 CHAPTER XXV Evie heard of her father's engagement when she was in for a tennis tournament, and her play went simply to pot. That she should marry and leave him had seemed natural enough, that he, left alone, should do the same, was deceitful, and now Charles and Dolly said it was all her fault. "'But I never dreamt of such a thing,' she grumbled. "'Dad took me to Cull now and then, and made me ask it to Simpsons. Well, I'm altogether off, Dad.' It was also an insult to their mother's memory. There they were agreed, and Evie had the idea of returning Mrs. Wilcox's lace and jewellery, as a protest." Against what it would protest she was not clear, but being only eighteen, the idea of renunciation appealed to her, the more as she did not care for jewellery or lace. Dolly then suggested that she and Uncle Percy should pretend to break off their engagement, and then perhaps Mr. Wilcox would quarrel with Miss Schlegel and break off his, or Paul might be cabled for. But at this point Charles told them not to talk nonsense. So Evie settled to marry as soon as possible. It was no good hanging about with these Schlegels eyeing her. The date of her wedding was consequently put forward from September to August, and in the intoxication of presents she recovered much of her good humour. Margaret found that she was expected to figure at this function, and to figure largely. It would be such an opportunity, said Henry, for her to get to know his set. Sir James Bitter would be there, and all the co-hills and the fussles, and his sister-in-law, Mrs. Warrington Wilcox, had fortunately got back from her tour around the world. Henry she loved, but his set promised to be another matter. He had not the knack of surrounding himself with nice people. Indeed, for a man of ability and virtue his choice had been singularly unfortunate. He had no guiding principle beyond a certain preference for mediocrity. He was content to settle one of the greatest things in life, haphazard, and so, while his investments went right, his friends generally went wrong. She would be told, oh, so and so is a good sort, a thundering good sort, and find on meeting him that he was a brute or a bore. If Henry had shown real affection she would have understood, for affection explains everything. But he seemed without sentiment. The thundering good sort might at any moment become, a fellow for whom I never did have much use, and have less now, and be shaken off cheerily into oblivion. Margaret had done the same as a schoolgirl. Now she never forgot any one for whom she had once cared. She connected, though the connection might be bitter, and she hoped that some day Henry would do the same. Evie was not to be married from Ducey Street. She had a fancy for something rural, and besides no one would be in London then, so she left her boxes for a few weeks at Honiton Grange, and her bands were duly published in the parish church, and for a couple of days the little town, dreaming between the ruddy hills, was roused by the clang of our civilization, and drew up by the roadside to let the motors pass. Honiton had been a discovery of Mr. Wilcox's, a discovery of which he was not altogether proud. It was up towards the Welsh border, and so difficult of access that he had concluded it must be something special. A ruined castle stood in the grounds. But having got there, what was one to do? The shooting was bad, the fishing indifferent, and women folk reported the scenery as nothing much. The place turned out to be in the wrong part of Shropshire, dammit, and though he never damned his own property aloud, he was only waiting to get it off his hands and then to let fly. Evie's marriage was its last appearance in public. As soon as a tenant was found, it became a house for which he never had had much use, and had less now, and, like Howard's end, faded into limbo. But on Margaret, Honiton was destined to make a lasting impression. She regarded it as her future home, and was anxious to start straight with the clergy, etc., and if possible to see something of the local life. It was a market-town, as tiny a one as England possesses, and had, for ages, served that lonely valley, and guarded our marches against the Kelt. In spite of the occasion, in spite of the numbing hilarity that greeted her as soon as she got into the reserved saloon at Paddington, her senses were awake and watching, and though Honiton was to prove one of her innumerable false starts, she never forgot it, nor the things that happened there. The London party only numbered eight—the Fussells, father and son—two Anglo-Indian ladies named Mrs. Plyn Lemon and Lady Edser—Mrs. Warrington Wilcox and her daughter—and lastly, the little girl, very smart and quiet, who figures at so many weddings, and who kept a watchful eye on Margaret, the bright elect. Dolly was absent, a domestic event detained her at Hilton. Paul had cabled a humorous message. Charles was to meet them with a trio of motors at Shrewsbury. Helen had refused her invitation. Tibby had never answered his. The management was excellent, as was to be expected with anything that Henry undertook. One was conscious of his sensible and generous brain in the background. They were his guests as soon as they reached the train, a special label for their luggage, a courier, a special lunch, they had only to look pleasant and, where possible, pretty. Margaret thought with dismay of her own nuptials, presumably under the management of Tibby. Mr. Tibbled Schlagel and Ms. Helen Schlagel requested the pleasure of Mrs. Plyn Lemon's company on the occasion of the marriage of their sister Margaret. The formula was incredible, but it must soon be printed and sent, and their wick and place need not compete with Onnerton. It must feed its guests properly and provide them with sufficient chairs. Her wedding would either be ramshackly or bourgeois, she hoped, the latter. Such an affair as the present, staged with the deftness that was almost beautiful, lay beyond her powers and those of her friends. The low-rich purr of a great western express is not the worst background for conversation, and the journey passed pleasantly enough. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness of the two men. They raised windows for some ladies and lowered them for others. They rang the bell for the servant. They identified the colleges as the train slipped past Oxford. They caught books or bagpurses in the act of tumbling to the floor. Yet there was nothing finicky about their politeness. It had the public school touch, and, though sedulous, was virile. More battles than Waterloo have been won on our playing fields, and Margaret bowed to a charm of which she did not wholly approve, and said nothing when the Oxford colleges were identified wrongly. Male and female created he them. The journey to Shrewsbury confirmed this questionable statement, and the long-glass saloon, that moved so easily and felt so comfortable, became a forcing house for the idea of sex. At Shrewsbury came fresh air. Margaret was all for sightseeing, and while the others were finishing their tea at the raven, she annexed a motor and hurried over the astonishing city. Her chauffeur was not the faithful Crane, but an Italian, who dearly loved making her late. Charles, watch and hand, though with a level brow, was standing in front of the hotel when they returned. It was perfectly all right, he told her, she was by no means the last. And then he dived into the coffee-room, and she heard him say, For God's sake, hurry the women up, we shall never be off. And Albert Fussell replied, Not I, I've done my share. And Colonel Fussell opined that the ladies were getting themselves up to kill. Presently Myra, Mrs. Warrington's daughter, appeared, and as she was his cousin, Charles blew her up a little. She had been changing her smart travelling hat for a smart motor hat. Then Mrs. Warrington herself, leading the quiet child, the two Anglo-Indian ladies were always last. Maid's courier, heavy luggage, had already gone on by a branch-line to a station near Ornatan. But there were five hat-boxes and four dressing-bags to be packed, and five dust-clokes to be put on, and to be put off at the last moment, because Charles declared them not necessary. The men presided over everything with unfailing good humour. By half past five the party was ready, and went out of Shrewsbury by the Welsh bridge. The heart for cheer had not the reticence of heart for cheer. Though robbed of half its magic by swift movement, it still conveyed the sense of hills. They were nearing the buttresses that forced the Severn Eastern, and make it an English stream, and the sun, sinking over the sentinels of Wales, was straight in their eyes. Having picked up another guest, they turned southward, avoiding the greater mountains, but conscious of an occasional summit, rounded and mild, whose colouring differed in quality from that of the lower earth, and whose contours altered more slowly. Quiet mysteries were in progress behind those tossing horizons. The West, as ever, was retreating with some secret, which may not be worth the discovery, but which no practical man will ever discover. They spoke of tariff reform. Mrs. Warrington was just back from the colonies. Like many other critics of Empire her mouth had been stopped with food, and she could only exclaim at the hospitality with which she had been received, and warn the mother country against trifling with young titans. They threatened to cut the painter, she cried, and where shall we be then? Miss Schlegel, you'll undertake to keep Henry's sound about tariff reform. It is our last hope. Margaret playfully confessed herself on the other side, and they began to quote from their respective handbooks, while the motor carried them deep into the hills. Curious these were, rather than impressive, for their outlines lacked beauty, and the pink fields, on their summits, suggested the handkerchiefs of a giant spread out to dry. An occasional outcrop of rock, an occasional wood, an occasional forest, treeless and brown, all hinted at wildness to follow, but the main colour was an agricultural green. The