Howards End (5 page)

Helen advanced along the same lines, though with a more irresponsible tread. In character she resembled her sister, but she was pretty, and so apt to have a more amusing time. People gathered round her more readily, especially when they were new acquaintances, and she did enjoy a little homage very much. When their father died and they ruled alone at Wickham Place, she often absorbed the whole of the company, while Margaret—both were tremendous talkers—fell flat. Neither sister bothered about this. Helen never apologized afterwards, Margaret did not feel the slightest rancour. But looks have their in-fluence upon character. The sisters were alike as little girls, but at the time of the Wilcox episode their methods were beginning to diverge; the younger was rather apt to entice people, and, in enticing them, to be herself enticed; the elder went straight ahead, and accepted an occasional failure as part of the game.

Little need be premised about Tibby. He was now an intelligent man of sixteen, but dyspeptic and difficile.

C
HAPTER
5

I
T WILL
be generally admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come—of course, not so as to disturb the others; or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music’s flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee; or like their cousin, Fräulein Mosebach, who remembers all the time that Beethoven is “echt Deutsch”; or like Fräulein Mosebach’s young man, who can remember nothing but Fräulein Mosebach: in any case, the passion of your life becomes more vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings. It is cheap, even if you hear it in the Queen’s Hall, dreariest music-room in London, though not as dreary as the Free Trade Hall, Manchester; and even if you sit on the extreme left of that hall, so that the brass bumps at you before the rest of the orchestra arrives, it is still cheap.

“Who is Margaret talking to?” said Mrs. Munt, at the conclusion of the first movement. She was again in London on a visit to Wickham Place.

Helen looked down the long line of their party and said that she did not know.

“Would it be some young man or other whom she takes an interest in?”

“I expect so,” Helen replied. Music enwrapped her, and she could not enter into the distinction that divides young men whom one takes an interest in from young men whom one knows.

“You girls are so wonderful in always having—Oh dear! one mustn’t talk.”

For the Andante had begun—very beautiful, but bearing a family likeness to all the other beautiful Andantes that Beethoven has written, and, to Helen’s mind, rather disconnecting the heroes and shipwrecks of the first movement from the heroes and goblins of the third. She heard the tune through once, and then her attention wandered, and she gazed at the audience, or the organ, or the architecture. Much did she censure the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen’s Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons, on which the October sunlight struck. “How awful to marry a man like those Cupids!” thought Helen. Here Beethoven started decorating his tune, so she heard him through once more, and then she smiled at her cousin Frieda. But Frieda, listening to Classical Music, could not respond. Herr Liesecke, too, looked as if wild horses could not make him inattentive; there were lines across his forehead, his lips were parted, his pince-nez at right angles to his nose, and he had laid a thick, white hand on either knee. And next to her was Aunt Juley, so British, and wanting to tap. How interesting that row of people was! What diverse influences had gone to the making! Here Beethoven, after humming and hawing with great sweetness, said “Heigho,” and the Andante came to an end. Applause, and a round of “wunderschöning” and “prachtvolleying” from the German contingent. Margaret started talking to her new young man; Helen said to her aunt: “Now comes the wonderful movement: first of all the goblins, and then a trio of elephants dancing”; and Tibby implored the company generally to look out for the transitional passage on the drum.

“On the what, dear?”

“On the
drum,
Aunt Juley.”

“No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the goblins and they come back,” breathed Helen, as the music started with a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end. Others followed him: They were not aggressive creatures; it was that that made them so terrible to Helen. They merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as splendour or heroism in the world. After the interlude of elephants dancing, they returned and made the observation for the second time. Helen could not contradict them, for, once at all events, she had felt the same, and had seen the reliable walls of youth collapse. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! The goblins were right.

Her brother raised his finger: it was the transitional passage on the drum.

