“How very rude!”
“I wonder. Or was it sensible?”
“No, Margaret, most rude.”
“In either case one can class it as reassuring.”
Mrs. Munt sighed. She was going back to Swanage on the morrow, just as her nieces were wanting her most. Other regrets crowded upon her: for instance, how magnificently she would have cut Charles if she had met him face to face. She had already seen him, giving an order to the porter — and very common he looked in a tall hat. But unfortunately his back was turned to her, and though she had cut his back, she could not regard this as a telling snub.
“But you will be careful, won’t you?” she exhorted.
“Oh, certainly. Fiendishly careful.”
“And Helen must be careful, too.”
“Careful over what?” cried Helen, at that moment coming into the room with her cousin.
“Nothing” said Margaret, seized with a momentary awkwardness.
“Careful over what, Aunt Juley?”
Mrs. Munt assumed a cryptic air. “It is only that a certain family, whom we know by name but do not mention, as you said yourself last night after the concert, have taken the flat opposite from the Mathesons — where the plants are in the balcony.”
Helen began some laughing reply, and then disconcerted them all by blushing. Mrs. Munt was so disconcerted that she exclaimed, “What, Helen, you don’t mind them coming, do you?” and deepened the blush to crimson.
“Of course I don’t mind,” said Helen a little crossly. “It is that you and Meg are both so absurdly grave about it, when there’s nothing to be grave about at all.”
“I’m not grave,” protested Margaret, a little cross in her turn.
“Well, you look grave; doesn’t she, Frieda?”
“I don’t feel grave, that’s all I can say; you’re going quite on the wrong tack.”
“No, she does not feel grave,” echoed Mrs. Munt. “I can bear witness to that. She disagrees— “
“Hark!” interrupted Fraulein Mosebach. “I hear Bruno entering the hall.”
For Herr Liesecke was due at Wickham Place to call for the two younger girls. He was not entering the hall — in fact, he did not enter it for quite five minutes. But Frieda detected a delicate situation, and said that she and Helen had much better wait for Bruno down below, and leave Margaret and Mrs. Munt to finish arranging the flowers. Helen acquiesced. But, as if to prove that the situation was not delicate really, she stopped in the doorway and said:
“Did you say the Mathesons’ flat, Aunt Juley? How wonderful you are! I never knew that the name of the woman who laced too tightly was Matheson.”
“Come, Helen,” said her cousin.
“Go, Helen,” said her aunt; and continued to Margaret almost in the same breath: “Helen cannot deceive me. She does mind.”
“Oh, hush!” breathed Margaret. “Frieda’ll hear you, and she can be so tiresome.”
“She minds,” persisted Mrs. Munt, moving thoughtfully about the room, and pulling the dead chrysanthemums out of the vases. “I knew she’d mind — and I’m sure a girl ought to! Such an experience! Such awful coarse-grained people! I know more about them than you do, which you forget, and if Charles had taken you that motor drive — well, you’d have reached the house a perfect wreck. Oh, Margaret, you don’t know what you are in for! They’re all bottled up against the drawing-room window. There’s Mrs. Wilcox — I’ve seen her. There’s Paul. There’s Evie, who is a minx. There’s Charles — I saw him to start with. And who would an elderly man with a moustache and a copper-coloured face be?”
“Mr. Wilcox, possibly.”
“I knew it. And there’s Mr. Wilcox.”
“It’s a shame to call his face copper colour,” complained Margaret. “He has a remarkably good complexion for a man of his age.”
Mrs. Munt, triumphant elsewhere, could afford to concede Mr. Wilcox his complexion. She passed on from it to the plan of campaign that her nieces should pursue in the future. Margaret tried to stop her.
“Helen did not take the news quite as I expected, but the Wilcox nerve is dead in her really, so there’s no need for plans.”
“It’s as well to be prepared.”
“No — it’s as well not to be prepared.”
“Why?”
“Because— “
Her thought drew being from the obscure borderland. She could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy. It is necessary to prepare for an examination, or a dinner-party, or a possible fall in the price of stock: those who attempt human relations must adopt another method, or fail. “Because I’d sooner risk it,” was her lame conclusion.
“But imagine the evenings,” exclaimed her aunt, pointing to the Mansions with the spout of the watering can. “Turn the electric light on here or there, and it’s almost the same room. One evening they may forget to draw their blinds down, and you’ll see them; and the next, you yours, and they’ll see you. Impossible to sit out on the balconies. Impossible to water the plants, or even speak. Imagine going out of the front-door, and they come out opposite at the same moment. And yet you tell me that plans are unnecessary, and you’d rather risk it.”
“I hope to risk things all my life.”
“Oh, Margaret, most dangerous.”
“But after all,” she continued with a smile, “there’s never any great risk as long as you have money.”
“Oh, shame! What a shocking speech!”
“Money pads the edges of things,” said Miss Schlegel. “God help those who have none.”
“But this is something quite new!” said Mrs. Munt, who collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those that are portable.
“New for me; sensible people have acknowledged it for years. You and I and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It’s only when we see some one near us tottering that we realise all that an independent income means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the fire, I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin.”
