Works of E M Forster

by E. M. Forster

  The more Margaret thought about it the more alarmed she became. For many months she had put the subject away, but it was too big to be slighted now. There was almost a taint of madness. Were all Helen’s actions to be governed by a tiny mishap, such as may happen to any young man or woman? Can human nature be constructed on lines so insignificant? The blundering little encounter at Howards End was vital. It propagated itself where graver intercourse lay barren; it was stronger than sisterly intimacy, stronger than reason or books. In one of her moods Helen had confessed that she still “enjoyed” it in a certain sense. Paul had faded, but the magic of his caress endured. And where there is enjoyment of the past there may also be reaction — propagation at both ends.

  Well, it is odd and sad that our minds should be such seed-beds, and we without power to choose the seed. But man is an odd, sad creature as yet, intent on pilfering the earth, and heedless of the growths within himself. He cannot be bored about psychology. He leaves it to the specialist, which is as if he should leave his dinner to be eaten by a steam-engine. He cannot be bothered to digest his own soul. Margaret and Helen have been more patient, and it is suggested that Margaret has succeeded — so far as success is yet possible. She does understand herself, she has some rudimentary control over her own growth. Whether Helen has succeeded one cannot say.

  The day that Mrs. Munt rallied Helen’s letter arrived. She had posted it at Munich, and would be in London herself on the morrow. It was a disquieting letter, though the opening was affectionate and sane.

  “DEAREST MEG,

  “Give Helen’s love to Aunt Juley. Tell her that I love, and have loved her ever since I can remember. I shall be in London Thursday.

  “My address will be care of the bankers. I have not yet settled on a hotel, so write or wire to me there and give me detailed news. If Aunt Juley is much better, or if, for a terrible reason, it would be no good my coming down to Swanage, you must not think it odd if I do not come. I have all sorts of plans in my head. I am living abroad at present, and want to get back as quickly as possible. Will you please tell me where our furniture is? I should like to take out one or two books; the rest are for you.

  “Forgive me, dearest Meg. This must read like rather a tiresome letter, but all letters are from your loving

  “HELEN.”

  It was a tiresome letter, for it tempted Margaret to tell a lie. If she wrote that Aunt Juley was still in danger her sister would come. Unhealthiness is contagious. We cannot be in contact with those who are in a morbid state without ourselves deteriorating. To “act for the best” might do Helen good, but would do herself harm, and, at the risk of disaster, she kept her colours flying a little longer. She replied that their aunt was much better, and awaited developments.

  Tibby approved of her reply. Mellowing rapidly, he was a pleasanter companion than before. Oxford had done much for him. He had lost his peevishness, and could hide his indifference to people and his interest in food. But he had not grown more human. The years between eighteen and twenty-two, so magical for most, were leading him gently from boyhood to middle age. He had never known young-manliness, that quality which warms the heart till death, and gives Mr. Wilcox an imperishable charm. He was frigid, through no fault of his own, and without cruelty. He thought Helen wrong and Margaret right, but the family trouble was for him what a scene behind footlights is for most people. He had only one suggestion to make, and that was characteristic.

  “Why don’t you tell Mr. Wilcox?”

  “About Helen?”

  “Perhaps he has come across that sort of thing.”

  “He would do all he could, but— “

  “Oh, you know best. But he is practical.”

  It was the student’s belief in experts. Margaret demurred for one or two reasons. Presently Helen’s answer came. She sent a telegram requesting the address of the furniture, as she would now return at once. Margaret replied, “Certainly not; meet me at the bankers’ at four.” She and Tibby went up to London. Helen was not at the bankers’, and they were refused her address. Helen had passed into chaos.

  Margaret put her arm round her brother. He was all that she had left, and never had he seemed more unsubstantial.

  “Tibby love, what next?”

  He replied: “It is extraordinary.”

  “Dear, your judgment’s often clearer than mine. Have you any notion what’s at the back?”

