As they were seated at Aunt Juley's breakfast-table at The Bays,
parrying her excessive hospitality and enjoying the view of the
bay, a letter came for Margaret and threw her into perturbation.
It was from Mr. Wilcox. It announced an "important change" in his
plans. Owing to Evie's marriage, he had decided to give up his
house in Ducie Street, and was willing to let it on a yearly
tenancy. It was a businesslike letter, and stated frankly what he
would do for them and what he would not do. Also the rent. If
they approved, Margaret was to come up AT ONCE--the words were
underlined, as is necessary when dealing with women--and to go
over the house with him. If they disapproved, a wire would
oblige, as he should put it into the hands of an agent.
The letter perturbed, because she was not sure what it meant. If
he liked her, if he had manoeuvred to get her to Simpson's, might
this be a manoeuvre to get her to London, and result in an offer
of marriage? She put it to herself as indelicately as possible,
in the hope that her brain would cry, "Rubbish, you're a
self-conscious fool!" But her brain only tingled a little and was
silent, and for a time she sat gazing at the mincing waves, and
wondering whether the news would seem strange to the others.
As soon as she began speaking, the sound of her own voice
reassured her. There could be nothing in it. The replies also
were typical, and in the burr of conversation her fears vanished.
"You needn't go though--"began her hostess.
"I needn't, but hadn't I better? It's really getting rather
serious. We let chance after chance slip, and the end of it is we
shall be bundled out bag and baggage into the street. We don't
know what we WANT, that's the mischief with us--"
"No, we have no real ties," said Helen, helping herself to toast.
"Shan't I go up to town to-day, take the house if it's the least
possible, and then come down by the afternoon train to-morrow,
and start enjoying myself. I shall be no fun to myself or to
others until this business is off my mind.
"But you won't do anything rash, Margaret?"
"There's nothing rash to do."
"Who ARE the Wilcoxes?" said Tibby, a question that sounds silly,
but was really extremely subtle as his aunt found to her cost
when she tried to answer it. "I don't MANAGE the Wilcoxes; I
don't see where they come IN."
"No more do I," agreed Helen. "It's funny that we just don't lose
sight of them. Out of all our hotel acquaintances, Mr. Wilcox is
the only one who has stuck. It is now over three years, and we
have drifted away from far more interesting people in that time."
"Interesting people don't get one houses."
"Meg, if you start in your honest-English vein, I shall throw the
treacle at you."
"It's a better vein than the cosmopolitan," said Margaret,
getting up. "Now, children, which is it to be? You know the Ducie
Street house. Shall I say yes or shall I say no? Tibby love--
which? I'm specially anxious to pin you both."
"It all depends on what meaning you attach to the word
'possible'"
"It depends on nothing of the sort. Say 'yes.'"
"Say 'no.'"
Then Margaret spoke rather seriously. "I think," she said, "that
our race is degenerating. We cannot settle even this little
thing; what will it be like when we have to settle a big one?"
"It will be as easy as eating," returned Helen.
"I was thinking of father. How could he settle to leave Germany
as he did, when he had fought for it as a young man, and all his
feelings and friends were Prussian? How could he break loose with
Patriotism and begin aiming at something else? It would have
killed me. When he was nearly forty he could change countries and
ideals--and we, at our age, can't change houses. It's
humiliating."
"Your father may have been able to change countries," said Mrs.
Munt with asperity, "and that may or may not be a good thing. But
he could change houses no better than you can, in fact, much
worse. Never shall I forget what poor Emily suffered in the move
from Manchester."
"I knew it," cried Helen. "I told you so. It is the little things
one bungles at. The big, real ones are nothing when they come."
"Bungle, my dear! You are too little to recollect--in fact, you
weren't there. But the furniture was actually in the vans and on
the move before the lease for Wickham Place was signed, and Emily
took train with baby--who was Margaret then--and the smaller
luggage for London, without so much as knowing where her new home
would be. Getting away from that house may be hard, but it is
nothing to the misery that we all went through getting you into
it."
