Helen and her aunt returned to Wickham Place in a state of
collapse, and for a little time Margaret had three invalids on
her hands. Mrs. Munt soon recovered. She possessed to a
remarkable degree the power of distorting the past, and before
many days were over she had forgotten the part played by her own
imprudence in the catastrophe. Even at the crisis she had cried,
"Thank goodness, poor Margaret is saved this!" which during the
journey to London evolved into, "It had to be gone through by
some one," which in its turn ripened into the permanent form of
"The one time I really did help Emily's girls was over the Wilcox
business." But Helen was a more serious patient. New ideas had
burst upon her like a thunderclap, and by them and by their
reverberations she had been stunned.
The truth was that she had fallen in love, not with an
individual, but with a family.
Before Paul arrived she had, as it were, been tuned up into his
key. The energy of the Wilcoxes had fascinated her, had created
new images of beauty in her responsive mind. To be all day with
them in the open air, to sleep at night under their roof, had
seemed the supreme joy of life, and had led to that abandonment
of personality that is a possible prelude to love. She had liked
giving in to Mr. Wilcox, or Evie, or Charles; she had liked being
told that her notions of life were sheltered or academic; that
Equality was nonsense, Votes for Women nonsense, Socialism
nonsense, Art and Literature, except when conducive to
strengthening the character, nonsense. One by one the Schlegel
fetiches had been overthrown, and, though professing to defend
them, she had rejoiced. When Mr. Wilcox said that one sound man
of business did more good to the world than a dozen of your
social reformers, she had swallowed the curious assertion without
a gasp, and had leant back luxuriously among the cushions of his
motorcar. When Charles said, "Why be so polite to servants? they
don't understand it," she had not given the Schlegel retort of,
"If they don't understand it, I do." No; she had vowed to be
less polite to servants in the future. "I am swathed in cant,"
she thought, "and it is good for me to be stripped of it." And
all that she thought or did or breathed was a quiet preparation
for Paul. Paul was inevitable. Charles was taken up with another
girl, Mr. Wilcox was so old, Evie so young, Mrs. Wilcox so
different. Round the absent brother she began to throw the halo
of Romance, to irradiate him with all the splendour of those
happy days, to feel that in him she should draw nearest to the
robust ideal. He and she were about the same age, Evie said. Most
people thought Paul handsomer than his brother. He was certainly
a better shot, though not so good at golf. And when Paul
appeared, flushed with the triumph of getting through an
examination, and ready to flirt with any pretty girl, Helen met
him halfway, or more than halfway, and turned towards him on the
Sunday evening.
He had been talking of his approaching exile in Nigeria, and he
should have continued to talk of it, and allowed their guest to
recover. But the heave of her bosom flattered him. Passion was
possible, and he became passionate. Deep down in him something
whispered, "This girl would let you kiss her; you might not have
such a chance again."
That was "how it happened," or, rather, how Helen described it to
her sister, using words even more unsympathetic than my own. But
the poetry of that kiss, the wonder of it, the magic that there
was in life for hours after it--who can describe that? It is so
easy for an Englishman to sneer at these chance collisions of
human beings. To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they
offer an equal opportunity. It is so easy to talk of "passing
emotion," and to forget how vivid the emotion was ere it passed.
Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at root a good one. We
recognise that emotion is not enough, and that men and women are
personalities capable of sustained relations, not mere
opportunities for an electrical discharge. Yet we rate the
impulse too highly. We do not admit that by collisions of this
trivial sort the doors of heaven may be shaken open. To Helen, at
all events, her life was to bring nothing more intense than the
embrace of this boy who played no part in it. He had drawn her
out of the house, where there was danger of surprise and light;
he had led her by a path he knew, until they stood under the
column of the vast wych-elm. A man in the darkness, he had
whispered "I love you" when she was desiring love. In time his
slender personality faded, the scene that he had evoked endured.
In all the variable years that followed she never saw the like of
it again.
"I understand," said Margaret--s"at least, I understand as much
as ever is understood of these things. Tell me now what happened
on the Monday morning."
"It was over at once."
"How, Helen?"
"I was still happy while I dressed, but as I came downstairs I
got nervous, and when I went into the dining-room I knew it was
no good. There was Evie--I can't explain--managing the tea-urn,
and Mr. Wilcox reading the Times."
"Was Paul there?"
"Yes; and Charles was talking to him about stocks and shares, and
he looked frightened."