air grew cooler, they had surmounted the last gradient, and Onneton lay below them with its church, its radiating houses, its castle, its river-girt peninsula. Close to the castle was a grey mansion, unintellectual but kindly, stretching with its grounds across the peninsula's neck, the sort of mansion that was built all over England in the beginning of the last century, while architecture was still an expression of the national character. That was the Grange, remarked Albert, over his shoulder, and then he jammed the brake on, and the motor slowed down and stopped. I'm sorry, he said, turning around. Do you mind getting out, by the door on the right? Study on." What's happened? asked Mrs. Warrington. Then the car behind them drew up, and the voice of Charles was heard saying, Get out the women at once! There was a concourse of males, and Margaret and her companions were hustled out and received into the second car. What had happened? As it started off again, the door of a cottage opened, and a girl screamed wildly at them. What is it? the ladies cried. Charles drove them a hundred yards without speaking. Then he said, It's all right. Your car just touched a dog. But stop! cried Margaret, horrified. It didn't hurt him. Didn't really hurt him? asked Myra. No. Do please stop! said Margaret, leaning forward. She was standing up in the car, the other occupants holding her knees to steady her. I want to go back, please! Charles took no notice. We've left Mr. Fussell behind, said another, and Angelo and Crane. Yes, but no woman. I expect a little of—Mrs. Warrington scratched her palm—will be more to the point than one of us. The insurance company sees to that, remarked Charles, and Albert will do the talking. I want to go back, though, I say! repeated Margaret, getting angry. Charles took no notice. The motor, loaded with refugees, continued to travel very slowly down the hill. The men are there, coerced the others. Men will see to it. The men can't see to it! Oh, this is ridiculous! Charles, I ask you to stop! Stopping's no good! drawled Charles. Isn't it? said Margaret, and jumped straight out of the car. She fell on her knees, cut her gloves, shook her hat over her ear. Cries of alarm followed her. You've hurt yourself! exclaimed Charles, jumping after her. Of course I've hurt myself! she retorted. May I ask what? There's nothing to ask, said Margaret, your hands bleeding. I know. I'm in for a frightful row from the paiter. You should have thought of that sooner, Charles. Charles had never been in such a position before. It was a woman in revolt who was hobbling away from him, and a sight was too strange to leave any room for anger. He recovered himself when the others caught them up, their sort, he understood. He commanded them to go back. Albert Fessel was seen walking towards them. It's all right," he called. It wasn't a dog, it was a cat. There! exclaimed Charles triumphantly. It's only a rotten cat. Got room in your car for a littlean. I caught as soon as I saw it wasn't a dog. The chauffeurs are tackling the girl. But Margaret walked forward steadily. Why should the chauffeurs tackle the girl? Ladies sheltering behind men, men sheltering behind servants, the whole system's wrong, and she must challenge it. Miss Schlagel, pour my word, you've hurt your hand. I'm just going to see," said Margaret. Don't you wait, Mr. Fessel. The second motor came round the corner. It is all right, madam," said Crane in his turn. He had taken to calling her madam. What's all right? The cat! Yes, madam. The girl received compensation for it. She was a very rude girl, said Angelo, from the third motor thoughtfully. Wouldn't she have been rude? The Italians spread out his hands, implying that he had not thought of rudeness, but would produce it, if it pleased her. The situation became absurd. The gentlemen were again buzzing round Miss Schlagel with offers of assistance, and Lady Edser began to bind up her hand. She yielded, apologizing slightly, and was led back to the car, and soon the landscape resumed its motion. The lonely cottage disappeared. The castle swelled on its cushion of turf, and they had arrived. No doubt she had disgraced herself. But she felt their whole journey from London had been unreal. They had no part with the earth and its emotions. They were dust, and stink, and cosmopolitan chatter, and a girl whose cat had been killed had lived more deeply than they. Oh, Henry! she exclaimed, I have been so naughty! for she had decided to take up this line. We ran over a cat. Charles told me not to jump out, but I would, and look. She held out her bandaged hand. Your poor Meg went such a flop. Mr. Wilcox looked bewildered. In evening dress he was standing to welcome his guests in the hall. A thinking it was a dog, added Mrs. Warrington. Ah! dogs a companion! said Colonel Fussell. A dog will remember you. Have you hurt yourself, Margaret? Not to speak about, and it's my left hand. Well, hurry up and change. She obeyed, asked at the others. Mr. Wilcox then turned to his son. Now, Charles, what's happened? Charles was absolutely honest. He described what he believed to have happened. Albert had flattened out a cat, and Miss Schlegel had lost her nerve as any woman might. She had been got safely into the other car, but when it was in motion had leapt out again in spite of all that they could say. After walking a little on the road, she had calmed down, and had said that she was sorry. His father accepted this explanation, and neither knew that Margaret had artfully prepared the way for it. It fitted in too well with their view of feminine nature. In the smoking-room, after dinner, the Colonel put forward the view that Miss Schlegel had jumped it out of devilry. Well, he remembered as a younger man in the harbour of Gibraltar once, how a girl—a handsome girl, too—had jumped overboard for a bet. He could see her now, and all the lads overboard after her. But Charles and Mr. Wilcox agreed it was much more probably nerves in Miss Schlegel's case. Charles was depressed. That woman had a tongue. She would bring worse disgrace on his father before she had done with them. He strolled out to the castle mound to think the matter over. The evening was exquisite. On three sides of him a little river whispered, full of messages from the west. Above his head the ruins made patterns against the sky. He carefully reviewed their dealings with this family, until he fitted Helen and Margaret and Aunt Julie into an orderly conspiracy. Paternity had made him suspicious. He had two children to look after, and more coming, and day by day they seemed less likely to grow up rich men. It is all very well, he reflected, the Pater saying that he will be just to all, but one can't be just indefinitely. Money isn't elastic. What's to happen if Evie has a family? And come to that. So may the Pater. They'll not be enough to go round, for there's none coming in, either through Dolly or Percy. It's damnable. He looked enviously at the Grange, whose windows poured light and laughter. First and last this wedding would cost a pretty penny. Two ladies were strolling up and down the garden terrace, and as the syllables imperialism were wafted to his ears he guessed that one of them was his aunt. She might have helped him if she, too, had not had a family to provide for. Everyone for himself, he repeated, a maxim which had cheered him in the past, but which rang grimly enough among the ruins of Onerton. He lacked his father's ability in business, and so had an ever higher regard for money. Unless he could inherit plenty, he feared to leave his children poor. As he sat thinking, one of the ladies left the terrace and walked into the meadow. He recognized her as Margaret by the white bandage that gleamed on her arm, and put out his cigar lest the gleam should betray him. She climbed up the mound in zig-zags, and at times stooped down as if she was stroking the turf. It sounds absolutely incredible, but for a moment Charles thought that she was in love with him, and had come out to tempt him. Charles believed in temptresses, who are indeed the strong man's necessary compliment, and having no sense of humor he could not purge himself of the thought by a smile. Margaret, who was engaged to his father and his sister's wedding-guest, kept on her way without noticing him, and he admitted that he had wronged her on this point. But what was she doing? Why was she stumbling about amongst the rubble and catching her dress in brambles and burrs? As she edged round the keep, she must have got to leeward and smelt his cigar smoke, for as she exclaimed, Hello! Who's that? Charles made no answer. Saxon or Kelt! she continued, laughing in the darkness. But it doesn't matter. Whichever you are you will have to listen to me. I love this place. I love Shropshire. I hate London. I am glad that this will be my home. Ah, dear! she was now moving back towards the house. What a comfort to have arrived! That woman means mischief, thought Charles, and compressed his lips. In a few minutes he followed her indoors, as the ground was getting damp. Mists were rising from the river, and presently it became invisible, though it whispered more loudly. There had been a heavy downpour in the Welsh hills. CHAPTER XXVI Next morning a fine mist covered the peninsula. The weather promised well, and the outline of the castle mound grew clear each moment that Margaret watched it. Presently she saw the keep, and the sun painted the rubble gold and charged the white sky with blue. The shadow of the house gathered itself together and fell over the garden. A cat looked up at her window and mewed. Lastly the river appeared, still holding the mists between its banks and its overhanging alders, and only visible as far as a hill, which cut off its upper reaches. Margaret was fascinated by Onerton. She had said that she loved it, but it was rather its romantic tension that held her. The rounded druids of whom she had caught glimpses in her drive, the rivers hurrying down from them to England, the carelessly modelled masses of the lowered hills, thrilled her with poetry. The house was