Works of E M Forster

by E. M. Forster

  “Ah, yes,” said Leonard, who was not going to let on that he had not bought a Sunday paper.

  “If this kind of thing goes on the population of England will be stationary in 1960.”

  “You don’t say so.”

  “I call it a very serious thing, eh?”

  “Good-evening, Mr. Cunningham.”

  “Good-evening, Mr. Bast.”

  Then Leonard entered Block B of the flats, and turned, not upstairs, but down, into what is known to house agents as a semi-basement, and to other men as a cellar. He opened the door, and cried, “Hullo!” with the pseudo geniality of the Cockney. There was no reply. “Hullo!” he repeated. The sitting-room was empty, though the electric light had been left burning. A look of relief came over his face, and he flung himself into the armchair.

  The sitting-room contained, besides the armchair, two other chairs, a piano, a three-legged table, and a cosy corner. Of the walls, one was occupied by the window, the other by a draped mantelshelf bristling with Cupids. Opposite the window was the door, and beside the door a bookcase, while over the piano there extended one of the masterpieces of Maud Goodman. It was an amorous and not unpleasant little hole when the curtains were drawn, and the lights turned on, and the gas-stove unlit. But it struck that shallow makeshift note that is so often heard in the dwelling-place. It had been too easily gained, and could be relinquished too easily.

  As Leonard was kicking off his boots he jarred the three-legged table, and a photograph frame, honourably poised upon it, slid sideways, fell off into the fireplace, and smashed. He swore in a colourless sort of way, and picked the photograph up. It represented a young lady called Jacky, and had been taken at the time when young ladies called Jacky were often photographed with their mouths open. Teeth of dazzling whiteness extended along either of Jacky’s jaw’s, and positively weighed her head sideways, so large were they and so numerous. Take my word for it, that smile was simply stunning, and it is only you and I who will be fastidious, and complain that true joy begins in the eyes, and that the eyes of Jacky did not accord with her smile, but were anxious and hungry.

  Leonard tried to pull out the fragments of glass, and cut his fingers and swore again. A drop of blood fell on the frame, another followed, spilling over on to the exposed photograph. He swore more vigorously, and dashed into the kitchen, where he bathed his hands. The kitchen was the same size as the sitting-room; beyond it was a bedroom. This completed his home. He was renting the flat furnished; of all the objects that encumbered it none were his own except the photograph frame, the Cupids, and the books.

  “Damn, damn, damnation!” he murmured, together with such other words as he had learnt from older men. Then he raised his hand to his forehead and said, “Oh, damn it all— “ which meant something different. He pulled himself together. He drank a little tea, black and silent, that still survived upon an upper shelf. He swallowed some dusty crumbs of a cake. Then he went back to the sitting-room, settled himself anew, and began to read a volume of Ruskin.

  “Seven miles to the north of Venice— “

  How perfectly the famous chapter opens! How supreme its command of admonition and of poetry! The rich man is speaking to us from his gondola.

  “Seven miles to the north of Venice the banks of sand which nearer the city rise little above low-water mark attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.”

  Leonard was trying to form his style on Ruskin; he understood him to be the greatest master of English Prose. He read forward steadily, occasionally making a few notes.

  “Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession, and first (for of the shafts enough has been said already), what is very peculiar to this church — its luminousness.”

  Was there anything to be learnt from this fine sentence? Could he adapt it to the needs of daily life? Could he introduce it, with modifications, when he next wrote a letter to his brother, the lay-reader? For example:

  “Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession, and first (for of the absence of ventilation enough has been said already), what is very peculiar to this flat — its obscurity.”

  Something told him that the modifications would not do; and that something, had he known it, was the spirit of English Prose. “My flat is dark as well as stuffy.” Those were the words for him.

  And the voice in the gondola rolled on, piping melodiously of Effort and Self-Sacrifice, full of high purpose, full of beauty, full even of sympathy and the love of men, yet somehow eluding all that was actual and insistent in Leonard’s life. For it was the voice of one who had never been dirty or hungry, and had not guessed successfully what dirt and hunger are.

  Leonard listened to it with reverence. He felt that he was being done good to, and that if he kept on with Ruskin, and the Queen’s Hall Concerts, and some pictures by Watts, he would one day push his head out of the grey waters and see the universe. He believed in sudden conversion, a belief which may be right, but which is peculiarly attractive to a half-baked mind. It is the basis of much popular religion; in the domain of business it dominates the Stock Exchange, and becomes that “bit of luck” by which all successes and failures are explained. “If only I had a bit of luck, the whole thing would come straight... He’s got a most magnificent place down at Streatham and a 20 h.p. Fiat, but then, mind you, he’s had luck... I ‘m sorry the wife’s so late, but she never has any luck over catching trains.” Leonard was superior to these people; he did believe in effort and in a steady preparation for the change that he desired. But of a heritage that may expand gradually, he had no conception; he hoped to come to Culture suddenly, much as the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus. Those Miss Schlegels had come to it; they had done the trick; their hands were upon the ropes, once and for all. And meanwhile, his flat was dark, as well as stuffy.