Helen, with her mouth full, cried:
"And that's the man who beat the Austrians, and the Danes, and
the French, and who beat the Germans that were inside himself.
And we're like him."
"Speak for yourself," said Tibby. "Remember that I am
cosmopolitan, please."
"Helen may be right."
"Of course she's right," said Helen.
Helen might be right, but she did not go up to London. Margaret
did that. An interrupted holiday is the worst of the minor
worries, and one may be pardoned for feeling morbid when a
business letter snatches one away from the sea and friends. She
could not believe that her father had ever felt the same. Her
eyes had been troubling her lately, so that she could not read in
the train and it bored her to look at the landscape, which she
had seen but yesterday. At Southampton she "waved" to Frieda;
Frieda was on her way down to join them at Swanage, and Mrs. Munt
had calculated that their trains would cross. But Frieda was
looking the other way, and Margaret travelled on to town feeling
solitary and old-maidish. How like an old maid to fancy that Mr.
Wilcox was courting her! She had once visited a spinster--poor,
silly, and unattractive--whose mania it was that every man who
approached her fell in love. How Margaret's heart had bled for
the deluded thing! How she had lectured, reasoned, and in despair
acquiesced! "I may have been deceived by the curate, my dear, but
the young fellow who brings the midday post really is fond of me,
and has, as a matter of fact--" It had always seemed to her the
most hideous corner of old age, yet she might be driven into it
herself by the mere pressure of virginity.
Mr. Wilcox met her at Waterloo himself. She felt certain that he
was not the same as usual; for one thing, he took offence at
everything she said.
"This is awfully kind of you," she began, "but I'm afraid it's
not going to do. The house has not been built that suits the
Schlegel family."
"What! Have you come up determined not to deal?"
"Not exactly."
"Not exactly? In that case let's be starting."
She lingered to admire the motor, which was new, and a fairer
creature than the vermilion giant that had borne Aunt Juley to
her doom three years before.
"Presumably it's very beautiful," she said. "How do you like it,
Crane?"
"Come, let's be starting," repeated her host. "How on earth did
you know that my chauffeur was called Crane?"
"Why, I know Crane; I've been for a drive with Evie once. I know
that you've got a parlourmaid called Milton. I know all sorts of
things."
"Evie!" he echoed in injured tones. "You won't see her. She's
gone out with Cahill. It's no fun, I can tell you, being left so
much alone. I've got my work all day--indeed, a great deal too
much of it--but when I come home in the evening, I tell you, I
can't stand the house."
"In my absurd way, I'm lonely too," Margaret replied. "It's
heart-breaking to leave one's old home. I scarcely remember
anything before Wickham Place, and Helen and Tibby were born
there. Helen says--"
"You, too, feel lonely?"
"Horribly. Hullo, Parliament's back!"
Mr. Wilcox glanced at Parliament contemptuously. The more
important ropes of life lay elsewhere. "Yes, they are talking
again," said he. "But you were going to say--"
"Only some rubbish about furniture. Helen says it alone endures
while men and houses perish, and that in the end the world will
be a desert of chairs and sofas--just imagine it!--rolling through
infinity with no one to sit upon them."
"Your sister always likes her little joke."
"She says 'Yes,' my brother says `No,' to Ducie Street. It's no
fun helping us, Mr. Wilcox, I assure you."
"You are not as unpractical as you pretend. I shall never believe
it."
Margaret laughed. But she was--quite as unpractical. She could
not concentrate on details. Parliament, the Thames, the
irresponsive chauffeur, would flash into the field of
house-hunting, and all demand some comment or response. It is
impossible to see modern life steadily and see it whole, and she
had chosen to see it whole. Mr. Wilcox saw steadily. He never
bothered over the mysterious or the private. The Thames might run
inland from the sea, the chauffeur might conceal all passion and
philosophy beneath his unhealthy skin. They knew their own
business, and he knew his.