insignificant, but the prospect from it would be an eternal joy, and she thought of all the friends she would have to stop in it, and of the conversion of Henry himself to a rural life. Society, too, promised favorably. The rector of the parish had dined with them last night, and she found that he was a friend of her father's, and so knew what to find in her. She liked him. He would introduce her to the town. While on her other side Sir James Bitter sat, repeating that she had only to give the word, and he would whip up the county families for twenty miles round. Whether Sir James, who was garden seeds, had promised what he could perform, she doubted, but so long as Henry mistook them for the county families when they did call, she was content. Charles and Albert Fussell now crossed the lawn. They were going for a morning dip, and a servant followed them with their bathing-dresses. She had meant to take a stroll herself before breakfast, but saw that the day was still sacred to men, and amused herself by watching their contretomb. In the first place the key of the bathing-shed could not be found. Charles stood by the riverside with folded hands, tragical, while the servant shouted, and was misunderstood by another servant in the garden. Then came a difficulty about a springboard, and soon three people were running backwards and forwards over the meadow, with orders and counter-orders and recriminations and apologies. If Margaret wanted to jump from a motor-car, she jumped. If Tibi thought paddling would benefit his ankles, he paddled. If a clerk desired adventure, he took a walk in the dark. But these athletes seemed paralyzed. They could not bathe without their appliances, though the morning sun was calling and the last mists were rising from the dimpling stream. Had they found the life of the body after all? Could not the men whom they despised as milk-sobs beat them, even on their own ground? She thought of the bathing arrangements as they should be in her day, no worrying of servants, no appliances, beyond good sense. Her reflections were disturbed by the quiet child, who had come out to speak to the cat, but was now watching her watch the men. She called, Good morning, dear—a little sharply—her voice spread consternation. Charles looked round, and though completely attired and indigo blue, vanished into the shed and was seen no more. Miss Wilcox is up. The child whispered, and then became unintelligible. What's that? It sounded like, cut yoke, sack back. I can't hear. On the bed, tissue paper. Gathering that the wedding-dress was on view and that a visit would be seemly, she went to Evie's room. All was hilarity here. Evie, in a petticoat, was dancing with one of the Anglo-Indian ladies, while the other was adoring yards of white satin. They screamed, they laughed, they sang, and the dog barked. Margaret screamed a little too, but without conviction. She could not feel that a wedding was so funny. Perhaps something was missing in her equipment. Evie gasped. Dolly is a rutter not to be here! Oh, we would rag just then! Then Margaret went down to breakfast. Henry was already installed. He ate slowly and spoke little, and was, in Margaret's eyes, the only member of their party who dodged emotions successfully. She could not suppose him indifferent either to the loss of his daughter or to the presence of his future wife. Yet he dwelt intact, only issuing orders occasionally, orders that promoted the comfort of his guests. He inquired after her hand. He set her to pour out the coffee and Mrs. Warrington to pour out the tea. When Evie came down there was a moment's awkwardness, and both ladies rose to vacate their places. Berton, called Henry, served tea and coffee from the side-bold. It wasn't genuine tact, but it was tact of a sort, the sort that is as useful as the genuine, and saves even more situations at board meetings. Henry traded a marriage like a funeral, item by item, never raising his eyes to the whole, and death where as thy sting, love where as thy victory, one would exclaim at the close. After breakfast she claimed a few words with him. It was always best to approach him formally. She asked for the interview because he was going on to shoot Grouse tomorrow, and she was returning to Helen in town. Certainly, dear, said he, of course I have the time. What do you want? Nothing. I was afraid something had gone wrong. No, I have nothing to say. But you may talk. Glancing at his watch he talked of the nasty curve at the Litchgate. She heard him with interest. Her surface could always respond to his without contempt, though all her deeper being might be yearning to help him. She had abandoned any plan of action. Love is the best, and the more she let herself love him, the more chance was there that he would set his soul in order. Such a moment as this, when they sat under fair weather by the walks of their future home, was so sweet to her that its sweetness would surely pierce to him. Each lift of his eyes, each parting of the thatched lip from the clean shaven, must prelude the tenderness that kills the monk and the beast at a single blow. Disappointed a hundred times, she still hoped. She loved him with too clear a vision to fear his cloudiness, whether he droned trivialities, as to-day, or sprang kisses on her in the twilight, she could pardon him, she could respond. If there is this nasty curve, she suggested, couldn't we walk to the church? Not, of course, you and Evie, but the rest of us might very well go on first, and that would mean fewer carriages. One can't have ladies walking through the market square. The fussles wouldn't like it. They were awfully particular at Charles's wedding. My—she—one of our party was anxious to walk, and certainly the church was just round the corner, and I shouldn't have minded, but the Colonel made a great point of it. You men shouldn't be so chivalrous," said Margaret thoughtfully. Why not? She knew why not, but said that she did not know. He then announced that unless she had anything special to say, he must visit the wine cellar, and they went off together in search of Burton. Though clumsy and a little inconvenient, Onneton was a genuine country house. They clattered down flagged passages, looked into room after room, and scaring unknown maids from the performance of obscure duties. The wedding breakfast must be in readiness when they came back from church, and tea would be served in the garden. The sight of so many agitated and serious people made Margaret smile, but she reflected that they were paid to be serious, and enjoyed being agitated. Here were the lower wheels of the machine that was tossing Evie up into nuptial glory. A little boy blocked their way with pigtails. His mind could not grasp their greatness, and he said, Boy, you'll leave. Let me pass, please." Henry asked him where Burton was, but the servants were so new that they did not know one another's names. In the still-room sat the band, who had stipulated for champagne as part of their fee, and who were already drinking beer. Sense of Arabic came from the kitchen, mingled with cries. Margaret knew what had happened there, for it happened at Wickham Place. One of the wedding dishes had boiled over, and the cook was throwing cedar shavings to hide the smell. At last they came upon the butler. Henry gave him the keys, and handed Margaret down the cellar stairs. Two doors were unlocked. She, who kept all her wine at the bottom of the linen cupboard, was astonished at the sight. We shall never get through it! she cried, and the two men were suddenly drawn into brotherhood, and exchanged smiles. She felt as if she had again jumped out of the car while it was moving. Certainly Honiton would take some digesting. It would be no small business to remain herself, and yet to assimilate such an establishment. She must remain herself, for his sake as well as her own. Since a shadowy wife degrades the husband whom she accompanies, and she must assimilate for reasons of common honesty, since she had no right to marry a man and make him uncomfortable. Her only ally was the power of home. The loss of Wiccan Place had taught her more than its possession. Howard's End had repeated the lesson. She was determined to create new sanctities among these hills. After visiting the wine cellar, she dressed, and then came the wedding, which seemed a small affair when compared with the preparations for it. Everything went like one o'clock. Mr. Cawhill materialized out of space, and was waiting for his bride at the church door. No one dropped the ring or mispronounced the responses, or trod on Evie's train, or cried. In a few minutes the clergymen performed their duty, the register was signed, and they were back in their carriages, negotiating the dangerous curve by the Lich Gate. Margaret was convinced that they had not been married at all, and that the Norman Church had been intent all the time on other business. There were more documents to sign at the house and the breakfast to eat, and then a few more people dropped in for the garden party. There had been a great many refusals, and after all it was not a very big affair, not as big as Margaret's would be. She noted the dishes and the strips of red carpet that outwardly she might give Henry what was proper, but inwardly she hoped for something better than this bland of Sunday church and fox-hunting, if only someone had been upset. But this wedding had gone off so particularly well. Quite like a derbaugh, in the opinion of Lady Edser, and she thoroughly agreed with her. So the wasted day lumbered forward, the bride and bridegroom drove off yelling with laughter, and for the second time the sun retreated towards the hills of Wales. Henry, who was more tired than he owned, came up to her in the castle meadow, and in tones of unusual softness said that he was pleased. Everything had gone off so well. She felt that he was praising her, too, and blushed. Certainly she had done all she could with his intractable friends, and had made a special point of cow-towing to the men. They were breaking camp this evening. Only the Warringtons and quiet child would stay the