Howards End (25 page)

C
HAPTER
29

H
ENRY DEAR
—” was her greeting.

He had finished his breakfast, and was beginning the
Times.
His sister-in-law was packing. She knelt by him and took the paper from him, feeling that it was unusually heavy and thick. Then, putting her face where it had been, she looked up in his eyes.

“Henry dear, look at me. No, I won’t have you shirking. Look at me. There. That’s all.”

“You’re referring to last evening,” he said huskily. “I have released you from your engagement. I could find excuses, but I won’t. No, I won’t. A thousand times no. I’m a bad lot, and must be left at that.”

Expelled from his old fortress, Mr. Wilcox was building a new one. He could no longer appear respectable to her, so he defended himself instead in a lurid past. It was not true repentance.

“Leave it where you will, boy. It’s not going to trouble us: I know what I’m talking about, and it will make no difference.”

“No difference?” he inquired. “No difference, when you find that I am not the fellow you thought?” He was annoyed with Miss Schlegel here. He would have preferred her to be prostrated by the blow, or even to rage. Against the tide of his sin flowed the feeling that she was not altogether womanly. Her eyes gazed too straight; they had read books that are suitable for men only. And though he had dreaded a scene, and though she had determined against one, there was a scene, all the same. It was somehow imperative.

“I am unworthy of you,” he began. “Had I been worthy, I should not have released you from your engagement. I know what I am talking about. I can’t bear to talk of such things. We had better leave it.”

She kissed his hand. He jerked it from her, and, rising to his feet, went on: “You, with your sheltered life, and refined pursuits, and friends, and books, you and your sister, and women like you—I say, how can you guess the temptations that lie round a man?”

“It is difficult for us,” said Margaret; “but if we are worth marrying, we do guess.”

“Cut off from decent society and family ties, what do you suppose happens to thousands of young fellows overseas? Isolated. No one near. I know by bitter experience, and yet you say it makes ‘no difference.’ ”

“Not to me.”

He laughed bitterly. Margaret went to the sideboard and helped herself to one of the breakfast dishes. Being the last down, she turned out the spirit-lamp that kept them warm. She was tender, but grave. She knew that Henry was not so much confessing his soul as pointing out the gulf between the male soul and the female, and she did not desire to hear him on this point.

“Did Helen come?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“But that won’t do at all, at all! We don’t want her gossiping with Mrs. Bast.”

“Good God! no!” he exclaimed, suddenly natural. Then he caught himself up. “Let them gossip. My game’s up, though I thank you for your unselfishness—little as my thanks are worth.”

“Didn’t she send me a message or anything?”

“I heard of none.”

“Would you ring the bell, please?”

“What to do?”

“Why, to inquire.”

He swaggered up to it tragically, and sounded a peal. Margaret poured herself out some coffee. The butler came, and said that Miss Schlegel had slept at the George, so far as he had heard. Should he go round to the George?

“I’ll go, thank you,” said Margaret, and dismissed him.

“It is no good,” said Henry. “Those things leak out; you cannot stop a story once it has started. I have known cases of other men—I despised them once, I thought that
I’m
different,
I
shall never be tempted. Oh, Margaret—” He came and sat down near her, improvising emotion. She could not bear to listen to him. “We fellows all come to grief once in our time. Will you believe that? There are moments when the strongest man—‘Let him who standeth, take heed lest he fall.’ That’s true, isn’t it? If you knew all, you would excuse me. I was far from good influences—far even from England. I was very, very lonely, and longed for a woman’s voice. That’s enough. I have told you too much already for you to forgive me now.”

“Yes, that’s enough, dear.”

“I have”—he lowered his voice—“I have been through hell.”

Gravely she considered this claim. Had he? Had he suffered tortures of remorse, or had it been “There! that’s over. Now for respectable life again?” The latter, if she read him rightly. A man who has been through hell does not boast of his virility. He is humble and hides it, if, indeed, it still exists. Only in legend does the sinner come forth penitent, but terrible, to conquer pure woman by his resistless power. Henry was anxious to be terrible, but had not got it in him. He was a good average Englishman who had slipped. The really culpable point—his faithlessness to Mrs. Wilcox—never seemed to strike him. She longed to mention Mrs. Wilcox.

