HOWARDS END
Chapter 17
The Age of Property holds bitter moments even for a proprietor. When a
move is imminent, furniture becomes ridiculous, and Margaret now lay awake at
nights wondering where, where on earth they and all their belongings would be
deposited in September next. Chairs, tables, pictures, books, that had
rumbled down to them through the generations, must rumble forward again like a
slide of rubbish to which she longed to give the final push, and send toppling
into the sea. But there were all their father's books--they never read
them, but they were their father's, and must be kept. There was the
marble-topped chiffonier--their mother had set store by it, they could not
remember why. Round every knob and cushion in the house sentiment
gathered, a sentiment that was at times personal, but more often a faint piety
to the dead, a prolongation of rites that might have ended at the
grave.
It was absurd, if you came to think of it;
Helen and Tibby came to think of it: Margaret was too busy with the
house-agents. The feudal ownership of land did bring dignity, whereas the
modern ownership of movables is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We
are reverting to the civilization of luggage, and historians of the future will
note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the
earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty. The
Schlegels were certainly the poorer for the loss of Wickham Place. It had
helped to balance their lives, and almost to counsel them. Nor is their
ground-landlord spiritually the richer. He has built flats on its site,
his motor-cars grow swifter, his exposures of Socialism more trenchant.
But he has spilt the precious distillation of the years, and no chemistry of his
can give it back to society again.
Margaret grew
depressed; she was anxious to settle on a house before they left town to pay
their annual visit to Mrs. Munt. She enjoyed this visit, and wanted to
have her mind at ease for it. Swanage, though dull, was stable, and this
year she longed more than usual for its fresh air and for the magnificent downs
that guard it on the north. But London thwarted her; in its atmosphere she
could not concentrate. London only stimulates, it cannot sustain; and
Margaret, hurrying over its surface for a house without knowing what sort of a
house she wanted, was paying for many a thrilling sensation in the past.
She could not even break loose from culture, and her time was wasted by concerts
which it would be a sin to miss, and invitations which it would never do to
refuse. At last she grew desperate; she resolved that she would go nowhere
and be at home to no one until she found a house, and broke the resolution in
half an hour.
Once she had humorously lamented that
she had never been to Simpson's restaurant in the Strand. Now a note
arrived from Miss Wilcox, asking her to lunch there. Mr. Cahill was
coming, and the three would have such a jolly chat, and perhaps end up at the
Hippodrome. Margaret had no strong regard for Evie, and no desire to meet
her fiancé, and she was surprised that Helen, who had been far funnier about
Simpson's, had not been asked instead. But the invitation touched her by
its intimate tone. She must know Evie Wilcox better than she supposed, and
declaring that she "simply must," she accepted.
But
when she saw Evie at the entrance of the restaurant, staring fiercely at nothing
after the fashion of athletic women, her heart failed her anew. Miss
Wilcox had changed perceptibly since her engagement. Her voice was
gruffer, her manner more downright, and she was inclined to patronize the more
foolish virgin. Margaret was silly enough to be pained at this.
Depressed at her isolation, she saw not only houses and furniture, but the
vessel of life itself slipping past her, with people like Evie and Mr. Cahill on
board.
There are moments when virtue and wisdom fail
us, and one of them came to her at Simpson's in the Strand. As she trod
the staircase, narrow, but carpeted thickly, as she entered the eating-room,
where saddles of mutton were being trundled up to expectant clergymen, she had a
strong, if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never
come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and literature, and
where no one ever got married or succeeded in remaining engaged. Then came
a little surprise. "Father might be of the party--yes, Father was." With a
smile of pleasure she moved forward to greet him, and her feeling of loneliness
vanished.
"I thought I'd get round if I could," said
he. "Evie told me of her little plan, so I just slipped in and secured a
table. Always secure a table first. Evie, don't pretend you want to
sit by your old father, because you don't. Miss Schlegel, come in my side,
out of pity. My goodness, but you look tired! Been worrying round
after your young clerks?"
