"Oh, Margaret," cried her aunt next morning, "such a most
unfortunate thing has happened. I could not get you alone."
The most unfortunate thing was not very serious. One of the flats
in the ornate block opposite had been taken furnished by the
Wilcox family, "coming up, no doubt, in the hope of getting into
London society." That Mrs. Munt should be the first to discover
the misfortune was not remarkable, for she was so interested in
the flats, that she watched their every mutation with unwearying
care. In theory she despised them--they took away that old-world
look--they cut off the sun--flats house a flashy type of person.
But if the truth had been known, she found her visits to Wickham
Place twice as amusing since Wickham Mansions had arisen, and
would in a couple of days learn more about them than her nieces
in a couple of months, or her nephew in a couple of years. She
would stroll across and make friends with the porters, and
inquire what the rents were, exclaiming for example: "What! a
hundred and twenty for a basement? You'll never get it!" And they
would answer: "One can but try, madam." The passenger lifts, the
arrangement for coals (a great temptation for a dishonest
porter), were all familiar matters to her, and perhaps a relief
from the politico-economical-esthetic atmosphere that reigned at
the Schlegels.
Margaret received the information calmly, and did not agree that
it would throw a cloud over poor Helen's life.
"Oh, but Helen isn't a girl with no interests," she explained.
"She has plenty of other things and other people to think about.
She made a false start with the Wilcoxes, and she'll be as
willing as we are to have nothing more to do with them."
"For a clever girl, dear, how very oddly you do talk. Helen'll
HAVE to have something more to do with them, now that they 're
all opposite. She may meet that Paul in the street. She cannot
very well not bow."
"Of course she must bow. But look here; let's do the flowers. I
was going to say, the will to be interested in him has died, and
what else matters? I look on that disastrous episode (over which
you were so kind) as the killing of a nerve in Helen. It's dead,
and she'll never be troubled with it again. The only things that
matter are the things that interest one. Bowing, even calling and
leaving cards, even a dinner-party--we can do all those things to
the Wilcoxes, if they find it agreeable; but the other thing, the
one important thing--never again. Don't you see?"
Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a most
questionable statement--that any emotion, any interest once
vividly aroused, can wholly die.
"I also have the honour to inform you that the Wilcoxes are bored
with us. I didn't tell you at the time--it might have made you
angry, and you had enough to worry you--but I wrote a letter to
Mrs. W, and apologised for the trouble that Helen had given them.
She didn't answer it."
"How very rude!"
"I wonder. Or was it sensible?"
"No, Margaret, most rude."
"In either case one can class it as reassuring."
Mrs. Munt sighed. She was going back to Swanage on the morrow,
just as her nieces were wanting her most. Other regrets crowded
upon her: for instance, how magnificently she would have cut
Charles if she had met him face to face. She had already seen
him, giving an order to the porter--and very common he looked in
a tall hat. But unfortunately his back was turned to her, and
though she had cut his back, she could not regard this as a
telling snub.
"But you will be careful, won't you?" she exhorted.
"Oh, certainly. Fiendishly careful."
"And Helen must be careful, too."
"Careful over what?" cried Helen, at that moment coming into the
room with her cousin.
"Nothing" said Margaret, seized with a momentary awkwardness.
"Careful over what, Aunt Juley?"
Mrs. Munt assumed a cryptic air. "It is only that a certain
family, whom we know by name but do not mention, as you said
yourself last night after the concert, have taken the flat
opposite from the Mathesons--where the plants are in the
balcony."
Helen began some laughing reply, and then disconcerted them all
by blushing. Mrs. Munt was so disconcerted that she exclaimed,
"What, Helen, you don't mind them coming, do you?" and deepened
the blush to crimson.
"Of course I don't mind," said Helen a little crossly. "It is
that you and Meg are both so absurdly grave about it, when
there's nothing to be grave about at all."
"I'm not grave," protested Margaret, a little cross in her turn.
"Well, you look grave; doesn't she, Frieda?"
"I don't feel grave, that's all I can say; you're going quite on
the wrong tack."
"No, she does not feel grave," echoed Mrs. Munt. "I can bear
witness to that. She disagrees--"
"Hark!" interrupted Fraulein Mosebach. "I hear Bruno entering the
hall."