Yet she liked being with him. He was not a rebuke, but a
stimulus, and banished morbidity. Some twenty years her senior,
he preserved a gift that she supposed herself to have already
lost--not youth's creative power, but its self-confidence and
optimism. He was so sure that it was a very pleasant world. His
complexion was robust, his hair had receded but not thinned, the
thick moustache and the eyes that Helen had compared to
brandy-balls had an agreeable menace in them, whether they were
turned towards the slums or towards the stars. Some day--in the
millennium--there may be no need for his type. At present, homage
is due to it from those who think themselves superior, and who
possibly are.
"At all events you responded to my telegram promptly," he
remarked.
"Oh, even I know a good thing when I see it."
"I'm glad you don't despise the goods of this world."
"Heavens, no! Only idiots and prigs do that."
"I am glad, very glad," he repeated, suddenly softening and
turning to her, as if the remark had pleased him. "There is so
much cant talked in would-be intellectual circles. I am glad you
don't share it. Self-denial is all very well as a means of
strengthening the character. But I can't stand those people who
run down comforts. They have usually some axe to grind. Can you?"
"Comforts are of two kinds," said Margaret, who was keeping
herself in hand--"those we can share with others, like fire,
weather, or music; and those we can't--food, food, for instance.
It depends."
"I mean reasonable comforts, of course. I shouldn't like to think
that you--" He bent nearer; the sentence died unfinished.
Margaret's head turned very stupid, and the inside of it seemed
to revolve like the beacon in a lighthouse. He did not kiss her,
for the hour was half-past twelve, and the car was passing by the
stables of Buckingham Palace. But the atmosphere was so charged
with emotion that people only seemed to exist on her account, and
she was surprised that Crane did not realise this, and turn
round. Idiot though she might be, surely Mr. Wilcox was more--how
should one put it?--more psychological than usual. Always a good
judge of character for business purposes, he seemed this
afternoon to enlarge his field, and to note qualities outside
neatness, obedience, and decision.
"I want to go over the whole house," she announced when they
arrived. "As soon as I get back to Swanage, which will be
to-morrow afternoon, I'll talk it over once more with Helen and
Tibby, and wire you 'yes' or 'no.'"
"Right. The dining-room." And they began their survey.
The dining-room was big, but over-furnished. Chelsea would have
moaned aloud. Mr. Wilcox had eschewed those decorative schemes
that wince, and relent, and refrain, and achieve beauty by
sacrificing comfort and pluck. After so much self-colour and
self-denial, Margaret viewed with relief the sumptuous dado, the
frieze, the gilded wall-paper, amid whose foliage parrots sang.
It would never do with her own furniture, but those heavy chairs,
that immense sideboard loaded with presentation plate, stood up
against its pressure like men. The room suggested men, and
Margaret, keen to derive the modern capitalist from the warriors
and hunters of the past, saw it as an ancient guest-hall, where
the lord sat at meat among his thanes. Even the Bible--the Dutch
Bible that Charles had brought back from the Boer War--fell into
position. Such a room admitted loot.
"Now the entrance-hall."
The entrance-hall was paved.
"Here we fellows smoke."
We fellows smoked in chairs of maroon leather. It was as if a
motor-car had spawned. "Oh, jolly!" said Margaret, sinking into
one of them.
"You do like it?" he said, fixing his eyes on her upturned face,
and surely betraying an almost intimate note. "It's all rubbish
not making oneself comfortable. Isn't it?"
"Ye--es. Semi-rubbish. Are those Cruikshanks?"
"Gillrays. Shall we go on upstairs?"
"Does all this furniture come from Howards End?"
"The Howards End furniture has all gone to Oniton."
"Does-- However, I'm concerned with the house, not the furniture.
How big is this smoking-room?"
"Thirty by fifteen. No, wait a minute. Fifteen and a half."
"Ah, well. Mr. Wilcox, aren't you ever amused at the solemnity
with which we middle classes approach the subject of houses?"
They proceeded to the drawing-room. Chelsea managed better here.
