The sisters went out to dinner full of their adventure, and when
they were both full of the same subject, there were few
dinner-parties that could stand up against them. This particular
one, which was all ladies, had more kick in it than most, but
succumbed after a struggle. Helen at one part of the table,
Margaret at the other, would talk of Mr. Bast and of no one else,
and somewhere about the entree their monologues collided, fell
ruining, and became common property. Nor was this all. The
dinner-party was really an informal discussion club; there was a
paper after it, read amid coffee-cups and laughter in the
drawing-room, but dealing more or less thoughtfully with some
topic of general interest. After the paper came a debate, and in
this debate Mr. Bast also figured, appearing now as a bright spot
in civilisation, now as a dark spot, according to the temperament
of the speaker. The subject of the paper had been, "How ought I
to dispose of my money?" the reader professing to be a
millionaire on the point of death, inclined to bequeath her
fortune for the foundation of local art galleries, but open to
conviction from other sources. The various parts had been
assigned beforehand, and some of the speeches were amusing. The
hostess assumed the ungrateful role of "the millionaire's eldest
son," and implored her expiring parent not to dislocate Society
by allowing such vast sums to pass out of the family. Money was
the fruit of self-denial, and the second generation had a right
to profit by the self-denial of the first. What right had "Mr.
Bast" to profit? The National Gallery was good enough for the
likes of him. After property had had its say--a saying that is
necessarily ungracious--the various philanthropists stepped
forward. Something must be done for "Mr. Bast"; his conditions
must be improved without impairing his independence; he must have
a free library, or free tennis-courts; his rent must be paid in
such a way that he did not know it was being paid; it must be
made worth his while to join the Territorials; he must be
forcibly parted from his uninspiring wife, the money going to her
as compensation; he must be assigned a Twin Star, some member of
the leisured classes who would watch over him ceaselessly (groans
from Helen); he must be given food but no clothes, clothes but no
food, a third-return ticket to Venice, without either food or
clothes when he arrived there. In short, he might be given
anything and everything so long as it was not the money itself.
And here Margaret interrupted.
"Order, order, Miss Schlegel!" said the reader of the paper. "You
are here, I understand, to advise me in the interests of the
Society for the Preservation of Places of Historic Interest or
Natural Beauty. I cannot have you speaking out of your role. It
makes my poor head go round, and I think you forget that I am
very ill."
"Your head won't go round if only you'll listen to my argument,"
said Margaret. "Why not give him the money itself? You're
supposed to have about thirty thousand a year."
"Have I? I thought I had a million."
"Wasn't a million your capital? Dear me! we ought to have settled
that. Still, it doesn't matter. Whatever you've got, I order you
to give as many poor men as you can three hundred a year each."
"But that would be pauperising them," said an earnest girl, who
liked the Schlegels, but thought them a little unspiritual at
times.
"Not if you gave them so much. A big windfall would not pauperise
a man. It is these little driblets, distributed among too many,
that do the harm. Money's educational. It's far more educational
than the things it buys." There was a protest. "In a sense,"
added Margaret, but the protest continued. "Well, isn't the most
civilized thing going, the man who has learnt to wear his income
properly?"
"Exactly what your Mr. Basts won't do."
"Give them a chance. Give them money. Don't dole them out
poetry-books and railway-tickets like babies. Give them the
wherewithal to buy these things. When your Socialism comes it may
be different, and we may think in terms of commodities instead of
cash. Till it comes give people cash, for it is the warp of
civilisation, whatever the woof may be. The imagination ought to
play upon money and realise it vividly, for it's the--the second
most important thing in the world. It is so slurred over and
hushed up, there is so little clear thinking--oh, political
economy, of course, but so few of us think clearly about our own
private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine
cases out of ten the result of independent means. Money: give Mr.
Bast money, and don't bother about his ideals. He'll pick up
those for himself.
She leant back while the more earnest members of the club began
to misconstrue her. The female mind, though cruelly practical in
daily life, cannot bear to hear ideals belittled in conversation,
and Miss Schlegel was asked however she could say such dreadful
things, and what it would profit Mr. Bast if he gained the whole
world and lost his own soul. She answered, "Nothing, but he would
not gain his soul until he had gained a little of the world."
Then they said, "No, we do not believe it," and she admitted that
an overworked clerk may save his soul in the superterrestrial
sense, where the effort will be taken for the deed, but she
denied that he will ever explore the spiritual resources of this
world, will ever know the rarer joys of the body, or attain to
clear and passionate intercourse with his fellows. Others had
attacked the fabric of Society--Property, Interest, etc.; she
only fixed her eyes on a few human beings, to see how, under
present conditions, they could be made happier. Doing good to
humanity was useless: the many-coloured efforts thereto spreading
over the vast area like films and resulting in an universal grey.