“I call that rather cynical.”
“So do I. But Helen and I, we ought to remember, when we are tempted to criticise others, that we are standing on these islands, and that most of the others are down below the surface of the sea. The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can. Imagine the tragedy last June, if Helen and Paul Wilcox had been poor people, and couldn’t invoke railways and motor-cars to part them.”
“That’s more like Socialism,” said Mrs. Munt suspiciously.
“Call it what you like. I call it going through life with one’s hand spread open on the table. I’m tired of these rich people who pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed — from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don’t want to steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want to steal them and do steal them sometimes, and that what’s a joke up here is down there reality.”
“There they go — there goes Fraulein Mosebach. Really, for a German she does dress charmingly. Oh!— “
“What is it?”
“Helen was looking up at the Wilcoxes’ flat.”
“Why shouldn’t she?”
“I beg your pardon, I interrupted you. What was it you were saying about reality?”
“I had worked round to myself, as usual,” answered Margaret in tones that were suddenly preoccupied.
“Do te
ll me this, at all events. Are you for the rich or for the poor?”
“Too difficult. Ask me another. Am I for poverty or for riches? For riches. Hurrah for riches!”
“For riches!” echoed Mrs. Munt, having, as it were, at last secured her nut.
“Yes. For riches. Money for ever!”
“So am I, and so, I am afraid, are most of my acquaintances at Swanage, but I am surprised that you agree with us.”
“Thank you so much, Aunt Juley. While I have talked theories, you have done the flowers.”
“Not at all, dear. I wish you would let me help you in more important things.”
“Well, would you be very kind? Would you come round with me to the registry office? There’s a housemaid who won’t say yes but doesn’t say no.”
On their way thither they too looked up at the Wilcoxes’ flat. Evie was in the balcony, “staring most rudely,” according to Mrs. Munt. Oh yes, it was a nuisance, there was no doubt of it. Helen was proof against a passing encounter, but — Margaret began to lose confidence. Might it reawake the dying nerve if the family were living close against her eyes? And Frieda Mosebach was stopping with them for another fortnight, and Frieda was sharp, abominably sharp, and quite capable of remarking, “You love one of the young gentlemen opposite, yes?” The remark would be untrue, but of the kind which, if stated often enough, may become true; just as the remark, “England and Germany are bound to fight,” renders war a little more likely each time that it is made, and is therefore made the more readily by the gutter press of either nation. Have the private emotions also their gutter press? Margaret thought so, and feared that good Aunt Juley and Frieda were typical specimens of it. They might, by continual chatter, lead Helen into a repetition of the desires of June. Into a repetition — they could not do more; they could not lead her into lasting love. They were — she saw it clearly — Journalism; her father, with all his defects and wrong-headedness, had been Literature, and had he lived, he would have persuaded his daughter rightly.
The registry office was holding its morning reception. A string of carriages filled the street. Miss Schlegel waited her turn, and finally had to be content with an insidious “temporary,” being rejected by genuine housemaids on the ground of her numerous stairs. Her failure depressed her, and though she forgot the failure, the depression remained. On her way home she again glanced up at the Wilcoxes’ flat, and took the rather matronly step of speaking about the matter to Helen.
“Helen, you must tell me whether this thing worries you.”
“If what?” said Helen, who was washing her hands for lunch.
“The Ws’ coming.”
“No, of course not.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Then she admitted that she was a little worried on Mrs. Wilcox’s account; she implied that Mrs. Wilcox might reach backward into deep feelings, and be pained by things that never touched the other members of that clan. “I shan’t mind if Paul points at our house and says, ‘There lives the girl who tried to catch me.’ But she might.”
“If even that worries you, we could arrange something. There’s no reason we should be near people who displease us or whom we displease, thanks to our money. We might even go away for a little.”
“Well, I am going away. Frieda’s just asked me to Stettin, and I shan’t be back till after the New Year. Will that do? Or must I fly the country altogether? Really, Meg, what has come over you to make such a fuss?”
“Oh, I’m getting an old maid, I suppose. I thought I minded nothing, but really I — I should be bored if you fell in love with the same man twice and” — she cleared her throat— “you did go red, you know, when Aunt Juley attacked you this morning. I shouldn’t have referred to it otherwise.”
But Helen’s laugh rang true, as she raised a soapy hand to heaven and swore that never, nowhere and nohow, would she again fall in love with any of the Wilcox family, down to its remotest collaterals.
CHAPTER VIII
The friendship between Margaret and Mrs. Wilcox, which was to develop so quickly and with such strange results, may perhaps have had its beginnings at Speyer, in the spring. Perhaps the elder lady, as she gazed at the vulgar, ruddy cathedral, and listened to the talk of her husband and Helen, may have detected in the other and less charming of the sisters a deeper sympathy, a sounder judgment. She was capable of detecting such things. Perhaps it was she who had desired the Miss Schlegels to be invited to Howards End, and Margaret whose presence she had particularly desired. All this is speculation; Mrs. Wilcox has left few clear indications behind her. It is certain that she came to call at Wickham Place a fortnight later, the very day that Helen was going with her cousin to Stettin.
