Howards End
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 scandalised 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
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, apologised, 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’s 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 IX
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