Howards End
“I perceive you are attempting blackmail. It is scarcely a pretty weapon
for a wife to use against her husband. My rule through life has been
never to pay the least attention to threats, and I can only repeat
what I said before: I do not give you and your sister leave to sleep at
Howards End.”
Margaret loosed his hands. He went into the house, wiping first one and
then the other on his handkerchief. For a little she stood looking at
the Six Hills, tombs of warriors, breasts of the spring. Then she passed
out into what was now the evening.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Charles and Tibby met at Ducie Street, where the latter was staying.
Their interview was short and absurd. They had nothing in common but the
English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them
understood. Charles saw in Helen the family foe. He had singled her out
as the most dangerous of the Schlegels, and, angry as he was, looked
forward to telling his wife how right he had been. His mind was made up
at once; the girl must be got out of the way before she disgraced them
farther. If occasion offered she might be married to a villain, or,
possibly, to a fool. But this was a concession to morality, it formed
no part of his main scheme. Honest and hearty was Charles’s dislike, and
the past spread itself out very clearly before him; hatred is a skilful
compositor. As if they were heads in a note-book, he ran through all
the incidents of the Schlegels’ campaign: the attempt to compromise his
brother, his mother’s legacy, his father’s marriage, the introduction
of the furniture, the unpacking of the same. He had not yet heard of the
request to sleep at Howards End; that was to be their master-stroke and
the opportunity for his. But he already felt that Howards End was the
objective, and, though he disliked the house, was determined to defend
it.
Tibby, on the other hand, had no opinions. He stood above the
conventions: his sister had a right to do what she thought right. It is
not difficult to stand above the conventions when we leave no hostages
among them; men can always be more unconventional than women, and a
bachelor of independent means need encounter no difficulties at all.
Unlike Charles, Tibby had money enough; his ancestors had earned it for
him, and if he shocked the people in one set of lodgings he had only to
move into another. His was the leisure without sympathy--an attitude as
fatal as the strenuous; a little cold culture may be raised on it, but
no art. His sisters had seen the family danger, and had never forgotten
to discount the gold islets that raised them from the sea. Tibby gave
all the praise to himself, and so despised the struggling and the
submerged.
Hence the absurdity of the interview; the gulf between them was economic
as well as spiritual. But several facts passed; Charles pressed for them
with an impertinence that the undergraduate could not withstand. On what
date had Helen gone abroad? To whom? (Charles was anxious to fasten the
scandal on Germany.) Then, changing his tactics, he said roughly: “I
suppose you realise that you are your sister’s protector?”
“In what sense?”
“If a man played about with my sister, I’d send a bullet through him,
but perhaps you don’t mind.”
“I mind very much,” protested Tibby.
“Who d’ye suspect, then? Speak out man. One always suspects some one.”
“No one. I don’t think so.” Involuntarily he blushed. He had remembered
the scene in his Oxford rooms.
“You are hiding something,” said Charles. As interviews go, he got the
best of this one. “When you saw her last, did she mention any one’s
name? Yes or no!” he thundered, so that Tibby started.
“In my rooms she mentioned some friends, called the Basts.”
“Who are the Basts?”
“People--friends of hers at Evie’s wedding.”
“I don’t remember. But, by great Scott, I do! My aunt told me about some
rag-tag. Was she full of them when you saw her? Is there a man? Did she
speak of the man? Or--look here--have you had any dealings with him?”
Tibby was silent. Without intending it, he had betrayed his sister’s
confidence; he was not enough interested in human life to see where
things will lead to. He had a strong regard for honesty, and his word,
once given, had always been kept up to now. He was deeply vexed, not
only for the harm he had done Helen, but for the flaw he had discovered
in his own equipment.
“I see--you are in his confidence. They met at your rooms. Oh, what a
family, what a family! God help the poor pater--”
And Tibby found himself alone.
CHAPTER XL
Leonard--he would figure at length in a newspaper report, but that
evening he did not count for much. The foot of the tree was in shadow,
since the moon was still hidden behind the house. But above, to right,
to left, down the long meadow the moonlight was streaming. Leonard
seemed not a man, but a cause.
Perhaps it was Helen’s way of falling in love--a curious way to
Margaret, whose agony and whose contempt of Henry were yet imprinted
with his image. Helen forgot people. They were husks that had enclosed
her emotion. She could pity, or sacrifice herself, or have instincts,
but had she ever loved in the noblest way, where man and woman, having
lost themselves in sex, desire to lose sex itself in comradeship?
Margaret wondered, but said no word of blame. This was Helen’s evening.
Troubles enough lay ahead of her--the loss of friends and of social
advantages, the agony, the supreme agony, of motherhood, which is not
even yet a matter of common knowledge. For the present let the moon
shine brightly and the breezes of the spring blow gently, dying away
from the gale of the day, and let the earth, that brings increase, bring
peace. Not even to herself dare she blame Helen.
She could not assess her trespass by any moral code; it was everything
or nothing. Morality can tell us that murder is worse than stealing, and
group most sins in an order all must approve, but it cannot group Helen.