By slight indications the sisters could convey much to each
other. Margaret saw horror latent in the scene, and Helen's next
remark did not surprise her.
"Somehow, when that kind of man looks frightened it is too awful.
It is all right for us to be frightened, or for men of another
sort--father, for instance; but for men like that! When I saw all
the others so placid, and Paul mad with terror in case I said the
wrong thing, I felt for a moment that the whole Wilcox family was
a fraud, just a wall of newspapers and motor-cars and golf-clubs,
and that if it fell I should find nothing behind it but panic
and emptiness."
"I don't think that. The Wilcoxes struck me as being genuine
people, particularly the wife."
"No, I don't really think that. But Paul was so broad-shouldered;
all kinds of extraordinary things made it worse, and I knew that
it would never do--never. I said to him after breakfast, when the
others were practising strokes, 'We rather lost our heads,' and
he looked better at once, though frightfully ashamed. He began a
speech about having no money to marry on, but it hurt him to make
it, and I stopped him. Then he said, 'I must beg your pardon over
this, Miss Schlegel; I can't think what came over me last night.'
And I said, 'Nor what over me; never mind.' And then we parted--
at least, until I remembered that I had written straight off to
tell you the night before, and that frightened him again. I asked
him to send a telegram for me, for he knew you would be coming or
something; and he tried to get hold of the motor, but Charles and
Mr. Wilcox wanted it to go to the station; and Charles offered to
send the telegram for me, and then I had to say that the telegram
was of no consequence, for Paul said Charles might read it, and
though I wrote it out several times, he always said people would
suspect something. He took it himself at last, pretending that he
must walk down to get cartridges, and, what with one thing and
the other, it was not handed in at the post-office until too
late. It was the most terrible morning. Paul disliked me more and
more, and Evie talked cricket averages till I nearly screamed. I
cannot think how I stood her all the other days. At last Charles
and his father started for the station, and then came your
telegram warning me that Aunt Juley was coming by that train, and
Paul--oh, rather horrible--said that I had muddled it. But Mrs.
Wilcox knew."
"Knew what?"
"Everything; though we neither of us told her a word, and she had
known all along, I think."
"Oh, she must have overheard you."
"I suppose so, but it seemed wonderful. When Charles and Aunt
Juley drove up, calling each other names, Mrs. Wilcox stepped in
from the garden and made everything less terrible. Ugh! but it
has been a disgusting business. To think that--" She sighed.
"To think that because you and a young man meet for a moment,
there must be all these telegrams and anger," supplied Margaret.
Helen nodded.
"I've often thought about it, Helen. It's one of the most
interesting things in the world. The truth is that there is a
great outer life that you and I have never touched--a life in
which telegrams and anger count. Personal relations, that we
think supreme, are not supreme there. There love means marriage
settlements, death, death duties. So far I'm clear. But here my
difficulty. This outer life, though obviously horrid; often seems
the real one--there's grit in it. It does breed character. Do
personal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?"
"Oh, Meg--, that's what I felt, only not so clearly, when the
Wilcoxes were so competent, and seemed to have their hands on all
the ropes."
"Don't you feel it now?"
"I remember Paul at breakfast," said Helen quietly. "I shall
never forget him. He had nothing to fall back upon. I know that
personal relations are the real life, for ever and ever."
"Amen!"
So the Wilcox episode fell into the background, leaving behind it
memories of sweetness and horror that mingled, and the sisters
pursued the life that Helen had commended. They talked to each
other and to other people, they filled the tall thin house at
Wickham Place with those whom they liked or could befriend. They
even attended public meetings. In their own fashion they cared
deeply about politics, though not as politicians would have us
care; they desired that public life should mirror whatever is
good in the life within. Temperance, tolerance, and sexual
equality were intelligible cries to them; whereas they did not
follow our Forward Policy in Tibet with the keen attention that
it merits, and would at times dismiss the whole British Empire
with a puzzled, if reverent, sigh. Not out of them are the shows
of history erected: the world would be a grey, bloodless place
were it composed entirely of Miss Schlegels. But the world being
what it is, perhaps they shine out in it like stars.
