Howards End
But the proposal was not to rank among the world’s great love scenes.
“Miss Schlegel”--his voice was firm--“I have had you up on false
pretences. I want to speak about a much more serious matter than a
house.”
Margaret almost answered: “I know--”
“Could you be induced to share my--is it probable--”
“Oh, Mr. Wilcox!” she interrupted, taking hold of the piano and averting
her eyes. “I see, I see. I will write to you afterwards if I may.”
He began to stammer. “Miss Schlegel--Margaret you don’t understand.”
“Oh yes! Indeed, yes!” said Margaret.
“I am asking you to be my wife.”
So deep already was her sympathy, that when he said, “I am asking you
to be my wife,” she made herself give a little start. She must show
surprise if he expected it. An immense joy came over her. It was
indescribable. It had nothing to do with humanity, and most resembled
the all-pervading happiness of fine weather. Fine weather is due to the
sun, but Margaret could think of no central radiance here. She stood in
his drawing-room happy, and longing to give happiness. On leaving him
she realised that the central radiance had been love.
“You aren’t offended, Miss Schlegel?”
“How could I be offended?”
There was a moment’s pause. He was anxious to get rid of her, and she
knew it. She had too much intuition to look at him as he struggled for
possessions that money cannot buy. He desired comradeship and affection,
but he feared them, and she, who had taught herself only to desire, and
could have clothed the struggle with beauty, held back, and hesitated
with him.
“Good-bye,” she continued. “You will have a letter from me--I am going
back to Swanage to-morrow.”
“Thank you.”
“Good-bye, and it’s you I thank.”
“I may order the motor round, mayn’t I?”
“That would be most kind.”
“I wish I had written. Ought I to have written?”
“Not at all.”
“There’s just one question--”
She shook her head. He looked a little bewildered as they parted.
They parted without shaking hands; she had kept the interview, for his
sake, in tints of the quietest grey. She thrilled with happiness ere
she reached her house. Others had loved her in the past, if one apply
to their brief desires so grave a word, but the others had been
“ninnies”--young men who had nothing to do, old men who could find
nobody better. And she had often ‘loved,’ too, but only so far as
the facts of sex demanded: mere yearnings for the masculine sex to be
dismissed for what they were worth, with a sigh. Never before had her
personality been touched. She was not young or very rich, and it amazed
her that a man of any standing should take her seriously. As she sat,
trying to do accounts in her empty house, amidst beautiful pictures and
noble books, waves of emotion broke, as if a tide of passion was flowing
through the night air. She shook her head, tried to concentrate her
attention, and failed. In vain did she repeat: “But I’ve been through
this sort of thing before.” She had never been through it; the big
machinery, as opposed to the little, had been set in motion, and the
idea that Mr. Wilcox loved, obsessed her before she came to love him in
return.
She would come to no decision yet. “Oh, sir, this is so sudden”--that
prudish phrase exactly expressed her when her time came. Premonitions
are not preparation. She must examine more closely her own nature and
his; she must talk it over judicially with Helen. It had been a strange
love-scene--the central radiance unacknowledged from first to last. She,
in his place, would have said Ich liebe dich, but perhaps it was not
his habit to open the heart. He might have done it if she had pressed
him--as a matter of duty, perhaps; England expects every man to open
his heart once; but the effort would have jarred him, and never, if
she could avoid it, should he lose those defences that he had chosen to
raise against the world. He must never be bothered with emotional talk,
or with a display of sympathy. He was an elderly man now, and it would
be futile and impudent to correct him.
Mrs. Wilcox strayed in and out, ever a welcome ghost; surveying the
scene, thought Margaret, without one hint of bitterness.
CHAPTER XIX
If one wanted to show a foreigner England, perhaps the wisest course
would be to take him to the final section of the Purbeck Hills, and
stand him on their summit, a few miles to the east of Corfe. Then system
after system of our island would roll together under his feet. Beneath
him is the valley of the Frome, and all the wild lands that come tossing
down from Dorchester, black and gold, to mirror their gorse in the
expanses of Poole. The valley of the Stour is beyond, unaccountable
stream, dirty at Blandford, pure at Wimborne--the Stour, sliding out of
fat fields, to marry the Avon beneath the tower of Christ church. The
valley of the Avon--invisible, but far to the north the trained eye may
see Clearbury Ring that guards it, and the imagination may leap beyond
that on to Salisbury Plain itself, and beyond the Plain to all the
glorious downs of Central England. Nor is Suburbia absent. Bournemouth’s
ignoble coast cowers to the right, heralding the pine-trees that mean,
for all their beauty, red houses, and the Stock Exchange, and extend to
the gates of London itself. So tremendous is the City’s trail! But the
cliffs of Freshwater it shall never touch, and the island will guard the
Island’s purity till the end of time. Seen from the west the Wight is
beautiful beyond all laws of beauty. It is as if a fragment of England
floated forward to greet the foreigner--chalk of our chalk, turf of
our turf, epitome of what will follow. And behind the fragment lies
Southampton, hostess to the nations, and Portsmouth, a latent fire, and
all around it, with double and treble collision of tides, swirls the
sea. How many villages appear in this view! How many castles! How many
churches, vanished or triumphant! How many ships, railways, and roads!
What incredible variety of men working beneath that lucent sky to what
final end! The reason fails, like a wave on the Swanage beach; the
imagination swells, spreads, and deepens, until it becomes geographic
and encircles England.
