If one wanted to show a foreigner England, perhaps the wisest
course would be to take him to the final section of the Purbeck
Hills, and stand him on their summit, a few miles to the east of
Corfe. Then system after system of our island would roll together
under his feet. Beneath him is the valley of the Frome, and all
the wild lands that come tossing down from Dorchester, black and
gold, to mirror their gorse in the expanses of Poole. The valley
of the Stour is beyond, unaccountable stream, dirty at Blandford,
pure at Wimborne--the Stour, sliding out of fat fields, to marry
the Avon beneath the tower of Christ church. The valley of the
Avon--invisible, but far to the north the trained eye may see
Clearbury Ring that guards it, and the imagination may leap
beyond that on to Salisbury Plain itself, and beyond the Plain to
all the glorious downs of Central England. Nor is Suburbia
absent. Bournemouth's ignoble coast cowers to the right,
heralding the pine-trees that mean, for all their beauty, red
houses, and the Stock Exchange, and extend to the gates of London
itself. So tremendous is the City's trail! But the cliffs of
Freshwater it shall never touch, and the island will guard the
Island's purity till the end of time. Seen from the west the
Wight is beautiful beyond all laws of beauty. It is as if a
fragment of England floated forward to greet the foreigner--chalk
of our chalk, turf of our turf, epitome of what will follow. And
behind the fragment lies Southampton, hostess to the nations, and
Portsmouth, a latent fire, and all around it, with double and
treble collision of tides, swirls the sea. How many villages
appear in this view! How many castles! How many churches,
vanished or triumphant! How many ships, railways, and roads! What
incredible variety of men working beneath that lucent sky to what
final end! The reason fails, like a wave on the Swanage beach;
the imagination swells, spreads, and deepens, until it becomes
geographic and encircles England.
So Frieda Mosebach, now Frau Architect Liesecke, and mother to
her husband's baby, was brought up to these heights to be
impressed, and, after a prolonged gaze, she said that the hills
were more swelling here than in Pomerania, which was true, but
did not seem to Mrs. Munt apposite. Poole Harbour was dry, which
led her to praise the absence of muddy foreshore at Friedrich
Wilhelms Bad, Rugen, where beech-trees hang over the tideless
Baltic, and cows may contemplate the brine. Rather unhealthy Mrs.
Munt thought this would be, water being safer when it moved
about.
"And your English lakes--Vindermere, Grasmere they, then,
unhealthy?"
"No, Frau Liesecke; but that is because they are fresh water, and
different. Salt water ought to have tides, and go up and down a
great deal, or else it smells. Look, for instance, at an
aquarium."
"An aquarium! Oh, MEESIS Munt, you mean to tell me that fresh
aquariums stink less than salt? Why, then Victor, my
brother-in-law, collected many tadpoles--" "You are not to say
'stink,'" interrupted Helen; "at least, you may say it, but you
must pretend you are being funny while you say it."
"Then 'smell.' And the mud of your Pool down there--does it not
smell, or may I say 'stink,' ha, ha?"
"There always has been mud in Poole Harbour," said Mrs. Munt,
with a slight frown. "The rivers bring it down, and a most
valuable oyster-fishery depends upon it."
"Yes, that is so," conceded Frieda; and another international
incident was closed.
"'Bournemouth is,'" resumed their hostess, quoting a local rhyme
to which she was much attached--"'Bournemouth is, Poole was, and
Swanage is to be the hmst important town of all and biggest of
the three.' Now, Frau Liesecke, I have shown you Bournemouth, and
I have shown you Poole, so let us walk backward a little, and
look down again at Swanage."
"Aunt Juley, wouldn't that be Meg's train?"
A tiny puff of smoke had been circling the harbour, and now was
bearing southwards towards them over the black and the gold.
"Oh, dearest Margaret, I do hope she won't be overtired."
"Oh, I do wonder--I do wonder whether she's taken the house."
"I hope she hasn't been hasty."
"So do I--oh, SO do I."
"Will it be as beautiful as Wickham Place?" Frieda asked.
"I should think it would. Trust Mr. Wilcox for doing himself
proud. All those Ducie Street houses are beautiful in their
modern way, and I can't think why he doesn't keep on with it. But
it's really for Evie that he went there, and now that Evie's
going to be married--"
"Ah!"
"You've never seen Miss Wilcox, Frieda. How absurdly matrimonial
you are!"
"But sister to that Paul?"
"Yes."
"And to that Charles," said Mrs. Munt with feeling. "Oh, Helen,
Helen, what a time that was!"
Helen laughed. "Meg and I haven't got such tender hearts. If
there's a chance of a cheap house, we go for it."
"Now look, Frau Liesecke, at my niece's train. You see, it is
coming towards us--coming, coming; and, when it gets to Corfe, it
will actually go THROUGH the downs, on which we are standing, so
that, if we walk over, as I suggested, and look down on Swanage,
we shall see it coming on the other side. Shall we?"
Frieda assented, and in a few minutes they had crossed the ridge
and exchanged the greater view for the lesser. Rather a dull
valley lay below, backed by the slope of the coastward downs.