And bit by bit the story was told her. It was a very simple story. Ten years ago was the time, a garrison town in Cyprus the place. Now and then he asked her whether she could possibly forgive him, and she answered: “I have already forgiven you, Henry.” She chose her words carefully, and so saved him from panic. She played the girl, until he could rebuild his fortress and hide his soul from the world. When the butler came to clear away, Henry was in a very different mood—asked the fellow what he was in such a hurry for, complained of the noise last night in the servants’ hall. Margaret looked intently at the butler. He, as a handsome young man, was faintly attractive to her as a woman—an attraction so faint as scarcely to be perceptible, yet the skies would have fallen if she had mentioned it to Henry.

On her return from the George the building operations were complete, and the old Henry fronted her, competent, cynical, and kind. He had made a clean breast, had been forgiven, and the great thing now was to forget his failure, and to send it the way of other unsuccessful investments. Jacky rejoined Howards End and Ducie Street, and the vermilion motor-car, and the Argentine Hard Dollars, and all the things and people for whom he had never had much use and had less now. Their memory hampered him. He could scarcely attend to Margaret, who brought back disquieting news from the George. Helen and her clients had gone.

“Well, let them go—the man and his wife, I mean, for the more we see of your sister the better.”

“But they have gone separately—Helen very early, the Basts just before I arrived. They have left no message. They have answered neither of my notes. I don’t like to think what it all means.”

“What did you say in the notes?”

“I told you last night.”

“Oh—ah—yes! Dear, would you like one turn in the garden?”

Margaret took his arm. The beautiful weather soothed her. But the wheels of Evie’s wedding were still at work, tossing the guests outwards as deftly as they had drawn them in, and she could not be with him long. It had been arranged that they should motor to Shrewsbury, whence he would go north, and she back to London with the Warringtons. For a fraction of time she was happy. Then her brain recommenced.

“I am afraid there has been gossiping of some kind at the George. Helen would not have left unless she had heard something. I mismanaged that. It is wretched. I ought to have parted her from that woman at once.”

“Margaret!” he exclaimed, loosing her arm impressively.

“Yes—yes, Henry?”

“I am far from a saint—in fact, the reverse—but you have taken me, for better or worse. Bygones must be by-gones. You have promised to forgive me. Margaret, a promise is a promise. Never mention that woman again.”

“Except for some practical reason—never.”

“Practical! You practical!”

“Yes, I’m practical,” she murmured, stooping over the mowing-machine and playing with the grass which trickled through her fingers like sand.

He had silenced her, but her fears made him uneasy. Not for the first time, he was threatened with blackmail. He was rich and supposed to be moral; the Basts knew that he was not, and might find it profitable to hint as much.

“At all events, you mustn’t worry,” he said. “This is a man’s business.” He thought intently. “On no account mention it to anybody.”

Margaret flushed at advice so elementary, but he was really paving the way for a lie. If necessary he would deny that he had ever known Mrs. Bast, and prosecute her for libel. Perhaps he never had known her. Here was Margaret, who behaved as if he had not. There the house. Round them were half a dozen gardeners, clearing up after his daughter’s wedding. All was so solid and spruce that the past flew up out of sight like a spring-blind, leaving only the last five minutes unrolled.

Glancing at these, he saw that the car would be round during the next five, and plunged into action. Gongs were tapped, orders issued, Margaret was sent to dress, and the housemaid to sweep up the long trickle of grass that she had left across the hall. As is Man to the Universe, so was the mind of Mr. Wilcox to the minds of some men—a concentrated light upon a tiny spot, a little Ten Minutes moving self-contained through its appointed years. No Pagan he, who lives for the Now, and may be wiser than all philosophers. He lived for the five minutes that have past, and the five to come; he had the business mind.

