Howards End (14 page)

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, than 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 everyone 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 long-haired 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, or 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 Charleses. “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—two, Wickham Place. We shan’t be there very long, either.”

“You, too, on the move?”

“Next September,” Margaret sighed.

“Everyone 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. Everyone 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.”

“Let’s ask him to tea.”

C
HAPTER
16

L
EONARD ACCEPTED
the invitation to tea next Saturday. But he was right; the visit proved a conspicuous failure.

“Sugar?” said Margaret.

“Cake?” said Helen. “The big cake or the little deadlies? I’m afraid you thought my letter rather odd, but we’ll explain—we aren’t odd, really—nor affected, really. We’re over-expressive: that’s all.”

As a lady’s lap-dog Leonard did not excel. He was not an Italian, still less a Frenchman, in whose blood there runs the very spirit of persiflage and of gracious repartee. His wit was the Cockney’s; it opened no doors into imagination, and Helen was drawn up short by “The more a lady has to say, the better,” administered waggishly.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Ladies brighten—”

“Yes, I know. The darlings are regular sunbeams. Let me give you a plate.”

“How do you like your work?” interposed Margaret.

He, too, was drawn up short. He would not have these women prying into his work. They were Romance, and so was the room to which he had at last penetrated, with the queer sketches of people bathing upon its walls, and so were the very tea-cups, with their delicate borders of wild strawberries. But he would not let Romance interfere with his life. There is the devil to pay then.

“Oh, well enough,” he answered.

“Your company is the Porphyrion, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s so”—becoming rather offended. “It’s funny how things get round.”

“Why funny?” asked Helen, who did not follow the workings of his mind. “It was written as large as life on your card, and considering we wrote to you there, and that you replied on the stamped paper—”

“Would you call the Porphyrion one of the big Insurance Companies?” pursued Margaret.

“It depends what you call big.”

“I mean by big, a solid, well-established concern that offers a reasonably good career to its employés.”

“I couldn’t say—some would tell you one thing and others another,” said the employé uneasily. “For my own part”—he shook his head—“I only believe half I hear. Not that even; it’s safer. Those clever ones come to the worse grief, I’ve often noticed. Ah, you can’t be too careful.”

He drank, and wiped his moustache, which was going to be one of those moustaches that always droop into tea-cups—more bother than they’re worth, surely, and not fashionable either.

“I quite agree, and that’s why I was curious to know: is it a solid, well-established concern?”

Leonard had no idea. He understood his own corner of the machine, but nothing beyond it. He desired to confess neither knowledge nor ignorance, and under these circumstances, another motion of the head seemed safest. To him, as to the British public, the Porphyrion was the Porphyrion of the advertisement—a giant, in the classical style, but draped sufficiently, who held in one hand a burning torch, and pointed with the other to St. Paul’s and Windsor Castle. A large sum of money was inscribed below, and you drew your own conclusions. This giant caused Leonard to do arithmetic and write letters, to explain the regulations to new clients, and re-explain them to old ones. A giant was of an impulsive morality—one knew that much. He would pay for Mrs. Munt’s hearth-rug with ostentatious haste, a large claim he would repudiate quietly and fight court by court. But his true fighting weight, his antecedents, his amours with other members of the commercial Pantheon—all these were as uncertain to ordinary mortals as were the escapades of Zeus. While the gods are powerful, we learn little about them. It is only in the days of their decadence that a strong light beats into heaven.

“We were told the Porphyrion’s no go,” blurted Helen. “We wanted to tell you; that’s why we wrote.”

“A friend of ours did think that it is unsufficiently reinsured,” said Margaret.

Now Leonard had his clue. He must praise the Porphyrion. “You can tell your friend,” he said, “that he’s quite wrong.”

“Oh, good!”

The young man coloured a little. In his circle to be wrong was fatal. The Miss Schlegels did not mind being wrong. They were genuinely glad that they had been misinformed. To them nothing was fatal but evil.

“Wrong, so to speak,” he added.

“How’s ‘so to speak’?”

“I mean I wouldn’t say he’s right altogether.”

But this was a blunder. “Then he is right partly,” said the elder woman, quick as lightning.

Leonard replied that everyone was right partly, if it came to that.

