Howards End
As soon as possible he went to bed. He watched a patch of moonlight
cross the floor of their lodging, and, as sometimes happens when the
mind is overtaxed, he fell asleep for the rest of the room, but kept
awake for the patch of moonlight. Horrible! Then began one of those
disintegrating dialogues. Part of him said: “Why horrible? It’s ordinary
light from the moon.” “But it moves.” “So does the moon.” “But it is a
clenched fist.” “Why not?” “But it is going to touch me.” “Let it.” And,
seeming to gather motion, the patch ran up his blanket. Presently a
blue snake appeared; then another parallel to it. “Is there life in the
moon?” “Of course.” “But I thought it was uninhabited.” “Not by Time,
Death, Judgment, and the smaller snakes.” “Smaller snakes!” said Leonard
indignantly and aloud. “What a notion!” By a rending effort of the
will he woke the rest of the room up. Jacky, the bed, their food, their
clothes on the chair, gradually entered his consciousness, and the
horror vanished outwards, like a ring that is spreading through water.
“I say, Jacky, I’m going out for a bit.”
She was breathing regularly. The patch of light fell clear of the
striped blanket, and began to cover the shawl that lay over her feet.
Why had he been afraid? He went to the window, and saw that the moon
was descending through a clear sky. He saw her volcanoes, and the bright
expanses that a gracious error has named seas. They paled, for the sun,
who had lit them up, was coming to light the earth. Sea of Serenity, Sea
of Tranquillity, Ocean of the Lunar Storms, merged into one lucent drop,
itself to slip into the sempiternal dawn. And he had been afraid of the
moon!
He dressed among the contending lights, and went through his money. It
was running low again, but enough for a return ticket to Hilton. As it
clinked, Jacky opened her eyes.
“Hullo, Len! What ho, Len!”
“What ho, Jacky! see you again later.”
She turned over and slept.
The house was unlocked, their landlord being a salesman at Covent
Garden. Leonard passed out and made his way down to the station. The
train, though it did not start for an hour, was already drawn up at the
end of the platform, and he lay down in it and slept. With the first
jolt he was in daylight; they had left the gateways of King’s Cross,
and were under blue sky. Tunnels followed, and after each the sky grew
bluer, and from the embankment at Finsbury Park he had his first sight
of the sun. It rolled along behind the eastern smokes--a wheel, whose
fellow was the descending moon--and as yet it seemed the servant of the
blue sky, not its lord. He dozed again. Over Tewin Water it was day. To
the left fell the shadow of the embankment and its arches; to the right
Leonard saw up into the Tewin Woods and towards the church, with its
wild legend of immortality. Six forest trees--that is a fact--grow out
of one of the graves in Tewin churchyard. The grave’s occupant--that is
the legend--is an atheist, who declared that if God existed, six forest
trees would grow out of her grave. These things in Hertfordshire; and
farther afield lay the house of a hermit--Mrs. Wilcox had known him--who
barred himself up, and wrote prophecies, and gave all he had to the
poor. While, powdered in between, were the villas of business men, who
saw life more steadily, though with the steadiness of the half-closed
eye. Over all the sun was streaming, to all the birds were singing, to
all the primroses were yellow, and the speedwell blue, and the country,
however they interpreted her, was uttering her cry of “now.” She did
not free Leonard yet, and the knife plunged deeper into his heart as the
train drew up at Hilton. But remorse had become beautiful.
Hilton was asleep, or at the earliest, breakfasting. Leonard noticed the
contrast when he stepped out of it into the country. Here men had been
up since dawn. Their hours were ruled, not by a London office, but by
the movements of the crops and the sun. That they were men of the finest
type only the sentimentalists can declare. But they kept to the life of
daylight. They are England’s hope. Clumsily they carry forward the torch
of the sun, until such time as the nation sees fit to take it up. Half
clodhopper, half board-school prig, they can still throw back to a
nobler stock, and breed yeomen.
At the chalk pit a motor passed him. In it was another type, whom Nature
favours--the Imperial. Healthy, ever in motion, it hopes to inherit the
earth. It breeds as quickly as the yeoman, and as soundly; strong is the
temptation to acclaim it as a super-yeoman, who carries his country’s
virtue overseas. But the Imperialist is not what he thinks or seems. He
is a destroyer. He prepares the way for cosmopolitanism, and though his
ambitions may be fulfilled, the earth that he inherits will be grey.
To Leonard, intent on his private sin, there came the conviction of
innate goodness elsewhere. It was not the optimism which he had been
taught at school. Again and again must the drums tap, and the goblins
stalk over the universe before joy can be purged of the superficial. It
was rather paradoxical, and arose from his sorrow. Death destroys a man,
but the idea of death saves him--that is the best account of it that has
yet been given. Squalor and tragedy can beckon to all that is great in
us, and strengthen the wings of love. They can beckon; it is not certain
that they will, for they are not love’s servants. But they can beckon,
and the knowledge of this incredible truth comforted him.
As he approached the house all thought stopped. Contradictory notions
stood side by side in his mind. He was terrified but happy, ashamed,
but had done no sin. He knew the confession: “Mrs. Wilcox, I have done
wrong,” but sunrise had robbed its meaning, and he felt rather on a
supreme adventure.
