Howards End
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 breeding 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 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 patronising 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
pauperise 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, that 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 longhaired 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 rockery. Evie got rather keen on Alpine plants. But it
didn’t do--no, it didn’t do. You remember, 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’s. “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--2 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.”
CHAPTER XVI
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--nor 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--”