They were looking across the Isle of Purbeck and on to Swanage,
soon to be the most important town of all, and ugliest of the
three. Margaret's train reappeared as promised, and was greeted
with approval by her aunt. It came to a standstill in the middle
distance, and there it had been planned that Tibby should meet
her, and drive her, and a tea-basket, up to join them.
"You see," continued Helen to her cousin, "the Wilcoxes collect
houses as your Victor collects tadpoles. They have, one, Ducie
Street; two, Howards End, where my great rumpus was; three, a
country seat in Shropshire; four, Charles has a house in Hilton;
and five, another near Epsom; and six, Evie will have a house
when she marries, and probably a pied-a-terre in the country--
which makes seven. Oh yes, and Paul a hut in Africa makes eight.
I wish we could get Howards End. That was something like a dear
little house! Didn't you think so, Aunt Juley?"
"I had too much to do, dear, to look at it," said Mrs. Munt, with
a gracious dignity. "I had everything to settle and explain, and
Charles Wilcox to keep in his place besides. It isn't likely I
should remember much. I just remember having lunch in your
bedroom."
"Yes, so do I. But, oh dear, dear, how dreadful it all seems! And
in the autumn there began that anti-Pauline movement--you, and
Frieda, and Meg, and Mrs. Wilcox, all obsessed with the idea that
I might yet marry Paul."
"You yet may," said Frieda despondently.
Helen shook her head. "The Great Wilcox Peril will never return.
If I'm certain of anything it's of that."
"One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions."
The remark fell damply on the conversation. But Helen slipped her
arm round her cousin, somehow liking her the better for making
it. It was not an original remark, nor had Frieda appropriated it
passionately, for she had a patriotic rather than a philosophic
mind. Yet it betrayed that interest in the universal which the
average Teuton possesses and the average Englishman does not. It
was, however illogically, the good, the beautiful, the true, as
opposed to the respectable, the pretty, the adequate. It was a
landscape of Bocklin's beside a landscape of Leader's, strident
and ill-considered, but quivering into supernatural life. It
sharpened idealism, stirred the soul. It may have been a bad
preparation for what followed.
"Look!" cried Aunt Juley, hurrying away from generalities over
the narrow summit of the down. "Stand where I stand, and you will
see the pony-cart coming. I see the pony-cart coming."
They stood and saw the pony-cart coming. Margaret and Tibby were
presently seen coming in it. Leaving the outskirts of Swanage, it
drove for a little through the budding lanes, and then began the
ascent.
"Have you got the house?" they shouted, long before she could
possibly hear.
Helen ran down to meet her. The highroad passed over a saddle,
and a track went thence at right angles alone the ridge of the
down.
"Have you got the house?"
Margaret shook her head.
"Oh, what a nuisance! So we're as we were?"
"Not exactly."
She got out, looking tired.
"Some mystery," said Tibby. "We are to be enlightened presently."
Margaret came close up to her and whispered that she had had a
proposal of marriage from Mr. Wilcox.
Helen was amused. She opened the gate on to the downs so that her
brother might lead the pony through. "It's just like a widower,"
she remarked. "They've cheek enough for anything, and invariably
select one of their first wife's friends."
Margaret's face flashed despair.
"That type--" She broke off with a cry. "Meg, not anything wrong
with you?"
"Wait one minute," said Margaret, whispering always.
"But you've never conceivably--you've never--" She pulled herself
together. "Tibby, hurry up through; I can't hold this gate
indefinitely. Aunt Juley! I say, Aunt Juley, make the tea, will
you, and Frieda; we've got to talk houses, and will come on
afterwards." And then, turning her face to her sister's, she
burst into tears.
Margaret was stupefied. She heard herself saying, "Oh, really--"
She felt herself touched with a hand that trembled.
"Don't," sobbed Helen, "don't, don't, Meg, don't!" She seemed
incapable of saying any other word. Margaret, trembling herself,
led her forward up the road, till they strayed through another
gate on to the down.
"Don't, don't do such a thing! I tell you not to--don't! I know--
don't!"
"What do you know?"
"Panic and emptiness," sobbed Helen. "Don't!"
Then Margaret thought, "Helen is a little selfish. I have never
behaved like this when there has seemed a chance of her
marrying." She said: "But we would still see each other very--
often, and you--"
"It's not a thing like that," sobbed Helen. And she broke right
away and wandered distractedly upwards, stretching her hands
towards the view and crying.
"What's happened to you?" called Margaret, following through the
wind that gathers at sundown on the northern slopes of hills.
"But it's stupid!" And suddenly stupidity seized her, and the
immense landscape was blurred. But Helen turned back.
"I don't know what's happened to either of us," said Margaret,
wiping her eyes. "We must both have done mad." Then Helen wiped
hers, and they even laughed a little.
"Look here, sit down."
"All right; I'll sit down if you'll sit down."
"There. (One kiss.) Now, whatever, whatever is the matter?"
"I do mean what I said. Don't; it wouldn't do."
