Howards End
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 civilisation. How
paradoxical! Yet I expect that is what we shall find in heaven.”
“And I,” said Tibby, “want civilisation without activity, which, I
expect, is what we shall find in the other place.”
“You needn’t go as far as the other place, Tibbikins, 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 really happen?”
“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 were
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 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 XIV
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 civilisation 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 humanised 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 characterised 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 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.”