To do good to one, or, as in this case, to a few, was the utmost
she dare hope for.
Between the idealists, and the political economists, Margaret had
a bad time. Disagreeing elsewhere, they agreed in disowning her,
and in keeping the administration of the millionaire's money in
their own hands. The earnest girl brought forward a scheme of
"personal supervision and mutual help," the effect of which was
to alter poor people until they became exactly like people who
were not so poor. The hostess pertinently remarked that she, as
eldest son, might surely rank among the millionaire's legatees.
Margaret weakly admitted the claim, and another claim was at once
set up by Helen, who declared that she had been the millionaire's
housemaid for over forty years, overfed and underpaid; was
nothing to be done for her, so corpulent and poor? The
millionaire then read out her last will and testament, in which
she left the whole of her fortune to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. Then she died. The serious parts of the discussion had
been of higher merit than the playful--in a men's debate is the
reverse more general?--but the meeting broke up hilariously
enough, and a dozen happy ladies dispersed to their homes.
Helen and Margaret walked with the earnest girl as far as
Battersea Bridge Station, arguing copiously all the way. When she
had gone they were conscious of an alleviation, and of the great
beauty of the evening. They turned back towards Oakley Street.
The lamps and the plane-trees, following the line of the
embankment, struck a note of dignity that is rare in English
cities. The seats, almost deserted, were here and there occupied
by gentlefolk in evening dress, who had strolled out from the
houses behind to enjoy fresh air and the whisper of the rising
tide. There is something continental about Chelsea Embankment. It
is an open space used rightly, a blessing more frequent in
Germany than here. As Margaret and Helen sat down, the city
behind them seemed to be a vast theatre, an opera-house in which
some endless trilogy was performing, and they themselves a pair
of satisfied subscribers, who did not mind losing a little of the
second act.
"Cold?"
"No."
"Tired?"
"Doesn't matter."
The earnest girl's train rumbled away over the bridge, "I say,
Helen--"
"Well?"
"Are we really going to follow up Mr. Bast?"
"I don't know."
"I think we won't."
"As you like."
"It's no good, I think, unless you really mean to know people.
The discussion brought that home to me. We got on well enough
with him in a spirit of excitement, but think of rational
intercourse. We mustn't play at friendship. No, it's no good."
"There's Mrs. Lanoline, too," Helen yawned. "So dull."
"Just so, and possibly worse than dull."
"I should like to know how he got hold of your card."
"But he said--something about a concert and an umbrella."
"Then did the card see the wife--"
"Helen, come to bed."
"No, just a little longer, it is so beautiful. Tell me; oh yes;
did you say money is the warp of the world?"
"Yes."
"Then what's the woof?"
"Very much what one chooses," said Margaret. "It's something that
isn't money--one can't say more."
"Walking at night?"
"Probably."
"For Tibby, Oxford?"
"It seems so."
"For you?"
"Now that we have to leave Wickham Place, I begin to think it's
that. For Mrs. Wilcox it was certainly Howards End."
One's own name will carry immense distances. Mr. Wilcox, who was
sitting with friends many seats away, heard this, rose to his
feet, and strolled along towards the speakers.
"It is sad to suppose that places may ever be more important than
people," continued Margaret.
"Why, Meg? They're so much nicer generally. I'd rather think of
that forester's house in Pomerania than of the fat Herr
Forstmeister who lived in it."
"I believe we shall come to care about people less and less,
Helen. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace
them. It's one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my
life caring most for a place."
Here Mr. Wilcox reached them. It was several weeks since they had
met.
"How do you do?" he cried. "I thought I recognised your voices.
Whatever are you both doing down here?"
His tones were protective. He implied that one ought not to sit
out on Chelsea Embankment without a male escort. Helen resented
this, but Margaret accepted it as part of the good man's
equipment.
"What an age it is since I've seen you, Mr. Wilcox. I met Evie in
the Tube, though, lately. I hope you have good news of your son."
"Paul?" said Mr. Wilcox, extinguishing his cigarette, and sitting
down between them. "Oh, Paul's all right. We had a line from Madeira.
He'll be at work again by now."
"Ugh--" said Helen, shuddering from complex causes.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Isn't the climate of Nigeria too horrible?"
"Some one's got to go," he said simply. England will never keep
her trade overseas unless she is prepared to make sacrifices.
Unless we get firm in West Africa, Ger--untold complications may
follow. Now tell me all your news."
"Oh, we've had a splendid evening," cried Helen, who always woke
up at the advent of a visitor. "We belong to a kind of club that
reads papers, Margaret and I--all women, but there is a
discussion after. This evening it was on how one ought to leave
one's money--whether to one's family, or to the poor, and if so
how--oh, most interesting."
