Howards End
don’t know about later, but now the Basts must clearly go.”
“Did you say that your sister is sleeping here, after all?”
“Probably.”
“Is she to be shown up to your room?”
“I have naturally nothing to say to her; I am going to bed. Will you
tell the servants about Helen? Could some one go to carry her bag?”
He tapped a little gong, which had been bought to summon the servants.
“You must make more noise than that if you want them to hear.”
Henry opened a door, and down the corridor came shouts of laughter. “Far
too much screaming there,” he said, and strode towards it. Margaret went
upstairs, uncertain whether to be glad that they had met, or sorry. They
had behaved as if nothing had happened, and her deepest instincts told
her that this was wrong. For his own sake, some explanation was due.
And yet--what could an explanation tell her? A date, a place, a few
details, which she could imagine all too clearly. Now that the first
shock was over, she saw that there was every reason to premise a Mrs.
Bast. Henry’s inner life had long laid open to her--his intellectual
confusion, his obtuseness to personal influence, his strong but furtive
passions. Should she refuse him because his outer life corresponded?
Perhaps. Perhaps, if the dishonour had been done to her, but it was done
long before her day. She struggled against the feeling. She told herself
that Mrs. Wilcox’s wrong was her own. But she was not a barren theorist.
As she undressed, her anger, her regard for the dead, her desire for a
scene, all grew weak. Henry must have it as he liked, for she loved him,
and some day she would use her love to make him a better man.
Pity was at the bottom of her actions all through this crisis. Pity, if
one may generalise, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is
for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not
be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness
stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil.
Here was the core of the question. Henry must be forgiven, and made
better by love; nothing else mattered. Mrs. Wilcox, that unquiet yet
kindly ghost, must be left to her own wrong. To her everything was in
proportion now, and she, too, would pity the man who was blundering
up and down their lives. Had Mrs. Wilcox known of his trespass? An
interesting question, but Margaret fell asleep, tethered by affection,
and lulled by the murmurs of the river that descended all the night from
Wales. She felt herself at one with her future home, colouring it and
coloured by it, and awoke to see, for the second time, Oniton Castle
conquering the morning mists.
CHAPTER XXIX
“Henry dear--” was her greeting.
He had finished his breakfast, and was beginning the Times. His
sister-in-law was packing. Margaret knelt by him and took the paper from
him, feeling that it was unusually heavy and thick. Then, putting her
face where it had been, she looked up in his eyes.
“Henry dear, look at me. No, I won’t have you shirking. Look at me.
There. That’s all.”
“You’re referring to last evening,” he said huskily. “I have released
you from your engagement. I could find excuses, but I won’t. No, I
won’t. A thousand times no. I’m a bad lot, and must be left at that.”
Expelled from his old fortress, Mr. Wilcox was building a new one.
He could no longer appear respectable to her, so he defended himself
instead in a lurid past. It was not true repentance.
“Leave it where you will, boy. It’s not going to trouble us; I know what
I’m talking about, and it will make no difference.”
“No difference?” he inquired. “No difference, when you find that I am
not the fellow you thought?” He was annoyed with Miss Schlegel here. He
would have preferred her to be prostrated by the blow, or even to
rage. Against the tide of his sin flowed the feeling that she was not
altogether womanly. Her eyes gazed too straight; they had read books
that are suitable for men only. And though he had dreaded a scene, and
though she had determined against one, there was a scene, all the same.
It was somehow imperative.
“I am unworthy of you,” he began. “Had I been worthy, I should not have
released you from your engagement. I know what I am talking about. I
can’t bear to talk of such things. We had better leave it.”
She kissed his hand. He jerked it from her, and, rising to his feet,
went on: “You, with your sheltered life, and refined pursuits, and
friends, and books, you and your sister, and women like you--I say, how
can you guess the temptations that lie round a man?”
“It is difficult for us,” said Margaret; “but if we are worth marrying,
we do guess.”
“Cut off from decent society and family ties, what do you suppose
happens to thousands of young fellows overseas? Isolated. No one near. I
know by bitter experience, and yet you say it makes ‘no difference.’”
“Not to me.”
He laughed bitterly. Margaret went to the sideboard and helped herself
to one of the breakfast dishes. Being the last down, she turned out the
spirit-lamp that kept them warm. She was tender, but grave. She knew
that Henry was not so much confessing his soul as pointing out the gulf
between the male soul and the female, and she did not desire to hear him
on this point.
“Did Helen come?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“But that won’t do at all, at all! We don’t want her gossiping with Mrs.
Bast.”
“Good God! no!” he exclaimed, suddenly natural. Then he caught himself
up. “Let them gossip, my game’s up, though I thank you for your
unselfishness--little as my thanks are worth.”
“Didn’t she send me a message or anything?”
“I heard of none.”
“Would you ring the bell, please?”
“What to do?”
“Why, to inquire.”
He swaggered up to it tragically, and sounded a peal. Margaret poured
herself out some coffee. The butler came, and said that Miss Schlegel
had slept at the George, so far as he had heard. Should he go round to
the George?
