

too. But if I find them giving themselves airs, or monopolizing my

father, or at all ill-treating him, or worrying him with their artistic

beastliness, I intend to put my foot down, yes, firmly. Taking my

mother’s place! Heaven knows what poor old Paul will say when the news

reaches him.”

The interlude closes. It has taken place in Charles’s garden at Hilton.

He and Dolly are sitting in deck-chairs, and their motor is regarding

them placidly from its garage across the lawn. A short-frocked edition

of Charles also regards them placidly; a perambulator edition is

squeaking; a third edition is expected shortly. Nature is turning out

Wilcoxes in this peaceful abode, so that they may inherit the earth.

Chapter 22

Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow.

Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of

the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the

passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half

beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it

love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the

grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect

the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear,

and he and his friends shall find easy-going.

It was hard-going in the roads of Mr. Wilcox’s soul. From boyhood he

had neglected them. “I am not a fellow who bothers about my own

inside.” Outwardly he was cheerful, reliable, and brave; but within,

all had reverted to chaos, ruled, so far as it was ruled at all, by an

incomplete asceticism. Whether as boy, husband, or widower, he had

always the sneaking belief that bodily passion is bad, a belief that is

desirable only when held passionately. Religion had confirmed him. The

words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable

men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catharine and

St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could-not be as

the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could

be a little ashamed of loving a wife. “Amabat, amare timebat.” And it

was here that Margaret hoped to help him.

It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her

own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own

soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of

her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be

exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments

no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the

isolation that is life to either, will die.

Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take the form of a

good “talking.” By quiet indications the bridge would be built and span

their lives with beauty.

But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for which she was

never prepared, however much she reminded herself of it: his

obtuseness. He simply did not notice things, and there was no more to

be said. He never noticed that Helen and Frieda were hostile, or that

Tibby was not interested in currant plantations; he never noticed the

lights and shades that exist in the grayest conversation, the

finger-posts, the milestones, the collisions, the illimitable views.

Once—on another occasion—she scolded him about it. He was puzzled, but

replied with a laugh: “My motto is Concentrate. I’ve no intention of

frittering away my strength on that sort of thing.” “It isn’t

frittering away the strength,” she protested. “It’s enlarging the space

in which you may be strong.” He answered: “You’re a clever little

woman, but my motto’s Concentrate.” And this morning he concentrated

with a vengeance.

They met in the rhododendrons of yesterday. In the daylight the bushes

were inconsiderable and the path was bright in the morning sun. She was

with Helen, who had been ominously quiet since the affair was settled.

“Here we all are!” she cried, and took him by one hand, retaining her

sister’s in the other.

“Here we are. Good-morning, Helen.”

Helen replied, “Good-morning, Mr. Wilcox.”

“Henry, she has had such a nice letter from the queer, cross boy—Do you

remember him? He had a sad moustache, but the back of his head was

young.”

“I have had a letter too. Not a nice one—I want to talk it over with

you:” for Leonard Bast was nothing to him now that she had given him

her word; the triangle of sex was broken for ever.

“Thanks to your hint, he’s clearing out of the Porphyrion.”

“Not a bad business that Porphyrion,” he said absently, as he took his

own letter out of his pocket.

“Not a _bad_—” she exclaimed, dropping his hand. “Surely, on Chelsea

Embankment—”

“Here’s our hostess. Good-morning, Mrs. Munt. Fine rhododendrons. Good

morning, Frau Liesecke; we manage to grow flowers in England, don’t

we?”

“Not a _bad_ business?”

“No. My letter’s about Howards End. Bryce has been ordered abroad, and

wants to sublet it. I am far from sure that I shall give him

permission. There was no clause in the agreement. In my opinion,

subletting is a mistake. If he can find me another tenant, whom I

consider suitable, I may cancel the agreement. Morning, Schlegel. Don’t

you think that’s better than subletting?”

Helen had dropped her hand now, and he had steered her past the whole

party to the seaward side of the house. Beneath them was the bourgeois

little bay, which must have yearned all through the centuries for just

such a watering-place as Swanage to be built on its margin. The waves

were colourless, and the Bournemouth steamer gave a further touch of

insipidity, drawn up against the pier and hooting wildly for

excursionists.

“When there is a sublet I find that damage—”

“Do excuse me, but about the Porphyrion. I don’t feel easy—might I just

bother you, Henry?”

Her manner was so serious that he stopped, and asked her a little

sharply what she wanted.

