Howards End
the world and that type of man, and as soon as I entered the room I saw
you had not been treating him properly. You must keep that type at a
distance. Otherwise they forget themselves. Sad, but true. They aren’t
our sort, and one must face the fact.”
“Ye--es.”
“Do admit that we should never have had the outburst if he was a
gentleman.”
“I admit it willingly,” said Margaret, who was pacing up and down the
room. “A gentleman would have kept his suspicions to himself.”
Mr. Wilcox watched her with a vague uneasiness.
“What did he suspect you of?”
“Of wanting to make money out of him.”
“Intolerable brute! But how were you to benefit?”
“Exactly. How indeed! Just horrible, corroding suspicion. One touch of
thought or of goodwill would have brushed it away. Just the senseless
fear that does make men intolerable brutes.”
“I come back to my original point. You ought to be more careful, Miss
Schlegel. Your servants ought to have orders not to let such people in.”
She turned to him frankly. “Let me explain exactly why we like this man,
and want to see him again.”
“That’s your clever way of talking. I shall never believe you like him.”
“I do. Firstly, because he cares for physical adventure, just as you
do. Yes, you go motoring and shooting; he would like to go camping out.
Secondly, he cares for something special IN adventure. It is quickest to
call that special something poetry--”
“Oh, he’s one of that writer sort.”
“No--oh no! I mean he may be, but it would be loathsome stuff. His brain
is filled with the husks of books, culture--horrible; we want him to
wash out his brain and go to the real thing. We want to show him how
he may get upsides with life. As I said, either friends or the country,
some”--she hesitated--“either some very dear person or some very dear
place seems necessary to relieve life’s daily grey, and to show that it
is grey. If possible, one should have both.”
Some of her words ran past Mr. Wilcox. He let them run past. Others he
caught and criticised with admirable lucidity.
“Your mistake is this, and it is a very common mistake. This young
bounder has a life of his own. What right have you to conclude it is an
unsuccessful life, or, as you call it, ‘grey’?”
“Because--”
“One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own
joys and interests--wife, children, snug little home. That’s where we
practical fellows” he smiled--“are more tolerant than you intellectuals.
We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well
elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after
his own affairs. I quite grant--I look at the faces of the clerks in my
own office, and observe them to be dull, but I don’t know what’s going
on beneath. So, by the way, with London. I have heard you rail against
London, Miss Schlegel, and it seems a funny thing to say but I was very
angry with you. What do you know about London? You only see civilisation
from the outside. I don’t say in your case, but in too many cases that
attitude leads to morbidity, discontent, and Socialism.”
She admitted the strength of his position, though it undermined
imagination. As he spoke, some outposts of poetry and perhaps of
sympathy fell ruining, and she retreated to what she called her “second
line”--to the special facts of the case.
“His wife is an old bore,” she said simply. “He never came home last
Saturday night because he wanted to be alone, and she thought he was
with us.”
“With YOU?”
“Yes.” Evie tittered. “He hasn’t got the cosy home that you assumed. He
needs outside interests.”
“Naughty young man!” cried the girl.
“Naughty?” said Margaret, who hated naughtiness more than sin. “When
you’re married Miss Wilcox, won’t you want outside interests?”
“He has apparently got them,” put in Mr. Wilcox slyly.
“Yes, indeed, father.”
“He was tramping in Surrey, if you mean that,” said Margaret, pacing
away rather crossly.
“Oh, I dare say!”
“Miss Wilcox, he was!”
“M--m--m--m!” from Mr. Wilcox, who thought the episode amusing, if
risque. With most ladies he would not have discussed it, but he was
trading on Margaret’s reputation as an emancipated woman.
“He said so, and about such a thing he wouldn’t lie.”
They both began to laugh.
“That’s where I differ from you. Men lie about their positions and
prospects, but not about a thing of that sort.”
He shook his head. “Miss Schlegel, excuse me, but I know the type.”
“I said before--he isn’t a type. He cares about adventures rightly. He’s
certain that our smug existence isn’t all. He’s vulgar and hysterical
and bookish, but don’t think that sums him up. There’s manhood in him as
well. Yes, that’s what I’m trying to say. He’s a real man.”
As she spoke their eyes met, and it was as if Mr. Wilcox’s defences
fell. She saw back to the real man in him. Unwittingly she had touched
his emotions.
A woman and two men--they had formed the magic triangle of sex, and
the male was thrilled to jealousy, in case the female was attracted by
another male. Love, say the ascetics, reveals our shameful kinship with
the beasts. Be it so: one can bear that; jealousy is the real shame. It
is jealousy, not love, that connects us with the farmyard intolerably,
and calls up visions of two angry cocks and a complacent hen. Margaret
crushed complacency down because she was civilised. Mr. Wilcox,
uncivilised, continued to feel anger long after he had rebuilt his
defences, and was again presenting a bastion to the world.
“Miss Schlegel, you’re a pair of dear creatures, but you really MUST be
careful in this uncharitable world. What does your brother say?”
“I forget.”
“Surely he has some opinion?”
“He laughs, if I remember correctly.”
“He’s very clever, isn’t he?” said Evie, who had met and detested Tibby
at Oxford.
