Howards End
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, 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 uncivilised and
wrong.”
“So uncivilised?” 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 talk the
thing over only 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 realise 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 III
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 around.
“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?”