“You said on Chelsea Embankment, surely, that it was a bad concern, so

we advised this clerk to clear out. He writes this morning that he’s

taken our advice, and now you say it’s not a bad concern.”

“A clerk who clears out of any concern, good or bad, without securing a

berth somewhere else first, is a fool, and I’ve no pity for him.”

“He has not done that. He’s going into a bank in Camden Town, he says.

The salary’s much lower, but he hopes to manage—a branch of Dempster’s

Bank. Is that all right?”

“Dempster! My goodness me, yes.”

“More right than the Porphyrion?”

“Yes, yes, yes; safe as houses—safer.”

“Very many thanks. I’m sorry—if you sublet—?”

“If he sublets, I shan’t have the same control. In theory there should

be no more damage done at Howards End; in practice there will be.

Things may be done for which no money can compensate. For instance, I

shouldn’t want that fine wych-elm spoilt. It hangs—Margaret, we must go

and see the old place some time. It’s pretty in its way. We’ll motor

down and have lunch with Charles.”

“I should enjoy that,” said Margaret bravely.

“What about next Wednesday?”

“Wednesday? No, I couldn’t well do that. Aunt Juley expects us to stop

here another week at least.”

“But you can give that up now.”

“Er—no,” said Margaret, after a moment’s thought.

“Oh, that’ll be all right. I’ll speak to her.”

“This visit is a high solemnity. My aunt counts on it year after year.

She turns the house upside down for us; she invites our special

friends—she scarcely knows Frieda, and we can’t leave her on her hands.

I missed one day, and she would be so hurt if I didn’t stay the full

ten.”

“But I’ll say a word to her. Don’t you bother.”

“Henry, I won’t go. Don’t bully me.”

“You want to see the house, though?”

“Very much—I’ve heard so much about it, one way or the other. Aren’t

there pigs’ teeth in the wych-elm?”

“_Pigs’ teeth?_”

“And you chew the bark for toothache.”

“What a rum notion! Of course not!”

“Perhaps I have confused it with some other tree. There are still a

great number of sacred trees in England, it seems.”

But he left her to intercept Mrs. Munt, whose voice could be heard in

the distance: to be intercepted himself by Helen.

“Oh, Mr. Wilcox, about the Porphyrion—” she began, and went scarlet all

over her face.

“It’s all right,” called Margaret, catching them up. “Dempster’s Bank’s

better.”

“But I think you told us the Porphyrion was bad, and would smash before

Christmas.”

“Did I? It was still outside the Tariff Ring, and had to take rotten

policies. Lately it came in—safe as houses now.”

“In other words, Mr. Bast need never have left it.”

“No, the fellow needn’t.”

“—and needn’t have started life elsewhere at a greatly reduced salary.”

“He only says ‘reduced,’” corrected Margaret, seeing trouble ahead.

“With a man so poor, every reduction must be great. I consider it a

deplorable misfortune.”

Mr. Wilcox, intent on his business with Mrs. Munt, was going steadily

on, but the last remark made him say: “What? What’s that? Do you mean

that I’m responsible?”

“You’re ridiculous, Helen.”

“You seem to think—” He looked at his watch. “Let me explain the point

to you. It is like this. You seem to assume, when a business concern is

conducting a delicate negotiation, it ought to keep the public informed

stage by stage. The Porphyrion, according to you, was bound to say, ‘I

am trying all I can to get into the Tariff Ring. I am not sure that I

shall succeed, but it is the only thing that will save me from

insolvency, and I am trying.’ My dear Helen—”

“Is that your point? A man who had little money has less—that’s mine.”

“I am grieved for your clerk. But it is all in the day’s work. It’s

part of the battle of life.”

“A man who had little money,” she repeated, “has less, owing to us.

Under these circumstances I do not consider ‘the battle of life’ a

happy expression.”

“Oh come, come!” he protested pleasantly. “You’re not to blame. No

one’s to blame.”

“Is no one to blame for anything?”

“I wouldn’t say that, but you’re taking it far too seriously. Who is

this fellow?”

“We have told you about the fellow twice already,” said Helen. “You

have even met the fellow. He is very poor and his wife is an

extravagant imbecile. He is capable of better things. We—we, the upper

classes—thought we would help him from the height of our superior

knowledge—and here’s the result!”

He raised his finger. “Now, a word of advice.”

“I require no more advice.”