The man of business smiled. Since his wife's death he had almost
doubled his income. He was an important figure at last, a
reassuring name on company prospectuses, and life had treated him
very well. The world seemed in his grasp as he listened to the
River Thames, which still flowed inland from the sea. So
wonderful to the girls, it held no mysteries for him. He had
helped to shorten its long tidal trough by taking shares in the
lock at Teddington, and if he and other capitalists thought good,
some day it could be shortened again. With a good dinner inside
him and an amiable but academic woman on either flank, he felt
that his hands were on all the ropes of life, and that what he
did not know could not be worth knowing.
"Sounds a most original entertainment!" he exclaimed, and laughed
in his pleasant way. "I wish Evie would go to that sort of thing.
But she hasn't the time. She's taken to breeding Aberdeen
terriers--jolly little dogs."
"I expect we'd better be doing the same, really."
"We pretend we're improving ourselves, you see," said Helen a
little sharply, for the Wilcox glamour is not of the kind that
returns, and she had bitter memories of the days when a speech
such as he had just made would have impressed her favourably. "We
suppose it a good thing to waste an evening once a fortnight over
a debate, but, as my sister says, it may be better to breed
dogs."
"Not at all. I don't agree with your sister. There's nothing like
a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for
them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end."
"Quickness--?"
"Yes. Quickness in argument. Time after time I've missed scoring
a point because the other man has had the gift of the gab and I
haven't. Oh, I believe in these discussions."
The patronising tone, thought Margaret, came well enough from a
man who was old enough to be their father. She had always
maintained that Mr. Wilcox had a charm. In times of sorrow or
emotion his inadequacy had pained her, but it was pleasant to
listen to him now, and to watch his thick brown moustache and
high forehead confronting the stars. But Helen was nettled. The
aim of their debates she implied was Truth.
"Oh yes, it doesn't much matter what subject you take," said he.
Margaret laughed and said, "But this is going to be far better
than the debate itself." Helen recovered herself and laughed too.
"No, I won't go on," she declared. "I'll just put our special
case to Mr. Wilcox."
"About Mr. Bast? Yes, do. He'll be more lenient to a special
case."
"But, Mr. Wilcox, do first light another cigarette. It's this.
We've just come across a young fellow, who's evidently very poor,
and who seems interest--"
"What's his profession?"
"Clerk."
"What in?"
"Do you remember, Margaret?"
"Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company."
"Oh yes; the nice people who gave Aunt Juley a new hearth rug. He
seems interesting, in some ways very, and one wishes one could
help him. He is married to a wife whom he doesn't seem to care
for much. He likes books, and what one may roughly call
adventure, and if he had a chance-- But he is so poor. He lives a
life where all the money is apt to go on nonsense and clothes.
One is so afraid that circumstances will be too strong for him
and that he will sink. Well, he got mixed up in our debate. He
wasn't the subject of it, but it seemed to bear on his point.
Suppose a millionaire died, and desired to leave money to help
such a man. How should he be helped? Should he be given three
hundred pounds a year direct, which was Margaret's plan? Most of
them thought this would pauperise him. Should he and those like
him be given free libraries? I said 'No!' He doesn't want more
books to read, but to read books rightly. My suggestion was he
should be given something every year towards a summer holiday,
but then there is his wife, and they said she would have to go
too. Nothing seemed quite right! Now what do you think? Imagine
that you were a millionaire, and wanted to help the poor. What
would you do?"
Mr. Wilcox, whose fortune was not so very far below the standard
indicated, laughed exuberantly. "My dear Miss Schlegel, I will
not rush in where your sex has been unable to tread. I will not
add another plan to the numerous excellent ones that have been
already suggested. My only contribution is this: let your young
friend clear out of the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company with
all possible speed."
"Why?" said Margaret.
He lowered his voice. "This is between friends. It'll be in the
Receiver's hands before Christmas. It'll smash," he added,
thinking that she had not understood.
"Dear me, Helen, listen to that. And he'll have to get another
place!"
"WILL have? Let him leave the ship before it sinks. Let him get
one now."
"Rather than wait, to make sure?"
"Decidedly."
"Why's that?"
Again the Olympian laugh, and the lowered voice. "Naturally the
man who's in a situation when he applies stands a better chance,
is in a stronger position, that the man who isn't. It looks as if
he's worth something. I know by myself--(this is letting you into
the State secrets)--it affects an employer greatly. Human nature,
I'm afraid."
"I hadn't thought of that," murmured Margaret, while Helen said,
"Our human nature appears to be the other way round. We employ
people because they're unemployed. The boot man, for instance."
"And how does he clean the boots?"
"Not well," confessed Margaret.
"There you are!"
"Then do you really advise us to tell this youth--?"
