Helen smiled. “Oh, Meg, you are a person,” she said. “Think of the racket and torture this time last year. But now I couldn’t stop unhappy if I tried. What a change — and all through you!”
“Oh, we merely settled down. You and Henry learnt to understand one another and to forgive, all through the autumn and the winter.”
“Yes, but who settled us down?”
Margaret did not reply. The scything had begun, and she took off her pince-nez to watch it.
“You!” cried Helen. “You did it all, sweetest, though you’re too stupid to see. Living here was your plan — I wanted you; he wanted you; and everyone said it was impossible, but you knew. Just think of our lives without you, Meg — I and baby with Monica, revolting by theory, he handed about from Dolly to Evie. But you picked up the pieces, and made us a home. Can’t it strike you — even for a moment — that your life has been heroic? Can’t you remember the two months after Charles’s arrest, when you began to act, and did all?”
“You were both ill at the time,” said Margaret. “I did the obvious things. I had two invalids to nurse. Here was a house, ready furnished and empty. It was obvious. I didn’t know myself it would turn into a permanent home. No doubt I have done a little towards straightening the tangle, but things that I can’t phrase have helped me.”
“I hope it will be permanent,” said Helen, drifting away to other thoughts.
“I think so. There are moments when I feel Howards End peculiarly our own.”
“All the same, London’s creeping.”
She pointed over the meadow — over eight or nine meadows, but at the end of them was a red rust.
“You see that in Surrey and even Hampshire now,” she continued. “I can see it from the Purbeck Downs. And London is only part of something else, I’m afraid. Life’s going to be melted down, all over the world.”
Margaret knew that her sister spoke truly. Howards End, Oniton, the Purbeck Downs, the Oderberge, were all survivals, and the melting-pot was being prepared for them. Logically, they had no right to be alive. One’s hope was in the weakness of logic. Were they possibly the earth beating time?
“Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong for ever,” she said. “This craze for motion has only set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by a civilisation that won’t be a movement, because it will rest on the earth. All the signs are against it now, but I can’t help hoping, and very early in the morning in the garden I feel that our house is the future as well as the past.”
They turned and looked at it. Their own memories coloured it now, for Helen’s child had been born in the central room of the nine. Then Margaret said, “Oh, take care — !” for something moved behind the window of the hall, and the door opened.
“The conclave’s breaking at last. I’ll go.”
It was Paul.
Helen retreated with the children far into the field. Friendly voices greeted her. Margaret rose, to encounter a man with a heavy black moustache.
“My father has asked for you,” he said with hostility.
She took her work and followed him.
“We have been talking business,” he continued, “but I dare say you knew all about it beforehand.”
“Yes, I did.”
Clumsy of movement — for he had spent all his life in the saddle — Paul drove his foot against the paint of the front door. Mrs. Wilcox gave a little cry of annoyance. She did not like anything scratched; she stopped in the hall to take Dolly’s boa and gloves out of a vase.
Her husband was lying in a great leather chair in the dining-room, and by his side, holding his hand rather ostentatiously, was Evie. Dolly, dressed in purple, sat near the window. The room was a little dark and airless; they were obliged to keep it like this until the carting of the hay. Margaret joined the family without speaking; the five of them had met already at tea, and she knew quite well what was going to be said. Averse to wasting her time, she went on sewing. The clock struck six.
“Is this going to suit everyone?” said Henry in a weary voice. He used the old phrases, but their effect was unexpected and shadowy. “Because I don’t want you all coming here later on and complaining that I have been unfair.”
“It’s apparently got to suit us,” said Paul.
“I beg your pardon, my boy. You have only to speak, and I will leave the house to you instead.”
Paul frowned ill-temperedly, and began scratching at his arm. “As I’ve given up the outdoor life that suited me, and I have come home to look after the business, it’s no good my settling down here,” he said at last. “It’s not really the country, and it’s not the town.”
“Very well. Does my arrangement suit you, Evie?”
“Of course, father.”
“And you, Dolly?”
Dolly raised her faded little face, which sorrow could wither but not steady. “Perfectly splendidly,” she said. “I thought Charles wanted it for the boys, but last time I saw him he said no, because we cannot possibly live in this part of England again. Charles says we ought to change our name, but I cannot think what to, for Wilcox just suits Charles and me, and I can’t think of any other name.”
There was a general silence. Dolly looked nervously round, fearing that she had been inappropriate. Paul continued to scratch his arm.
“Then I leave Howards End to my wife absolutely,” said Henry. “And let everyone understand that; and after I am dead let there be no jealousy and no surprise.”
Margaret did not answer. There was something uncanny in her triumph. She, who had never expected to conquer anyone, had charged straight through these Wilcoxes and broken up their lives.
“In consequence, I leave my wife no money,” said Henry. “That is her own wish. All that she would have had will be divided among you. I am also giving you a great deal in my lifetime, so that you may be independent of me. That is her wish, too. She also is giving away a great deal of money. She intends to diminish her income by half during the next ten years; she intends when she dies to leave the house to her nephew, down in the field. Is all that clear? Does everyone understand?”
Paul rose to his feet. He was accustomed to natives, and a very little shook him out of the Englishman. Feeling manly and cynical, he said: “Down in the field? Oh, come! I think we might have had the whole establishment, piccaninnies included.”
Mrs. Cahill whispered: “Don’t, Paul. You promised you’d take care.” Feeling a woman of the world, she rose and prepared to take her leave.
Her father kissed her. “Good-bye, old girl,” he said; “don’t you worry about me.”
“Good-bye, dad.”