For Herr Liesecke was due at Wickham Place to call for the two
younger girls. He was not entering the hall--in fact, he did not
enter it for quite five minutes. But Frieda detected a delicate
situation, and said that she and Helen had much better wait for
Bruno down below, and leave Margaret and Mrs. Munt to finish
arranging the flowers. Helen acquiesced. But, as if to prove that
the situation was not delicate really, she stopped in the doorway
and said:
"Did you say the Mathesons' flat, Aunt Juley? How wonderful you
are! I never knew that the name of the woman who laced too
tightly was Matheson."
"Come, Helen," said her cousin.
"Go, Helen," said her aunt; and continued to Margaret almost in
the same breath: "Helen cannot deceive me. She does mind."
"Oh, hush!" breathed Margaret. "Frieda'll hear you, and she can
be so tiresome."
"She minds," persisted Mrs. Munt, moving thoughtfully about the
room, and pulling the dead chrysanthemums out of the vases. "I
knew she'd mind--and I'm sure a girl ought to! Such an
experience! Such awful coarse-grained people! I know more about
them than you do, which you forget, and if Charles had taken you
that motor drive--well, you'd have reached the house a perfect
wreck. Oh, Margaret, you don't know what you are in for! They're
all bottled up against the drawing-room window. There's Mrs.
Wilcox--I've seen her. There's Paul. There's Evie, who is a minx.
There's Charles--I saw him to start with. And who would an
elderly man with a moustache and a copper-coloured face be?"
"Mr. Wilcox, possibly."
"I knew it. And there's Mr. Wilcox."
"It's a shame to call his face copper colour," complained
Margaret. "He has a remarkably good complexion for a man of his
age."
Mrs. Munt, triumphant elsewhere, could afford to concede Mr.
Wilcox his complexion. She passed on from it to the plan of
campaign that her nieces should pursue in the future. Margaret
tried to stop her.
"Helen did not take the news quite as I expected, but the Wilcox
nerve is dead in her really, so there's no need for plans."
"It's as well to be prepared."
"No--it's as well not to be prepared."
"Why?"
"Because--"
Her thought drew being from the obscure borderland. She could not
explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for
all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at
the expense of joy. It is necessary to prepare for an
examination, or a dinner-party, or a possible fall in the price
of stock: those who attempt human relations must adopt another
method, or fail. "Because I'd sooner risk it," was her lame
conclusion.
"But imagine the evenings," exclaimed her aunt, pointing to the
Mansions with the spout of the watering can. "Turn the electric
light on here or there, and it's almost the same room. One
evening they may forget to draw their blinds down, and you'll see
them; and the next, you yours, and they'll see you. Impossible to
sit out on the balconies. Impossible to water the plants, or even
speak. Imagine going out of the front-door, and they come out
opposite at the same moment. And yet you tell me that plans are
unnecessary, and you'd rather risk it."
"I hope to risk things all my life."
"Oh, Margaret, most dangerous."
"But after all," she continued with a smile, "there's never any
great risk as long as you have money."
"Oh, shame! What a shocking speech!"
"Money pads the edges of things," said Miss Schlegel. "God help
those who have none."
"But this is something quite new!" said Mrs. Munt, who collected
new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially
attracted by those that are portable.
"New for me; sensible people have acknowledged it for years. You
and I and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so
firm beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It's
only when we see some one near us tottering that we realise all
that an independent income means. Last night, when we were
talking up here round the fire, I began to think that the very
soul of the world is economic, and that the lowest abyss is not
the absence of love, but the absence of coin."
"I call that rather cynical."
"So do I. But Helen and I, we ought to remember, when we are
tempted to criticise others, that we are standing on these
islands, and that most of the others are down below the surface
of the sea. The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to
love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love
no longer. We rich can. Imagine the tragedy last June, if Helen
and Paul Wilcox had been poor people, and couldn't invoke
railways and motor-cars to part them."
"That's more like Socialism," said Mrs. Munt suspiciously.
"Call it what you like. I call it going through life with one's
hand spread open on the table. I'm tired of these rich people who
pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the
piles of money that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each
year upon six hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby
will stand upon eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away
into the sea they are renewed--from the sea, yes, from the sea.
