Howards End
into St. Paul’s, whose dome stands out of the welter so bravely, as
if preaching the gospel of form. But within, St. Paul’s is as its
surroundings--echoes and whispers, inaudible songs, invisible mosaics,
wet footmarks, crossing and recrossing the floor. Si monumentum
requiris, circumspice; it points us back to London. There was no hope of
Helen here.
Henry was unsatisfactory at first. That she had expected. He was
overjoyed to see her back from Swanage, and slow to admit the growth of
a new trouble. When they told him of their search, he only chaffed Tibby
and the Schlegels generally, and declared that it was “just like Helen”
to lead her relatives a dance.
“That is what we all say,” replied Margaret. “But why should it be
just like Helen? Why should she be allowed to be so queer, and to grow
queerer?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m a plain man of business. I live and let live. My
advice to you both is, don’t worry. Margaret, you’ve got black marks
again under your eyes. You know that’s strictly forbidden. First
your aunt--then your sister. No, we aren’t going to have it. Are we,
Theobald?” He rang the bell. “I’ll give you some tea, and then you go
straight to Ducie Street. I can’t have my girl looking as old as her
husband.”
“All the same, you have not quite seen our point,” said Tibby.
Mr. Wilcox, who was in good spirits, retorted, “I don’t suppose I ever
shall.” He leant back, laughing at the gifted but ridiculous family,
while the fire flickered over the map of Africa. Margaret motioned to
her brother to go on. Rather diffident, he obeyed her.
“Margaret’s point is this,” he said. “Our sister may be mad.”
Charles, who was working in the inner room, looked round.
“Come in, Charles,” said Margaret kindly. “Could you help us at all? We
are again in trouble.”
“I’m afraid I cannot. What are the facts? We are all mad more or less,
you know, in these days.”
“The facts are as follows,” replied Tibby, who had at times a pedantic
lucidity. “The facts are that she has been in England for three days and
will not see us. She has forbidden the bankers to give us her address.
She refuses to answer questions. Margaret finds her letters colourless.
There are other facts, but these are the most striking.”
“She has never behaved like this before, then?” asked Henry.
“Of course not!” said his wife, with a frown.
“Well, my dear, how am I to know?”
A senseless spasm of annoyance came over her. “You know quite well that
Helen never sins against affection,” she said. “You must have noticed
that much in her, surely.”
“Oh yes; she and I have always hit it off together.”
“No, Henry--can’t you see?--I don’t mean that.”
She recovered herself, but not before Charles had observed her. Stupid
and attentive, he was watching the scene.
“I was meaning that when she was eccentric in the past, one could trace
it back to the heart in the long-run. She behaved oddly because she
cared for some one, or wanted to help them. There’s no possible excuse
for her now. She is grieving us deeply, and that is why I am sure that
she is not well. ‘Mad’ is too terrible a word, but she is not well.
I shall never believe it. I shouldn’t discuss my sister with you if I
thought she was well--trouble you about her, I mean.”
Henry began to grow serious. Ill-health was to him something perfectly
definite. Generally well himself, he could not realise that we sink to
it by slow gradations. The sick had no rights; they were outside the
pale; one could lie to them remorselessly. When his first wife was
seized, he had promised to take her down into Hertfordshire, but
meanwhile arranged with a nursing-home instead. Helen, too, was ill. And
the plan that he sketched out for her capture, clever and well-meaning
as it was, drew its ethics from the wolf-pack.
“You want to get hold of her?” he said. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?
She has got to see a doctor.”
“For all I know she has seen one already.”
“Yes, yes; don’t interrupt.” He rose to his feet and thought intently.
The genial, tentative host disappeared, and they saw instead the man who
had carved money out of Greece and Africa, and bought forests from the
natives for a few bottles of gin. “I’ve got it,” he said at last. “It’s
perfectly easy. Leave it to me. We’ll send her down to Howards End.”
“How will you do that?”
“After her books. Tell her that she must unpack them herself. Then you
can meet her there.”
“But, Henry, that’s just what she won’t let me do. It’s part of
her--whatever it is--never to see me.”
“Of course you won’t tell her you’re going. When she is there, looking
at the cases, you’ll just stroll in. If nothing is wrong with her, so
much the better. But there’ll be the motor round the corner, and we can
run her to a specialist in no time.”
Margaret shook her head. “It’s quite impossible.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t seem impossible to me,” said Tibby; “it is surely a very
tippy plan.”
“It is impossible, because--” She looked at her husband sadly. “It’s not
the particular language that Helen and I talk, if you see my meaning. It
would do splendidly for other people, whom I don’t blame.”
“But Helen doesn’t talk,” said Tibby. “That’s our whole difficulty. She
won’t talk your particular language, and on that account you think she’s
ill.”
“No, Henry; it’s sweet of you, but I couldn’t.”
“I see,” he said; “you have scruples.”
“I suppose so.”
“And sooner than go against them you would have your sister suffer. You
could have got her down to Swanage by a word, but you had scruples. And
scruples are all very well. I am as scrupulous as any man alive, I hope;
but when it is a case like this, when there is a question of madness--”
“I deny it’s madness.”
“You said just now--”
“It’s madness when I say it, but not when you say it.”
Henry shrugged his shoulders. “Margaret! Margaret!” he groaned. “No
education can teach a woman logic. Now, my dear, my time is valuable. Do
you want me to help you or not?”