The surer its pronouncements on this point, the surer may we be that
morality is not speaking. Christ was evasive when they questioned Him.
It is those that cannot connect who hasten to cast the first stone.
This was Helen’s evening--won at what cost, and not to be marred by the
sorrows of others. Of her own tragedy Margaret never uttered a word.
“One isolates,” said Helen slowly. “I isolated Mr. Wilcox from the other
forces that were pulling Leonard downhill. Consequently, I was full of
pity, and almost of revenge. For weeks I had blamed Mr. Wilcox only, and
so, when your letters came--”
“I need never have written them,” sighed Margaret. “They never shielded
Henry. How hopeless it is to tidy away the past, even for others!”
“I did not know that it was your own idea to dismiss the Basts.”
“Looking back, that was wrong of me.”
“Looking back, darling, I know that it was right. It is right to save
the man whom one loves. I am less enthusiastic about justice now. But we
both thought you wrote at his dictation. It seemed the last touch of his
callousness. Being very much wrought up by this time--and Mrs. Bast
was upstairs. I had not seen her, and had talked for a long time to
Leonard--I had snubbed him for no reason, and that should have warned me
I was in danger. So when the notes came I wanted us to go to you for an
explanation. He said that he guessed the explanation--he knew of it, and
you mustn’t know. I pressed him to tell me. He said no one must know; it
was something to do with his wife. Right up to the end we were Mr. Bast
and Miss Schlegel. I was going to tell him that he must be frank with me
when I saw his eyes, and guessed that Mr. Wilcox had ruined him in two
ways, not one. I drew him to me. I made him tell me. I felt very lonely
myself. He is not to blame. He would have gone on worshipping me. I want
never to see him again, though it sounds appalling. I wanted to give him
money and feel finished. Oh, Meg, the little that is known about these
things!”
She laid her face against the tree.
“The little, too, that is known about growth! Both times it was
loneliness, and the night, and panic afterwards. Did Leonard grow out of
Paul?”
Margaret did not speak for a moment. So tired was she that her attention
had actually wandered to the teeth--the teeth that had been thrust into
the tree’s bark to medicate it. From where she sat she could see them
gleam. She had been trying to count them. “Leonard is a better growth
than madness,” she said. “I was afraid that you would react against Paul
until you went over the verge.”
“I did react until I found poor Leonard. I am steady now. I shan’t ever
like your Henry, dearest Meg, or even speak kindly about him, but all
that blinding hate is over. I shall never rave against Wilcoxes any
more. I understand how you married him, and you will now be very happy.”
Margaret did not reply.
“Yes,” repeated Helen, her voice growing more tender, “I do at last
understand.”
“Except Mrs. Wilcox, dearest, no one understands our little movements.”
“Because in death--I agree.”
“Not quite. I feel that you and I and Henry are only fragments of that
woman’s mind. She knows everything. She is everything. She is the house,
and the tree that leans over it. People have their own deaths as well
as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall
differ in our nothingness. I cannot believe that knowledge such as hers
will perish with knowledge such as mine. She knew about realities. She
knew when people were in love, though she was not in the room. I don’t
doubt that she knew when Henry deceived her.”
“Good-night, Mrs. Wilcox,” called a voice.
“Oh, good-night, Miss Avery.”
“Why should Miss Avery work for us?” Helen murmured.
“Why, indeed?”
Miss Avery crossed the lawn and merged into the hedge that divided
it from the farm. An old gap, which Mr. Wilcox had filled up, had
reappeared, and her track through the dew followed the path that he had
turfed over, when he improved the garden and made it possible for games.
“This is not quite our house yet,” said Helen. “When Miss Avery called,
I felt we are only a couple of tourists.”
“We shall be that everywhere, and for ever.”
“But affectionate tourists.”
“But tourists who pretend each hotel is their home.”
“I can’t pretend very long,” said Helen. “Sitting under this tree one
forgets, but I know that to-morrow I shall see the moon rise out of
Germany. Not all your goodness can alter the facts of the case. Unless
you will come with me.”
Margaret thought for a moment. In the past year she had grown so fond
of England that to leave it was a real grief. Yet what detained her? No
doubt Henry would pardon her outburst, and go on blustering and muddling
into a ripe old age. But what was the good? She had just as soon vanish
from his mind.
“Are you serious in asking me, Helen? Should I get on with your Monica?”
“You would not, but I am serious in asking you.”
“Still, no more plans now. And no more reminiscences.”
They were silent for a little. It was Helen’s evening.
The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made
music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths,
but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled
again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life.
Life passed. The tree rustled again.
“Sleep now,” said Margaret.
The peace of the country was entering into her. It has no commerce with
memory, and little with hope. Least of all is it concerned with the
hopes of the next five minutes. It is the peace of the present, which
passes understanding. Its murmur came “now,” and “now” once more as they
trod the gravel, and “now,” as the moonlight fell upon their father’s