And all our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred-pounders,
and all our speeches; and because we don't want to steal
umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want
to steal them and do steal them sometimes, and that what's a joke
up here is down there reality."
"There they go--there goes Fraulein Mosebach. Really, for a
German she does dress charmingly. Oh!--"
"What is it?"
"Helen was looking up at the Wilcoxes' flat."
"Why shouldn't she?"
"I beg your pardon, I interrupted you. What was it you were
saying about reality?"
"I had worked round to myself, as usual," answered Margaret in
tones that were suddenly preoccupied.
"Do tell me this, at all events. Are you for the rich or for the
poor?"
"Too difficult. Ask me another. Am I for poverty or for riches?
For riches. Hurrah for riches!"
"For riches!" echoed Mrs. Munt, having, as it were, at last
secured her nut.
"Yes. For riches. Money for ever!"
"So am I, and so, I am afraid, are most of my acquaintances at
Swanage, but I am surprised that you agree with us."
"Thank you so much, Aunt Juley. While I have talked theories, you
have done the flowers."
"Not at all, dear. I wish you would let me help you in more
important things."
"Well, would you be very kind? Would you come round with me to
the registry office? There's a housemaid who won't say yes but
doesn't say no."
On their way thither they too looked up at the Wilcoxes' flat.
Evie was in the balcony, "staring most rudely," according to Mrs.
Munt. Oh yes, it was a nuisance, there was no doubt of it. Helen
was proof against a passing encounter, but--Margaret began to
lose confidence. Might it reawake the dying nerve if the family
were living close against her eyes? And Frieda Mosebach was
stopping with them for another fortnight, and Frieda was sharp,
abominably sharp, and quite capable of remarking, "You love one
of the young gentlemen opposite, yes?" The remark would be
untrue, but of the kind which, if stated often enough, may become
true; just as the remark, "England and Germany are bound to
fight," renders war a little more likely each time that it is
made, and is therefore made the more readily by the gutter press
of either nation. Have the private emotions also their gutter
press? Margaret thought so, and feared that good Aunt Juley and
Frieda were typical specimens of it. They might, by continual
chatter, lead Helen into a repetition of the desires of June.
Into a repetition--they could not do more; they could not lead
her into lasting love. They were--she saw it clearly--Journalism;
her father, with all his defects and wrong-headedness, had been
Literature, and had he lived, he would have persuaded his
daughter rightly.
The registry office was holding its morning reception. A string
of carriages filled the street. Miss Schlegel waited her turn,
and finally had to be content with an insidious "temporary,"
being rejected by genuine housemaids on the ground of her
numerous stairs. Her failure depressed her, and though she forgot
the failure, the depression remained. On her way home she again
glanced up at the Wilcoxes' flat, and took the rather matronly
step of speaking about the matter to Helen.
"Helen, you must tell me whether this thing worries you."
"If what?" said Helen, who was washing her hands for lunch.
"The Ws' coming."
"No, of course not."
"Really?"
"Really." Then she admitted that she was a little worried on Mrs.
Wilcox's account; she implied that Mrs. Wilcox might reach
backward into deep feelings, and be pained by things that never
touched the other members of that clan. "I shan't mind if Paul
points at our house and says, 'There lives the girl who tried to
catch me.' But she might."
"If even that worries you, we could arrange something. There's no
reason we should be near people who displease us or whom we
displease, thanks to our money. We might even go away for a
little."
"Well, I am going away. Frieda's just asked me to Stettin, and I
shan't be back till after the New Year. Will that do? Or must I
fly the country altogether? Really, Meg, what has come over you
to make such a fuss?"
"Oh, I'm getting an old maid, I suppose. I thought I minded
nothing, but really I--I should be bored if you fell in love with
the same man twice and"--she cleared her throat--"you did go
red, you know, when Aunt Juley attacked you this morning. I
shouldn't have referred to it otherwise."
But Helen's laugh rang true, as she raised a soapy hand to heaven
and swore that never, nowhere and nohow, would she again fall in
love with any of the Wilcox family, down to its remotest
collaterals.
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