He entered a garden, steadied himself against a motor-car that he found
in it, found a door open and entered a house. Yes, it would be very
easy. From a room to the left he heard voices, Margaret’s amongst them.
His own name was called aloud, and a man whom he had never seen said,
“Oh, is he there? I am not surprised. I now thrash him within an inch of
his life.”
“Mrs. Wilcox,” said Leonard, “I have done wrong.”
The man took him by the collar and cried, “Bring me a stick.” Women were
screaming. A stick, very bright, descended. It hurt him, not where it
descended, but in the heart. Books fell over him in a shower. Nothing
had sense.
“Get some water,” commanded Charles, who had all through kept very calm.
“He’s shamming. Of course I only used the blade. Here, carry him out
into the air.”
Thinking that he understood these things, Margaret obeyed him. They laid
Leonard, who was dead, on the gravel; Helen poured water over him.
“That’s enough,” said Charles.
“Yes, murder’s enough,” said Miss Avery, coming out of the house with
the sword.
CHAPTER XLII
When Charles left Ducie Street he had caught the first train home, but
had no inkling of the newest development until late at night. Then
his father, who had dined alone, sent for him, and in very grave tones
inquired for Margaret.
“I don’t know where she is, pater” said Charles. “Dolly kept back dinner
nearly an hour for her.”
“Tell me when she comes in.”
Another hour passed. The servants went to bed, and Charles visited his
father again, to receive further instructions. Mrs. Wilcox had still not
returned.
“I’ll sit up for her as late as you like, but she can hardly be coming.
Isn’t she stopping with her sister at the hotel?”
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Wilcox thoughtfully--“perhaps.”
“Can I do anything for you, sir?”
“Not to-night, my boy.”
Mr. Wilcox liked being called sir. He raised his eyes, and gave his son
more open a look of tenderness than he usually ventured. He saw Charles
as little boy and strong man in one. Though his wife had proved unstable
his children were left to him.
After midnight he tapped on Charles’s door. “I can’t sleep,” he said. “I
had better have a talk with you and get it over.”
He complained of the heat. Charles took him out into the garden, and
they paced up and down in their dressing-gowns. Charles became very
quiet as the story unrolled; he had known all along that Margaret was as
bad as her sister.
“She will feel differently in the morning,” said Mr. Wilcox, who had
of course said nothing about Mrs. Bast. “But I cannot let this kind of
thing continue without comment. I am morally certain that she is with
her sister at Howards End. The house is mine--and, Charles, it will be
yours--and when I say that no one is to live there, I mean that no one
is to live there. I won’t have it.” He looked angrily at the moon.
“To my mind this question is connected with something far greater, the
rights of property itself.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Charles.
Mr. Wilcox linked his arm in his son’s, but somehow liked him less as
he told him more. “I don’t want you to conclude that my wife and I had
anything of the nature of a quarrel. She was only overwrought, as who
would not be? I shall do what I can for Helen, but on the understanding
that they clear out of the house at once. Do you see? That is a sine qua
non.”
“Then at eight to-morrow I may go up in the car?”
“Eight or earlier. Say that you are acting as my representative, and, of
course, use no violence, Charles.”
On the morrow, as Charles returned, leaving Leonard dead upon the
gravel, it did not seem to him that he had used violence. Death was
due to heart disease. His stepmother herself had said so, and even Miss
Avery had acknowledged that he only used the flat of the sword. On his
way through the village he informed the police, who thanked him, and
said there must be an inquest. He found his father in the garden shading
his eyes from the sun.
“It has been pretty horrible,” said Charles gravely. “They were there,
and they had the man up there with them too.”
“What--what man?”
“I told you last night. His name was Bast.”
“My God! is it possible?” said Mr. Wilcox. “In your mother’s house!
Charles, in your mother’s house!”
“I know, pater. That was what I felt. As a matter of fact, there is
no need to trouble about the man. He was in the last stages of heart
disease, and just before I could show him what I thought of him he went
off. The police are seeing about it at this moment.”
Mr. Wilcox listened attentively.
“I got up there--oh, it couldn’t have been more than half-past seven.
The Avery woman was lighting a fire for them. They were still upstairs.
I waited in the drawing-room. We were all moderately civil and
collected, though I had my suspicions. I gave them your message, and
Mrs. Wilcox said, ‘Oh yes, I see; yes,’ in that way of hers.”
“Nothing else?”
“I promised to tell you, ‘with her love,’ that she was going to Germany
with her sister this evening. That was all we had time for.”
Mr. Wilcox seemed relieved.
“Because by then I suppose the man got tired of hiding, for suddenly
Mrs. Wilcox screamed out his name. I recognised it, and I went for him
in the hall. Was I right, pater? I thought things were going a little
too far.”
“Right, my dear boy? I don’t know. But you would have been no son of
mine if you hadn’t. Then did he just--just--crumple up as you said?” He
shrunk from the simple word.
“He caught hold of the bookcase, which came down over him. So I merely
put the sword down and carried him into the garden. We all thought he
was shamming. However, he’s dead right enough. Awful business!”
“Sword?” cried his father, with anxiety in his voice. “What sword? Whose
sword?”
“A sword of theirs.”
“What were you doing with it?”
“Well, didn’t you see, pater, I had to snatch up the first thing handy.
I hadn’t a riding-whip or stick. I caught him once or twice over the