For, as if things were going too far, Beethoven took hold of the goblins and made them do what he wanted. He appeared in person. He gave them a little push, and they began to walk in a major key instead of in a minor, and then—he blew with his mouth and they were scattered! Gusts of splendour, gods and demi-gods contending with vast swords, colour and fragrance broadcast on the field of battle, magnificent victory, magnificent death! Oh, it all burst before the girl, and she even stretched out her gloved hands as if it was tangible. Any fate was titanic; any contest desirable; conqueror and conquered would alike be applauded by the angels of the utmost stars.

And the goblins—they had not really been there at all? They were only the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief? One healthy human impulse would dispel them? Men like the Wilcoxes, or President Roosevelt, would say yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins really had been there. They might return—and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall.

Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were scattered. He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion. But the goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.

Helen pushed her way out during the applause. She desired to be alone. The music summed up to her all that had happened or could happen in her career. She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be superseded. The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have no other meaning, and life could have no other meaning. She pushed right out of the building, and walked slowly down the outside staircase, breathing the autumnal air, and then she strolled home.

“Margaret,” called Mrs. Munt, “is Helen all right?”

“Oh yes.”

“She is always going away in the middle of a programme,” said Tibby.

“The music has evidently moved her deeply,” said Fräulein Mosebach.

“Excuse me,” said Margaret’s young man, who had for some time been preparing a sentence, “but that lady has, quite inadvertently, taken my umbrella.”

“Oh, good gracious me!—I am so sorry. Tibby, run after Helen.”

“I shall miss the Four Serious Songs if I do.”

“Tibby love, you must go.”

“It isn’t of any consequence,” said the young man, in truth a little uneasy about his umbrella.

“But of course it is. Tibby! Tibby!”

Tibby rose to his feet, and wilfully caught his person on the backs of the chairs. By the time he had tipped up the seat and had found his hat, and had deposited his full score in safety, it was “too late” to go after Helen. The Four Serious Songs had begun, and one could not move during their performance.

“My sister is so careless,” whispered Margaret.

“Not at all,” replied the young man; but his voice was dead and cold.

“If you would give me your address—”

“Oh, not at all, not at all”; and he wrapped his great-coat over his knees.

Then the Four Serious Songs rang shallow in Margaret’s ears. Brahms, for all his grumbling and grizzling, had never guessed what it felt like to be suspected of stealing an umbrella. For this fool of a young man thought that she and Helen and Tibby had been playing the confidence trick on him, and that if he gave his address they would break into his rooms some midnight or other and steal his walking-stick too. Most ladies would have laughed, but Margaret really minded, for it gave her a glimpse into squalor. To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. As soon as Brahms had grunted himself out, she gave him her card and said: “That is where we live; if you preferred, you could call for the umbrella after the concert, but I didn’t like to trouble you when it has all been our fault.”

His face brightened a little when he saw that Wickham Place was W. It was sad to see him corroded with suspicion, and yet not daring to be impolite, in case these well-dressed people were honest after all. She took it as a good sign that he said to her: “It’s a fine programme this afternoon, is it not?” for this was the remark with which he had originally opened, before the umbrella intervened.

“The Beethoven’s fine,” said Margaret, who was not a female of the encouraging type. “I don’t like the Brahms, though, nor the Mendelssohn that came first—and ugh! I don’t like this Elgar that’s coming.”

“What, what?” called Herr Liesecke, overhearing. “The
Pomp and Circumstance
will not be fine?”

“Oh, Margaret, you tiresome girl!” cried her aunt. “Here have I been persuading Herr Liesecke to stop for
Pomp and Circumstance,
and you are undoing all my work. I am so anxious for him to hear what
we
are doing in music. Oh, you mustn’t run down our English composers, Margaret.”

“For my part, I have heard the composition at Stettin,” said Fräulein Mosebach. “On two occasions. It is dramatic, a little.”

“Frieda, you despise English music. You know you do. And English art. And English literature, except Shakespeare and he’s a German. Very well, Frieda, you may go.”