  “None, unless it’s something mental.”

  “Oh — that!” said Margaret. “Quite impossible.” But the suggestion had been uttered, and in a few minutes she took it up herself. Nothing else explained. And London agreed with Tibby. The mask fell off the city, and she saw it for what it really is — a caricature of infinity. The familiar barriers, the streets along which she moved, the houses between which she had made her little journeys for so many years, became negligible suddenly. Helen seemed one with grimy trees and the traffic and the slowly-flowing slabs of mud. She had accomplished a hideous act of renunciation and returned to the One. Margaret’s own faith held firm. She knew the human soul will be merged, if it be merged at all, with the stars and the sea. Yet she felt that her sister had been going amiss for many years. It was symbolic the catastrophe should come now, on a London afternoon, while rain fell slowly.

  Henry was the only hope. Henry was definite. He might know of some paths in the chaos that were hidden from them, and she determined to take Tibby’s advice and lay the whole matter in his hands. They must call at his office. He could not well make it worse. She went for a few moments into St. Paul’s, whose dome stands out of the welter so bravely, as if preaching the gospel of form. But within, St. Paul’s is as its surroundings — echoes and whispers, inaudible songs, invisible mosaics, wet footmarks, crossing and recrossing the floor. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice; it points us back to London. There was no hope of Helen here.

  Henry was unsatisfactory at first. That she had expected. He was overjoyed to see her back from Swanage, and slow to admit the growth of a new trouble. When they told him of their search, he only chaffed Tibby and the Schlegels generally, and declared that it was “just like Helen” to lead her relatives a dance.

  “That is what we all say,” replied Margaret. “But why should it be just like Helen? Why should she be allowed to be so queer, and to grow queerer?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m a plain man of business. I live and let live. My advice to you both is, don’t worry. Margaret, you’ve got black marks again under your eyes. You know that’s strictly forbidden. First your aunt — then your sister. No, we aren’t going to have it. Are we, Theobald?” He rang the bell. “I’ll give you some tea, and then you go straight to Ducie Street. I can’t have my girl looking as old as her husband.”

  “All the same, you have not quite seen our point,” said Tibby.

  Mr. Wilcox, who was in good spirits, retorted, “I don’t suppose I ever shall.” He leant back, laughing at the gifted but ridiculous family, while the fire flickered over the map of Africa. Margaret motioned to her brother to go on. Rather diffident, he obeyed her.

  “Margaret’s point is this,” he said. “Our sister may be mad.”

  Charles, who was working in the inner room, looked round.

  “Come in, Charles,” said Margaret kindly. “Could you help us at all? We are again in trouble.”

  “I’m afraid I cannot. What are the facts? We are all mad more or less, you know, in these days.”

  “The facts are as follows,” replied Tibby, who had at times a pedantic lucidity. “The facts are that she has been in England for three days and will not see us. She has forbidden the bankers to give us her address. She refuses to answer questions. Margaret finds her letters colourless. There are other facts, but these are the most striking.”

  “She has never behaved like this before, then?” asked Henry.

  “Of course not!” said his wife, with a frown.

  “Well, my dear, how am I to know?”

  A senseless spasm of annoyance ca
me over her. “You know quite well that Helen never sins against affection,” she said. “You must have noticed that much in her, surely.”

  “Oh yes; she and I have always hit it off together.”

  “No, Henry — can’t you see? — I don’t mean that.”

  She recovered herself, but not before Charles had observed her. Stupid and attentive, he was watching the scene.

  “I was meaning that when she was eccentric in the past, one could trace it back to the heart in the long-run. She behaved oddly because she cared for some one, or wanted to help them. There’s no possible excuse for her now. She is grieving us deeply, and that is why I am sure that she is not well. ‘Mad’ is too terrible a word, but she is not well. I shall never believe it. I shouldn’t discuss my sister with you if I thought she was well — trouble you about her, I mean.”

