Howards End
sword. They passed upstairs, kissed, and amidst the endless iterations
fell asleep. The house had enshadowed the tree at first, but as the moon
rose higher the two disentangled, and were clear for a few moments
at midnight. Margaret awoke and looked into the garden. How
incomprehensible that Leonard Bast should have won her this night of
peace! Was he also part of Mrs. Wilcox’s mind?
CHAPTER XLI
Far different was Leonard’s development. The months after Oniton,
whatever minor troubles they might bring him, were all overshadowed by
Remorse. When Helen looked back she could philosophise, or she could
look into the future and plan for her child. But the father saw nothing
beyond his own sin. Weeks afterwards, in the midst of other occupations,
he would suddenly cry out, “Brute--you brute, I couldn’t have--” and be
rent into two people who held dialogues. Or brown rain would descend,
blotting out faces and the sky. Even Jacky noticed the change in him.
Most terrible were his sufferings when he awoke from sleep. Sometimes
he was happy at first, but grew conscious of a burden hanging to him
and weighing down his thoughts when they would move. Or little irons
scorched his body. Or a sword stabbed him. He would sit at the edge of
his bed, holding his heart and moaning, “Oh what SHALL I do, whatever
SHALL I do?” Nothing brought ease. He could put distance between him and
the trespass, but it grew in his soul.
Remorse is not among the eternal verities. The Greeks were right to
dethrone her. Her action is too capricious, as though the Erinyes
selected for punishment only certain men and certain sins. And of all
means to regeneration Remorse is surely the most wasteful. It cuts away
healthy tissues with the poisoned. It is a knife that probes far deeper
than the evil. Leonard was driven straight through its torments and
emerged pure, but enfeebled--a better man, who would never lose control
of himself again, but also a smaller man, who had less to control. Nor
did purity mean peace. The use of the knife can become a habit as hard
to shake off as passion itself, and Leonard continued to start with a
cry out of dreams.
He built up a situation that was far enough from the truth. It never
occurred to him that Helen was to blame. He forgot the intensity of
their talk, the charm that had been lent him by sincerity, the magic
of Oniton under darkness and of the whispering river. Helen loved the
absolute. Leonard had been ruined absolutely, and had appeared to her
as a man apart, isolated from the world. A real man, who cared for
adventure and beauty, who desired to live decently and pay his way, who
could have travelled more gloriously through life than the juggernaut
car that was crushing him. Memories of Evie’s wedding had warped
her, the starched servants, the yards of uneaten food, the rustle of
overdressed women, motor-cars oozing grease on the gravel, a pretentious
band. She had tasted the lees of this on her arrival; in the darkness,
after failure, they intoxicated her. She and the victim seemed alone in
a world of unreality, and she loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an
hour.
In the morning she was gone. The note that she left, tender and
hysterical in tone, and intended to be most kind, hurt her lover
terribly. It was as if some work of art had been broken by him, some
picture in the National Gallery slashed out of its frame. When he
recalled her talents and her social position, he felt that the first
passer-by had a right to shoot him down. He was afraid of the waitress
and the porters at the railway-station. He was afraid at first of his
wife, though later he was to regard her with a strange new tenderness,
and to think, “There is nothing to choose between us, after all.”
The expedition to Shropshire crippled the Basts permanently. Helen
in her flight forgot to settle the hotel bill, and took their return
tickets away with her; they had to pawn Jacky’s bangles to get home, and
the smash came a few days afterwards. It is true that Helen offered him
five thousand pounds, but such a sum meant nothing to him. He could not
see that the girl was desperately righting herself, and trying to save
something out of the disaster, if it was only five thousand pounds. But
he had to live somehow. He turned to his family, and degraded himself to
a professional beggar. There was nothing else for him to do.
“A letter from Leonard,” thought Blanche, his sister; “and after all
this time.” She hid it, so that her husband should not see, and when he
had gone to his work read it with some emotion, and sent the prodigal a
little money out of her dress allowance.
“A letter from Leonard!” said the other sister, Laura, a few days later.
She showed it to her husband. He wrote a cruel, insolent reply, but sent
more money than Blanche, so Leonard soon wrote to him again.
And during the winter the system was developed.
Leonard realised that they need never starve, because it would be too
painful for his relatives. Society is based on the family, and the
clever wastrel can exploit this indefinitely. Without a generous thought
on either side, pounds and pounds passed. The donors disliked Leonard,
and he grew to hate them intensely. When Laura censured his immoral
marriage, he thought bitterly, “She minds that! What would she say if
she knew the truth?” When Blanche’s husband offered him work, he found
some pretext for avoiding it. He had wanted work keenly at Oniton, but
too much anxiety had shattered him, he was joining the unemployable.
When his brother, the lay-reader, did not reply to a letter, he wrote
again, saying that he and Jacky would come down to his village on foot.
He did not intend this as blackmail. Still the brother sent a postal
order, and it became part of the system. And so passed his winter and
his spring.