The lovers laughed and glanced at each other. Moved by a common impulse, they rose to their feet and fled from
Pomp and Circumstance.

“We have this call to pay in Finsbury Circus, it is true,” said Herr Liesecke, as he edged past her and reached the gangway just as the music started.

“Margaret—” loudly whispered by Aunt Juley. “Margaret, Margaret! Fräulein Mosebach has left her beautiful little bag behind her on the seat.”

Sure enough, there was Frieda’s reticule, containing her address book, her pocket dictionary, her map of London, and her money.

“Oh, what a bother—what a family we are! Fr—Frieda!”

“Hush!” said all those who thought the music fine.

“But it’s the number they want in Finsbury Circus—”

“Might I—couldn’t I—” said the suspicious young man, and got very red.

“Oh, I would be so grateful.”

He took the bag—money clinking inside it—and slipped up the gangway with it. He was just in time to catch them at the swing-door, and he received a pretty smile from the German girl and a fine bow from her cavalier. He returned to his seat up-sides with the world. The trust that they had reposed in him was trivial, but he felt that it cancelled his mistrust for them, and that probably he would not be “had” over his umbrella. This young man had been “had” in the past—badly, perhaps overwhelmingly—and now most of his energies went in defending himself against the unknown. But this afternoon—perhaps on account of music—he perceived that one must slack off occasionally, or what is the good of being alive? Wickham Place, W., though a risk, was as safe as most things, and he would risk it.

So when the concert was over and Margaret said: “We live quite near; I am going there now. Could you walk around with me, and we’ll find your umbrella?” he said: “Thank you,” peaceably, and followed her out of the Queen’s Hall. She wished that he was not so anxious to hand a lady downstairs, or to carry a lady’s programme for her—his class was near enough her own for its manners to vex her. But she found him interesting on the whole—everyone interested the Schlegels, on the whole, at that time—and while her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea.

“How tired one gets after music!” she began.

“Do you find the atmosphere of Queen’s Hall oppressive?”

“Yes, horribly.”

“But surely the atmosphere of Covent Garden is even more oppressive.”

“Do you go there much?”

“When my work permits, I attend the gallery for the Royal Opera.”

Helen would have exclaimed: “So do I. I love the gallery,” and thus have endeared herself to the young man. Helen could do these things. But Margaret had an almost morbid horror of “drawing people out,” of “making things go.” She had been to the gallery at Covent Garden, but she did not “attend” it, preferring the more expensive seats; still less did she love it. So she made no reply.

“This year I have been three times—to
Faust, Tosca,
and—” Was it “Tannhouser” or “Tannhoyser”? Better not risk the word.

Margaret disliked
Tosca
and
Faust.
And so, for one reason and another, they walked on in silence, chaperoned by the voice of Mrs. Munt, who was getting into difficulties with her nephew.

“I do in a
way
remember the passage, Tibby, but when every instrument is so beautiful, it is difficult to pick out one thing rather than another. I am sure that you and Helen take me to the very nicest concerts. Not a dull note from beginning to end. I only wish that our German friends would have stayed till it finished.”

“But surely you haven’t forgotten the drum steadily beating on the low C, Aunt Juley?” came Tibby’s voice. “No one could. It’s unmistakable.”

“A specially loud part?” hazarded Mrs. Munt. “Of course, I do not go in for being musical,” she added, the shot failing. “I only care for music—a very different thing. But still I will say this for myself—I do know when I like a thing and when I don’t. Some people are the same about pictures. They can go into a picture gallery—Miss Conder can—and say straight off what they feel, all round the wall. I never could do that. But music is so different to pictures, to my mind. When it comes to music I am as safe as houses, and I assure you, Tibby, I am by no means pleased by everything. There was a thing—something about a faun in French—which Helen went into ecstasies over, but I thought it most tinkling and superficial, and said so, and I held to my opinion too.”