night, and the others were already moving towards the house to finish their packing. I think it did go off well, she agreed. Since I had to jump out of the motor, I am thankful I lighted on my left hand. I am so very glad about it, Henry dear. I only hope that the guests at ours may be half as comfortable. You must all remember that we have no practical person among us, except my aunt, and she is not used to entertainments on a large scale. I know, he said gravely. Under the circumstances, it would be better to put everything into the hands of Harrods, or Whitelies, or even go to some hotel. You desire a hotel? Yes, because—well, I mustn't interfere with you. No doubt you want to be married from your old home. My old home's falling into pieces, Henry. I only want my new. Isn't it a perfect evening? The Alexandrina isn't bad. The Alexandrina, she echoed, more occupied with the threads of smoke that were issuing from their chimneys, and ruling the sunlit slopes with parallels of grey. It's off Curson Street. Is it? Let's be married from off Curson Street. Then she turned westward to gaze at the swirling gold. Just where the river rounded the hill, the sun caught it. Fairyland must lie above the bend, and its precious liquid was pouring towards them past Charles's bathing shed. She gazed so long that her eyes were dazzled, and when they moved back to the house, she could not recognize the faces of people who were coming out of it. A parlor maid was preceding them. Who are those people? she asked. They're coolers, exclaimed Henry. It's too late for coolers. Perhaps they're town people who want to see the wedding-presence. I'm not at home yet to townies. Well, hide among the ruins, and if I can stop them, I will. He thanked her. Margaret went forward, smiling socially. She supposed that these were unpunctual guests, who would have to be content with vicarious civility, since Evie and Charles were gone, Henry tired, and the others in their rooms. She assumed the heirs of a hostess. Not for long. For one of the group was Helen. Helen in her oldest clothes, and dominated by that tense, wounding excitement that had made her a terror in their nursery days. What is it? she called. Oh, what's wrong? It's Tippi Hill. Helen spoke to her two companions, who fell back. Then she bore forward furiously. They're starving! she shouted. I found them starving! Who? why have you come? The Basts. Oh, Helen! moaned Margaret. Whatever have you done now? He has lost his place. He has been turned out of his bank. Yes, he's done for. We upper classes have ruined him, and I suppose you'll tell me it's the battle of life. Starving! His wife is ill. Starving! She fainted in the train. Helen, are you mad? Perhaps. Yes, if you like, I'm mad. But I've brought them. I'll stand in justice no longer. I'll show up the wretchedness that lies under this luxury, this talk of impersonal forces, this cant about God doing what we're too slack to do ourselves. Have you actually brought two starving people from London to Shropshire, Helen? Helen was checked. She had not thought of this, and her hysteria abated. There was a restaurant car on the train, she said. Don't be absurd. They aren't starving, and you know it. Now begin from the beginning. I won't have such theatrical nonsense. How dare you? Yes, how dare you? She repeated as anger filled her, bursting into Evie's wedding in this heartless way. My goodness, but you've a perverted notion of philanthropy. Look! she indicated the house. Servants, people out of the windows, they think it's some vulgar scandal, and I must explain. Oh no! It's only my sister screaming, and only two hangers on of ours, whom she has brought here for no conceivable reason. Kindly take back that word, hangers on," said Helen, ominously calm. Very well, conceded Margaret, who for all her wrath was determined to avoid a real quarrel. I too am sorry about them, but it beats me why you've brought them here, or why you'll hear yourself. It's our last chance of seeing Mr. Wilcox. Margaret moved towards the house at this. She was determined not to worry Henry. He's going to Scotland. I know he is. I insist on seeing him. Yes, to-morrow. I knew it was our last chance. How do you do, Mr. Bast? said Margaret, trying to control her voice. This is an odd business. What view do you take of it? There is Mrs. Bast, too, prompted Helen. Jackie also shook hands. She, like her husband, was shy, and further more ill, and further more so beastly stupid that she could not grasp what was happening. She only knew that the lady had swept down like a whirlwind last night, had paid the rent, redeemed the furniture, provided them with a dinner and breakfast, and ordered them to meet her at Paddington next morning. Leonard had feebly protested, and when the morning came had suggested that they shouldn't go. But she, half mesmerized, had obeyed. The lady had told them to, and they must, and their bed-sitting room had accordingly changed into Paddington, and Paddington into a railway carriage that shook and grew hot and grew cold, and vanished entirely, and reappeared amid torrents of expensive scent. You have fainted, said the lady, in an awestruck voice. Perhaps the air would do you good. And perhaps it had, for here she was, feeling rather better among a lot of flowers. I am sure I don't want to intrude, began Leonard, in answer to Margaret's question. But you have been so kind to me in the past, in warning me about the Porphyrian, that I wondered—why, I wondered whether—whether we could get him back into the Porphyrian again," supplied Helen. Meg, this has been a cheerful business, a bright evening's work that was on Chelsea embankment. Margaret shook her head and returned to Mr. Bast. I don't understand. You left the Porphyrian because we suggested it was a bad concern, didn't you? That's right. And went into a bank instead. I told you all that," said Helen, and they reduced their staff after he'd been in a month, and now he's penniless, and I consider that we and our informant are directly to blame. I hate all this," Leonard muttered. I hope you do, Mr. Bast. But it's no good mincing matters. You have done yourself no good by coming here. If you intend to confront Mr. Wilcox, and to call him to account for a chance remark, you will make a very great mistake. I brought them. I did it all," cried Helen. I can only advise you to go at once. My sister has put you in a false position. And it is kindest to tell you so. It's too late to get to town, but you'll find a comfortable hotel in Onerton, where Mrs. Bast can rest, and I hope you'll be my guests there. That isn't what I want, Miss Schlegel," said Leonard. You're very kind, and no doubt it's a false position, but you make me miserable. I seem no good at all. It's work, he wants, interpreted Helen. Can't you see?" Then he said, Jackie, let's go. We're more bothered than we're worth, for costing these ladies pounds and pounds all ready to get work for us, and they never will. There's nothing we're good enough to do. We would like to find you work, said Margaret, rather conventionally. We want to—I, like my sister—you're only down in your luck. Go to the hotel, have a good night's rest, and some day you shall pay me back the bill, if you prefer it. But Leonard was near the abyss, and at such moments men see clearly. You don't know what you're talking about," he said. I shall never get work now. If rich people fail at one profession, they can try another. Not I. I had my groove, and I've got out of it. I could do one particular branch of insurance and one particular office well enough to command a salary, but that's all. Poetry's nothing, Miss Schlegel. Once thoughts about this and that are nothing. Your money, too, is nothing, if you'll understand me. I mean, if a man over twenty once loses his own particular job, it's all over with him. I have seen it happen to others. The friends gave them money for a little, but in the end they fall over the edge. It's no good. It's a whole world pulling. There will always be rich and poor. He ceased. Weren't you of something to eat? said Margaret. I don't know what to do. It isn't my house, and though Mr. Wilcox would have been glad to see you at any other time. As I say, I don't know what to do, but I undertake to do what I can for you. Helen offered them something. Do try, sandwich, Mrs. Bast. They moved to a long table behind which a servant was still standing. Iced cakes, sandwiches, innumerable, coffee, claret cup, champagne remained almost intact, their overfed guests could do no more. Leonard refused. Jackie thought she could manage a little. Margaret left them whispering together and had a few more words with Helen. She said, Helen, I like Mr. Bast. I agree that he's worth helping. I agree that we are directly responsible. No, indirectly, via Mr. Wilcox. Let me tell you once for all that if you take up that attitude I'll do nothing. No doubt you're right, logically, and are entitled to say a great many scathing things about Henry, only I won't have it, so choose. Helen looked at the sunset. If you promise to take them quietly to the George, I will speak to Henry about them, in my own way, mind, there is to be none of this absurd screaming about justice. I have no use for justice. If it was only a question of money, we could do it ourselves. But he wants work, and that we can't give him. But possibly Henry can. It's his duty, too," grumbled Helen. Nor am I concerned with duty. I'm concerned with the characters of various people whom we know, and how, things being as they are, things may be made a little better. Mr. Wilcox hates being asked favours. All businessmen do. But I am going to ask him, at the risk of a rebuff, because I want to make things a little better. Very well, I promise. You take it very calmly. Take them off to the George, then, and I'll try. Poor creatures! But they look tired. As they parted, she added, I haven't nearly done with you, though, Helen. You have been most self-indulgent. I can't get over it. You have less restraint rather than more as you grow older. Think it over, and alter yourself, or we shan't have happy lives. She