“A word of advice. Don’t take up that sentimental attitude over the

poor. See that she doesn’t, Margaret. The poor are poor, and one’s

sorry for them, but there it is. As civilization moves forward, the

shoe is bound to pinch in places, and it’s absurd to pretend that

anyone is responsible personally. Neither you, nor I, nor my informant,

nor the man who informed him, nor the directors of the Porphyrion, are

to blame for this clerk’s loss of salary. It’s just the shoe

pinching—no one can help it; and it might easily have been worse.”

Helen quivered with indignation.

“By all means subscribe to charities—subscribe to them largely—but

don’t get carried away by absurd schemes of Social Reform. I see a good

deal behind the scenes, and you can take it from me that there is no

Social Question—except for a few journalists who try to get a living

out of the phrase. There are just rich and poor, as there always have

been and always will be. Point me out a time when men have been equal—”

“I didn’t say—”

“Point me out a time when desire for equality has made them happier.

No, no. You can’t. There always have been rich and poor. I’m no

fatalist. Heaven forbid! But our civilization is moulded by great

impersonal forces” (his voice grew complacent; it always did when he

eliminated the personal), “and there always will be rich and poor. You

can’t deny it” (and now it was a respectful voice)—“and you can’t deny

that, in spite of all, the tendency of civilization has on the whole

been upward.”

“Owing to God, I suppose,” flashed Helen.

He stared at her.

“You grab the dollars. God does the rest.”

It was no good instructing the girl if she was going to talk about God

in that neurotic modern way. Fraternal to the last, he left her for the

quieter company of Mrs. Munt. He thought, “She rather reminds me of

Dolly.”

Helen looked out at the sea.

“Don’t even discuss political economy with Henry,” advised her sister.

“It’ll only end in a cry.”

“But he must be one of those men who have reconciled science with

religion,” said Helen slowly. “I don’t like those men. They are

scientific themselves, and talk of the survival of the fittest, and cut

down the salaries of their clerks, and stunt the independence of all

who may menace their comfort, but yet they believe that somehow

good—and it is always that sloppy ‘somehow’—will be the outcome, and

that in some mystical way the Mr. Basts of the future will benefit

because the Mr. Basts of today are in pain.”

“He is such a man in theory. But oh, Helen, in theory!”

“But oh, Meg, what a theory!”

“Why should you put things so bitterly, dearie?”

“Because I’m an old maid,” said Helen, biting her lip. “I can’t think

why I go on like this myself.” She shook off her sister’s hand and went

into the house. Margaret, distressed at the day’s beginning, followed

the Bournemouth steamer with her eyes. She saw that Helen’s nerves were

exasperated by the unlucky Bast business beyond the bounds of

politeness. There might at any minute be a real explosion, which even

Henry would notice. Henry must be removed.

“Margaret!” her aunt called. “Magsy! It isn’t true, surely, what Mr.

Wilcox says, that you want to go away early next week?”

“Not ‘want,’” was Margaret’s prompt reply; “but there is so much to be

settled, and I do want to see the Charles’.”

“But going away without taking the Weymouth trip, or even the

Lulworth?” said Mrs. Munt, coming nearer. “Without going once more up

Nine Barrows Down?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Mr. Wilcox rejoined her with, “Good! I did the breaking of the ice.”

A wave of tenderness came over her. She put a hand on either shoulder,

and looked deeply into the black, bright eyes. What was behind their

competent stare? She knew, but was not disquieted.

Chapter 23

Margaret had no intention of letting things slide, and the evening

before she left Swanage she gave her sister a thorough scolding. She

censured her, not for disapproving of the engagement, but for throwing

over her disapproval a veil of mystery. Helen was equally frank. “Yes,”

she said, with the air of one looking inwards, “there is a mystery. I

can’t help it. It’s not my fault. It’s the way life has been made.”

Helen in those days was over-interested in the subconscious self. She

exaggerated the Punch and Judy aspect of life, and spoke of mankind as

puppets, whom an invisible showman twitches into love and war. Margaret

pointed out that if she dwelt on this she, too, would eliminate the

personal. Helen was silent for a minute, and then burst into a queer

speech, which cleared the air. “Go on and marry him. I think you’re

splendid; and if anyone can pull it off, you will.” Margaret denied

that there was anything to “pull off,” but she continued: “Yes, there

is, and I wasn’t up to it with Paul. I can only do what’s easy. I can

only entice and be enticed. I can’t, and won’t attempt difficult

relations. If I marry, it will either be a man who’s strong enough to

boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss. So I shan’t ever marry, for

there aren’t such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I

shall certainly run away from him before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’

There! Because I’m uneducated. But you, you’re different; you’re a

heroine.”