How did he stand now, as his motor slipped out of Oniton and breasted the great round hills? Margaret had heard a certain rumour, but was all right. She had forgiven him, God bless her, and he felt the manlier for it. Charles and Evie had not heard it, and never must hear. No more must Paul. Over his children he felt great tenderness, which he did not try to track to a cause: Mrs. Wilcox was too far back in his life. He did not connect her with the sudden aching love that he felt for Evie. Poor little Evie! he trusted that Cahill would make her a decent husband.

And Margaret? How did she stand?

She had several minor worries. Clearly her sister had heard something. She dreaded meeting her in town. And she was anxious about Leonard, for whom they certainly were responsible. Nor ought Mrs. Bast to starve. But the main situation had not altered. She still loved Henry. His actions, not his disposition, had disappointed her, and she could bear that. And she loved her future home. Standing up in the car, just where she had leapt from it two days before, she gazed back with deep emotion upon Oniton. Besides the Grange and the castle keep, she could now pick out the church and the black-and-white gables of the George. There was the bridge, and the river nibbling its green peninsula. She could even see the bathing-shed, but while she was looking for Charles’s new springboard, the forehead of the hill rose up and hid the whole scene.

She never saw it again. Day and night the river flows down into England, day after day the sun retreats into the Welsh mountains, and the tower chimes: “See the Conquering Hero.” But the Wilcoxes have no part in the place, nor in any place. It is not their names that recur in the parish register. It is not their ghosts that sigh among the alders at evening. They have swept into the valley and swept out of it, leaving a little dust and a little money behind.

C
HAPTER
30

T
IBBY WAS
now approaching his last year at Oxford. He had moved out of college, and was contemplating the Universe, or such portions of it as concerned him, from his comfortable lodgings in Long Wall. He was not concerned with much. When a young man is untroubled by passions and sincerely indifferent to public opinion, his outlook is necessarily limited. Tibby neither wished to strengthen the position of the rich nor to improve that of the poor, and so was well content to watch the elms nodding behind the mildly embattled parapets of Magdalen. There are worse lives. Though selfish, he was never cruel; though affected in manner, he never posed. Like Margaret, he disdained the heroic equipment, and it was only after many visits that men discovered Schlegel to possess a character and a brain. He had done well in Mods, much to the surprise of those who attended lectures and took proper exercise, and was now glancing disdainfully at Chinese in case he should some day consent to qualify as a Student Interpreter. To him thus employed Helen entered. A telegram had preceded her.

He noticed, in a distant way, that his sister had altered. As a rule he found her too pronounced, and had never come across this look of appeal, pathetic yet dignified—the look of a sailor who has lost everything at sea.

“I have come from Oniton,” she began. “There has been a great deal of trouble there.”

“Who’s for lunch?” said Tibby, picking up the claret, which was warming in the hearth. Helen sat down submis sively at the table. “Why such an early start?” he asked.

“Sunrise or something—when I could get away.”

“So I surmise. Why?”

“I don’t know what’s to be done, Tibby. I am very much upset at a piece of news that concerns Meg, and do not want to face her, and I am not going back to Wickham Place. I stopped here to tell you this.”

The landlady came in with the cutlets. Tibby put a marker in the leaves of his Chinese grammar and helped them. Oxford—the Oxford of the vacation—dreamed and rustled outside, and indoors the little fire was coated with grey where the sunshine touched it. Helen continued her odd story.

“Give Meg my love and say that I want to be alone. I mean to go to Munich or else Bonn.”

“Such a message is easily given,” said her brother.

“As regards Wickham Place and my share of the furniture, you and she are to do exactly as you like. My own feeling is that everything may just as well be sold. What does one want with dusty economic books, which have made the world no better, or with mother’s hideous chiffoniers? I have also another commission for you. I want you to deliver a letter.” She got up. “I haven’t written it yet. Why shouldn’t I post it, though?” She sat down again. “My head is rather wretched. I hope that none of your friends are likely to come in.”