“Mr. Bast, I don’t understand business, and I dare say my questions are stupid, but can you tell me what makes a concern ‘right’ or ‘wrong’?”

Leonard sat back with a sigh.

“Our friend, who is also a business man, was so positive. He said before Christmas—”

“And advised you to clear out of it,” concluded Helen. “But I don’t see why he should know better than you do.”

Leonard rubbed his hands. He was tempted to say that he knew nothing about the thing at all. But a commercial training was too strong for him. Nor could he say it was a bad thing, for this would be giving it away; nor yet that it was good, for this would be giving it away equally. He attempted to suggest that it was something between the two, with vast possibilities in either direction, but broke down under the gaze of four sincere eyes. As yet he scarcely distinguished between the two sisters. One was more beautiful and more lively, but “the Miss Schlegels” still remained a composite Indian god whose waving arms and contradictory speeches were the product of a single mind.

“One can but see,” he remarked, adding, “as Ibsen says, ‘things happen.’ ” He was itching to talk about books and make the most of his romantic hour. Minute after minute slipped away, while the ladies, with imperfect skill, discussed the subject of reinsurance or praised their anonymous friend. Leonard grew annoyed—perhaps rightly. He made vague remarks about not being one of those who minded their affairs being talked over by others, but they did not take the hint. Men might have shown more tact. Women, however tactful elsewhere, are heavy-handed here. They cannot see why we should shroud our incomes and our prospects in a veil. “How much exactly have you, and how much do you expect to have next June?” And these were women with a theory, who held that reticence about money matters is absurd, and that life would be truer if each would state the exact size of the golden island upon which he stands, the exact stretch of warp over which he throws the woof that is not money. How can we do justice to the pattern otherwise?

And the precious minutes slipped away, and Jacky and squalor came nearer. At last he could bear it no longer, and broke in, reciting the names of books feverishly. There was a moment of piercing joy when Margaret said: “So
you
like Carlyle,” and then the door opened, and “Mr. Wilcox, Miss Wilcox” entered, preceded by two prancing puppies.

“Oh, the dears! Oh, Evie, how too impossibly sweet!” screamed Helen, falling on her hands and knees.

“We brought the little fellows round,” said Mr. Wilcox.

“I bred ’em myself.”

“Oh, really! Mr. Bast, come and play with puppies.”

“I’ve got to be going now,” said Leonard sourly.

“But play with puppies a little first.”

“This is Ahab, that’s Jezebel,” said Evie, who was one of those who name animals after the less successful characters of Old Testament history.

“I’ve got to be going.”

Helen was too much occupied with puppies to notice him.

“Mr. Wilcox, Mr. Ba—Must you be really? Good-bye!”

“Come again,” said Helen from the floor.

Then Leonard’s gorge arose. Why should he come again? What was the good of it? He said roundly: “No, I shan’t; I knew it would be a failure.”

Most people would have let him go. “A little mistake. We tried knowing another class—impossible.” But the Schlegels had never played with life. They had attempted friendship, and they would take the consequences. Helen retorted: “I call that a very rude remark. What do you want to turn on me like that for?” and suddenly the drawing-room re-echoed to a vulgar row.

“You ask me why I turn on you?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to have me here for?”

“To help you, you silly boy!” cried Helen. “And don’t shout.”

“I don’t want your patronage. I don’t want your tea. I was quite happy. What do you want to unsettle me for?” He turned to Mr. Wilcox. “I put it to this gentleman. I ask you, sir, am I to have my brain picked?”

Mr. Wilcox turned to Margaret with the air of humorous strength that he could so well command. “Are we intruding, Miss Schlegel? Can we be of any use or shall we go?”

But Margaret ignored him.

“I’m connected with a leading insurance company, sir. I receive what I take to be an invitation from these—ladies” (he drawled the word). “I come, and it’s to have my brain picked. I ask you, is it fair?”

“Highly unfair,” said Mr. Wilcox, drawing a gasp from Evie, who knew that her father was becoming dangerous.

“There, you hear that? Most unfair, the gentleman says. There! Not content with”—pointing at Margaret—“you can’t deny it.” His voice rose: he was falling into the rhythm of a scene with Jacky. “But as soon as I’m useful, it’s a very different thing. ‘Oh yes, send for him. Cross-question him. Pick his brains.’ Oh yes. Now, take me on the whole, I’m a quiet fellow: I’m law-abiding. I don’t wish any unpleasantness; but I—I—”

“You,” said Margaret—“you—you—”

Laughter from Evie, as at a repartee.