rejoined Henry. Fortunately, he had been sitting down. These physical matters were important. Was it townese? he asked, greeting her with a pleasant smile. You'll never believe me, said Margaret, sitting down beside him. It's all right now. But it was my sister. Helen here! he cried, preparing to rise. But she refused the invitation. I thought she despised weddings. Don't get up. She has not come to the wedding. I've bundled her off to the George. Inherently hospitable, he protested. No, she has two of her protege with her, and must keep with them. Let them all come. My dear Henry, did you see them? I did catch sight of a brown bunch of a woman, certainly. The brown bunch was Helen. But did you catch sight of a sea-green and salmon bunch? What! are they out bean-feasting? No, business. They wanted to see me, and later on I want to talk to you about them. She was ashamed of her own diplomacy, in dealing with the Wilcox, how tempting it was to lapse from comradeship, and to give him the kind of woman that he desired. Henry took the hint at once, and said, Why later on? Tell me now. No time like the present. Shall I? If it isn't a long story. Oh, not five minutes. But there's a sting at the end of it. For I want you to find the man some work in your office. What are his qualifications? I don't know. He's a clerk. How old? Twenty-five, perhaps. What's his name? Bast, said Margaret, and was about to remind him that they had met at Wickham Place, but stopped herself. It had not been a successful meeting. Where was he before? Dempster's Bank. Why did he leave? He asked, still remembering nothing. They reduced their staff. All right, I'll see him. It was the reward of her tact and devotion through the day. Now she understood why some women prefer influence to rights. Mrs. Flynn Lemon, when condemning suffragettes, had said, The woman who can't influence a husband to vote the way she wants, ought to be ashamed of herself. Margaret had wenced, but she was influencing Henry now, and though pleased at her little victory, she knew that she had won it by the methods of the harem. I should be glad if you took him, she said, but I don't know whether he's qualified. I'll do what I can. But, Margaret, this mustn't be taken as a precedent. No, of course, of course. I can't fit in your protégé every day. Business would suffer. I can promise you he's the last—he—he's rather a special case. Protégés always are. She let it stand at that. He rose with a little extra touch of complacency and held out his hand to help her up. How wide the gulf between Henry as he was and Henry as Helen thought he ought to be. And she herself, hovering as usual between the two, now accepting men as they are, now yearning with her sister for truth. Love and truth. Their warfare seems eternal. Perhaps the whole visible world rests on it, and if they were one, life itself, like the spirits when Prospero was reconciled to his brother, might vanish into air, into thin air. Your protégé has made us late, said he. The fuzzles will just be starting. On the whole she sided with men as they are. Henry would save the bests as he had saved Howard's end, while Helen and her friends were discussing the ethics of salvation. His was a slap-dash method, but the world has been built slap-dash, and the beauty of mountain and river and sunset may be but the varnish with which the unskilled artificer hides his joints. Onneton, like herself, was imperfect. Its apple-trees were stunted, its castle ruinous. It too had suffered in the border warfare between the Anglo-Saxon and the Kelt, between things as they are and as they ought to be. Once more the West was retreating, once again the orderly stars were dotting the Eastern sky. There is certainly no rest for us on the earth. But there is happiness, and as Margaret ascended the mound on her lover's arm, she felt that she was having her share. To her annoyance Mrs. Bast was still in the garden. The husband and Helen had left her there to finish her meal while they went to engage rooms. Margaret found this woman repellent. She had felt when shaking her hand an overpowering shame. She remembered the motive of her collet wick in place, and smelled again odors from the abyss, odors the more disturbing because they were involuntary. For there was no malice in Jackie. There she sat, a piece of cake in one hand, an empty champagne glass in the other, doing no harm to anybody. She's overtired, Margaret whispered. She's something else, said Henry. This won't do. I can't have her in my garden in the state. Is she—? Margaret hesitated to add, drunk. Now that she was going to marry him, he had grown particular. He discounted in striskay conversations now. Henry went up to the woman. She raised her face, which gleamed in the twilight like a puffball. Ma'am, you'll be more comfortable in the hotel, he said sharply. Jackie replied, If it isn't hen! Henry! she repeated, quite distinctly. Mr. Wilcox was much annoyed. I can't congratulate you on your protégés, he remarked. And don't go! You do love me, dear, don't you? Bless us! What a person! sighed Margaret, gathering up her skirts. Jackie pointed with her cake. You're a nice boy, you are! she yawned. There now, I love you! Henry, I am awfully sorry. And pray why, he asked, and looked at her so sternly that she feared he was ill. He seemed more scandalised than the facts demanded. To have brought this down on you. Pray don't apologise. The voice continued. Why did she call you hen? said Margaret innocently. Has she ever seen you before? Seen and before, said Jackie, who hasn't seen and? He's serving you like me, my dear. These boys, you wait. Still we love them. Are you now satisfied? Henry asked. Margaret began to grow frightened. I don't know what it is all about, she said. Let's come in. But he thought she was acting. He thought he was trapped. He saw his whole life crumbling. Don't you indeed? he said bidingly. I do. Allow me to congratulate you on the success of your plan. This is Helen's plan, not mine. I now understand your interest in the Bast's. Very well thought out. I am amused at your caution, Margaret. You are quite right, it was necessary. I am a man, and have lived a man's past. I have the honour to release you from your engagement. Still, she could not understand. She knew of life's seamy side as a theory. She could not grasp it as a fact. More words from Jackie were necessary. Words unequivocal, undenied. So that! Burst from her, and she went indoors. She stopped herself from saying more. So, Walt! asked Colonel Fessle, who was getting ready to start in the hall. We were saying— Henry and I were just having the fastest argument— My point being! Seizing his fur coat from a footman, she offered to help him on. He protested, and there was a playful little scene. No, let me do that! said Henry, following. Thanks so much! You see, he has forgiven me. The Colonel said gallantly. I don't expect there's much to forgive. He got into the car. The ladies followed him after an interval. Maid's courier and heavier luggage had been sent on earlier by the branch line. Still chattering, still thanking their host and patronising their future hostess, the guests were home away. Then Margaret continued, So that woman has been your mistress. You put it with your usual delicacy, he replied. When, please? Why? When, please? Ten years ago. She left him without a word. For it was not her tragedy. It was Mrs. Wilcox's. End of CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII of Howard's End This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Klett Howard's End by E. M. Forster CHAPTER XXVII Helen began to wonder why she had spent a matter of eight pounds and making some people ill and others angry. Now that the wave of excitement was ebbing, and had left her, Mr. Bast and Mrs. Bast stranded for the night in a Shropshire hotel, she asked herself what forces had made the wave flow. At all events no harm was done. Margaret would play the game properly now, and though Helen disapproved of her sister's methods, she knew that the Basts would benefit by them in the long run. Mr. Wilcox is so illogical. She explained to Leonard, who had put his wife to bed, and was sitting with her in the empty coffee-room. If we told him it was his duty to take you on, he might refuse to do it. The fact is, he isn't properly educated. I don't want to set you against him, but you'll find him a trial. I can never thank you sufficiently, Miss Schlegel. Was all that Leonard felt equal to. I believe in personal responsibility. Don't you? And in personal everything. I hate—I suppose I wouldn't to say that— but the Wilcox's are on the wrong tack, surely. Or perhaps it isn't their fault. Perhaps the little thing that says I is missing out for the middle of their heads, and then it's a waste of time to blame them. There's a nightmare of a theory that says a special race is being born, which will rule the rest of us in the future, just because it lacks the little thing that says I. Had you heard that? I get no time for reading. How do you thought it, then? That there are two kinds of people—our kind—who live straight from the middle of their heads, and the other kind who can't, because their heads have no middle. They can't say I. They aren't, in fact, and so they're supermen. Pierpont Morgan has never said I in his life. Leonard roused himself. If his benefactress wanted intellectual conversation, she must have it. She was more important than his ruined past. I never got on to Nietzsche, he said. But I always understood that those supermen were rather what you may call egoists. Oh, no, that's wrong, replied Helen. No superman ever said I want, because I want must lead to the question, who am I, and so to pity and to justice? He only says want. Want Europe, if he's Napoleon, want wives, if he's Bluebeard, want Botticelli, if he's Pierpont Morgan. Never the I. And if you could pierce through him, you'd find panic and emptiness in the middle. Leonard was silent for a moment. Then he said, May I take it, Miss Schlegel, that you and I are both the sort that say I? Of course. And your sister, too? Of