Howards End
“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 some
one near us tottering that we realise 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
criticise 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 Fraulein 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 Ws’ 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 VIII
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 her
husband and Helen, 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 Fraulein 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 Fraulein 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 Fraulein 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--O 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 civilised, 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.
Fraulein 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 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 luggages 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 accuse 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. So 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 the 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.”