In the horror there are two bright spots. He never confused the past. He
remained alive, and blessed are those who live, if it is only to a sense
of sinfulness. The anodyne of muddledom, by which most men blur and
blend their mistakes, never passed Leonard’s lips--
“And if I drink oblivion of a day,
So shorten I the stature of my soul.”
It is a hard saying, and a hard man wrote it, but it lies at the root of
all character.
And the other bright spot was his tenderness for Jacky. He pitied her
with nobility now--not the contemptuous pity of a man who sticks to a
woman through thick and thin. He tried to be less irritable. He wondered
what her hungry eyes desired--nothing that she could express, or that
he or any man could give her. Would she ever receive the justice that is
mercy--the justice for by-products that the world is too busy to bestow?
She was fond of flowers, generous with money, and not revengeful. If she
had borne him a child he might have cared for her. Unmarried, Leonard
would never have begged; he would have flickered out and died. But the
whole of life is mixed. He had to provide for Jacky, and went down dirty
paths that she might have a few feathers and the dishes of food that
suited her.
One day he caught sight of Margaret and her brother. He was in St.
Paul’s. He had entered the cathedral partly to avoid the rain and partly
to see a picture that had educated him in former years. But the light
was bad, the picture ill placed, and Time and judgment were inside him
now. Death alone still charmed him, with her lap of poppies, on which
all men shall sleep. He took one glance, and turned aimlessly away
towards a chair. Then down the nave he saw Miss Schlegel and her
brother. They stood in the fairway of passengers, and their faces were
extremely grave. He was perfectly certain that they were in trouble
about their sister.
Once outside--and he fled immediately--he wished that he had spoken
to them. What was his life? What were a few angry words, or even
imprisonment? He had done wrong--that was the true terror. Whatever they
might know, he would tell them everything he knew. He re-entered St.
Paul’s. But they had moved in his absence, and had gone to lay their
difficulties before Mr. Wilcox and Charles.
The sight of Margaret turned remorse into new channels. He desired to
confess, and though the desire is proof of a weakened nature, which
is about to lose the essence of human intercourse, it did not take
an ignoble form. He did not suppose that confession would bring him
happiness. It was rather that he yearned to get clear of the tangle. So
does the suicide yearn. The impulses are akin, and the crime of suicide
lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave
behind. Confession need harm no one--it can satisfy that test--and
though it was un-English, and ignored by our Anglican cathedral, Leonard
had a right to decide upon it.
Moreover, he trusted Margaret. He wanted her hardness now. That cold,
intellectual nature of hers would be just, if unkind. He would do
whatever she told him, even if he had to see Helen. That was the supreme
punishment she would exact. And perhaps she would tell him how Helen
was. That was the supreme reward.
He knew nothing about Margaret, not even whether she was married to Mr.
Wilcox, and tracking her out took several days. That evening he
toiled through the wet to Wickham Place, where the new flats were now
appearing. Was he also the cause of their move? Were they expelled from
society on his account? Thence to a public library, but could find no
satisfactory Schlegel in the directory. On the morrow he searched again.
He hung about outside Mr. Wilcox’s office at lunch time, and, as the
clerks came out said, “Excuse me, sir, but is your boss married?” Most
of them stared, some said, “What’s that to you?” but one, who had not
yet acquired reticence, told him what he wished. Leonard could not learn
the private address. That necessitated more trouble with directories
and tubes. Ducie Street was not discovered till the Monday, the day
that Margaret and her husband went down on their hunting expedition to
Howards End.
He called at about four o’clock. The weather had changed, and the
sun shone gaily on the ornamental steps--black and white marble in
triangles. Leonard lowered his eyes to them after ringing the bell. He
felt in curious health; doors seemed to be opening and shutting inside
his body, and he had been obliged to sleep sitting up in bed, with his
back propped against the wall. When the parlourmaid came he could not
see her face; the brown rain had descended suddenly.
“Does Mrs. Wilcox live here?” he asked.
“She’s out,” was the answer.
“When will she be back?”
“I’ll ask,” said the parlourmaid.
Margaret had given instructions that no one who mentioned her name
should ever be rebuffed. Putting the door on the chain--for Leonard’s
appearance demanded this--she went through to the smoking-room, which
was occupied by Tibby. Tibby was asleep. He had had a good lunch.
Charles Wilcox had not yet rung him up for the distracting interview. He
said drowsily: “I don’t know. Hilton. Howards End. Who is it?”
“I’ll ask, sir.”
“No, don’t bother.”
“They have taken the car to Howards End,” said the parlourmaid to
Leonard.
He thanked her, and asked whereabouts that place was.
“You appear to want to know a good deal,” she remarked. But Margaret had
forbidden her to be mysterious. She told him against her better judgment
that Howards End was in Hertfordshire.
“Is it a village, please?”
“Village! It’s Mr. Wilcox’s private house--at least, it’s one of them.
Mrs. Wilcox keeps her furniture there. Hilton is the village.”
“Yes. And when will they be back?”
“Mr. Schlegel doesn’t know. We can’t know everything, can we?” She
shut him out, and went to attend to the telephone, which was ringing
furiously.
He loitered away another night of agony. Confession grew more difficult.