course, repeated Helen a little sharply. She was annoyed with Margaret, but did not want her discussed. All presentable people say I. But Mr. Wilcox, he is not, perhaps. I don't know that it's any good discussing Mr. Wilcox, either. Quite so, quite so, he agreed. Helen asked herself why she had snubbed him. Once or twice during the day she had encouraged him to criticize, and then had pulled him up short. Was she afraid of him presuming? If so, it was disgusting of her. But he was thinking the snub quite natural. Everything she did was natural and incapable of causing offence. While the Miss Schlegels were together he had felt them scarcely human, a sort of admonitory whirligig. But a Miss Schlegel alone was different. She was, in Helen's case, unmarried, in Margaret's about to be married, in neither case an echo of her sister. A light had fallen at last into this rich upper world, and he saw that it was full of men and women, some of whom were more friendly to him than others. Helen had become his Miss Schlegel, who scolded him and corresponded with him, and had swept down yesterday with grateful vehemence. Margaret, though not unkind, was severe and remote. He would not presume to help her, for instance. He had never liked her, and began to think that his original impression was true, and that her sister did not like her either. Helen was certainly lonely. She, who gave away so much, was receiving too little. Leonard was pleased to think that he could spare her vexation by holding his tongue, and concealing what he knew about Mr. Wilcox. Jackie had announced her discovery when he fetched her from the lawn. After the first shock, he did not mind for himself. By now he had no illusions about his wife, and this was only one new stain on the face of a love that had never been pure. To keep perfection perfect, that should be his ideal, if the future gave him time to have ideals. Helen, and Margaret for Helen's sake, must not know. Helen disconcerted him by turning the conversation to his wife. Mrs. Bast, does she ever say I? She asked, half mischievously, and then— Is she very tired? It's better she stops in her room, said Leonard. Shall I sit up with her? No, thank you—she does not need company. Mr. Bast, what kind of woman is your wife? Leonard blushed up to his eyes. He ought to know my ways by now. Does that question offend you? No. Oh, no, Mishlegal. No. Because I love honesty. Don't pretend your marriage has been a happy one. You and she can have nothing in common. He did not deny it, but said shyly. I suppose that's pretty obvious. But Jackie never meant to do anybody any harm. When things went wrong, or I heard things, I used to think it was her fault, but, looking back, it's more mine. I needn't to married her, but as I have I must stick to her and keep her. How long have you been married? Nearly three years. What did your people say? They will not have anything to do with us. They had a sort of family council when they heard I was married, and cut us off altogether. Helen began to pace up and down the room. My good boy, what a mess! she said gently. Who are your people? He could answer this. His parents, who were dead, had been in trade. His sisters had married commercial travellers. His brother was a lay-reader. And your grandparents? Leonard told her a secret that he had held shameful up to now. They were just nothing at all, he said. Agricultural labourers and that sort. So, from which part? The Lincolnshire mostly, but my mother's father, he, oddly enough, came from these parts round here. From this very Shropshire? Yes, that is odd. My mother's people were Lancashire. But why do your brother and your sisters object to Mrs. Bast? Oh, I don't know. Excuse me, you do know. I am not a baby. I can bear anything you tell me, and the more you tell, the more I shall be able to help. Have they heard anything against her? He was silent. I think I have guessed now, said Helen very gravely. I don't think so, Miss Schlegel. I hope not. We must be honest, even over these things. I have guessed. I am frightfully, dreadfully sorry, but it does not make the least difference to me. I shall feel just the same to both of you. I blame not your wife for these things, but men. Leonard left it at that, so long as she did not guess the man. She stood at the window and slowly pulled up the blinds. The hotel looked over a dark square. The mists had begun. When she turned back to him, her eyes were shining. Don't you worry, he pleaded. I can't bear that. We shall be all right, if I get work. If I could only get work—something regular to do—then it wouldn't be so bad again. I don't trouble after books, as I used. I can imagine that with regular work we should settle down again. It stops one thinking. Settle down to what? Oh, just settle down. And that's to be life, said Helen, with a catch in her throat. How can you, with all the beautiful things to see and do, with music, with walking at night? Walking is well enough, and a man's in work, he answered. Oh, I did talk a lot of nonsense once, but there's nothing like a bailiff in the house to drive it out to you. When I saw him fingering my Ruskins and Stevenson's, I seemed to see life straight real—and it isn't a pretty sight. My books are back again, thanks to you, but they'll never be the same to me again, and I shan't ever again think night in the woods is wonderful. Why not? asked Helen, throwing up the window. Because I see one must have money. Well, you're wrong. I wish I was wrong. But—the clergyman—he has money of his own, or else he's paid. The poet or the musician does the same. The tramp, he's no different. The tramp goes to the work-house on the end, and is paid for with other people's money. Miss Schlegel, the real thing's money, and all the rest is a dream. You're still wrong. You've forgotten death. Leonard could not understand. If we lived for ever, what do you say would be true? But we have to die. We have to leave life presently. Injustice and greed would be the real thing if we lived for ever. As it is, we must hold to other things. Because death is coming. I love death, not morbidly, but because he explains. He shows me the emptiness of money. Death and money are the eternal foes, not death and life. Never mind what lies behind death, Mr. Bast, but be sure that the poet and the musician and the tramp will be happier in it than the man who has never learnt to say, I am I. I wonder. We are all in a mist—I know, but I can help you this far—men like the Wilcox is a deeper in the mist than any. Sane sound Englishman, building up empires, levelling all the world into what they call common sense, but mention death to them and their offended, because death's really imperial, and he cries out against them for ever. I am as afraid of death as any one. But not of the idea of death. But what is the difference? Infinite difference, said Helen, more gravely than before. Leonard looked at her wondering, and had the sense of great things sweeping out of the shrouded night, but he could not receive them, because his heart was still full of little things. As the lost umbrella had spoiled the concert at Queen's Hall, so the lost situation was obscuring the diviner harmonies now. Death, life, and materialism were fine words. But would Mr. Wilcox take him on as a clock? Talk is one would. Mr. Wilcox was king of this world, the Superman, with his own morality, whose head remained in the clouds. I must be stupid, he said apologetically. While to Helen the paradox became clearer and clearer. Death destroys a man. The idea of death saves him. Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind lie something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-house that they will one day enter, but love knows better. Death is his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle the fues of love have been strengthened, and his vision cleared, until there is no one who can stand against him. So never give in, continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea that the invisible lodges against the visible. Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience it resisted her. Presently the waitress entered and gave her a letter from Margaret. Another note addressed to Leonard was inside. They read them, listening to the murmurings of the river. For many hours Margaret did nothing. Then she controlled herself and wrote some letters. She was too bruised to speak to Henry. She could pity him, and even determine to marry him, but as yet all lay too deep in her heart for speech. On the surface the sense of his degradation was too strong. She could not command voice or look, and the gentle words that she forced out through her pen seemed to proceed from some other person. My dearest boy, she began, this is not to part us. It is everything or nothing, and I mean it to be nothing. It happened long before we ever met, and even if it had happened since, I should be writing the same, I hope. I do understand." But she crossed out, I do understand. It struck a false note. Henry could not bear to be understood. She also crossed out, it is everything or nothing. Henry would resent so strong a grasp of the situation. She must not comment. Comment is unfeminine. I think that'll about do, she thought. Then the sense of his degradation choked her. Was he worth all this bother? To have yielded to a woman of that sort was everything. Yes, it was, and she could not be his wife. She tried to translate his temptation into her own language, and her brain reeled. Men must be different, even to want to yield to such a temptation. Her belief in comradeship was stifled, and she saw life as from that glass saloon on the Great Western, which sheltered male and female alike from the fresh air. Are the sexes really races, each with its own code of morality, and their mutual love a mere device of nature to keep things going? Strip human intercourse of the proprieties, and is it reduced to this? Her judgment told her no. She knew that out of nature's device we have built a magic that will win us immortality. Far more mysterious than the call of sex to sex is the tenderness that we throw