“You are the man who tried to walk by the Pole Star.”

More laughter.

“You saw the sunrise.”

Laughter.

“You tried to get away from the fogs that are stifling us all—away past books and houses to the truth. You were looking for a real home.”

“I fail to see the connection,” said Leonard, hot with stupid anger.

“So do I.” There was a pause. “You were that last Sunday—you are this today. Mr. Bast! I and my sister have talked you over. We wanted to help you; we also supposed you might help us. We did not have you here out of charity—which bores us—but because we hoped there would be a connection between last Sunday and other days. What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? They have never entered into mine, but into yours, we thought—Haven’t we all to struggle against life’s daily greyness, against pettiness, against mechanical cheerfulness, against suspicion? I struggle by remembering my friends; others I have known by remembering some place—some beloved place or tree—we thought you one of these.”

“Of course, if there’s been any misunderstanding,” mumbled Leonard, “all I can do is to go. But I beg to state—” He paused. Ahab and Jezebel danced at his boots and made him look ridiculous. “You were picking my brain for official information—I can prove it—I—” He blew his nose and left them.

“Can I help you now?” said Mr. Wilcox, turning to Margaret. “May I have one quiet word with him in the hall?”

“Helen, go after him—do anything—
anything
—to make the noodle understand.”

Helen hesitated.

“But really—” said their visitor. “Ought she to?”

At once she went.

He resumed. “I would have chimed in, but I felt that you could polish him off for yourselves—I didn’t interfere.

You were splendid, Miss Schlegel—absolutely splendid. You can take my word for it, but there are very few women who could have managed him.”

“Oh yes,” said Margaret distractedly.

“Bowling him over with those long sentences was what fetched me,” cried Evie.

“Yes, indeed,” chuckled her father; “all that part about ‘mechanical cheerfulness’—oh, fine!”

“I’m very sorry,” said Margaret, collecting herself. “He’s a nice creature really. I cannot think what set him off. It has been most unpleasant for you.”

“Oh,
I
didn’t mind.” Then he changed his mood. He asked if he might speak as an old friend, and, permission given, said: “Oughtn’t you really to be more careful?”

Margaret laughed, though her thoughts still strayed after Helen. “Do you realize that it’s all your fault?” she said. “You’re responsible.”

“I?”

“This is the young man whom we were to warn against the Porphyrion. We warn him, and—look!”

Mr. Wilcox was annoyed. “I hardly consider that a fair deduction,” he said.

“Obviously unfair,” said Margaret. “I was only thinking how tangled things are. It’s our fault mostly—neither yours nor his.”

“Not his?”

“No.”

“Miss Schlegel, you are too kind.”

“Yes, indeed,” nodded Evie, a little contemptuously.

“You behave much too well to people, and then they impose on you. I know the world and that type of man, and as soon as I entered the room I saw you had not been treating him properly. You must keep that type at a distance. Otherwise they forget themselves. Sad, but true. They aren’t our sort, and one must face the fact.”

“Ye-es.”

“Do admit that we should never have had the outburst if he was a gentleman.”

“I admit it willingly,” said Margaret, who was pacing up and down the room. “A gentleman would have kept his suspicions to himself.”

Mr. Wilcox watched her with a vague uneasiness.

“What did he suspect you of?”

“Of wanting to make money out of him.”

“Intolerable brute! But how were you to benefit?”

“Exactly. How indeed! Just horrible, corroding suspicion. One touch of thought or of goodwill would have brushed it away. Just the senseless fear that does make men intolerable brutes.”

“I come back to my original point. You ought to be more careful, Miss Schlegel. Your servants ought to have orders not to let such people in.”

She turned to him frankly. “Let me explain exactly why we like this man, and want to see him again.”

“That’s your clever way of thinking. I shall never believe you like him.”

“I do. Firstly, because he cares for physical adventure, just as you do. Yes, you go motoring and shooting; he would like to go camping out. Secondly, he cares for something special
in
adventure. It is quickest to call that special something poetry—”

“Oh, he’s one of that writer sort.”