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

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 wallpaper, 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 motorcar 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.

“Goodbye,” she continued. “You will have a letter from me⁠—I am going back to Swanage tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“Goodbye, 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