Tibby locked the door. His friends often found it in this condition. Then he asked whether anything had gone wrong at Evie’s wedding.

“Not there,” said Helen, and burst into tears.

He had known her hysterical—it was one of her aspects with which he had no concern—and yet these tears touched him as something unusual. They were nearer the things that did concern him, such as music. He laid down his knife and looked at her curiously. Then, as she continued to sob, he went on with his lunch.

The time came for the second course, and she was still crying. Apple Charlotte was to follow, which spoils by waiting. “Do you mind Mrs. Martlette coming in?” he asked, “or shall I take it from her at the door?”

“Could I bathe my eyes, Tibby?”

He took her to his bedroom, and introduced the pudding in her absence. Having helped himself, he put it down to warm in the hearth. His hand stretched towards the grammar, and soon he was turning over the pages, raising his eyebrows scornfully, perhaps at human nature, perhaps at Chinese. To him thus employed Helen returned. She had pulled herself together, but the grave appeal had not vanished from her eyes.

“Now for the explanation,” she said. “Why didn’t I begin with it? I have found out something about Mr. Wilcox. He has behaved very wrongly indeed, and ruined two people’s lives. It all came on me very suddenly last night; I am very much upset, and I do not know what to do. Mrs. Bast—”

“Oh, those people!”

Helen seemed silenced.

“Shall I lock the door again?”

“No, thanks, Tibbikins. You’re being very good to me. I want to tell you the story before I go abroad. You must do exactly what you like—treat it as part of the furniture. Meg cannot have heard it yet, I think. But I cannot face her and tell her that the man she is going to marry had misconducted himself. I don’t even know whether she ought to be told. Knowing as she does that I dislike him, she will suspect me, and think that I want to ruin her match. I simply don’t know what to make of such a thing. I trust your judgment. What would you do?”

“I gather he has had a mistress,” said Tibby.

Helen flushed with shame and anger. “And ruined two people’s lives. And goes about saying that personal actions count for nothing, and there always will be rich and poor. He met her when he was trying to get rich out in Cyprus—I don’t wish to make him worse than he is, and no doubt she was ready enough to meet him. But there it is. They met. He goes his way and she goes hers. What do you suppose is the end of such women?”

He conceded that it was a bad business.

“They end in two ways: Either they sink till the lunatic asylums and the workhouses are full of them, and cause Mr. Wilcox to write letters to the papers complaining of our national degeneracy, or else they entrap a boy into marriage before it is too late. She—I can’t blame her.

“But this isn’t all,” she continued after a long pause, during which the landlady served them with coffee. “I come now to the business that took me to Oniton. We went all three. Acting on Mr. Wilcox’s advice, the man throws up a secure situation and takes an insecure one, from which he is dismissed. There are certain excuses, but in the main Mr. Wilcox is to blame, as Meg herself admitted. It is only common justice that he should employ the man himself. But he meets the woman, and, like the cur that he is, he refuses, and tries to get rid of them. He makes Meg write. Two notes came from her late that evening—one for me, one for Leonard, dismissing him with barely a reason. I couldn’t understand. Then it comes out that Mrs. Bast had spoken to Mr. Wilcox on the lawn while we left her to get rooms, and was still speaking about him when Leonard came back to her. This Leonard knew all along. He thought it natural he should be ruined twice. Natural! Could you have contained yourself?”

“It is certainly a very bad business,” said Tibby.

His reply seemed to calm his sister. “I was afraid that I saw it out of proportion. But you are right outside it, and you must know. In a day or two—or perhaps a week—take whatever steps you think fit. I leave it in your hands.”

She concluded her charge.

“The facts as they touch Meg are all before you,” she added; and Tibby sighed and felt it rather hard that, because of his open mind, he should be empanelled to serve as a juror. He had never been interested in human beings, for which one must blame him, but he had had rather too much of them at Wickham Place. Just as some people cease to attend when books are mentioned, so Tibby’s attention wandered when “personal relations” came under discussion. Ought Margaret to know what Helen knew the Basts to know? Similar questions had vexed him from infancy, and at Oxford he had learned to say that the importance of human beings has been vastly overrated by specialists. The epigram, with its faint whiff of the eighties, meant nothing. But he might have let it off now if his sister had not been ceaselessly beautiful.

