Mrs. Wilcox bowed gravely. She was offended, and did not pretend to the contrary. She was sitting up in bed, writing letters on an invalid table that spanned her knees. A breakfast tray was on another table beside her. The light of the fire, the light from the window, and the light of a candle-lamp, which threw a quivering halo round her hands combined to create a strange atmosphere of dissolution.
“I knew he was going to India in November, but I forgot.”
“He sailed on the 17th for Nigeria, in Africa.”
“I knew — I know. I have been too absurd all through. I am very much ashamed.”
Mrs. Wilcox did not answer.
“I am more sorry than I can say, and I hope that you will forgive me.”
“It doesn’t matter, Miss Schlegel. It is good of you to have come round so promptly.”
“It does matter,” cried Margaret. “I have been rude to you; and my sister is not even at home, so there was not even that excuse.”
“Indeed?”
“She has just gone to Germany.”
“She gone as well,” murmured the other. “Yes, certainly, it is quite safe — safe, absolutely, now.”
“You’ve been worrying too!” exclaimed Margaret, getting more and more excited, and taking a chair without invitation. “How perfectly extraordinary! I can see that you have. You felt as I do; Helen mustn’t meet him again.”
“I did think it best.”
“Now why?”
“That’s a most difficult question,” said Mrs. Wilcox, smiling, and a little losing her expression of annoyance. “I think you put it best in your letter — it was an instinct, which may be wrong.”
“It wasn’t that your son still— “
“Oh no; he often — my Paul is very young, you see.”
“Then what was it?”
She repeated: “An instinct which may be wrong.”
“In other words, they belong to types that can fall in love, but couldn’t live together. That’s dreadfully probable. I’m afraid that in nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another.”
“These are indeed ‘other words,’” said Mrs. Wilcox. “I had nothing so coherent in my head. I was merely alarmed when I knew that my boy cared for your sister.”
“Ah, I have always been wanting to ask you. How DID you know? Helen was so surprised when our aunt drove up, and you stepped forward and arranged things. Did Paul tell you?”
“There is nothing to be gained by discussing that,” said Mrs. Wilcox after a moment’s pause.
“Mrs. Wilcox, were you very angry with us last June? I wrote you a letter and you didn’t answer it.”
“I was certainly against taking Mrs. Matheson’s flat. I knew it was opposite your house.”
“But it’s all right now?”
“I think so.”
“You only think? You aren’t sure? I do love these little muddles tidied up?”
“Oh yes, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Wilcox, moving with uneasiness beneath the clothes. “I always sound uncertain over things. It is my way of speaking.”
“That’s all right, and I’m sure, too.”
Here the maid came in to remove the breakfast-tray. They were interrupted, and when they resumed conversation it was on more normal lines.
“I must say good-bye now — you will be getting up.”
“No — please stop a little longer — I am taking a day in bed. Now and then I do.”
“I thought of you as one of the early risers.”
“At Howards End — yes; there is nothing to get up for in London.”
“Nothing to get up for?” cried the scandalised Margaret. “When there are all the autumn exhibitions, and Ysaye playing in the afternoon! Not to mention people.”
“The truth is, I am a little tired. First came the wedding, and then Paul went off, and, instead of resting yesterday, I paid a round of calls.”
“A wedding?”
“Yes; Charles, my elder son, is married.”
“Indeed!”
“We took the flat chiefly on that account, and also that Paul could get his African outfit. The flat belongs to a cousin of my husband’s, and she most kindly offered it to us. So before the day came we were able to make the acquaintance of Dolly’s people, which we had not yet done.”
Margaret asked who Dolly’s people were.
“Fussell. The father is in the Indian army — retired; the brother is in the army. The mother is dead.”
So perhaps these were the “chinless sunburnt men” whom Helen had espied one afternoon through the window. Margaret felt mildly interested in the fortunes of the Wilcox family. She had acquired the habit on Helen’s account, and it still clung to her. She asked for more information about Miss Dolly Fussell that was, and was given it in even, unemotional tones. Mrs. Wilcox’s voice, though sweet and compelling, had little range of expression. It suggested that pictures, concerts, and people are all of small and equal value. Only once had it quickened — when speaking of Howards End.
“Charles and Albert Fussell have known one another some time. They belong to the same club, and are both devoted to golf. Dolly plays golf too, though I believe not so well; and they first met in a mixed foursome. We all like her, and are very much pleased. They were married on the 11th, a few days before Paul sailed. Charles was very anxious to have his brother as best man, so he made a great point of having it on the 11th. The Fussells would have preferred it after Christmas, but they were very nice about it. There is Dolly’s photograph — in that double frame.”
“Are you quite certain that I’m not interrupting, Mrs. Wilcox?”
“Yes, quite.”
“Then I will stay. I’m enjoying this.”
Dolly’s photograph was now examined. It was signed “For dear Mims,” which Mrs. Wilcox interpreted as “the name she and Charles had settled that she should call me.” Dolly looked silly, and had one of those triangular faces that so often prove attractive to a robust man. She was very pretty. From her Margaret passed to Charles, whose features prevailed opposite. She speculated on the forces that had drawn the two together till God parted them. She found time to hope that they would be happy.