into that call. Far wider is the gulf between us and the farmyard, than between the farmyard and the garbage that nourishes it. We are evolving, in ways that science cannot measure, to ends that theology dares not contemplate. Men did produce one jewel, the gods will say, and saying will give us immortality. Margaret knew all this, but for the moment she could not feel it, and transformed the marriage of Evie and Mr. Cahill into a carnival of fools, and her own marriage, too miserable to think of that, she tore up the letter, and then wrote another, Dear Mr. Bast, I have spoken to Mr. Wilcox about you, as I promised, and am sorry to say that he has no vacancy for you. Yours truly, M. J. Schlegel. She enclosed this in a note to Helen, over which she took less trouble than she might have done, but her head was aching, and she could not stop to pick her words. Dear Helen, give him this. The Basts are no good. Henry found the woman drunk on the lawn. I am having a room got ready for you here, and will you please come round at once on getting this? The Basts are not at all the type we should trouble about. I may go round to them myself in the morning, and do anything that is fair. M. In writing this, Margaret felt that she was being practical. Something might be arranged for the Basts later on, but they must be silenced for the moment. She hoped to avoid a conversation between the woman and Helen. She rang the bell for a servant, but no one answered it. Mr. Wilcox and the Warringtons were gone to bed, and the kitchen was abandoned to Saturnalia. Consequently she went over to the George herself. She did not enter the hotel, for discussion would have been perilous, and saying that the letter was important, she gave it to the waitress. As she recrossed the square she saw Helen and Mr. Bast looking out of the window of the coffee-room, and feared she was already too late. Her task was not yet over. She ought to tell Henry what she had done. This came easily for she saw him in the hall. The night wind had been rattling the pictures against the wall, and the noise had disturbed him. "'Who's that?' he called, quite the householder. Margaret walked in and passed him. "'I have asked Helen to sleep,' she said. "'She is best here, so don't lock the front door.' "'I thought someone had got in,' said Henry. "'At the same time I told the man that we could do nothing for him. I don't know about later, but now the Basts must clearly go.' "'Did you say that your sister is sleeping here after all?' "'Probably.' "'Is she to be shown up to your room?' "'I have naturally nothing to say to her. I am going to bed. Will you tell the servants about Helen? Could someone go to carry her bag?' He tapped a little gong which had been bought to summon the servants. "'You must make more noise than that if you want them to hear.' Henry opened a door and down the corridor came shouts of laughter. "'Far too much screaming there,' he said, and strode towards it. Margaret went upstairs, uncertain whether to be glad that they had met or sorry. They had behaved as if nothing had happened, and her deepest instincts told her that this was wrong. For his own sake some explanation was due. And yet what could an explanation tell her? A date, a place, a few details, which she could imagine all too clearly. Now that the first shock was over she saw that there was every reason to premise a Mrs. Bast. Henry's inner life had long laid open to her, his intellectual confusion, his obtuseness to personal influence, his strong but furtive passions. Should she refuse him because his outer life corresponded? Perhaps. Perhaps if the dishonor had been done to her, but it was done long before her day. She struggled against the feeling. She told herself that Mrs. Wilcox's wrong was her own. But she was not a bargain theorist. As she undressed her anger, her regard for the dead, her desire for a scene, all grew weak. Henry must have it as he liked, for she loved him, and some day she would use her love to make him a better man. Pity was at the bottom of her actions all through this crisis. Pity, if one may generalize, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil. Here was the core of the question. Henry must be forgiven, and made better by love. Nothing else mattered. Mrs. Wilcox, that unquiet yet kindly ghost, must be left to her own wrong. To her everything was in proportion now, and she, too, would pity the man who was blundering up and down their lives. Had Mrs. Wilcox known of his trespass? An interesting question, but Margaret fell asleep, tethered by affection, and lulled by the murmurs of the river that descended all the night from Wales. She felt herself at one with her future home, colouring it and coloured by it, and awoke to see, for the second time, Onagton Castle conquering the morning mists. Howard's End by E. M. Forster Chapter 29 Henry 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 lured 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. A 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 appeal. 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 is started. I have known cases of other men. I despised them once. I thought that I am 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. Jackie rejoined Howard's End and Deucey Street, and the Vermillion Motorcar, 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! uh, 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 recommended. 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 bygones. 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 am 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 must not worry, he said. This is a man's business. He thought intently. On no account mention it to any body. 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 passed, and the five to come. He had the business mind. How did he stand now as his motor slipped out of Onerton 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. Bass 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 Onerton. 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 Wilcox's 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. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Tibi 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 Longwall. 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. Tibi 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 Maudlin. 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 Maud's, 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 to 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 Onerton, she began. There has been a great deal of trouble there. "'Who's for lunch?' said Tibi, picking up the claret, which was warming in the hearth. Helen sat down submissively 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, Tibi. 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 Wiccan Place. I stopped here to tell you this.' The landlady came in with the cutlets. Tibi 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 Bon.' Such a message is easily given. said her brother. "'As regards Wiccan 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 know 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.' Tibi 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. Martinet coming in?' he asked. Or shall I take it from her at the door?' "'Could I bathe my eyes, Tibi?' 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 to be kins. 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 has 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 wanted 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 Tibi. Helen flushed with shame and anger, and ruined two people's lives, and goes about saying that personal actions count for nothing, and they will always 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 in the work-houses 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 us to Onerton. 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 right. 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 Tibi. 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 touched Meg a rule before you, she added, and Tibi sighed and felt it rather hard that, because of his open mind, he should be impaneled 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 Wiccan Place. Just as some people ceased to attend when books are mentioned, so Tibi's attention wandered when personal relations came under discussion. Aught Margaret to know what Helen knew the best 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 to begins if you do this. What is the sum? Five thousand. Good God alive! said Tibi, and went Combson. 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, heeded to unusual manliness of diction. But it's half what you have. Not nearly 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 hay-cocks people can make of their lives. His delicate intonations would not work, and he could only blurt out that 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 he'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 to-morrow. 