It was sallow and ineffective. One could visualise the ladies
withdrawing to it, while their lords discussed life's realities
below, to the accompaniment of cigars. Had Mrs. Wilcox's
drawing-room at Howards End looked thus? Just as this thought
entered Margaret's brain, Mr. Wilcox did ask her to be his wife,
and the knowledge that she had been right so overcame her that
she nearly fainted.
But the proposal was not to rank among the world's great love
scenes.
"Miss Schlegel"--his voice was firm--"I have had you up on false
pretences. I want to speak about a much more serious matter than
a house."
Margaret almost answered: "I know--"
"Could you be induced to share my--is it probable--"
"Oh, Mr. Wilcox!" she interrupted, taking hold of the piano and
averting her eyes. "I see, I see. I will write to you afterwards
if I may."
He began to stammer. "Miss Schlegel--Margaret you don't
understand."
"Oh yes! Indeed, yes!" said Margaret.
"I am asking you to be my wife."
So deep already was her sympathy, that when he said, "I am asking
you to be my wife," she made herself give a little start. She
must show surprise if he expected it. An immense joy came over
her. It was indescribable. It had nothing to do with humanity,
and most resembled the all-pervading happiness of fine weather.
Fine weather is due to the sun, but Margaret could think of no
central radiance here. She stood in his drawing-room happy, and
longing to give happiness. On leaving him she realised that the
central radiance had been love.
"You aren't offended, Miss Schlegel?"
"How could I be offended?"
There was a moment's pause. He was anxious to get rid of her, and
she knew it. She had too much intuition to look at him as he
struggled for possessions that money cannot buy. He desired
comradeship and affection, but he feared them, and she, who had
taught herself only to desire, and could have clothed the
struggle with beauty, held back, and hesitated with him.
"Good-bye," she continued. "You will have a letter from me--I am
going back to Swanage to-morrow."
"Thank you."
"Good-bye, and it's you I thank."
"I may order the motor round, mayn't I?"
"That would be most kind."
"I wish I had written. Ought I to have written?"
"Not at all."
"There's just one question--"
She shook her head. He looked a little bewildered as they parted.
They parted without shaking hands; she had kept the interview,
for his sake, in tints of the quietest grey. she thrilled with
happiness ere she reached her house. Others had loved her in the
past, if one apply to their brief desires so grave a word, but
the others had been "ninnies"--young men who had nothing to do,
old men who could find nobody better. And she had often 'loved,'
too, but only so far as the facts of sex demanded: mere yearnings
for the masculine sex to be dismissed for what they were worth,
with a sigh. Never before had her personality been touched. She
was not young or very rich, and it amazed her that a man of any
standing should take her seriously as she sat, trying to do
accounts in her empty house, amidst beautiful pictures and noble
books, waves of emotion broke, as if a tide of passion was
flowing through the night air. She shook her head, tried to
concentrate her attention, and failed. In vain did she repeat:
"But I've been through this sort of thing before." She had
never been through it; the big machinery, as opposed to the
little, had been set in motion, and the idea that Mr. Wilcox
loved, obsessed her before she came to love him in return.
She would come to no decision yet. "oh, sir, this is so sudden"--
that prudish phrase exactly expressed her when her time came.
Premonitions are not preparation. She must examine more closely
her own nature and his; she must talk it over judicially with
Helen. It had been a strange love-scene--the central radiance
unacknowledged from first to last. She, in his place, would have
said Ich liebe dich, but perhaps it was not his habit to open the
heart. He might have done it if she had pressed him--as a matter
of duty, perhaps; England expects every man to open his heart
once; but the effort would have jarred him, and never, if she
could avoid it, should he lose those defences that he had chosen
to raise against the world. He must never be bothered with
emotional talk, or with a display of sympathy. He was an elderly
man now, and it would be futile and impudent to correct him.
Mrs. Wilcox strayed in and out, ever a welcome ghost; surveying
the scene, thought Margaret, without one hint of bitterness.
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