“They have gone to Naples for their honeymoon.”
“Lucky people!”
“I can hardly imagine Charles in Italy.”
“Doesn’t he care for travelling?”
“He likes travel, but he does see through foreigners so. What he enjoys most is a motor tour in England, and I think that would have carried the day if the weather had not been so abominable. His father gave him a car for a wedding present, which for the present is being stored at Howards End.”
“I suppose you have a garage there?”
“Yes. My husband built a little one only last month, to the west of the house, not far from the wych-elm, in what used to be the paddock for the pony.”
The last words had an indescribable ring about them.
“Where’s the pony gone?” asked Margaret after a pause.
“The pony? Oh, dead, ever so long ago.”
“The wych-elm I remember. Helen spoke of it as a very splendid tree.”
“It is the finest wych-elm in Hertfordshire. Did your sister tell you about the teeth?”
“No.”
“Oh, it might interest you. There are pigs’ teeth stuck into the trunk, about four feet from the ground. The country people put them in long ago, and they think that if they chew a piece of the bark, it will cure the toothache. The teeth are almost grown over now, and no one comes to the tree.”
“I should. I love folklore and all festering superstitions.”
“Do you think that the tree really did cure toothache, if one believed in it?”
“Of course it did. It would cure anything — once.”
“Certainly I remember cases — you see I lived at Howards End long, long before Mr. Wilcox knew it. I was born there.”
The conversation again shifted. At the time it seemed little more th
an aimless chatter. She was interested when her hostess explained that Howards End was her own property. She was bored when too minute an account was given of the Fussell family, of the anxieties of Charles concerning Naples, of the movements of Mr. Wilcox and Evie, who were motoring in Yorkshire. Margaret could not bear being bored. She grew inattentive, played with the photograph frame, dropped it, smashed Dolly’s glass, apologised, was pardoned, cut her finger thereon, was pitied, and finally said she must be going — there was all the housekeeping to do, and she had to interview Tibby’s riding-master.
Then the curious note was struck again.
“Good-bye, Miss Schlegel, good-bye. Thank you for coming. You have cheered me up.”
“I’m so glad!”
“I — I wonder whether you ever think about yourself?”
“I think of nothing else,” said Margaret, blushing, but letting her hand remain in that of the invalid.
“I wonder. I wondered at Heidelberg.”
“I’M sure!”
“I almost think— “
“Yes?” asked Margaret, for there was a long pause — a pause that was somehow akin to the flicker of the fire, the quiver of the reading-lamp upon their hands, the white blur from the window; a pause of shifting and eternal shadows.
“I almost think you forget you’re a girl.”
Margaret was startled and a little annoyed. “I’m twenty-nine,” she remarked. “That’s not so wildly girlish.”
Mrs. Wilcox smiled.
“What makes you say that? Do you mean that I have been gauche and rude?”
A shake of the head. “I only meant that I am fifty-one, and that to me both of you — Read it all in some book or other; I cannot put things clearly.”
“Oh, I’ve got it — inexperience. I’m no better than Helen, you mean, and yet I presume to advise her.”
“Yes. You have got it. Inexperience is the word.”
“Inexperience,” repeated Margaret, in serious yet buoyant tones.
“Of course, I have everything to learn — absolutely everything — just as much as Helen. Life’s very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I’ve got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged — well, one can’t do all these things at once, worse luck, because they’re so contradictory. It’s then that proportion comes in — to live by proportion. Don’t BEGIN with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed, and a deadlock — Gracious me, I’ve started preaching!”
“Indeed, you put the difficulties of life splendidly,” said Mrs. Wilcox, withdrawing her hand into the deeper shadows. “It is just what I should have liked to say about them myself.”
CHAPTER IX
Mrs. Wilcox cannot be accused of giving Margaret much information about life. And Margaret, on the other hand, has made a fair show of modesty, and has pretended to an inexperience that she certainly did not feel. She had kept house for over ten years; she had entertained, almost with distinction; she had brought up a charming sister, and was bringing up a brother. Surely, if experience is attainable, she had attained it. Yet the little luncheon-party that she gave in Mrs. Wilcox’s honour was not a success. The new friend did not blend with the “one or two delightful people” who had been asked to meet her, and the atmosphere was one of polite bewilderment. Her tastes were simple, her knowledge of culture slight, and she was not interested in the New English Art Club, nor in the dividing-line between Journalism and Literature, which was started as a conversational hare. The delightful people darted after it with cries of joy, Margaret leading them, and not till the meal was half over did they realise that the principal guest had taken no part in the chase. There was no common topic. Mrs. Wilcox, whose life had been spent in the service of husband and sons, had little to say to strangers who had never shared it, and whose age was half her own. Clever talk alarmed her, and withered her delicate imaginings; it was the social counterpart of a motor-car, all jerks, and she was a wisp of hay, a flower. Twice she deplored the weather, twice criticised the train service on the Great Northern Railway. They vigorously assented, and rushed on, and when she inquired whether there was any news of Helen, her hostess was too much occupied in placing Rothenstein to answer. The question was repeated: “I hope that your sister is safe in Germany by now.” Margaret checked herself and said, “Yes, thank you; I heard on Tuesday.” But the demon of vociferation was in her, and the next moment she was off again.