“I’ll go, thank you,” said Margaret, and dismissed him.
“It is no good,” said Henry. “Those things leak out; you cannot stop a
story once it has started. I have known cases of other men--I despised
them once, I thought that I’m different, I shall never be tempted. Oh,
Margaret--” He came and sat down near her, improvising emotion. She
could not bear to listen to him. “We fellows all come to grief once in
our time. Will you believe that? There are moments when the strongest
man--‘Let him who standeth, take heed lest he fall.’ That’s true,
isn’t it? If you knew all, you would excuse me. I was far from good
influences--far even from England. I was very, very lonely, and longed
for a woman’s voice. That’s enough. I have told you too much already for
you to forgive me now.”
“Yes, that’s enough, dear.”
“I have”--he lowered his voice--“I have been through hell.”
Gravely she considered this claim. Had he? Had he suffered tortures of
remorse, or had it been, “There! that’s over. Now for respectable life
again”? The latter, if she read him rightly. A man who has been through
hell does not boast of his virility. He is humble and hides it, if,
indeed, it still exists. Only in legend does the sinner come forth
penitent, but terrible, to conquer pure woman by his resistless power.
Henry was anxious to be terrible, but had not got it in him. He was a
good average Englishman, who had slipped. The really culpable point--his
faithlessness to Mrs. Wilcox--never seemed to strike him. She longed to
mention Mrs. Wilcox.
And bit by bit the story was told her. It was a very simple story. Ten
years ago was the time, a garrison town in Cyprus the place. Now and
then he asked her whether she could possibly forgive him, and she
answered, “I have already forgiven you, Henry.” She chose her words
carefully, and so saved him from panic. She played the girl, until he
could rebuild his fortress and hide his soul from the world. When the
butler came to clear away, Henry was in a very different mood--asked
the fellow what he was in such a hurry for, complained of the noise last
night in the servants’ hall. Margaret looked intently at the butler. He,
as a handsome young man, was faintly attractive to her as a woman--an
attraction so faint as scarcely to be perceptible, yet the skies would
have fallen if she had mentioned it to Henry.
On her return from the George the building operations were complete, and
the old Henry fronted her, competent, cynical, and kind. He had made a
clean breast, had been forgiven, and the great thing now was to forget
his failure, and to send it the way of other unsuccessful investments.
Jacky rejoined Howards End and Dude Street, and the vermilion motor-car,
and the Argentine Hard Dollars, and all the things and people for whom
he had never had much use and had less now. Their memory hampered him.
He could scarcely attend to Margaret, who brought back disquieting news
from the George. Helen and her clients had gone.
“Well, let them go--the man and his wife, I mean, for the more we see of
your sister the better.”
“But they have gone separately--Helen very early, the Basts just before
I arrived. They have left no message. They have answered neither of my
notes. I don’t like to think what it all means.”
“What did you say in the notes?”
“I told you last night.”
“Oh--ah--yes! Dear, would you like one turn in the garden?”
Margaret took his arm. The beautiful weather soothed her. But the wheels
of Evie’s wedding were still at work, tossing the guests outwards as
deftly as they had drawn them in, and she could not be with him long. It
had been arranged that they should motor to Shrewsbury, whence he would
go north, and she back to London with the Warringtons. For a fraction of
time she was happy. Then her brain recommenced.
“I am afraid there has been gossiping of some kind at the George. Helen
would not have left unless she had heard something. I mismanaged that.
It is wretched. I ought to have parted her from that woman at once.”
“Margaret!” he exclaimed, loosing her arm impressively.
“Yes--yes, Henry?”
“I am far from a saint--in fact, the reverse--but you have taken me, for
better or worse. Bygones must be bygones. You have promised to forgive
me. Margaret, a promise is a promise. Never mention that woman again.”
“Except for some practical reason--never.”
“Practical! You practical!”
“Yes, I’m practical,” she murmured, stooping over the mowing-machine and
playing with the grass which trickled through her fingers like sand.
He had silenced her, but her fears made him uneasy. Not for the first
time, he was threatened with blackmail. He was rich and supposed to be
moral; the Basts knew that he was not, and might find it profitable to
hint as much.
“At all events, you mustn’t worry,” he said. “This is a man’s business.”
He thought intently. “On no account mention it to anybody.”
Margaret flushed at advice so elementary, but he was really paving the
way for a lie. If necessary he would deny that he had ever known Mrs.
Bast, and prosecute her for libel. Perhaps he never had known her. Here
was Margaret, who behaved as if he had not. There the house. Round them
were half a dozen gardeners, clearing up after his daughter’s wedding.
All was so solid and spruce, that the past flew up out of sight like a
spring-blind, leaving only the last five minutes unrolled.
Glancing at these, he saw that the car would be round during the
next five, and plunged into action. Gongs were tapped, orders issued,
Margaret was sent to dress, and the housemaid to sweep up the long
trickle of grass that she had left across the hall. As is Man to the
Universe, so was the mind of Mr. Wilcox to the minds of some men--a
concentrated light upon a tiny spot, a little Ten Minutes moving