“You see, Helen—have a cigarette—I don’t see what I’m to do.”

“Then there’s nothing to be done. I dare say you are right. Let them marry. There remains the question of compensation.”

“Do you want me to adjudicate that too? Had you not better consult an expert?”

“This part is in confidence,” said Helen. “It has nothing to do with Meg, and do not mention it to her. The compensation—I do not see who is to pay it if I don’t, and I have already decided on the minimum sum. As soon as possible I am placing it to your account, and when I am in Germany you will pay it over for me. I shall never forget your kindness, Tibbikins, if you do this.”

“What is the sum?”

“Five thousand.”

“Good God alive!” said Tibby, and went crimson.

“Now, what is the good of driblets? To go through life having done one thing—to have raised one person from the abyss: not these puny gifts of shillings and blankets—making the grey more grey. No doubt people will think me extraordinary.”

“I don’t care a damn what people think!” cried he, heated to unusual manliness of diction. “But it’s half what you have.”

“Not exactly half.” She spread out her hands over her soiled skirt. “I have far too much, and we settled at Chelsea last spring that three hundred a year is necessary to set a man on his feet. What I give will bring in a hundred and fifty between two. It isn’t enough.”

He could not recover. He was not angry or even shocked, and he saw that Helen would still have plenty to live on. But it amazed him to think what haycocks people can make of their lives. His delicate intonations would not work, and he could only blurt out that the five thousand pounds would mean a great deal of bother for him personally.

“I didn’t expect you to understand me.”

“I? I understand nobody.”

“But you’ll do it?”

“Apparently.”

“I leave you two commissions, then. The first concerns Mr. Wilcox, and you are to use your discretion. The second concerns the money, and is to be mentioned to no one, and carried out literally. You will send a hundred pounds on account tomorrow.”

He walked with her to the station, passing through those streets whose serried beauty never bewildered him and never fatigued. The lovely creature raised domes and spires into the cloudless blue, and only the ganglion of vulgarity round Carfax showed how evanescent was the phantom, how faint its claim to represent England. Helen, rehearsing her commission, noticed nothing: the Basts were in her brain, and she retold the crisis in a meditative way, which might have made other men curious. She was seeing whether it would hold. He asked her once why she had taken the Basts right into the heart of Evie’s wedding. She stopped like a frightened animal and said: “Does that seem to you so odd?” Her eyes, the hand laid on the mouth, quite haunted him, until they were absorbed into the figure of St. Mary the Virgin, before whom he paused for a moment on the walk home.

It is convenient to follow him in the discharge of his duties. Margaret summoned him the next day. She was terrified at Helen’s flight, and he had to say that she had called in at Oxford. Then she said: “Did she seem worried at any rumour about Henry?” He answered “Yes.” “I knew it was that!” she exclaimed. “I’ll write to her.” Tibby was relieved.

He then sent the cheque to the address that Helen gave him, and stated that later on he was instructed to forward five thousand pounds. An answer came back, very civil and quiet in tone—such an answer as Tibby himself would have given. The cheque was returned, the legacy refused, the writer being in no need of money. Tibby forwarded this to Helen, adding in the fulness of his heart that Leonard Bast seemed somewhat a monumental person after all. Helen’s reply was frantic. He was to take no notice. He was to go down at once and say that she commanded acceptance. He went. A scurf of books and china ornaments awaited him. The Basts had just been evicted for not paying their rent, and had wandered no one knew whither. Helen had begun bungling with her money by this time, and had even sold out her shares in the Nottingham and Derby Railroad. For some weeks she did nothing. Then she reinvested, and, owing to the good advice of her stock-brokers, became rather richer than she had been before.