“Only on Tuesday, for they live right away at Stettin. Did you ever know any one living at Stettin?”
“Never,” said Mrs. Wilcox gravely, while her neighbour, a young man low down in the Education Office, began to discuss what people who lived at Stettin ought to look like. Was there such a thing as Stettininity? Margaret swept on.
“People at Stettin drop things into boats out of overhanging warehouses. At least, our cousins do, but aren’t particularly rich. The town isn’t interesting, except for a clock that rolls its eyes, and the view of the Oder, which truly is something special. Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, you would love the Oder! The river, or rather rivers — there seem to be dozens of them — are intense blue, and the plain they run through an intensest green.”
“Indeed! That sounds like a most beautiful view, Miss Schlegel.”
“So I say, but Helen, who will muddle things, says no, it’s like music. The course of the Oder is to be like music. It’s obliged to remind her of a symphonic poem. The part by the landing-stage is in B minor, if I remember rightly, but lower down things get extremely mixed. There is a slodgy theme in several keys at once, meaning mud-banks, and another for the navigable canal, and the exit into the Baltic is in C sharp major, pianissimo.”
“What do the overhanging warehouses make of that?” asked the man, laughing.
“They make a great deal of it,” replied Margaret, unexpectedly rushing off on a new track. “I think it’s affectation to compare the Oder to music, and so do you, but the overhanging warehouses of Stettin take beauty seriously, which we don’t, and the average Englishman doesn’t, and despises all who do. Now don’t say ‘Germans have no taste,’ or I shall scream. They haven’t. But — but — such a tremendous but! — they take poetry seriously. They do take poetry seriously.”
“Is anything gained by that?”
“Yes, yes. The German is always on the lookout for beauty. He may miss it through stupidity, or misinterpret it, but he is always asking beauty to enter his life, and I believe that in the end it will come. At Heidelberg I met a fat veterinary surgeon whose voice broke with sobs as he repeated some mawkish poetry. So easy for me to laugh — I, who never repeat poetry, good or bad, and cannot remember one fragment of verse to thrill myself with. My blood boils — well, I ‘m half German, so put it down to patriotism — when I listen to the tasteful contempt of the average islander for things Teutonic, whether they’re Bocklin or my veterinary surgeon. ‘Oh, Bocklin,’ they say; ‘he strains after beauty, he peoples Nature with gods too consciously.’ Of course Bocklin strains, because he wants something — beauty and all the other intangible gifts that are floating about the world. So his landscapes don’t come off, and Leader’s do.”
“I am not sure that I agree. Do you?” said he, turning to Mrs. Wilcox.
She replied: “I think Miss Schlegel puts everything splendidly;” and a chill fell on the conversation.
“Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, say something nicer than that. It’s such a snub to be told you put things splendidly.”
“I do not mean it as a snub. Your last speech interested me so much. Generally people do not seem quite to like Germany. I have long wanted to hear what is said on the other side.”
“The other side? Then you do disagree. Oh, good! Give us your side.”
“I have no side. But my husband” — her voice softened, the chill increased— “has very little faith in the Continent, and our children have all taken after him.”
“On what grounds? Do they feel that the Continent is in bad form?”
Mrs. Wilcox had no idea; she paid little attention to grounds. She was not intellectual, nor even alert, and it was odd that, all the same, she should give the idea of greatness. Margaret, zigzagging with her friends over Thought and Art, was conscious of a personality that transcended their own and dwarfed their activities. There was no bitterness in Mrs. Wilcox; there was not even criticism; she was lovable, and no ungracious or uncharitable word had passed her lips. Yet she and daily life were out of focus; one or the other must show blurred. And at lunch she seemed more out of focus than usual, and nearer the line that divides daily life from a life that may be of greater importance.
“You will admit, though, that the Continent — it seems silly to speak of ‘the Continent,’ but really it is all more like itself than any part of it is like England. England is unique. Do have another jelly first. I was going to say that the Continent, for good or for evil, is interested in ideas. Its Literature and Art have what one might call the kink of the unseen about them, and this persists even through decadence and affectation. There is more liberty of action in England, but for liberty of thought go to bureaucratic Prussia. People will there discuss with humility vital questions that we here think ourselves too good to touch with tongs.”
“I do not want to go to Prussia,” said Mrs. Wilcox “not even to see that interesting view that you were describing. And for discussing with humility I am too old. We never discuss anything at Howards End.”
“Then you ought to!” said Margaret. “Discussion keeps a house alive. It cannot stand by bricks and mortar alone.”
“It cannot stand without them,” said Mrs. Wilcox, unexpectedly catching on to the thought, and rousing, for the first and last time, a faint hope in the breasts of the delightful people. “It cannot stand without them, and I sometimes think — But I cannot expect your generation to agree, for even my daughter disagrees with me here.”
“Never mind us or her. Do say!”
“I sometimes think that it is wiser to leave action and discussion to men.”
Works of E M Forster Page 73
