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

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 Böcklin’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 gone 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