"No, after houses," said
Margaret, edging past him into the box. "I'm hungry, not tired; I want to
eat heaps."
"That's good. What'll you
have?"
"Fish pie," said she, with a glance at the
menu.
"Fish pie! Fancy coming for fish pie to
Simpson's. It's not a bit the thing to go for
here. "
"Go for something for me, then," said
Margaret, pulling off her gloves. Her spirits were rising, and his
reference to Leonard Bast had warmed her
curiously.
"Saddle of mutton," said he after profound
reflection: "and cider to drink. That's the type of thing. I like
this place, for a joke, once in a way. It is so thoroughly Old
English. Don't you agree?"
"Yes," said
Margaret, who didn't. The order was given, the joint rolled up, and the
carver, under Mr. Wilcox's direction, cut the meat where it was succulent, and
piled their plates high. Mr. Cahill insisted on sirloin, but admitted that
he had made a mistake later on. He and Evie soon fell into a conversation
of the "No, I didn't; yes, you did" type--conversation which, though fascinating
to those who are engaged in it, neither desires nor deserves the attention of
others.
"It's a golden rule to tip the carver.
Tip everywhere's my motto."
"Perhaps it does make
life more human."
"Then the fellows know one
again. Especially in the East, if you tip, they remember you from year's
end to year's end.
"Have you been in the
East?"
"Oh, Greece and the Levant. I used to go
out for sport and business to Cyprus; some military society of a sort
there. A few piastres, properly distributed, help to keep one's memory
green. But you, of course, think this shockingly cynical. How's your
discussion society getting on? Any new Utopias
lately?"
"No, I'm house-hunting, Mr. Wilcox, as I've
already told you once. Do you know of any
houses?"
"Afraid I
don't."
"Well, what's the point of being practical if
you can't find two distressed females a house? We merely want a small
house with large rooms, and plenty of them."
"Evie, I
like that! Miss Schlegel expects me to turn house agent for
her!"
"What's that,
Father?
"I want a new home in September, and
someone must find it. I can't."
"Percy, do you
know of anything?"
"I can't say I do," said Mr.
Cahill.
"How like you! You're never any
good."
"Never any good. Just listen to
her! Never any good. Oh, come!"
"Well,
you aren't. Miss Schlegel, is he?"
The torrent
of their love, having splashed these drops at Margaret, swept away on its
habitual course. She sympathized with it now, for a little comfort had
restored her geniality. Speech and silence pleased her equally, and while
Mr. Wilcox made some preliminary inquiries about cheese, her eyes surveyed the
restaurant, and admired its well-calculated tributes to the solidity of our
past. Though no more Old English than the works of Kipling, it had
selected its reminiscences so adroitly that her criticism was lulled, and the
guests whom it was nourishing for imperial purposes bore the outer semblance of
Parson Adams or Tom Jones. Scraps of their talk jarred oddly on the
ear. "Right you are! I'll cable out to Uganda this evening," came
from the table behind. "Their Emperor wants war; well, let him have it,"
was the opinion of a clergyman. She smiled at such incongruities.
"Next time," she said to Mr. Wilcox, "you shall come to lunch with me at Mr.
Eustace Miles's."
"With
pleasure."
"No, you'd hate it," she said, pushing her
glass towards him for some more cider. "It's all proteids and
body-buildings, and people come up to you and beg your pardon, but you have such
a beautiful aura."
"A
what?"
"Never heard of an aura? Oh, happy,
happy man! I scrub at mine for hours. Nor of an astral
plane?"
He had heard of astral planes, and censured
them.
"Just so. Luckily it was Helen's aura,
not mine, and she had to chaperone it and do the politenesses. I just sat
with my handkerchief in my mouth till the man
went."
"Funny experiences seem to come to you two
girls. No one's ever asked me about my--what d'ye call it? Perhaps
I've not got one."
"You're bound to have one, but it
may be such a terrible colour that no one dares mention
it."
"Tell me, though, Miss Schlegel, do you really
believe in the supernatural and all that?"
"Too
difficult a question."