"I advise nothing," he interrupted, glancing up and down the
Embankment, in case his indiscretion had been overheard. "I
oughtn't to have spoken--but I happen to know, being more or less
behind the scenes. The Porphyrion's a bad, bad concern-- Now,
don't say I said so. It's outside the Tariff Ring."
"Certainly I won't say. In fact, I don't know what that means."
"I thought an insurance company never smashed," was Helen's
contribution. "Don't the others always run in and save them?"
"You're thinking of reinsurance," said Mr. Wilcox mildly. "It is
exactly there that the Porphyrion is weak. It has tried to
undercut, has been badly hit by a long series of small fires, and
it hasn't been able to reinsure. I'm afraid that public
companies don't save one another for love."
"'Human nature,' I suppose," quoted Helen, and he laughed and
agreed that it was. When Margaret said that she supposed that
clerks, like every one else, found it extremely difficult to get
situations in these days, he replied, "Yes, extremely," and rose
to rejoin his friends. He knew by his own office--seldom a vacant
post, and hundreds of applicants for it; at present no vacant
post.
"And how's Howards End looking?" said Margaret, wishing to change
the subject before they parted. Mr. Wilcox was a little apt to
think one wanted to get something out of him.
"It's let."
"Really. And you wandering homeless in longhaired Chelsea? How
strange are the ways of Fate!"
"No; it's let unfurnished. We've moved."
"Why, I thought of you both as anchored there for ever. Evie
never told me."
"I dare say when you met Evie the thing wasn't settled. We only
moved a week ago. Paul has rather a feeling for the old place,
and we held on for him to have his holiday there; but, really, it
is impossibly small. Endless drawbacks. I forget whether you've
been up to it?"
"As far as the house, never."
"Well, Howards End is one of those converted farms. They don't
really do, spend what you will on them. We messed away with a
garage all among the wych-elm roots, and last year we enclosed a
bit of the meadow and attempted a rockery. Evie got rather keen
on Alpine plants. But it didn't do--no, it didn't do. You
remember, your sister will remember, the farm with those
abominable guinea-fowls, and the hedge that the old woman never
would cut properly, so that it all went thin at the bottom. And,
inside the house, the beams--and the staircase through a door--
picturesque enough, but not a place to live in." He glanced over
the parapet cheerfully. "Full tide. And the position wasn't
right either. The neighbourhood's getting suburban. Either be in
London or out of it, I say; so we've taken a house in Ducie
Street, close to Sloane Street, and a place right down in
Shropshire--Oniton Grange. Ever heard of Oniton? Do come and see
us--right away from everywhere, up towards Wales."
"What a change!" said Margaret. But the change was in her own
voice, which had become most sad. "I can't imagine Howards End or
Hilton without you."
"Hilton isn't without us," he replied. "Charles is there still."
"Still?" said Margaret, who had not kept up with the Charles's.
"But I thought he was still at Epsom. They were furnishing that
Christmas--one Christmas. How everything alters! I used to admire
Mrs. Charles from our windows very often. Wasn't it Epsom?"
"Yes, but they moved eighteen months ago. Charles, the good chap"
--his voice dropped--"thought I should be lonely. I didn't want
him to move, but he would, and took a house at the other end of
Hilton, down by the Six Hills. He had a motor, too. There they
all are, a very jolly party--he and she and the two
grandchildren."
"I manage other people's affairs so much better than they manage
them themselves," said Margaret as they shook hands. "When you
moved out of Howards End, I should have moved Mr. Charles Wilcox
into it. I should have kept so remarkable a place in the family."
"So it is," he replied. "I haven't sold it, and don't mean to."
"No; but none of you are there,"
"Oh, we've got a splendid tenant--Hamar Bryce, an invalid. If
Charles ever wanted it--but he won't. Dolly is so dependent on
modern conveniences. No, we have all decided against Howards End.
We like it in a way, but now we feel that it is neither one thing
nor the other. One must have one thing or the other."
"And some people are lucky enough to have both. You're doing
yourself proud, Mr. Wilcox. My congratulations."
"And mine," said Helen.
"Do remind Evie to come and see us--2 Wickham Place. We shan't be
there very long, either."
"You, too, on the move?"
"Next September," Margaret sighed.
"Every one moving! Good-bye."
The tide had begun to ebb. Margaret leant over the parapet and
watched it sadly. Mr. Wilcox had forgotten his wife, Helen her
lover; she herself was probably forgetting. Every one moving. Is
it worth while attempting the past when there is this continual
flux even in the hearts of men?
Helen roused her by saying: "What a prosperous vulgarian Mr.
Wilcox has grown! I have very little use for him in these days.
However, he did tell us about the Porphyrion. Let us write to Mr.
Bast as soon as ever we get home, and tell him to clear out of it
at once."
"Do; yes, that's worth doing. Let us."
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