“Oh, Helen! Am I? Will it be as dreadful for poor Henry as all that?”

“You mean to keep proportion, and that’s heroic, it’s Greek, and I

don’t see why it shouldn’t succeed with you. Go on and fight with him

and help him. Don’t ask _me_ for help, or even for sympathy.

Henceforward I’m going my own way. I mean to be thorough, because

thoroughness is easy. I mean to dislike your husband, and to tell him

so. I mean to make no concessions to Tibby. If Tibby wants to live with

me, he must lump me. I mean to love _you_ more than ever. Yes, I do.

You and I have built up something real, because it is purely spiritual.

There’s no veil of mystery over us. Unreality and mystery begin as soon

as one touches the body. The popular view is, as usual, exactly the

wrong one. Our bothers are over tangible things—money, husbands,

house-hunting. But Heaven will work of itself.”

Margaret was grateful for this expression of affection, and answered,

“Perhaps.” All vistas close in the unseen—no one doubts it—but Helen

closed them rather too quickly for her taste. At every turn of speech

one was confronted with reality and the absolute. Perhaps Margaret grew

too old for metaphysics, perhaps Henry was weaning her from them, but

she felt that there was something a little unbalanced in the mind that

so readily shreds the visible. The business man who assumes that this

life is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is nothing,

fail, on this side and on that, to hit the truth. “Yes, I see, dear;

it’s about halfway between,” Aunt Juley had hazarded in earlier years.

No; truth, being alive, was not halfway between anything. It was only

to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though

proportion is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to

insure sterility.

Helen, agreeing here, disagreeing there, would have talked till

midnight, but Margaret, with her packing to do, focussed the

conversation on Henry. She might abuse Henry behind his back, but

please would she always, be civil to him in company? “I definitely

dislike him, but I’ll do what I can,” promised Helen. “Do what you can

with my friends in return.”

This conversation made Margaret easier. Their inner life was so safe

that they could bargain over externals in a way that would have been

incredible to Aunt Juley, and impossible for Tibby or Charles. There

are moments when the inner life actually “pays,” when years of

self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of

practical use. Such moments are still rare in the West; that they come

at all promises a fairer future. Margaret, though unable to understand

her sister, was assured against estrangement, and returned to London

with a more peaceful mind.

The following morning, at eleven o’clock, she presented herself at the

offices of the Imperial and West African Rubber Company. She was glad

to go there, for Henry had implied his business rather than described

it, and the formlessness and vagueness that one associates with Africa

had hitherto brooded over the main sources of his wealth. Not that a

visit to the office cleared things up. There was just the ordinary

surface scum of ledgers and polished counters and brass bars that began

and stopped for no possible reason, of electric-light globes blossoming

in triplets, of little rabbit hutches faced with glass or wire, of

little rabbits. And even when she penetrated to the inner depths, she

found only the ordinary table and Turkey carpet, and though the map

over the fireplace did depict a helping of West Africa, it was a very

ordinary map. Another map hung opposite, on which the whole continent

appeared, looking like a whale marked out for blubber, and by its side

was a door, shut, but Henry’s voice came through it, dictating a

“strong” letter. She might have been at the Porphyrion, or Dempster’s

Bank, or her own wine-merchant’s. Everything seems just alike in these

days. But perhaps she was seeing the Imperial side of the company

rather than its West African, and Imperialism always had been one of

her difficulties.

“One minute!” called Mr. Wilcox on receiving her name. He touched a

bell, the effect of which was to produce Charles.

Charles had written his father an adequate letter—more adequate than

Evie’s, through which a girlish indignation throbbed. And he greeted

his future stepmother with propriety.

“I hope that my wife—how do you do?—will give you a decent lunch,” was

his opening. “I left instructions, but we live in a rough-and-ready

way. She expects you back to tea, too, after you have had a look at

Howards End. I wonder what you’ll think of the place. I wouldn’t touch

it with tongs myself. Do sit down! It’s a measly little place.”

“I shall enjoy seeing it,” said Margaret, feeling, for the first time,

shy.

“You’ll see it at its worst, for Bryce decamped abroad last Monday

without even arranging for a charwoman to clear up after him. I never

saw such a disgraceful mess. It’s unbelievable. He wasn’t in the house

a month.”