A word on their origin. They were not "English to the back-bone,"
as their aunt had piously asserted. But, on the other hand, they
were not "Germans of the dreadful sort." Their father had
belonged to a type that was more prominent in Germany fifty years
ago than now. He was not the aggressive German, so dear to the
English journalist, nor the domestic German, so dear to the
English wit. If one classed him at all it would be as the
countryman of Hegel and Kant, as the idealist, inclined to be
dreamy, whose Imperialism was the Imperialism of the air. Not
that his life had been inactive. He had fought like blazes
against Denmark, Austria, France. But he had fought without
visualising the results of victory. A hint of the truth broke on
him after Sedan, when he saw the dyed moustaches of Napoleon
going grey; another when he entered Paris, and saw the smashed
windows of the Tuileries. Peace came--it was all very immense,
one had turned into an Empire--but he knew that some quality had
vanished for which not all Alsace-Lorraine could compensate him.
Germany a commercial Power, Germany a naval Power, Germany with
colonies here and a Forward Policy there, and legitimate
aspirations in the other place, might appeal to others, and be
fitly served by them; for his own part, he abstained from the
fruits of victory, and naturalised himself in England. The more
earnest members of his family never forgave him, and knew that
his children, though scarcely English of the dreadful sort, would
never be German to the back-bone. He had obtained work in one of
our provincial universities, and there married Poor Emily (or
Die Englanderin, as the case may be), and as she had money,
they proceeded to London, and came to know a good many people.
But his gaze was always fixed beyond the sea. It was his hope
that the clouds of materialism obscuring the Fatherland would
part in time, and the mild intellectual light re-emerge. "Do you
imply that we Germans are stupid, Uncle Ernst?" exclaimed a
haughty and magnificent nephew. Uncle Ernst replied, "To my mind.
You use the intellect, but you no longer care about it. That I
call stupidity." As the haughty nephew did not follow, he
continued, "You only care about the things that you can use, and
therefore arrange them in the following order: Money, supremely
useful; intellect, rather useful; imagination, of no use at all.
No"--for the other had protested--"your Pan-Germanism is no more
imaginative than is our Imperialism over here. It is the vice of
a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand
square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square
mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as
heaven. That is not imagination. No, it kills it. When their
poets over here try to celebrate bigness they are dead at once,
and naturally. Your poets too are dying, your philosophers, your
musicians, to whom Europe has listened for two hundred years.
Gone. Gone with the little courts that nurtured them--gone with
Esterhazy and Weimar. What? What's that? Your universities? Oh
yes, you have learned men, who collect more facts than do the
learned men of England. They collect facts, and facts, and
empires of facts. But which of them will rekindle the light
within?"
To all this Margaret listened, sitting on the haughty nephew's
knee.
It was a unique education for the little girls. The haughty
nephew would be at Wickham Place one day, bringing with him an
even haughtier wife, both convinced that Germany was appointed by
God to govern the world. Aunt Juley would come the next day,
convinced that Great Britain had been appointed to the same post
by the same authority. Were both these loud-voiced parties right?
On one occasion they had met and Margaret with clasped hands had
implored them to argue the subject out in her presence. Whereat
they blushed, and began to talk about the weather. "Papa," she
cried--she was a most offensive child--"why will they not discuss
this most clear question?" Her father, surveying the parties
grimly, replied that he did not know. Putting her head on one
side, Margaret then remarked, "To me one of two things is very
clear; either God does not know his own mind about England and
Germany, or else these do not know the mind of God." A hateful
little girl, but at thirteen she had grasped a dilemma that most
people travel through life without perceiving. Her brain darted
up and down; it grew pliant and strong. Her conclusion was, that
any human being lies nearer to the unseen than any organisation,
and from this she never varied.
Helen advanced along the same lines, though with a more
irresponsible tread. In character she resembled her sister, but
she was pretty, and so apt to have a more amusing time. People
gathered round her more readily, especially when they were new
acquaintances, and she did enjoy a little homage very much. When
their father died and they ruled alone at Wickham Place, she
often absorbed the whole of the company, while Margaret--both
were tremendous talkers--fell flat. Neither sister bothered about
this. Helen never apologised afterwards, Margaret did not feel
the slightest rancour. But looks have their influence upon
character. The sisters were alike as little girls, but at the
time of the Wilcox episode their methods were beginning to
diverge; the younger was rather apt to entice people, and, in
enticing them, to be herself enticed; the elder went straight
ahead, and accepted an occasional failure as part of the game.
Little need be premised about Tibby. He was now an intelligent
man of sixteen, but dyspeptic and difficile.
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