Margaret had no intention of letting things slide, and the
evening before she left Swanage she gave her sister a thorough
scolding. She censured her, not for disapproving of the
engagement, but for throwing over her disapproval a veil of
mystery. Helen was equally frank. "Yes," she said, with the air
of one looking inwards, "there is a mystery. I can't help it.
It's not my fault. It's the way life has been made." Helen in
those days was over-interested in the subconscious self. She
exaggerated the Punch and Judy aspect of life, and spoke of
mankind as puppets, whom an invisible showman twitches into love
and war. Margaret pointed out that if she dwelt on this she, too,
would eliminate the personal. Helen was silent for a minute, and
then burst into a queer speech, which cleared the air. "Go on
and marry him. I think you're splendid; and if any one can pull
it off, you will." Margaret denied that there was anything to
"pull off," but she continued: "Yes, there is, and I wasn't up
to it with Paul. I can do only what's easy. I can only entice
and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations.
If I marry, it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss
me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for
there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry,
for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack
Robinson.' There! Because I'm uneducated. But you, you're
different; you're a heroine."
"Oh, Helen! Am I? Will it be as dreadful for poor Henry as all
that?"
"You mean to keep proportion, and that's heroic, it's Greek, and
I don't see why it shouldn't succeed with you. Go on and fight
with him and help him. Don't ask me for help, or even for
sympathy. Henceforward I'm going my own way. I mean to be
thorough, because thoroughness is easy. I mean to dislike your
husband, and to tell him so. I mean to make no concessions to
Tibby. If Tibby wants to live with me, he must lump me. I mean to
love you more than ever. Yes, I do. You and I have built up
something real, because it is purely spiritual. There's no veil
of mystery over us. Unreality and mystery begin as soon as one
touches the body. The popular view is, as usual, exactly the
wrong one. Our bothers are over tangible things--money, husbands,
house-hunting. But Heaven will work of itself."
Margaret was grateful for this expression of affection, and
answered, "Perhaps." All vistas close in the unseen--no one
doubts it--but Helen closed them rather too quickly for her
taste. At every turn of speech one was confronted with reality
and the absolute. Perhaps Margaret grew too old for metaphysics,
perhaps Henry was weaning her from them, but she felt that there
was something a little unbalanced in the mind that so readily
shreds the visible. The business man who assumes that this life
is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is nothing,
fail, on this side and on that, to hit the truth. "Yes, I see,
dear; it's about half-way between," Aunt Juicy had hazarded in
earlier years. No; truth, being alive, was not half-way between
anything. It was only to be found by continuous excursions into
either realm, and though proportion is the final secret, to
espouse it at the outset is to insure sterility.
Helen, agreeing here, disagreeing there, would have talked till
midnight, but Margaret, with her packing to do, focussed the
conversation on Henry. She might abuse Henry behind his back, but
please would she always be civil to him in company? "I definitely
dislike him, but I'll do what I can," promised Helen. "Do what
you can with my friends in return."
This conversation made Margaret easier. Their inner life was so
safe that they could bargain over externals in a way that would
have been incredible to Aunt Juley, and impossible for Tibby or
Charles. There are moments when the inner life actually "pays,"
when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive,
are suddenly of practical use. Such moments are still rare in the
West; that they come at all promises a fairer future. Margaret,
though unable to understand her sister, was assured against
estrangement, and returned to London with a more peaceful mind.
The following morning, at eleven o'clock, she presented herself
at the offices of the Imperial and West African Rubber Company.
She was glad to go there, for Henry had implied his business
rather than described it, and the formlessness and vagueness that
one associates with Africa itself had hitherto brooded over the
main sources of his wealth. Not that a visit to the office cleared
things up. There was just the ordinary surface scum of ledgers
and polished counters and brass bars that began and stopped for
no possible reason, of electric-light globes blossoming in
triplets, of little rabbit-hutches faced with glass or wire, of
little rabbits. And even when she penetrated to the inner depths,
she found only the ordinary table and Turkey carpet, and though
the map over the fireplace did depict a helping of West Africa,
it was a very ordinary map. Another map hung opposite, on which
the whole continent appeared, looking like a whale marked out
for a blubber, and by its side was a door, shut, but Henry's
voice came through it, dictating a "strong" letter. She might
have been at the Porphyrion, or Dempster's Bank, or her own
wine-merchant's. Everything seems just alike in these days. But
perhaps she was seeing the Imperial side of the company rather
than its West African, and Imperialism always had been one of
her difficulties.
"One minute!" called Mr. Wilcox on receiving her name. He touched
a bell, the effect of which was to produce Charles.
Charles had written his father an adequate letter--more adequate
than Evie's, through which a girlish indignation throbbed. And he
greeted his future stepmother with propriety.