“Helen!” cried Fraulein Mosebach in awestruck tones (she was now in her cousin’s confidence)— “his mother has forgiven you!” And then, remembering that in England the new-comer ought not to call before she is called upon, she changed her tone from awe to disapproval, and opined that Mrs. Wilcox was keine Dame.
“Bother the whole family!” snapped Margaret. “Helen, stop giggling and pirouetting, and go and finish your packing. Why can’t the woman leave us alone?”
“I don’t know what I shall do with Meg,” Helen retorted, collapsing upon the stairs. “She’s got Wilcox and Box upon the brain. Meg, Meg, I don’t love the young gentleman; I don’t love the young gentleman, Meg, Meg. Can a body speak plainer?”
“Most certainly her love has died,” asserted Fraulein Mosebach.
“Most certainly it has, Frieda, but that will not prevent me from being bored with the Wilcoxes if I return the call.”
Then Helen simulated tears, and Fraulein Mosebach, who thought her extremely amusing, did the same. “Oh, boo hoo! boo hoo hoo! Meg’s going to return the call, and I can’t. ‘Cos why? ‘Cos I’m going to German-eye.”
“If you are going to Germany, go and pack; if you aren’t, go and call on the Wilcoxes instead of me.”
“But, Meg, Meg, I don’t love the young gentleman; I don’t love the young — O lud, who’s that coming down the stairs? I vow ’tis my brother. O crimini!”
A male — even such a male as Tibby — was enough to stop the foolery. The barrier of sex, though decreasing among the civilised, is still high, and higher on the side of women. Helen could tell her sister all, and her cousin much about Paul; she told her brother nothing. It was not prudishness, for she now spoke of “the Wilcox ideal” with laughter, and even with a growing brutality. Nor was it precaution, for Tibby seldom repeated any news that did not concern himself. It was rather the feeling that she betrayed a secret into the camp of men, and that, however trivial it was on this side of the barrier, it would become important on that. So she stopped, or rather began to fool on other subjects, until her long-suffering relatives drove her upstairs. Fraulein Mosebach followed her, but lingered to say heavily over the banisters to Margaret, “It is all right — she does not love the young man — he has not been worthy of her.”
“Yes, I know; thanks very much.”
“I thought I did right to tell you.”
“Ever so many thanks.”
“What’s that?” asked Tibby. No one told him, and he proceeded into the dining-room, to eat plums.
That evening Margaret took decisive action. The house was very quiet, and the fog — we are in November now — pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost. Frieda and Helen and all their luggages had gone. Tibby, who was not feeling well, lay stretched on a sofa by the fire. Margaret sat by him, thinking. Her mind darted from impulse to impulse, and finally marshalled them all in review. The practical person, who knows what he wants at once, and generally knows nothing else, will accuse her of indecision. But this was the way her mind worked. And when she did act, no one could accuse her of indecision then. She hit out as lustily as if she had not considered the matter at all. The letter that she wrote Mrs. Wilcox glowed with the native hue of resolution. The pale cast of thought was with her a breath rather than a tarnish, a breat
h that leaves the colours all the more vivid when it has been wiped away.
“DEAR MRS. WILCOX,
“I have to write something discourteous. It would be better if we did not meet. Both my sister and my aunt have given displeasure to your family, and, in my sister’s case, the grounds for displeasure might recur. So far as I know she no longer occupies her thoughts with your son. But it would not be fair, either to her or to you, if they met, and it is therefore right that our acquaintance, which began so pleasantly, should end.
“I fear that you will not agree with this; indeed, I know that you will not, since you have been good enough to call on us. It is only an instinct on my part, and no doubt the instinct is wrong. My sister would, undoubtedly, say that it is wrong. I write without her knowledge, and I hope that you will not associate her with my discourtesy.
“Believe me,
“Yours truly,
“M. J. SCHLEGEL.”
Margaret sent this letter round by the post. Next morning she received the following reply by hand:
“DEAR MISS SCHLEGEL,
“You should not have written me such a letter. I called to tell you that Paul has gone abroad.
“RUTH WILCOX.”
Margaret’s cheeks burnt. She could not finish her breakfast. She was on fire with shame. Helen had told her that the youth was leaving England, but other things had seemed more important, and she had forgotten. All her absurd anxieties fell to the ground, and in their place arose the certainty that she had been rude to Mrs. Wilcox. Rudeness affected Margaret like a bitter taste in the mouth. It poisoned life. At times it is necessary, but woe to those who employ it without due need. She flung on a hat and shawl, just like a poor woman, and plunged into the fog, which still continued. Her lips were compressed, the letter remained in her hand, and in this state she crossed the street, entered the marble vestibule of the flats, eluded the concierges, and ran up the stairs till she reached the second floor. She sent in her name, and to her surprise was shown straight into Mrs. Wilcox’s bedroom.
“Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, I have made the baddest blunder. I am more, more ashamed and sorry than I can say.”
Works of E M Forster Page 72