  Presently there was a noise on the staircase. He shut up Margaret’s card in the pages of Ruskin, and opened the door. A woman entered, of whom it is simplest to say that she was not respectable. Her appearance was awesome. She seemed all strings and bell-pulls — ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that clinked and caught and a boa of azure feathers hung round her neck, with the ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound with a double row of pearls, her arms were bare to the elbows, and might again be detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat, which was flowery, resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we sowed with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which germinated here yes, and there no. She wore it on the back of her head. As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down her back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny, rippled around her forehead. The face — the face does not signify. It was the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth were not so numerous as the photographer had suggested, and certainly not so white. Yes, Jacky was past her prime, whatever that prime may have been. She was descending quicker than most women into the colourless years, and the look in her eyes confessed it.

  “What ho!” said Leonard, greeting the apparition with much spirit, and helping it off with its boa.

  Jacky, in husky tones, replied, “What ho!”

  “Been out?” he asked. The question sounds superfluous, but it cannot have been really, for the lady answered, “No,” adding, “Oh, I am so tired.”

  “You tired?”

  “Eh?”

  “I’m tired,” said he, hanging the boa up.

  “Oh, Len, I am so tired.”

  “I’ve been to that classical concert I told you about,” said Leonard.

  “What’s that?”

  “I came back as soon as it was over.”

  “Any one been round to our place?” asked Jacky.

  “Not that I’ve seen. I met Mr. Cunningham outside, and we passed a few remarks.”

  “What, not Mr. Cunningham?” />
  “Yes.”

  “Oh, you mean Mr. Cunningham.”

  “Yes. Mr. Cunningham.”

  “I’ve been out to tea at a lady friend’s.”

  Her secret being at last given — to the world, and the name of the lady friend being even adumbrated, Jacky made no further experiments in the difficult and tiring art of conversation. She never had been a great talker. Even in her photographic days she had relied upon her smile and her figure to attract, and now that she was

  “On the shelf,

  On the shelf,

  Boys, boys, I’m on the shelf,”

  she was not likely to find her tongue. Occasional bursts of song (of which the above is an example) still issued from her lips, but the spoken word was rare.

  She sat down on Leonard’s knee, and began to fondle him. She was now a massive woman of thirty-three, and her weight hurt him, but he could not very well say anything. Then she said, “Is that a book you’re reading?” and he said, “That’s a book,” and drew it from her unreluctant grasp. Margaret’s card fell out of it. It fell face downwards, and he murmured, “Bookmarker.”

  “Len— “

  “What is it?” he asked, a little wearily, for she only had one topic of conversation when she sat upon his knee.

  “You do love me?”

  “Jacky, you know that I do. How can you ask such questions!”

  “But you do love me, Len, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  A pause. The other remark was still due.

  “Len— “

  “Well? What is it?”

  “Len, you will make it all right?”

  “I can’t have you ask me that again,” said the boy, flaring up into a sudden passion. “I’ve promised to marry you when I’m of age, and that’s enough. My word’s my word. I’ve promised to marry you as soon as ever I’m twenty-one, and I can’t keep on being worried. I’ve worries enough. It isn’t likely I’d throw you over, let alone my word, when I’ve spent all this money. Besides, I’m an Englishman, and I never go back on my word. Jacky, do be reasonable. Of course I’ll marry you. Only do stop badgering me.”

  “When’s your birthday, Len?”

  “I’ve told you again and again, the eleventh of November next. Now get off my knee a bit; some one must get supper, I suppose.”

  Jacky went through to the bedroom, and began to see to her hat. This meant blowing at it with short sharp puffs. Leonard tidied up the sitting-room, and began to prepare their evening meal. He put a penny into the slot of the gas-meter, and soon the flat was reeking with metallic fumes. Somehow he could not recover his temper, and all the time he was cooking he continued to complain bitterly.

  “It really is too bad when a fellow isn’t trusted. It makes one feel so wild, when I’ve pretended to the people here that you’re my wife — all right, all right, you SHALL be my wife — and I’ve bought you the ring to wear, and I’ve taken this flat furnished, and it’s far more than I can afford, and yet you aren’t content, and I’ve also not told the truth when I’ve written home.” He lowered his voice. “He’d stop it.” In a tone of horror, that was a little luxurious, he repeated: “My brother’d stop it. I’m going against the whole world, Jacky.

  “That’s what I am, Jacky. I don’t take any heed of what any one says. I just go straight forward, I do. That’s always been my way. I’m not one of your weak knock-kneed chaps. If a woman’s in trouble, I don’t leave her in the lurch. That’s not my street. No, thank you.

  “I’ll tell you another thing too. I care a good deal about improving myself by means of Literature and Art, and so getting a wider outlook. For instance, when you came in I was reading Ruskin’s Stones of Venice. I don’t say this to boast, but just to show you the kind of man I am. I can tell you, I enjoyed that classical concert this afternoon.”

  To all his moods Jacky remained equally indifferent. When supper was ready — and not before — she emerged from the bedroom, saying: “But you do love me, don’t you?”