"I hope that my wife--how do you do?--will give you a decent
lunch," was his opening. "I left instructions, but we live in a
rough-and-ready way. She expects you back to tea, too, after you
have had a look at Howards End. I wonder what you'll think of the
place. I wouldn't touch it with tongs myself. Do sit down! It's a
measly little place."
"I shall enjoy seeing it," said Margaret, feeling, for the first
time, shy.
"You'll see it at its worst, for Bryce decamped abroad last
Monday without even arranging for a charwoman to clear up after
him. I never saw such a disgraceful mess. It's unbelievable. He
wasn't in the house a month."
"I've more than a little bone to pick with Bryce," called Henry
from the inner chamber.
"Why did he go so suddenly?"
"Invalid type; couldn't sleep."
"Poor fellow!"
"Poor fiddlesticks!" said Mr. Wilcox, joining them. "He had the
impudence to put up notice-boards without as much as saying with
your leave or by your leave. Charles flung them down."
"Yes, I flung them down," said Charles modestly.
"I've sent a telegram after him, and a pretty sharp one, too.
He, and he in person, is responsible for the upkeep of that house
for the next three years."
"The keys are at the farm; we wouldn't have the keys."
"Quite right."
"Dolly would have taken them, but I was in, fortunately."
"What's Mr. Bryce like?" asked Margaret.
But nobody cared. Mr. Bryce was the tenant, who had no right to
sublet; to have defined him further was a waste of time. On his
misdeeds they descanted profusely, until the girl who had been
typing the strong letter game out with it. Mr. Wilcox added his
signature. "Now we'll be off," said he.
A motor-drive, a form of felicity detested by Margaret,
awaited her. Charles saw them in, civil to the last, and in a
moment the offices of the Imperial and West African Rubber
Company faded away. But it was not an impressive drive. Perhaps
the weather was to blame, being grey and banked high with weary
clouds. Perhaps Hertfordshire is scarcely intended for motorists.
Did not a gentleman once motor so quickly through Westmoreland
that he missed it? and if Westmoreland can be missed, it will
fare ill with a county whose delicate structure particularly
needs the attentive eye. Hertfordshire is England at its
quietest, with little emphasis of river and hill; it is England
meditative. If Drayton were with us again to write a new edition
of his incomparable poem, he would sing the nymphs of
Hertfordshire as indeterminate of feature, with hair obfuscated
by the London smoke. Their eyes would be sad, and averted from
their fate towards the Northern flats, their leader not Isis or
Sabrina, but the slowly flowing Lea. No glory of raiment would be
theirs, no urgency of dance; but they would be real nymphs.
The chauffeur could not travel as quickly as he had hoped, for
the Great North Road was full of Easter traffic. But he went
quite quick enough for Margaret, a poor-spirited creature, who
had chickens and children on the brain.
"They're all right," said Mr. Wilcox. "They'll learn--like the
swallows and the telegraph-wires."
"Yes, but, while they're learning--"
"The motor's come to stay," he answered. "One must get about.
There's a pretty church--oh, you aren't sharp enough. Well, look
out, if the road worries you--right outward at the scenery."
She looked at the scenery. It heaved and merged like porridge.
Presently it congealed. They had arrived.
Charles's house on the left; on the right the swelling forms of
the Six Hills. Their appearance in such a neighbourhood surprised
her. They interrupted the stream of residences that was
thickening up towards Hilton. Beyond them she saw meadows and a
wood, and beneath them she settled that soldiers of the best kind
lay buried. She hated war and liked soldiers--it was one of her
amiable inconsistencies.
But here was Dolly, dressed up to the nines, standing at the door
to greet them, and here were the first drops of the rain. They
ran in gaily, and after a long wait in the drawing-room, sat down
to the rough-and-ready lunch, every dish of which concealed or
exuded cream. Mr. Bryce was the chief topic of conversation.
Dolly described his visit with the key, while her father-in-law
gave satisfaction by chaffing her and contradicting all she said.
It was evidently the custom to laugh at Dolly. He chaffed
Margaret too, and Margaret roused from a grave meditation was
pleased and chaffed him back. Dolly seemed surprised and eyed her
curiously. After lunch the two children came down. Margaret
disliked babies, but hit it off better with the two-year-old, and
sent Dolly into fits of laughter by talking sense to him. "Kiss
them now, and come away," said Mr. Wilcox. She came, but refused
to kiss them; it was such hard luck on the little things, she
said, and though Dolly proffered Chorly-worly and Porgly-woggles
in turn, she was obdurate.
By this time it was raining steadily. The car came round with the
hood up, and again she lost all sense of space. In a few minutes
they stopped, and Crane opened the door of the car.
"What's happened?" asked Margaret.
"What do you suppose?" said Henry.
