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

“No, Henry⁠—can’t you see?⁠—I don’t mean that.”

She recovered herself, but not before Charles had observed her. Stupid and attentive, he was watching the scene.

“I was meaning that when she was eccentric in the past, one could trace it back to the heart in the long-run. She behaved oddly because she cared for someone, or wanted to help them. There’s no possible excuse for her now. She is grieving us deeply, and that is why I am sure that she is not well. ‘Mad’ is too terrible a word, but she is not well. I shall never believe it. I shouldn’t discuss my sister with you if I thought she was well⁠—trouble you about her, I mean.”

Henry began to grow serious. Ill-health was to him something perfectly definite. Generally well himself, he could not realise that we sink to it by slow gradations. The sick had no rights; they were outside the pale; one could lie to them remorselessly. When his first wife was seized, he had promised to take her down into Hertfordshire, but meanwhile arranged with a nursing-home instead. Helen, too, was ill. And the plan that he sketched out for her capture, clever and well-meaning as it was, drew its ethics from the wolf-pack.

“You want to get hold of her?” he said. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? She has got to see a doctor.”

“For all I know she has seen one already.”

“Yes, yes; don’t interrupt.” He rose to his feet and thought intently. The genial, tentative host disappeared, and they saw instead the man who had carved money out of Greece and Africa, and bought forests from the natives for a few bottles of gin. “I’ve got it,” he said at last. “It’s perfectly easy. Leave it to me. We’ll send her down to Howards End.”

“How will you do that?”

“After her books. Tell her that she must unpack them herself. Then you can meet her there.”

“But, Henry, that’s just what she won’t let me do. It’s part of her⁠—whatever it is⁠—never to see me.”

“Of course you won’t tell her you’re going. When she is there, looking at the cases, you’ll just stroll in. If nothing is wrong with her, so much the better. But there’ll be the motor round the corner, and we can run her to a specialist in no time.”

Margaret shook her head. “It’s quite impossible.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t seem impossible to me,” said Tibby; “it is surely a very tippy plan.”

“It is impossible, because⁠—” She looked at her husband sadly. “It’s not the particular language that Helen and I talk, if you see my meaning. It would do splendidly for other people, whom I don’t blame.”

“But Helen doesn’t talk,” said Tibby. “That’s our whole difficulty. She won’t talk your particular language, and on that account you think she’s ill.”

“No, Henry; it’s sweet of you, but I couldn’t.”

“I see,” he said; “you have scruples.”

“I suppose so.”

“And sooner than go against them you would have your sister suffer. You could have got her down to Swanage by a word, but you had scruples. And scruples are all very well. I am as scrupulous as any man alive, I hope; but when it is a case like this, when there is a question of madness⁠—”

“I deny it’s madness.”

“You said just now⁠—”

“It’s madness when I say it, but not when you say it.”

Henry shrugged his shoulders. “Margaret! Margaret!” he groaned. “No education can teach a woman logic. Now, my dear, my time is valuable. Do you want me to help you or not?”

“Not in that way.”

“Answer my question. Plain question, plain answer. Do⁠—”

Charles surprised them by interrupting. “Pater, we may as well keep Howards End out of it,” he said.

“Why, Charles?”

Charles could give no reason; but Margaret felt as if, over tremendous distance, a salutation had passed between them.

“The whole house is at sixes and sevens,” he said crossly. “We don’t want any more mess.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” asked his father. “My boy, pray who’s ‘we’?”

“I am sure I beg your pardon,” said Charles. “I appear always to be intruding.”

By now Margaret wished she had never mentioned her trouble to her husband. Retreat was impossible. He was determined to push the matter to a satisfactory conclusion, and Helen faded as he talked. Her fair, flying hair and eager eyes counted for nothing, for she was ill, without rights, and any of her friends might hunt her. Sick at heart, Margaret joined in the chase. She wrote her sister a lying letter, at her husband’s dictation; she said the furniture was all at Howards End, but could be seen on Monday next at 3 p.m., when a charwoman would be in attendance. It was a cold letter, and the more plausible for that. Helen would think she was offended. And on Monday next she and Henry were to lunch with Dolly, and then ambush themselves in the garden.

After they had gone, Mr. Wilcox said to his son: “I can’t have this sort of behaviour, my boy. Margaret’s too sweet-natured to mind, but I mind for her.”

Charles made no answer.

“Is anything wrong with you, Charles, this afternoon?”

“No, pater; but you may be taking on a bigger business than you reckon.”

“How?”

“Don’t ask me.”

One speaks of the moods of spring, but the days that are her true children have only one mood; they are all full of the rising and dropping of winds, and the whistling of birds. New flowers may come out, the green embroidery of the hedges increase, but the same heaven broods overhead, soft, thick, and blue, the same figures, seen and unseen, are wandering by coppice and meadow. The morning that Margaret had spent with Miss Avery, and the afternoon she set out to entrap Helen, were the scales of a single balance. Time might never have moved, rain never have fallen, and man alone, with his schemes and ailments, was troubling Nature until he saw her through a veil of tears.

She protested no more. Whether Henry was right or wrong, he was most kind, and she