"Why's that? Gruyère or
Stilton?"
"Gruyère,
please."
"Better have
Stilton."
"Stilton. Because, though I don't
believe in auras, and think Theosophy's only a
halfway-house--"
"--Yet there may be something in it
all the same," he concluded, with a frown.
"Not even
that. It may be halfway in the wrong direction. I can't
explain. I don't believe in all these fads, and yet I don't like saying
that I don't believe in them."
He seemed unsatisfied,
and said: "So you wouldn't give me your word that you don't hold with
astral bodies and all the rest of it?"
"I could,"
said Margaret, surprised that the point was of any importance to him.
"Indeed, I will. When I talked about scrubbing my aura, I was only trying
to be funny. But why do you want this
settled?"
"I don't
know."
"Now, Mr. Wilcox, you do
know."
"Yes, I am," "No, you're not," burst from the
lovers opposite. Margaret was silent for a moment, and then changed the
subject.
"How's your
house?"
"Much the same as when you honoured it last
week."
"I don't mean Ducie Street. Howards End,
of course."
"Why 'of
course'?"
"Can't you turn out your tenant and let it
to us? We're nearly demented."
"Let me
think. I wish I could help you. But I thought you wanted to be in
town. One bit of advice: fix your district, then fix your price, and then
don't budge. That's how I got both Ducie Street and Oniton. I said
to myself, 'I mean to be exactly here,' and I was, and Oniton's a place in a
thousand."
"But I do budge. Gentlemen seem to
mesmerize houses--cow them with an eye, and up they come, trembling.
Ladies can't. It's the houses that are mesmerizing me. I've no
control over the saucy things. Houses are alive.
No?"
"I'm out of my depth," he said, and added:
"Didn't you talk rather like that to your office
boy?"
"Did I? --I mean I did, more or
less. I talk the same way to every one--or try
to."
"Yes, I know. And how much do you suppose
that he understood of it?"
"That's his lookout.
I don't believe in suiting my conversation to my company. One can
doubtless hit upon some medium of exchange that seems to do well enough, but
it's no more like the real thing than money is like food. There's no
nourishment in it. You pass it to the lower classes, and they pass it back
to you, and this you call 'social intercourse' or 'mutual endeavour,' when it's
mutual priggishness if it's anything. Our friends at Chelsea don't see
this. They say one ought to be at all costs intelligible, and
sacrifice--"
"Lower classes," interrupted Mr. Wilcox,
as it were thrusting his hand into her speech. "Well, you do admit that
there are rich and poor. That's
something."
Margaret could not reply. Was he
incredibly stupid, or did he understand her better than she understood
herself?
"You do admit that, if wealth was
divided up equally, in a few years there would be rich and poor again just the
same. The hard-working man would come to the top, the wastrel sink to the
bottom."
"Every one admits
that."
"Your Socialists
don't."
"My Socialists do. Yours mayn't; but I
strongly suspect yours of being not Socialists, but ninepins, which you have
constructed for your own amusement. I can't imagine any living creature
who would bowl over quite so easily."
He would have
resented this had she not been a woman. But women may say anything--it was
one of his holiest beliefs--and he only retorted, with a gay smile: "I don't
care. You've made two damaging admissions, and I'm heartily with you in
both."
In time they finished lunch, and Margaret, who
had excused herself from the Hippodrome, took her leave. Evie had scarcely
addressed her, and she suspected that the entertainment had been planned by the
father. He and she were advancing out of their respective families towards
a more intimate acquaintance. It had begun long ago. She had been
his wife's friend, and, as such, he had given her that silver vinaigrette as a
memento. It was pretty of him to have given that vinaigrette, and he had
always preferred her to Helen--unlike most men. But the advance had been
astonishing lately. They had done more in a week than in two years, and
were really beginning to know each other.
She did not
forget his promise to sample Eustace Miles, and asked him as soon as she could
secure Tibby as his chaperon. He came, and partook of body-building dishes
with humility.
Next morning the Schlegels left for
Swanage. They had not succeeded in finding a new home.