  Henry began to grow serious. Ill-health was to him something perfectly definite. Generally well himself, he could not realise that we sink to it by slow gradations. The sick had no rights; they were outside the pale; one could lie to them remorselessly. When his first wife was seized, he had promised to take her down into Hertfordshire, but meanwhile arranged with a nursing-home instead. Helen, too, was ill. And the plan that he sketched out for her capture, clever and well-meaning as it was, drew its ethics from the wolf-pack.

  “You want to get hold of her?” he said. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? She has got to see a doctor.”

  “For all I know she has seen one already.”

  “Yes, yes; don’t interrupt.” He rose to his feet and thought intently. The genial, tentative host disappeared, and they saw instead the man who had carved money out of Greece and Africa, and bought forests from the natives for a few bottles of gin. “I’ve got it,” he said at last. “It’s perfectly easy. Leave it to me. We’ll send her down to Howards End.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “After her books. Tell her that she must unpack them herself. Then you can meet her there.”

  “But, Henry, that’s just what she won’t let me do. It’s part of her — whatever it is — never to see me.”

  “Of course you won’t tell her you’re going. When she is there, looking at the cases, you’ll just stroll in. If nothing is wrong with her, so much the better. But there’ll be the motor round the corner, and we can run her to a specialist in no time.”

  Margaret shook her head. “It’s quite impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t seem impossible to me,” said Tibby; “it is surely a very tippy plan.”

  “It is impossible, because— “ She looked at her husband sadly. “It’s not the particular language that Helen and I talk, if you see my meaning. It would do splendidly for other people, whom I don’t blame.”

  “But Helen doesn’t talk,” said Tibby. “That’s our whole difficulty. She won’t talk your particular language, and on that account you think she’s ill.”

  “No, Henry; it’s sweet of you, but I couldn’t.”

  “I see,” he said; “you have scruples.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And sooner than go against them you would have your sister suffer. You could have got her down to Swanage by a word, but you had scruples. And scruples are all very well. I am as scrupulous as any man alive, I hope; but when it is a case like this, when there is a question of madness— “

  “I deny it’s madness.”

  “You said just now— “

  “It’s madness when I say it, but not when you say it.”

  Henry shrugged his shoulders. “Margaret! Margaret!” he groaned. “No education can teach a woman logic. Now, my dear, my time is valuable. Do you want me to help you or not?”

  “Not in that way.”

  “Answer my question. Plain question, plain answer. Do— “

  Charles surprised them by interrupting. “Pater, we may as well keep Howards End out of it,” he said.

  “Why, Charles?”

  Charles could give no reason; but Margaret felt as if, over tremendous distance, a salutation had passed between them.

  “The whole house is at sixes and sevens,” he said crossly. “We don’t want any more mess.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” asked his father. “My boy, pray who’s ‘we’?”

  “I am sure I beg your pardon,” said Charles. “I appear always to be intruding.”

  By now Margaret wished she had never mentioned her trouble to her husband. Retreat was impossible. He was determined to push the matter to a satisfactory conclusion, and Helen faded as he talked. Her fair, flying hair and eager eyes counted for nothing, for she was ill, without rights, and any of her friends might hunt her. Sick at heart, Margaret joined in the chase. She wrote her sister a lying letter, at her husband’s dictation; she said the furniture was all at Howards End, but could be seen on Monday next at 3 P.M., when a charwoman would be in attendance. It was a cold letter, and the more plausible for that. Helen would think she was offended. And on Monday next she and Henry were to lunch with Dolly, and then ambush themselves in the garden.

  After they had gone, Mr. Wilcox said to his son: “I can’t have this sort of behaviour, my boy. Margaret’s too sweet-natured to mind, but I mind for her.”

  Charles made no answer.

  “Is anything wrong with you, Charles, this afternoon?”