“I’ve more than a little bone to pick with Bryce,” called Henry from

the inner chamber.

“Why did he go so suddenly?”

“Invalid type; couldn’t sleep.”

“Poor fellow!”

“Poor fiddlesticks!” said Mr. Wilcox, joining them. “He had the

impudence to put up notice-boards without as much as saying with your

leave or by your leave. Charles flung them down.”

“Yes, I flung them down,” said Charles modestly.

“I’ve sent a telegram after him, and a pretty sharp one, too. He, and

he in person is responsible for the upkeep of that house for the next

three years.”

“The keys are at the farm; we wouldn’t have the keys.”

“Quite right.”

“Dolly would have taken them, but I was in, fortunately.”

“What’s Mr. Bryce like?” asked Margaret.

But nobody cared. Mr. Bryce was the tenant, who had no right to sublet;

to have defined him further was a waste of time. On his misdeeds they

descanted profusely, until the girl who had been typing the strong

letter came out with it. Mr. Wilcox added his signature. “Now we’ll be

off,” said he.

A motor-drive, a form of felicity detested by Margaret, awaited her.

Charles saw them in, civil to the last, and in a moment the offices of

the Imperial and West African Rubber Company faded away. But it was not

an impressive drive. Perhaps the weather was to blame, being grey and

banked high with weary clouds. Perhaps Hertfordshire is scarcely

intended for motorists. Did not a gentleman once motor so quickly

through Westmoreland that he missed it? and if Westmoreland can be

missed, it will fare ill with a county whose delicate structure

particularly needs the attentive eye. Hertfordshire is England at its

quietest, with little emphasis of river and hill; it is England

meditative. If Drayton were with us again to write a new edition of his

incomparable poem, he would sing the nymphs of Hertfordshire as

indeterminate of feature, with hair obfuscated by the London smoke.

Their eyes would be sad, and averted from their fate towards the

Northern flats, their leader not Isis or Sabrina, but the slowly

flowing Lea. No glory of raiment would be theirs, no urgency of dance;

but they would be real nymphs.

The chauffeur could not travel as quickly as he had hoped, for the

Great North Road was full of Easter traffic. But he went quite quick

enough for Margaret, a poor-spirited creature, who had chickens and

children on the brain.

“They’re all right,” said Mr. Wilcox. “They’ll learn—like the swallows

and the telegraph-wires.”

“Yes, but, while they’re learning—”

“The motor’s come to stay,” he answered. “One must get about. There’s a

pretty church—oh, you aren’t sharp enough. Well, look out, if the road

worries you—right outward at the scenery.”

She looked at the scenery. It heaved and merged like porridge.

Presently it congealed. They had arrived.

Charles’s house on the left; on the right the swelling forms of the Six

Hills. Their appearance in such a neighbourhood surprised her. They

interrupted the stream of residences that was thickening up towards

Hilton. Beyond them she saw meadows and a wood, and beneath them she

settled that soldiers of the best kind lay buried. She hated war and

liked soldiers—it was one of her amiable inconsistencies.

But here was Dolly, dressed up to the nines, standing at the door to

greet them, and here were the first drops of the rain. They ran in

gaily, and after a long wait in the drawing-room sat down to the

rough-and-ready lunch, every dish in which concealed or exuded cream.

Mr. Bryce was the chief topic of conversation. Dolly described his

visit with the key, while her father-in-law gave satisfaction by

chaffing her and contradicting all she said. It was evidently the

custom to laugh at Dolly. He chaffed Margaret, too, and Margaret,

roused from a grave meditation, was pleased, and chaffed him back.

Dolly seemed surprised, and eyed her curiously. After lunch the two

children came down. Margaret disliked babies, but hit it off better

with the two-year-old, and sent Dolly into fits of laughter by talking

sense to him. “Kiss them now, and come away,” said Mr. Wilcox. She

came, but refused to kiss them: it was such hard luck on the little

things, she said, and though Dolly proffered Chorly-worly and

Porgly-woggles in turn, she was obdurate.

By this time it was raining steadily. The car came round with the hood

up, and again she lost all sense of space. In a few minutes they

stopped, and Crane opened the door of the car.

“What’s happened?” asked Margaret.

“What do you suppose?” said Henry.

A little porch was close up against her face.

“Are we there already?”

“We are.”

“Well, I never! In years ago it seemed so far away.”

Smiling, but somehow disillusioned, she jumped out, and her impetus

carried her to the front-door. She was about to open it, when Henry

said: “That’s no good; it’s locked. Who’s got the key?”