Then it was Dolly’s turn. Anxious to contribute, she laughed nervously, and said: “Good-bye, Mr. Wilcox. It does seem curious that Mrs. Wilcox should have left Margaret Howards End, and yet she get it, after all.”
From Evie came a sharply-drawn breath. “Goodbye,” she said to Margaret, and kissed her.
And again and again fell the word, like the ebb of a dying sea.
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Dolly.”
“So long, father.”
“Good-bye, my boy; always take care of yourself.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Wilcox.”
“Good-bye.”
Margaret saw their visitors to the gate. Then she returned to her husband and laid her head in his hands. He was pitiably tired. But Dolly’s remark had interested her. At last she said: “Could you tell me, Henry, what was that about Mrs. Wilcox having left me Howards End?”
Tranquilly he replied: “Yes, she did. But that is a very old story. When she was ill and you were so kind to her she wanted to make you some return, and, not being herself at the time, scribbled ‘Howards End’ on a piece of paper. I went into it thoroughly, and, as it was clearly fanciful, I set it aside, little knowing what my Margaret would be to me in the future.”
Margaret was silent. Something shook her life in its inmost recesses, and she shivered.
“I d
idn’t do wrong, did I?” he asked, bending down.
“You didn’t, darling. Nothing has been done wrong.”
From the garden came laughter. “Here they are at last!” exclaimed Henry, disengaging himself with a smile. Helen rushed into the gloom, holding Tom by one hand and carrying her baby on the other. There were shouts of infectious joy.
“The field’s cut!” Helen cried excitedly— “the big meadow! We’ve seen to the very end, and it’ll be such a crop of hay as never!”
WEYBRIDGE, 1908-1910.
THE END
The Shorter Fiction
The prestigious Tonbridge public school, which Forster attended as a boy
THE MACHINE STOPS
This short story was originally published The Oxford and Cambridge Review in November 1909 and later republished in Forster’s The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. It was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two in 1973, after being voted one of the best novellas until that time.
The Machine Stops
1. The Air Ship
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.
An electric bell rang.
The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.
‘I suppose I must see who it is’, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.
‘Who is it?’ she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.
But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said: ‘Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes - for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on “Music during the Australian Period”.’
She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness. ‘Be quick!’ she called, her irritation returning. ‘Be quick, Kuno; here I am in the dark wasting my time.’
But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her. ‘Kuno, how slow you are.’
He smiled gravely.
‘I really believe you enjoy dawdling.’
‘I have called you before, mother, but you were always busy or isolated. I have something particular to say.’
‘What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. Why could you not send it by pneumatic post?’
‘Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want — — ‘
‘Well?’
‘I want you to come and see me.’
Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.
‘But I can see you!’ she exclaimed. ‘What more do you want?’
‘I want to see you not through the Machine,’ said Kuno. ‘I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.’
‘Oh, hush!’ said his mother, vaguely shocked. ‘You mustn’t say anything against the Machine.’ ‘Why not?’
‘One mustn’t.’
‘You talk as if a god had made the Machine,’ cried the other.
‘I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.’
She replied that she could scarcely spare the time for a visit.
‘The air-ship barely takes two days to fly between me and you.’
‘I dislike air-ships.’
‘Why?’
‘I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an air- ship.’
‘I do not get them anywhere else.’
‘What kind of ideas can the air give you?’ He paused for an instant.
‘Do you not know four big stars that form an oblong, and three stars close together in the middle of the oblong, and hanging from these stars, three other stars?’
‘No, I do not. I dislike the stars. But did they give you an idea? How interesting; tell me.’ ‘I had an idea that they were like a man.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘The four big stars are the man’s shoulders and his knees.
The three stars in the middle are like the belts that men wore once, and the three stars hanging are like a sword.’
‘A sword?’
‘Men carried swords about with them, to kill animals and other men.’
‘It does not strike me as a very good idea, but it is certainly original. When did it come to you first?’
‘In the air-ship — — ‘ He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people - an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something ‘good enough’ had long since been accepted by our race.
‘The truth is,’ he continued, ‘that I want to see these stars again. They are curious stars. I want to see them not from the air-ship, but from the surface of the earth, as our ancestors did, thousands of years ago. I want to visit the surface of the earth.’ She was shocked again.
‘Mother, you must come, if only to explain to me what is the harm of visiting the surface of the earth.’
‘No harm,’ she replied, controlling herself. ‘But no advantage. The surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no advantage. The surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no life remains on it, and you would need a respirator, or the cold of the outer air would kill you. One dies immediately in the outer air.’
‘I know; of course I shall take all precautions.’
‘And besides — — ‘
‘Well?’
She considered, and chose her words with care. Her son had a queer temper, and she wished to dissuade him from the expedition.
‘It is contrary to the spirit of the age,’ she asserted.
‘Do you mean by that, contrary to the Machine?’
‘In a sense, but — — ‘
His image is the blue plate faded.
‘Kuno!’
He had isolated himself.
For a moment Vashti felt lonely.
Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere - buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.
Vashanti’s next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one’s own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? - say this day month.
To most of these questions she replied with irritation - a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries through press of engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just been told one-that four stars and three in the middle were like a man: she doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music. The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous account of music in the pre Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primæval as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the musicians of today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas. Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received, and at its conclusion she and many of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea; there were ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed. The bed was not to her liking. It was too large, and she had a feeling for a small bed.
Complaint was useless, for beds were of the same dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in the Machine. Vashti isolated herself-it was necessary, for neither day nor night existed under the ground-and reviewed all that had happened since she had summoned the bed last. Ideas? Scarcely any. Events - was Kuno’s invitation an event?
Works of E M Forster Page 100