“Not in that way.”
“Answer my question. Plain question, plain answer. Do--”
Charles surprised them by interrupting. “Pater, we may as well keep
Howards End out of it,” he said.
“Why, Charles?”
Charles could give no reason; but Margaret felt as if, over tremendous
distance, a salutation had passed between them.
“The whole house is at sixes and sevens,” he said crossly. “We don’t
want any more mess.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” asked his father. “My boy, pray who’s ‘we’?”
“I am sure I beg your pardon,” said Charles. “I appear always to be
intruding.”
By now Margaret wished she had never mentioned her trouble to her
husband. Retreat was impossible. He was determined to push the matter
to a satisfactory conclusion, and Helen faded as he talked. Her fair,
flying hair and eager eyes counted for nothing, for she was ill, without
rights, and any of her friends might hunt her. Sick at heart, Margaret
joined in the chase. She wrote her sister a lying letter, at her
husband’s dictation; she said the furniture was all at Howards End, but
could be seen on Monday next at 3 P.M., when a charwoman would be in
attendance. It was a cold letter, and the more plausible for that. Helen
would think she was offended. And on Monday next she and Henry were to
lunch with Dolly, and then ambush themselves in the garden.
After they had gone, Mr. Wilcox said to his son: “I can’t have this sort
of behaviour, my boy. Margaret’s too sweet-natured to mind, but I mind
for her.”
Charles made no answer.
“Is anything wrong with you, Charles, this afternoon?”
“No, pater; but you may be taking on a bigger business than you reckon.”
“How?”
“Don’t ask me.”
CHAPTER XXXV
One speaks of the moods of spring, but the days that are her true
children have only one mood; they are all full of the rising and
dropping of winds, and the whistling of birds. New flowers may come out,
the green embroidery of the hedges increase, but the same heaven broods
overhead, soft, thick, and blue, the same figures, seen and unseen, are
wandering by coppice and meadow. The morning that Margaret had spent
with Miss Avery, and the afternoon she set out to entrap Helen, were the
scales of a single balance. Time might never have moved, rain never
have fallen, and man alone, with his schemes and ailments, was troubling
Nature until he saw her through a veil of tears.
She protested no more. Whether Henry was right or wrong, he was most
kind, and she knew of no other standard by which to judge him. She
must trust him absolutely. As soon as he had taken up a business, his
obtuseness vanished. He profited by the slightest indications, and the
capture of Helen promised to be staged as deftly as the marriage of
Evie.
They went down in the morning as arranged, and he discovered that their
victim was actually in Hilton. On his arrival he called at all
the livery-stables in the village, and had a few minutes’ serious
conversation with the proprietors. What he said, Margaret did not
know--perhaps not the truth; but news arrived after lunch that a lady
had come by the London train, and had taken a fly to Howards End.
“She was bound to drive,” said Henry. “There will be her books.”
“I cannot make it out,” said Margaret for the hundredth time.
“Finish your coffee, dear. We must be off.”
“Yes, Margaret, you know you must take plenty,” said Dolly.
Margaret tried, but suddenly lifted her hand to her eyes. Dolly stole
glances at her father-in-law which he did not answer. In the silence the
motor came round to the door.
“You’re not fit for it,” he said anxiously. “Let me go alone. I know
exactly what to do.”
“Oh yes, I am fit,” said Margaret, uncovering her face. “Only most
frightfully worried. I cannot feel that Helen is really alive. Her
letters and telegrams seem to have come from some one else. Her voice
isn’t in them. I don’t believe your driver really saw her at the
station. I wish I’d never mentioned it. I know that Charles is vexed.
Yes, he is--” She seized Dolly’s hand and kissed it. “There, Dolly will
forgive me. There. Now we’ll be off.”
Henry had been looking at her closely. He did not like this breakdown.
“Don’t you want to tidy yourself?” he asked.
“Have I time?”
“Yes, plenty.”
She went to the lavatory by the front door, and as soon as the bolt
slipped, Mr. Wilcox said quietly:
“Dolly, I’m going without her.”
Dolly’s eyes lit up with vulgar excitement. She followed him on tiptoe
out to the car.
“Tell her I thought it best.”
“Yes, Mr. Wilcox, I see.”
“Say anything you like. All right.”
The car started well, and with ordinary luck would have got away. But
Porgly-woggles, who was playing in the garden, chose this moment to sit
down in the middle of the path. Crane, in trying to pass him, ran one
wheel over a bed of wallflowers. Dolly screamed. Margaret, hearing the
noise, rushed out hatless, and was in time to jump on the footboard.
She said not a single word; he was only treating her as she had treated
Helen, and her rage at his dishonesty only helped to indicate what Helen
would feel against them. She thought, “I deserve it; I am punished for
lowering my colours.” And she accepted his apologies with a calmness
that astonished him.
“I still consider you are not fit for it,” he kept saying.
“Perhaps I was not at lunch. But the whole thing is spread clearly
before me now.”
“I was meaning to act for the best.”
“Just lend me your scarf, will you. This wind takes one’s hair so.”
“Certainly, dear girl. Are you all right now?”
“Look! My hands have stopped trembling.”
“And have quite forgiven me? Then listen. Her cab should already have
arrived at Howards End. (We’re a little late, but no matter.) Our first
move will be to send it down to wait at the farm, as, if possible, one