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 car-facts 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. "'All right to her.'" Tibbie 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 Tibbie himself would have given. The cheque was returned, the legacy refused, the writer being in no need of money. Tibbie forwarded this to Helen. Adding in the fullness 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 them. The Basts had just been evicted for not paying their rent, and had wandered no one new with her. Helen had begun bungling with her money by this time, had had even sold out her shares in the Nottingham and Darby Railway. For some weeks she did nothing. Then she reinvested, and, owing to the good advice of her stockbrokers, became rather richer than she had been before. Falling as variously as the generations of men, some with the tragic roar, some quietly, but to an afterlife in the city of ghosts, while from others, and thus was the death of Wiccan Place, the spirit slips before the body parishes. It had decayed in the spring, disintegrating the girls more than they knew, and causing either to accost unfamiliar regions. By September it was a corpse, void of emotion, and scarcely hallowed by the memories of thirty years of happiness. Through its round-topped doorway passed furniture and pictures and books, until the last room was gutted and the last van had rumbled away. It stood for a week or two longer, open-eyed, as if astonished at its own emptiness. Then it fell. Navies came, and spilled it back into the gray. With their muscles and their beery good temper, they were not the worst of undertakers for a house which had always been human, and had not mistaken culture for an end. The furniture, with a few exceptions, went down into Hartfordshire, Mr. Wilcox having most kindly offered Howard's End as a warehouse. Mr. Bryce had died abroad, an unsatisfactory affair, and as there seemed little guarantee that the rent would be paid regularly, he cancelled the agreement, and resumed possession himself. Until he re-let the house, the Schlegels were welcome to stack their furniture in the garage and lower rooms. Margaret demurred, but Tibbie accepted the offer gladly. It saved him from coming to any decision about the future. The plate and the more valuable pictures found a safer home in London, but the bulk of the things went country ways, and were entrusted to the guardianship of Miss Avery. Shortly before the move, our hero and heroine were married. They have weathered the storm, and may reasonably expect peace. To have no illusions, and yet to love, what stronger surety can a woman find? She had seen her husband's past as well as his heart. She knew her own heart with the thoroughness that commonplace people believe impossible. The heart of Mrs. Wilcox was alone hidden, and perhaps it is superstitious to speculate on the feelings of the dead. They were married quietly—really quietly—for as the day approached, she refused to go through another onyton. Her brother gave her away, her aunt, who was out of health, presided over a few colourless refreshments. The Wilcoxes were represented by Charles, who witnessed the marriage settlement, and by Mr. Cahill. Paul did send a cable-gram. In a few minutes, and without the aid of music, the clergyman made the man and wife, and soon the glass shade had fallen that cuts off married couples from the world. She, a monogamous, regretted the cessation of some of life's innocent odours. He, whose instincts were polygamous, felt morally braced by the change, and less liable to the temptations that had assailed him in the past. They spent their honeymoon near Innsbruck. Henry knew of a reliable hotel there, and Margaret hoped for a meeting with her sister. In this she was disappointed. As they came south, Helen retreated over the Brenner, and wrote an unsatisfactory postcard from the shores of the Lake of Garda, saying that her plans were uncertain, and had better be ignored. Evidently, she disliked meeting Henry. Two months are surely enough to accustom an outsider to a situation which a wife has accepted in two days, and Margaret had again to regret her sister's lack of self-control. In a long letter she pointed out the need of charity in sexual matters, so little is known about them. It is hard enough for those who are personally touched to judge, than how futile must be the verdict of society. I don't say there is no standard. For that would destroy morality. Only that that can be no standard until our impulses are classified and better understood. Helen thanked her for her kind letter. Rather a curious reply. She moved south again, and spoke of wintering in Naples. Mr. Wilcox was not sorry that the meeting failed. Helen left him time to gross skin over his wound. There were still moments when it pained him. Had he only known that Margaret was awaiting him, Margaret so lively and intelligent, and yet so submissive, he would have kept himself worthier of her. Incapable of grouping the past, he confused the episode of Jackie with another episode that had taken place in the days of his bachelorhood. The two made one crop of wild oats, for which he was heartily sorry, and he could not see that those oats are of a darker stock which are rooted in another's dishonor. Unchastity and infidelity were as confused to him as to the Middle Ages, his only moral teacher. Ruth, poor old Ruth, did not enter into his calculations at all, for poor old Ruth had never found him out. His affection for his present wife grew steadily. Her cleverness gave him no trouble, and indeed he liked to see her reading poetry or something about social questions. It distinguished her from the wives of other men. He had only to call, and she clapped the book up and was ready to do what he wished. Then they would argue so jollily, and once or twice she had him in quite a tight corner, but as soon as he grew really serious she gave in. Man is for war, woman for the recreation of the warrior, but he does not dislike it if she makes a show of fight. She cannot win in a real battle, having no muscles, only nerves. Nerves make her jump out of a moving motor-car, or refuse to be married fashionably. The warrior may well allow her to triumph on such occasions. They move not to the imperishable plinth of things that touch his peace. Margaret had a bad attack of these nerves during the honeymoon. He told her, casually as was his habit, that Arnett and Grange was let. She showed her annoyance, and asked rather crossly why she had not been consulted. I didn't want to bother you, he replied. Besides, I have only heard for certain this morning. Where are we to live? said Margaret, trying to laugh. I loved the place extraordinarily. Don't you believe in having a permanent home, Henry? He assured her that she misunderstood him. It is home life that distinguishes us from the foreigner, but he did not believe in a damp home. This is news. I never heard till this minute that Onerton was damp. My dear girl! He flung out his hand. Have you eyes? Have you a skin? How could it be anything but damp in such a situation? In the first place, the Grange is on clay, and built where the castle moat must have been. Then there's that detestable little river, steaming all night like a kettle. Feel the cellar walls. Look up under the eaves. Ask Sir James or any one. Though Shropshire valley is a notorious. The only possible place for a house in Shropshire is on a hill, but for my part I think the country is too far from London, and the scenery nothing special. Margaret could not resist saying, Why did you go there, then? I—because— He drew his head back and grew rather angry. Why have we come to the Tyrol if it comes to that? One might go on asking such questions indefinitely. One might, but he was only gaining time for a plausible answer. Out it came, and he believed it as soon as it was spoken. The truth is, I took Onerton on account of Evie. Don't let this go any further. Certainly not. I shouldn't like her to know that she nearly let me in for a very bad bargain. No sooner did I sign the agreement than she got engaged. Poor little girl! She was so keen on it all, and wouldn't even wait to make proper inquiries about the shooting. Afraid it would get snapped up—just like all of your sex. Well, no harm's done. She has had her country wedding, and I've got rid of my house to some fellows who are starting a preparatory school. Where shall we live, then, Henry? I should enjoy living somewhere. I have not yet decided. What about Norfolk? Margaret was silent. Marriage had not saved her from the sense of flux. London was but a foretaste of this nomadic civilization which is altering human nature so profoundly, and throws upon personal relations a stress greater than they have ever borne before. Under cosmopolitanism, if it comes, we shall receive no help from the earth. Trees and meadows and mountains will only be a spectacle, and the binding force that they once exercised on character must be entrusted to love alone. May love be equal to the task. It is now a what, continued Henry, nearly October. Let us come for the winter at Ducey Street, and look out for something in the spring. If possible, something permanent. I can't be as young as I was, for these alterations don't suit me. But, my dear, which would you rather have—alterations or rheumatism? I see your point," said Margaret, getting up. If Onerton is really damp, it is impossible, and must be inhabited by little boys. Only in the spring let us look before we leap. I will take warning by Evie, and not hurry you. Remember that you have a free hand this time. These endless moves must be bad for the furniture, and are certainly expensive. What a practical little woman it is! What's it been reading? Theo—Theo—how much? Theosophy. So Ducey Street was her first fate. A pleasant enough fate. The house, being only a little larger than Wiccan Place, trained her for the immense establishment that was promised in the spring. They were frequently away, but at home life ran fairly regularly. In the morning Henry went to the business, and his sandwich, a relic this of some prehistoric craving, was always cut by her own hand. He did not rely upon the sandwich for lunch, but liked to have it by him in case he grew hungry at eleven. When he had gone, there was the house to look after, and the servants to humanize, and several kettles of halons to keep on the boil. Her conscience pricked her a little about the bests. She was not sorry to have lost sight of them. No doubt Leonard was worth helping, but being Henry's wife she preferred to help someone else. As for theaters and discussion societies, they attracted her less and less. She began to miss new movements, and to spend her spare time rereading or thinking, rather to the concern of her Chelsea friends. They attributed the change to her marriage, and perhaps some deep instinct did warn her not to travel further from her husband than was inevitable. Yet the main cause lay deeper still. She had outgrown stimulants, and was passing from words to things. It was doubtless a pity not to keep up with Vettikind or John, but some closing of the gates is inevitable after thirty, if the mind itself is to become a creative power.