Howards End
preparing a sentence, “but that lady has, quite inadvertently, taken my
umbrella.”
“Oh, good gracious me!--I am so sorry. Tibby, run after Helen.”
“I shall miss the Four Serious Songs if I do.”
“Tibby, love, you must go.”
“It isn’t of any consequence,” said the young man, in truth a little
uneasy about his umbrella.
“But of course it is. Tibby! Tibby!”
Tibby rose to his feet, and wilfully caught his person on the backs of
the chairs. By the time he had tipped up the seat and had found his
hat, and had deposited his full score in safety, it was “too late” to
go after Helen. The Four Serious Songs had begun, and one could not move
during their performance.
“My sister is so careless,” whispered Margaret.
“Not at all,” replied the young man; but his voice was dead and cold.
“If you would give me your address--”
“Oh, not at all, not at all;” and he wrapped his greatcoat over his
knees.
Then the Four Serious Songs rang shallow in Margaret’s ears. Brahms, for
all his grumbling and grizzling, had never guessed what it felt like
to be suspected of stealing an umbrella. For this fool of a young man
thought that she and Helen and Tibby had been playing the confidence
trick on him, and that if he gave his address they would break into
his rooms some midnight or other and steal his walking-stick too. Most
ladies would have laughed, but Margaret really minded, for it gave her
a glimpse into squalor. To trust people is a luxury in which only the
wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. As soon as Brahms had
grunted himself out, she gave him her card and said, “That is where
we live; if you preferred, you could call for the umbrella after the
concert, but I didn’t like to trouble you when it has all been our
fault.”
His face brightened a little when he saw that Wickham Place was W. It
was sad to see him corroded with suspicion, and yet not daring to be
impolite, in case these well-dressed people were honest after all. She
took it as a good sign that he said to her, “It’s a fine programme
this afternoon, is it not?” for this was the remark with which he had
originally opened, before the umbrella intervened.
“The Beethoven’s fine,” said Margaret, who was not a female of the
encouraging type. “I don’t like the Brahms, though, nor the Mendelssohn
that came first and ugh! I don’t like this Elgar that’s coming.”
“What, what?” called Herr Liesecke, overhearing. “The ‘Pomp and
Circumstance’ will not be fine?”
“Oh, Margaret, you tiresome girl!” cried her aunt.
“Here have I been persuading Herr Liesecke to stop for ‘Pomp and
Circumstance,’ and you are undoing all my work. I am so anxious for him
to hear what WE are doing in music. Oh,--you musn’t run down our English
composers, Margaret.”
“For my part, I have heard the composition at Stettin,” said Fraulein
Mosebach, “on two occasions. It is dramatic, a little.”
“Frieda, you despise English music. You know you do. And English art.
And English literature, except Shakespeare, and he’s a German. Very
well, Frieda, you may go.”
The lovers laughed and glanced at each other. Moved by a common impulse,
they rose to their feet and fled from “Pomp and Circumstance.”
“We have this call to pay in Finsbury Circus, it is true,” said Herr
Liesecke, as he edged past her and reached the gangway just as the music
started.
“Margaret--” loudly whispered by Aunt Juley.
“Margaret, Margaret! Fraulein Mosebach has left her beautiful little bag
behind her on the seat.”
Sure enough, there was Frieda’s reticule, containing her address book,
her pocket dictionary, her map of London, and her money.
“Oh, what a bother--what a family we are! Fr--frieda!”
“Hush!” said all those who thought the music fine.
“But it’s the number they want in Finsbury Circus.”
“Might I--couldn’t I--” said the suspicious young man, and got very red.
“Oh, I would be so grateful.”
He took the bag--money clinking inside it--and slipped up the gangway
with it. He was just in time to catch them at the swing-door, and he
received a pretty smile from the German girl and a fine bow from her
cavalier. He returned to his seat upsides with the world. The trust that
they had reposed in him was trivial, but he felt that it cancelled his
mistrust for them, and that probably he would not be “had” over his
umbrella. This young man had been “had” in the past badly, perhaps
overwhelmingly--and now most of his energies went in defending himself
against the unknown. But this afternoon--perhaps on account of music--he
perceived that one must slack off occasionally or what is the good
of being alive? Wickham Place, W., though a risk, was as safe as most
things, and he would risk it.
So when the concert was over and Margaret said, “We live quite near; I
am going there now. Could you walk round with me, and we’ll find your
umbrella?” he said, “Thank you,” peaceably, and followed her out of
the Queen’s Hall. She wished that he was not so anxious to hand a lady
downstairs, or to carry a lady’s programme for her--his class was near
enough her own for its manners to vex her. But she found him interesting
on the whole--every one interested the Schlegels on the whole at that
time--and while her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to
invite him to tea.
“How tired one gets after music!” she began.
“Do you find the atmosphere of Queen’s Hall oppressive?”
“Yes, horribly.”
“But surely the atmosphere of Covent Garden is even more oppressive.”
“Do you go there much?”
“When my work permits, I attend the gallery for the Royal Opera.”
Helen would have exclaimed, “So do I. I love the gallery,” and thus
have endeared herself to the young man. Helen could do these things. But
Margaret had an almost morbid horror of “drawing people out,” of “making
things go.” She had been to the gallery at Covent Garden, but she did
not “attend” it, preferring the more expensive seats; still less did she
love it. So she made no reply.