“Yes, pretty well--but I wonder what Helen’s doing.”
“She is very young to undertake this sort of thing,” said Mr. Wilcox.
Margaret went out to the landing. She heard no sound, and Mr. Bast’s
topper was missing from the hall.
“Helen!” she called.
“Yes!” replied a voice from the library.
“You in there?”
“Yes--he’s gone some time.”
Margaret went to her. “Why, you’re all alone,” she said.
“Yes--it’s all right, Meg. Poor, poor creature--”
“Come back to the Wilcoxes and tell me later--Mr. W much concerned, and
slightly titillated.”
“Oh, I’ve no patience with him. I hate him. Poor dear Mr. Bast! he
wanted to talk literature, and we would talk business. Such a muddle of
a man, and yet so worth pulling through. I like him extraordinarily.”
“Well done,” said Margaret, kissing her, “but come into the drawing-room
now, and don’t talk about him to the Wilcoxes. Make light of the whole
thing.”
Helen came and behaved with a cheerfulness that reassured their
visitor--this hen at all events was fancy-free.
“He’s gone with my blessing,” she cried, “and now for puppies.”
As they drove away, Mr. Wilcox said to his daughter:
“I am really concerned at the way those girls go on. They are as clever
as you make ’em, but unpractical--God bless me! One of these days
they’ll go too far. Girls like that oughtn’t to live alone in London.
Until they marry, they ought to have some one to look after them. We
must look in more often--we’re better than no one. You like them, don’t
you, Evie?”
Evie replied: “Helen’s right enough, but I can’t stand the toothy one.
And I shouldn’t have called either of them girls.”
Evie had grown up handsome. Dark-eyed, with the glow of youth under
sunburn, built firmly and firm-lipped, she was the best the Wilcoxes
could do in the way of feminine beauty. For the present, puppies and
her father were the only things she loved, but the net of matrimony was
being prepared for her, and a few days later she was attracted to a Mr.
Percy Cahill, an uncle of Mrs. Charles’s, and he was attracted to her.
CHAPTER XVII
The Age of Property holds bitter moments even for a proprietor. When
a move is imminent, furniture becomes ridiculous, and Margaret now
lay awake at nights wondering where, where on earth they and all
their belongings would be deposited in September next. Chairs, tables,
pictures, books, that had rumbled down to them through the generations,
must rumble forward again like a slide of rubbish to which she longed to
give the final push, and send toppling into the sea. But there were
all their father’s books--they never read them, but they were
their father’s, and must be kept. There was the marble-topped
chiffonier--their mother had set store by it, they could not remember
why. Round every knob and cushion in the house gathered a sentiment
that was at times personal, but more often a faint piety to the dead, a
prolongation of rites that might have ended at the grave.
It was absurd, if you came to think of it; Helen and Tibby came to think
of it; Margaret was too busy with the house-agents. The feudal ownership
of land did bring dignity, whereas the modern ownership of movables
is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We are reverting to the
civilisation of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the
middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth,
and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty. The
Schlegels were certainly the poorer for the loss of Wickham Place. It
had helped to balance their lives, and almost to counsel them. Nor is
their ground-landlord spiritually the richer. He has built flats on
its site, his motor-cars grow swifter, his exposures of Socialism more
trenchant. But he has spilt the precious distillation of the years, and
no chemistry of his can give it back to society again.
Margaret grew depressed; she was anxious to settle on a house before
they left town to pay their annual visit to Mrs. Munt. She enjoyed this
visit, and wanted to have her mind at ease for it. Swanage, though dull,
was stable, and this year she longed more than usual for its fresh air
and for the magnificent downs that guard it on the north. But London
thwarted her; in its atmosphere she could not concentrate. London only
stimulates, it cannot sustain; and Margaret, hurrying over its surface
for a house without knowing what sort of a house she wanted, was paying
for many a thrilling sensation in the past. She could not even break
loose from culture, and her time was wasted by concerts which it would
be a sin to miss, and invitations which it would never do to refuse. At
last she grew desperate; she resolved that she would go nowhere and be
at home to no one until she found a house, and broke the resolution in
half an hour.
Once she had humorously lamented that she had never been to Simpson’s
restaurant in the Strand. Now a note arrived from Miss Wilcox, asking
her to lunch there. Mr Cahill was coming and the three would have such a
jolly chat, and perhaps end up at the Hippodrome. Margaret had no strong
regard for Evie, and no desire to meet her fiance, and she was surprised
that Helen, who had been far funnier about Simpson’s, had not been asked
instead. But the invitation touched her by its intimate tone. She
must know Evie Wilcox better than she supposed, and declaring that she
“simply must,” she accepted.
But when she saw Evie at the entrance of the restaurant, staring
fiercely at nothing after the fashion of athletic women, her heart
failed her anew. Miss Wilcox had changed perceptibly since her
engagement. Her voice was gruffer, her manner more downright, and she
was inclined to patronise the more foolish virgin. Margaret was silly
enough to be pained at this. Depressed at her isolation, she saw not
only houses and furniture, but the vessel of life itself slipping past
her, with people like Evie and Mr. Cahill on board.