  “No, pater; but you may be taking on a bigger business than you reckon.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  One speaks of the moods of spring, but the days that are her true children have only one mood; they are all full of the rising and dropping of winds, and the whistling of birds. New flowers may come out, the green embroidery of the hedges increase, but the same heaven broods overhead, soft, thick, and blue, the same figures, seen and unseen, are wandering by coppice and meadow. The morning that Margaret had spent with Miss Avery, and the afternoon she set out to entrap Helen, were the scales of a single balance. Time might never have moved, rain never have fallen, and man alone, with his schemes and ailments, was troubling Nature until he saw her through a veil of tears.

  She protested no more. Whether Henry was right or wrong, he was most kind, and she knew of no other standard by which to judge him. She must trust him absolutely. As soon as he had taken up a business, his obtuseness vanished. He profited by the slightest indications, and the capture of Helen promised to be staged as deftly as the marriage of Evie.

  They went down in the morning as arranged, and he discovered that their victim was actually in Hilton. On his arrival he called at all the livery-stables in the village, and had a few minutes’ serious conversation with the proprietors. What he said, Margaret did not know — perhaps not the truth; but news arrived after lunch that a lady had come by the London train, and had taken a fly to Howards End.

  “She was bound to drive,” said Henry. “There will be her books.”

  “I cannot make it out,” said Margaret for the hundredth time.

  “Finish your coffee, dear. We must be off.”

  “Yes, Margaret, you know you must take plenty,” said Dolly.

  Margaret tried, but suddenly lifted her hand to her eyes. Dolly stole glances at her father-in-law which he did not answer. In the silence the motor came round to the door.

  “You’re not fit for it,” he said anxiously. “Let me go alone. I know exactly what to do.”

  “Oh yes, I am fit,” said Margaret, uncovering her face. “Only most frightfully worried. I cannot feel that Helen is really alive. Her letters and telegrams seem to have come from some one else. Her voice isn’t in them. I don’t believe your driver really saw her at the station. I wish I’d never mentioned it. I know that Charles is vexed. Yes, he is— “ She seized Dolly’s hand and kissed it. “There, Dolly will forgive me. There. Now we’ll be off.”

  Henry had been looking at her closely. He did not like this breakdown.

  “Don’t you want to tidy yourself?” he asked.


  “Have I time?”

  “Yes, plenty.”

  She went to the lavatory by the front door, and as soon as the bolt slipped, Mr. Wilcox said quietly:

  “Dolly, I’m going without her.”

  Dolly’s eyes lit up with vulgar excitement. She followed him on tiptoe out to the car.

  “Tell her I thought it best.”

  “Yes, Mr. Wilcox, I see.”

  “Say anything you like. All right.”

  The car started well, and with ordinary luck would have got away. But Porgly-woggles, who was playing in the garden, chose this moment to sit down in the middle of the path. Crane, in trying to pass him, ran one wheel over a bed of wallflowers. Dolly screamed. Margaret, hearing the noise, rushed out hatless, and was in time to jump on the footboard. She said not a single word; he was only treating her as she had treated Helen, and her rage at his dishonesty only helped to indicate what Helen would feel against them. She thought, “I deserve it; I am punished for lowering my colours.” And she accepted his apologies with a calmness that astonished him.

  “I still consider you are not fit for it,” he kept saying.

  “Perhaps I was not at lunch. But the whole thing is spread clearly before me now.”

  “I was meaning to act for the best.”

  “Just lend me your scarf, will you. This wind takes one’s hair so.”

  “Certainly, dear girl. Are you all right now?”

  “Look! My hands have stopped trembling.”

  “And have quite forgiven me? Then listen. Her cab should already have arrived at Howards End. (We’re a little late, but no matter.) Our first move will be to send it down to wait at the farm, as, if possible, one doesn’t want a scene before servants. A certain gentleman” — he pointed at Crane’s back— “won’t drive in, but will wait a little short of the front gate, behind the laurels. Have you still the keys of the house?”