As he had himself forgotten to call for the key at the farm, no one

replied. He also wanted to know who had left the front gate open, since

a cow had strayed in from the road, and was spoiling the croquet lawn.

Then he said rather crossly: “Margaret, you wait in the dry. I’ll go

down for the key. It isn’t a hundred yards.

“Mayn’t I come too?”

“No; I shall be back before I’m gone.”

Then the car turned away, and it was as if a curtain had risen. For the

second time that day she saw the appearance of the earth.

There were the greengage-trees that Helen had once described, there the

tennis lawn, there the hedge that would be glorious with dog-roses in

June, but the vision now was of black and palest green. Down by the

dell-hole more vivid colours were awakening, and Lent Lilies stood

sentinel on its margin, or advanced in battalions over the grass.

Tulips were a tray of jewels. She could not see the wych-elm tree, but

a branch of the celebrated vine, studded with velvet knobs, had covered

the porch. She was struck by the fertility of the soil; she had seldom

been in a garden where the flowers looked so well, and even the weeds

she was idly plucking out of the porch were intensely green. Why had

poor Mr. Bryce fled from all this beauty? For she had already decided

that the place was beautiful.

“Naughty cow! Go away!” cried Margaret to the cow, but without

indignation.

Harder came the rain, pouring out of a windless sky, and spattering up

from the notice-boards of the house-agents, which lay in a row on the

lawn where Charles had hurled them. She must have interviewed Charles

in another world—where one did have interviews. How Helen would revel

in such a notion! Charles dead, all people dead, nothing alive but

houses and gardens. The obvious dead, the intangible alive, and—no

connection at all between them! Margaret smiled. Would that her own

fancies were as clear-cut! Would that she could deal as high-handedly

with the world! Smiling and sighing, she laid her hand upon the door.

It opened. The house was not locked up at all.

She hesitated. Ought she to wait for Henry? He felt strongly about

property, and might prefer to show her over himself. On the other hand,

he had told her to keep in the dry, and the porch was beginning to

drip. So she went in, and the drought from inside slammed the door

behind.

Desolation greeted her. Dirty finger-prints were on the hall-windows,

flue and rubbish on its unwashed boards. The civilization of luggage

had been here for a month, and then decamped. Dining-room and drawing

room—right and left—were guessed only by their wall-papers. They were

just rooms where one could shelter from the rain. Across the ceiling of

each ran a great beam. The dining-room and hall revealed theirs openly,

but the drawing-room’s was match-boarded—because the facts of life must

be concealed from ladies? Drawing-room, dining-room, and hall—how petty

the names sounded! Here were simply three rooms where children could

play and friends shelter from the rain. Yes, and they were beautiful.

Then she opened one of the doors opposite—there were two—and exchanged

wall-papers for whitewash. It was the servants’ part, though she

scarcely realized that: just rooms again, where friends might shelter.

The garden at the back was full of flowering cherries and plums.

Farther on were hints of the meadow and a black cliff of pines. Yes,

the meadow was beautiful.

Penned in by the desolate weather, she recaptured the sense of space

which the motor had tried to rob from her. She remembered again that

ten square miles are not ten times as wonderful as one square mile,

that a thousand square miles are not practically the same as heaven.

The phantom of bigness, which London encourages, was laid for ever when

she paced from the hall at Howards End to its kitchen and heard the

rains run this way and that where the watershed of the roof divided

them.

Now Helen came to her mind, scrutinizing half Wessex from the ridge of

the Purbeck Downs, and saying: “You will have to lose something.” She

was not so sure. For instance, she would double her kingdom by opening

the door that concealed the stairs.

Now she thought of the map of Africa; of empires; of her father; of the

two supreme nations, streams of whose life warmed her blood, but,

mingling, had cooled her brain. She paced back into the hall, and as

she did so the house reverberated.

“Is that you, Henry?” she called.

There was no answer, but the house reverberated again.

“Henry, have you got in?”

But it was the heart of the house beating, faintly at first, then

loudly, martially. It dominated the rain.

It is the starved imagination, not the well-nourished, that is afraid.

Margaret flung open the door to the stairs. A noise as of drums seemed

to deafen her. A woman, an old woman, was descending, with figure

erect, with face impassive, with lips that parted and said dryly:

“Oh! Well, I took you for Ruth Wilcox.”

Margaret stammered: “I—Mrs. Wilcox—I?”