Howards End, E. M. Forster [fox in socks read aloud TXT] 📗

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 realise 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 talking. 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.”

“No⁠—oh no! I mean he may be, but it would be loathsome stuff. His brain is filled with the husks of books, culture⁠—horrible; we want him to wash out his brain and go to the real thing. We want to show him how he may get upsides with life. As I said, either friends or the country, some”⁠—she hesitated⁠—“either some very dear person or some very dear place seems necessary to relieve life’s daily grey, and to show that it is grey. If possible, one should have both.”

Some of her words ran past Mr. Wilcox. He let them run past. Others he caught and criticised with admirable lucidity.

“Your mistake is this, and it is a very common mistake. This young bounder has a life of his own. What right have you to conclude it is an unsuccessful life, or, as you call it, ‘grey’?”

“Because⁠—”

“One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests⁠—wife, children, snug little home. That’s where we practical fellows”⁠—he smiled⁠—“are more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after his own affairs. I quite grant⁠—I look at the faces of the clerks in my own office, and observe them to be dull, but I don’t know what’s going on beneath. So, by the way, with London. I have heard you rail against London, Miss Schlegel, and it seems a funny thing to say but I was very angry with you. What do you know about London? You only see civilisation from the outside. I don’t say in your case, but in too many cases that attitude leads to morbidity, discontent, and Socialism.”

She admitted the strength of his position, though it undermined imagination. As he spoke, some outposts of poetry and perhaps of sympathy fell ruining, and she retreated to what she called her “second line”⁠—to the special facts of the case.

“His wife is an