"Oh, Helen, stop saying 'don't'! It's ignorant. It's as if your
head wasn't out of the slime. 'Don't' is probably what Mrs. Bast
says all the day to Mr. Bast."
Helen was silent.
"Well?"
"Tell me about it first, and meanwhile perhaps I'll have got my
head out of the slime."
"That's better. Well, where shall I begin? When I arrived at
Waterloo--no, I'll go back before that, because I'm anxious you
should know everything from the first. The 'first' was about ten
days ago. It was the day Mr. Bast came to tea and lost his
temper. I was defending him, and Mr. Wilcox became jealous about
me, however slightly. I thought it was the involuntary thing,
which men can't help any more than we can. You know--at least, I
know in my own case--when a man has said to me, 'So-and-so's a
pretty girl,' I am seized with a momentary sourness against So-
and-so, and long to tweak her ear. It's a tiresome feeling, but
not an important one, and one easily manages it. But it wasn't
only this in Mr. Wilcox's case, I gather now."
"Then you love him?'
Margaret considered. "It is wonderful knowing that a real man
cares for you," she said. "The mere fact of that grows more
tremendous. Remember, I've known and liked him steadily for
nearly three years."
"But loved him?"
Margaret peered into her past. It is pleasant to analyse feelings
while they are still only feelings, and unembodied in the social
fabric. With her arm round Helen, and her eyes shifting over the
view, as if this country or that could reveal the secret of her
own heart, she meditated honestly, and said, "No."
"But you will?"
"Yes," said Margaret, "of that I'm pretty sure. Indeed, I began
the moment he spoke to me."
"And have settled to marry him?"
"I had, but am wanting a long talk about it now. What is it
against him, Helen? You must try and say."
Helen, in her turn, looked outwards. "It is ever since Paul," she
said finally.
"But what has Mr. Wilcox to do with Paul?"
"But he was there, they were all there that morning when I came
down to breakfast, and saw that Paul was frightened--the man who
loved me frightened and all his paraphernalia fallen, so that I
knew it was impossible, because personal relations are the
important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of
telegrams and anger."
She poured the sentence forth in one breath, but her sister
understood it, because it touched on thoughts that were familiar
between them.
"That's foolish. In the first place, I disagree about the outer
life. Well, we've often argued that. The real point is that there
is the widest gulf between my love-making and yours. Yours was
romance; mine will be prose. I'm not running it down--a very good
kind of prose, but well considered, well thought out. For
instance, I know all Mr. Wilcox's faults. He's afraid of emotion.
He cares too much about success, too little about the past. His
sympathy lacks poetry, and so isn't sympathy really. I'd even say
"--she looked at the shining lagoons--"that, spiritually, he's
not as honest as I am. Doesn't that satisfy you?"
"No, it doesn't," said Helen. "It makes me feel worse and worse.
You must be mad."
Margaret made a movement of irritation.
"I don't intend him, or any man or any woman, to be all my life--
good heavens, no! There are heaps of things in me that he
doesn't, and shall never, understand."
Thus she spoke before the wedding ceremony and the physical
union, before the astonishing glass shade had fallen that
interposes between married couples and the world. She was to keep
her independence more than do most women as yet. Marriage was to
alter her fortunes rather than her character, and she was not far
wrong in boasting that she understood her future husband. Yet he
did alter her character--a little. There was an unforeseen
surprise, a cessation of the winds and odours of life, a social
pressure that would have her think conjugally.
"So with him," she continued. "There are heaps of things in him--
more especially things that he does that will always be hidden
from me. He has all those public qualities which you so despise
and which enable all this--" She waved her hand at the landscape,
which confirmed anything. "If Wilcoxes hadn't worked and died in
England for thousands of years, you and I couldn't sit here
without having our throats cut. There would be no trains, no
ships to carry us literary people about in, no fields even. Just
savagery. No--perhaps not even that. Without their spirit life
might never have moved out of protoplasm. More and more do I
refuse to draw my income and sneer at those who guarantee it.
There are times when it seems to me--"
"And to me, and to all women. So one kissed Paul."
"That's brutal." said 'Margaret. "Mine is an absolutely different
case. I've thought things out."
"It makes no difference thinking things out. They come to the
same."
"Rubbish!"
There was a long silence, during which the tide returned into
Poole Harbour. "One would lose something," murmured Helen,
apparently to herself. The water crept over the mud-flats towards
the gorse and the blackened heather. Branksea Island lost its
immense foreshores, and became a sombre episode of trees. Frome
was forced inward towards Dorchester, Stour against Wimborne,
Avon towards Salisbury, and over the immense displacement the sun
presided, leading it to triumph ere he sank to rest. England was
alive, throbbing through all her estuaries, crying for joy
through the mouths of all her gulls, and the north wind, with
contrary motion, blew stronger against her rising seas. What did
it mean? For what end are her fair complexities, her changes of
soil, her sinuous coast? Does she belong to those who have
moulded her and made her feared by other lands, or to those who
have added nothing to her power, but have somehow seen her, seen
the whole island at once, lying as a jewel in a silver sea,
sailing as a ship of souls, with all the brave world's fleet
accompanying her towards eternity?
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