A little porch was close up against her face.
"Are we there already?"
"We are."
"Well, I never! In years ago it seemed so far away."
Smiling, but somehow disillusioned, she jumped out, and her
impetus carried her to the front-door. She was about to open it,
when Henry said: "That's no good; it's locked. Who's got the
key?"
As he had himself forgotten to call for the key at the farm, no
one replied. He also wanted to know who had left the front gate
open, since a cow had strayed in from the road, and was spoiling
the croquet lawn. Then he said rather crossly: "Margaret, you
wait in the dry. I'll go down for the key. It isn't a hundred
yards."
"Mayn't I come too?"
"No; I shall be back before I'm gone."
Then the car turned away, and it was as if a curtain had risen.
For the second time that day she saw the appearance of the earth.
There were the greengage-trees that Helen had once described,
there the tennis lawn, there the hedge that would be glorious
with dog-roses in June, but the vision now was of black and
palest green. Down by the dell-hole more vivid colours were
awakening, and Lent lilies stood sentinel on its margin, or
advanced in battalions over the grass. Tulips were a tray of
jewels. She could not see the wych-elm tree, but a branch of the
celebrated vine, studded with velvet knobs had covered the perch.
She was struck by the fertility of the soil; she had seldom been
in a garden where the flowers looked so well, and even the weeds
she was idly plucking out of the porch were intensely green. Why
had poor Mr. Bryce fled from all this beauty? For she had already
decided that the place was beautiful.
"Naughty cow! Go away!" cried Margaret to the cow, but without
indignation.
Harder came the rain, pouring out of a windless sky, and
spattering up from the notice-boards of the house-agents, which
lay in a row on the lawn where Charles had hurled them. She must
have interviewed Charles in another world--where one did have
interviews. How Helen would revel in such a notion! Charles dead,
all people dead, nothing alive but houses and gardens. The
obvious dead, the intangible alive, and no connection at all
between them! Margaret smiled. Would that her own fancies were as
clear-cut! Would that she could deal as high-handedly with the
world! Smiling and sighing, she laid her hand upon the door. It
opened. The house was not locked up at all.
She hesitated. Ought she to wait for Henry? He felt strongly
about property, and might prefer to show her over himself. On the
other hand, he had told her to keep in the dry, and the porch was
beginning to drip. So she went in, and the draught from inside
slammed the door behind.
Desolation greeted her. Dirty finger-prints were on the
hall-windows, flue and rubbish on its unwashed boards. The
civilisation of luggage had been here for a month, and then
decamped. Dining-room and drawing-room--right and left--were
guessed only by their wallpapers. They were just rooms where one
could shelter from the rain. Across the ceiling of each ran a
great beam. The dining-room and hall revealed theirs openly, but
the drawing-room's was match-boarded--because the facts of life
must be concealed from ladies? Drawing-room, dining-room, and
hall--how petty the names sounded! Here were simply three rooms
where children could play and friends shelter from the rain. Yes,
and they were beautiful.
Then she opened one of the doors opposite--there were two--and
exchanged wall-papers for whitewash. It was the servants' part,
though she scarcely realised that: just rooms again, where
friends might shelter. The garden at the back was full of
flowering cherries and plums. Farther on were hints of the meadow
and a black cliff of pines. Yes, the meadow was beautiful.
Penned in by the desolate weather, she recaptured the sense of
space which the motor had tried to rob from her. She remembered
again that ten square miles are not ten times as wonderful as one
square mile, that a thousand square miles are not practically the
same as heaven. The phantom of bigness, which London encourages,
was laid for ever when she paced from the hall at Howards End to
its kitchen and heard the rain run this way and that where the
watershed of the roof divided it.
Now Helen came to her mind, scrutinising half Wessex from the
ridge of the Purbeck Downs, and saying: "You will have to lose
something." She was not so sure. For instance she would double
her kingdom by opening the door that concealed the stairs.
Now she thought of the map of Africa; of empires; of her father;
of the two supreme nations, streams of whose life warmed her
blood, but, mingling, had cooled her brain. She paced back into
the hall, and as she did so the house reverberated.
"Is that you, Henry?" she called.
There was no answer, but the house reverberated again.
"Henry, have you got in?"
But it was the heart of the house beating, faintly at first, then
loudly, martially. It dominated the rain.
It is the starved imagination, not the well-nourished, that is
afraid. Margaret flung open the door to the stairs. A noise as of
drums seemed to deafen her. A woman, an old woman, was
descending, with figure erect, with face impassive, with lips
that parted and said dryly:
"Oh! Well, I took you for Ruth Wilcox."
Margaret stammered: "I--Mrs. Wilcox--I?"
"In fancy, of course--in fancy. You had her way of walking.
Good-day." And the old woman passed out into the rain.
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