“This year I have been three times--to ‘Faust,’ ‘Tosca,’ and--” Was it
“Tannhouser” or “Tannhoyser”? Better not risk the word.
Margaret disliked “Tosca” and “Faust.” And so, for one reason and
another, they walked on in silence, chaperoned by the voice of Mrs.
Munt, who was getting into difficulties with her nephew.
“I do in a WAY remember the passage, Tibby, but when every instrument is
so beautiful, it is difficult to pick out one thing rather than another.
I am sure that you and Helen take me to the very nicest concerts. Not a
dull note from beginning to end. I only wish that our German friends had
stayed till it finished.”
“But surely you haven’t forgotten the drum steadily beating on the low
C, Aunt Juley?” came Tibby’s voice. “No one could. It’s unmistakable.”
“A specially loud part?” hazarded Mrs. Munt. “Of course I do not go
in for being musical,” she added, the shot failing. “I only care for
music--a very different thing. But still I will say this for myself--I
do know when I like a thing and when I don’t. Some people are the same
about pictures. They can go into a picture gallery--Miss Conder can--and
say straight off what they feel, all round the wall. I never could do
that. But music is so different from pictures, to my mind. When it comes
to music I am as safe as houses, and I assure you, Tibby, I am by no
means pleased by everything. There was a thing--something about a faun
in French--which Helen went into ecstasies over, but I thought it most
tinkling and superficial, and said so, and I held to my opinion too.”
“Do you agree?” asked Margaret. “Do you think music is so different from
pictures?”
“I--I should have thought so, kind of,” he said.
“So should I. Now, my sister declares they’re just the same. We have
great arguments over it. She says I’m dense; I say she’s sloppy.”
Getting under way, she cried: “Now, doesn’t it seem absurd to you? What
is the good of the Arts if they’re interchangeable? What is the good
of the ear if it tells you the same as the eye? Helen’s one aim is to
translate tunes into the language of painting, and pictures into the
language of music. It’s very ingenious, and she says several pretty
things in the process, but what’s gained, I’d like to know? Oh, it’s
all rubbish, radically false. If Monet’s really Debussy, and Debussy’s
really Monet, neither gentleman is worth his salt--that’s my opinion.”
Evidently these sisters quarrelled.
“Now, this very symphony that we’ve just been having--she won’t let it
alone. She labels it with meanings from start to finish; turns it into
literature. I wonder if the day will ever return when music will be
treated as music. Yet I don’t know. There’s my brother--behind us. He
treats music as music, and oh, my goodness! He makes me angrier than any
one, simply furious. With him I daren’t even argue.”
An unhappy family, if talented.
“But, of course, the real villain is Wagner. He has done more than any
man in the nineteenth century towards the muddling of the arts. I
do feel that music is in a very serious state just now, though
extraordinarily interesting. Every now and then in history there do
come these terrible geniuses, like Wagner, who stir up all the wells of
thought at once. For a moment it’s splendid. Such a splash as never
was. But afterwards--such a lot of mud; and the wells--as it were, they
communicate with each other too easily now, and not one of them will run
quite clear. That’s what Wagner’s done.”
Her speeches fluttered away from the young man like birds. If only he
could talk like this, he would have caught the world. Oh, to acquire
culture! Oh, to pronounce foreign names correctly! Oh, to be well
informed, discoursing at ease on every subject that a lady started! But
it would take one years. With an hour at lunch and a few shattered hours
in the evening, how was it possible to catch up with leisured women,
who had been reading steadily from childhood? His brain might be full
of names, he might have even heard of Monet and Debussy; the trouble
was that he could not string them together into a sentence, he could not
make them “tell,” he could not quite forget about his stolen umbrella.
Yes, the umbrella was the real trouble. Behind Monet and Debussy the
umbrella persisted, with the steady beat of a drum. “I suppose my
umbrella will be all right,” he was thinking. “I don’t really mind about
it. I will think about music instead. I suppose my umbrella will be all
right.” Earlier in the afternoon he had worried about seats. Ought he
to have paid as much as two shillings? Earlier still he had wondered,
“Shall I try to do without a programme?” There had always been something
to worry him ever since he could remember, always something that
distracted him in the pursuit of beauty. For he did pursue beauty, and,
therefore, Margaret’s speeches did flutter away from him like birds.
Margaret talked ahead, occasionally saying, “Don’t you think so? don’t
you feel the same?” And once she stopped, and said, “Oh, do interrupt
me!” which terrified him. She did not attract him, though she filled him
with awe. Her figure was meagre, her face seemed all teeth and eyes, her
references to her sister and her brother were uncharitable. For all
her cleverness and culture, she was probably one of those soulless,
atheistical women who have been so shown up by Miss Corelli. It was
surprising (and alarming) that she should suddenly say, “I do hope that
you’ll come in and have some tea. We should be so glad. I have dragged
you so far out of your way.”
They had arrived at Wickham Place. The sun had set, and the backwater,
in deep shadow, was filling with a gentle haze. To the right the
fantastic sky-line of the flats towered black against the hues of
evening; to the left the older houses raised a square-cut, irregular