So Frieda Mosebach, now Frau Architect Liesecke, and mother to her
husband’s baby, was brought up to these heights to be impressed, and,
after a prolonged gaze, she said that the hills were more swelling
here than in Pomerania, which was true, but did not seem to Mrs. Munt
apposite. Poole Harbour was dry, which led her to praise the absence of
muddy foreshore at Friedrich Wilhelms Bad, Rugen, where beech-trees hang
over the tideless Baltic, and cows may contemplate the brine. Rather
unhealthy Mrs. Munt thought this would be, water being safer when it
moved about.
“And your English lakes--Vindermere, Grasmere they, then, unhealthy?”
“No, Frau Liesecke; but that is because they are fresh water, and
different. Salt water ought to have tides, and go up and down a great
deal, or else it smells. Look, for instance, at an aquarium.”
“An aquarium! Oh, MEESIS Munt, you mean to tell me that fresh aquariums
stink less than salt? Why, then Victor, my brother-in-law, collected
many tadpoles--” “You are not to say ‘stink,’” interrupted Helen; “at
least, you may say it, but you must pretend you are being funny while
you say it.”
“Then ‘smell.’ And the mud of your Pool down there--does it not smell,
or may I say ‘stink,’ ha, ha?”
“There always has been mud in Poole Harbour,” said Mrs. Munt, with
a slight frown. “The rivers bring it down, and a most valuable
oyster-fishery depends upon it.”
“Yes, that is so,” conceded Frieda; and another international incident
was closed.
“‘Bournemouth is,’” resumed their hostess, quoting a local rhyme to
which she was much attached--“‘Bournemouth is, Poole was, and Swanage
is to be the most important town of all and biggest of the three.’ Now,
Frau Liesecke, I have shown you Bournemouth, and I have shown you Poole,
so let us walk backward a little, and look down again at Swanage.”
“Aunt Juley, wouldn’t that be Meg’s train?”
A tiny puff of smoke had been circling the harbour, and now was bearing
southwards towards them over the black and the gold.
“Oh, dearest Margaret, I do hope she won’t be overtired.”
“Oh, I do wonder--I do wonder whether she’s taken the house.”
“I hope she hasn’t been hasty.”
“So do I--oh, SO do I.”
“Will it be as beautiful as Wickham Place?” Frieda asked.
“I should think it would. Trust Mr. Wilcox for doing himself proud. All
those Ducie Street houses are beautiful in their modern way, and I can’t
think why he doesn’t keep on with it. But it’s really for Evie that he
went there, and now that Evie’s going to be married--”
“Ah!”
“You’ve never seen Miss Wilcox, Frieda. How absurdly matrimonial you
are!”
“But sister to that Paul?”
“Yes.”
“And to that Charles,” said Mrs. Munt with feeling. “Oh, Helen, Helen,
what a time that was!”
Helen laughed. “Meg and I haven’t got such tender hearts. If there’s a
chance of a cheap house, we go for it.”
“Now look, Frau Liesecke, at my niece’s train. You see, it is coming
towards us--coming, coming; and, when it gets to Corfe, it will actually
go THROUGH the downs, on which we are standing, so that, if we walk
over, as I suggested, and look down on Swanage, we shall see it coming
on the other side. Shall we?”
Frieda assented, and in a few minutes they had crossed the ridge and
exchanged the greater view for the lesser. Rather a dull valley lay
below, backed by the slope of the coastward downs. They were looking
across the Isle of Purbeck and on to Swanage, soon to be the most
important town of all, and ugliest of the three. Margaret’s train
reappeared as promised, and was greeted with approval by her aunt.
It came to a standstill in the middle distance, and there it had been
planned that Tibby should meet her, and drive her, and a tea-basket, up
to join them.
“You see,” continued Helen to her cousin, “the Wilcoxes collect houses
as your Victor collects tadpoles. They have, one, Ducie Street; two,
Howards End, where my great rumpus was; three, a country seat in
Shropshire; four, Charles has a house in Hilton; and five, another near
Epsom; and six, Evie will have a house when she marries, and probably a
pied-a-terre in the country--which makes seven. Oh yes, and Paul a
hut in Africa makes eight. I wish we could get Howards End. That was
something like a dear little house! Didn’t you think so, Aunt Juley?”
“I had too much to do, dear, to look at it,” said Mrs. Munt, with a
gracious dignity. “I had everything to settle and explain, and Charles
Wilcox to keep in his place besides. It isn’t likely I should remember
much. I just remember having lunch in your bedroom.”
“Yes, so do I. But, oh dear, dear, how dreadful it all seems! And in the
autumn there began that anti-Pauline movement--you, and Frieda, and
Meg, and Mrs. Wilcox, all obsessed with the idea that I might yet marry
Paul.”
“You yet may,” said Frieda despondently.
Helen shook her head. “The Great Wilcox Peril will never return. If I’m
certain of anything it’s of that.”
“One is certain of nothing but the truth of one’s own emotions.”
The remark fell damply on the conversation. But Helen slipped her arm
round her cousin, somehow liking her the better for making it. It was
not an original remark, nor had Frieda appropriated it passionately, for
she had a patriotic rather than a philosophic mind. Yet it betrayed that
interest in the universal which the average Teuton possesses and the
average Englishman does not. It was, however illogically, the good,
the beautiful, the true, as opposed to the respectable, the pretty,
the adequate. It was a landscape of Bocklin’s beside a landscape of