  They began with a soup square, which Leonard had just dissolved in some hot water. It was followed by the tongue — a freckled cylinder of meat, with a little jelly at the top, and a great deal of yellow fat at the bottom — ending with another square dissolved in water (jelly: pineapple), which Leonard had prepared earlier in the day. Jacky ate contentedly enough, occasionally looking at her man with those anxious eyes, to which nothing else in her appearance corresponded, and which yet seemed to mirror her soul. And Leonard managed to convince his stomach that it was having a nourishing meal.

  After supper they smoked cigarettes and exchanged a few statements. She observed that her “likeness” had been broken. He found occasion to remark, for the second time, that he had come straight back home after the concert at Queen’s Hall. Presently she sat upon his knee. The inhabitants of Camelia Road tramped to and fro outside the window, just on a level with their heads, and the family in the flat on the ground-floor began to sing, “Hark, my soul, it is the Lord.”

  “That tune fairly gives me the hump,” said Leonard.

  Jacky followed this, and said that, for her part, she thought it a lovely tune.

  “No; I’ll play you something lovely. Get up, dear, for a minute.”

  He went to the piano and jingled out a little Grieg. He played badly and vulgarly, but the performance was not without its effect, for Jacky said she thought she’d be going to bed. As she receded, a new set of interests possessed the boy, and he began to think of what had been said about music by that odd Miss Schlegel — the one that twisted her face about so when she spoke. Then the thoughts grew sad and envious. There was the girl named Helen, who had pinched his umbrella, and the German girl who had smiled at him pleasantly, and Herr some one, and Aunt some one, and the brother — all, all with their hands on the ropes. They had all passed up that narrow, rich staircase at Wickham Place to some ample room, whither he could never follow them, not if he read for ten hours a day. Oh, it was no good, this continual aspiration. Some are born cultured; the rest had better go in for whatever comes easy. To see life steadily and to see it whole was not for the likes of him.

  From the darkness beyond the kitchen a voice called, “Len?”

  “You in bed?” he asked, his forehead twitching.

  “All right.”

  Presently she called him again.

  “I must clean my boots ready for the morning,” he answered.

  Presently she called him again.

  “I rather want to get this chapter done.”

  “What?”

  He closed his ears against her.

  “What’s that?”

  “All right, Jacky, nothing; I’m reading a book.”

  “What?”

  “What?” he answered, catching her degraded deafness.

  Presently she called him again.

  Ruskin had visited Torcello by this time, and was ordering his gondoliers to take him to Murano. It occurred to him, as he glided over the whispering lagoons, that the power of Nature could not be shortened by the folly, nor her beauty altogether saddened by the misery of such as Leonard.

  CHAPTER VII

  “Oh, Margaret,” cried her aunt next morning, “such a most unfortunate thing has happened. I could not get you alone.”

  The most unfortunate thing was not very serious. One of the flats in the ornate block opposite had been taken furnished by the Wilcox family, “coming up, no doubt, in the hope of getting into London society.” That Mrs. Munt should be the first to discover the misfortune was not remarkable, for she was so interested in the flats, that she watched their every mutation with unwearying care. In theory she despised them — they took away that old-world look — they cut off the sun — flats house a flashy type of person. But if the truth had been known, she found her visits to Wickham Place twice as amusing since Wickham Mansions had arisen, and would in a couple of days learn more about them than her nieces in a couple of months, or her nephew in a couple of years. She would
stroll across and make friends with the porters, and inquire what the rents were, exclaiming for example: “What! a hundred and twenty for a basement? You’ll never get it!” And they would answer: “One can but try, madam.” The passenger lifts, the arrangement for coals (a great temptation for a dishonest porter), were all familiar matters to her, and perhaps a relief from the politico-economical-esthetic atmosphere that reigned at the Schlegels.

  Margaret received the information calmly, and did not agree that it would throw a cloud over poor Helen’s life.

  “Oh, but Helen isn’t a girl with no interests,” she explained. “She has plenty of other things and other people to think about. She made a false start with the Wilcoxes, and she’ll be as willing as we are to have nothing more to do with them.”

  “For a clever girl, dear, how very oddly you do talk. Helen’ll HAVE to have something more to do with them, now that they ‘re all opposite. She may meet that Paul in the street. She cannot very well not bow.”

  “Of course she must bow. But look here; let’s do the flowers. I was going to say, the will to be interested in him has died, and what else matters? I look on that disastrous episode (over which you were so kind) as the killing of a nerve in Helen. It’s dead, and she’ll never be troubled with it again. The only things that matter are the things that interest one. Bowing, even calling and leaving cards, even a dinner-party — we can do all those things to the Wilcoxes, if they find it agreeable; but the other thing, the one important thing — never again. Don’t you see?”

  Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a most questionable statement — that any emotion, any interest once vividly aroused, can wholly die.

  “I also have the honour to inform you that the Wilcoxes are bored with us. I didn’t tell you at the time — it might have made you angry, and you had enough to worry you — but I wrote a letter to Mrs. W, and apologised for the trouble that Helen had given them. She didn’t answer it.”