HOWARDS END
Chapter 24
"It gave her quite a turn," said Mr. Wilcox, when retailing the incident to
Dolly at tea-time. "None of you girls have any nerves, really. Of
course, a word from me put it all right, but silly old Miss Avery--she
frightened you, didn't she, Margaret? There you stood clutching a bunch of
weeds. She might have said something, instead of coming down the stairs
with that alarming bonnet on. I passed her as I came in. Enough to
make the car shy. I believe Miss Avery goes in for being a character; some
old maids do." He lit a cigarette. "It is their last resource.
Heaven knows what she was doing in the place; but that's Bryce's business, not
mine."
"I wasn't as foolish as you suggest," said
Margaret. "She only startled me, for the house had been silent so
long."
"Did you take her for a spook?" asked Dolly,
for whom "spooks" and "going to church" summarized the
unseen.
"Not
exactly."
"She really did frighten you," said Henry,
who was far from discouraging timidity in females. "Poor Margaret!
And very naturally. Uneducated classes are so
stupid."
"Is Miss Avery uneducated classes?" Margaret
asked, and found herself looking at the decoration scheme of Dolly's
drawing-room.
"She's just one of the crew at the
farm. People like that always assume things. She assumed you'd know
who she was. She left all the Howards End keys in the front lobby, and
assumed that you'd seen them as you came in, that you'd lock up the house when
you'd done, and would bring them on down to her. And there was her niece
hunting for them down at the farm. Lack of education makes people very
casual. Hilton was full of women like Miss Avery
once."
"I shouldn't have disliked it,
perhaps."
"Or Miss Avery giving me a wedding
present," said Dolly.
Which was illogical but
interesting. Through Dolly, Margaret was destined to learn a good
deal.
"But Charles said I must try not to mind,
because she had known his grandmother."
"As usual,
you've got the story wrong, my good Dorothea."
"I
mean great-grandmother--the one who left Mrs. Wilcox the house. Weren't
both of them and Miss Avery friends when Howards End, too, was a
farm?"
Her father-in-law blew out a shaft of
smoke. His attitude to his dead wife was curious. He would allude to
her, and hear her discussed, but never mentioned her by name. Nor was he
interested in the dim, bucolic past. Dolly was--for the following
reason.
"Then hadn't Mrs. Wilcox a brother--or was it
an uncle? Anyhow, he popped the question, and Miss Avery, she said 'No.'
Just imagine, if she'd said 'Yes,' she would have been Charles's aunt. (Oh, I
say,--that's rather good! 'Charlie's Aunt'! I must chaff him about
that this evening.) And the man went out and was killed. Yes, I'm certain
I've got it right now. Tom Howard--he was the last of
them."
"I believe so," said Mr. Wilcox
negligently.
"I say! Howards End--Howard's
Ended!" cried Dolly. "I'm rather on the spot this evening,
eh?"
"I wish you'd ask whether Crane's
ended."
"Oh, Mr. Wilcox, how can
you?"
"Because, if he has had enough tea, we ought to
go.--Dolly's a good little woman," he continued, "but a little of her goes a
long way. I couldn't live near her if you paid
me."
Margaret smiled. Though presenting a firm
front to outsiders, no Wilcox could live near, or near the possessions of, any
other Wilcox. They had the colonial spirit, and were always making for
some spot where the white man might carry his burden unobserved. Of
course, Howards End was impossible, so long as the younger couple were
established in Hilton. His objections to the house were plain as daylight
now.
Crane had had enough tea, and was sent to the
garage, where their car had been trickling muddy water over Charles's. The
downpour had surely penetrated the Six Hills by now, bringing news of our
restless civilization. "Curious mounds," said, Henry, "but in with you
now; another time." He had to be up in London by seven--if possible, by
six-thirty. Once more she lost the sense of space; once more trees,
houses, people, animals, hills, merged and heaved into one dirtiness, and she
was at Wickham Place.
Her evening was pleasant.
The sense of flux which had haunted her all the year disappeared for a
time. She forgot the luggage and the motor-cars, and the hurrying men who
know so much and connect so little. She recaptured the sense of space,
which is the basis of all earthly beauty, and, starting from Howards End, she
attempted to realize England. She failed--visions do not come when we try,
though they may come through trying. But an unexpected love of the island
awoke in her, connecting on this side with the joys of the flesh, on that with
the inconceivable. Helen and her father had known this love, poor Leonard
Bast was groping after it, but it had been hidden from Margaret till this
afternoon. It had certainly come through the house and old Miss
Avery. Through them: the notion of "through" persisted; her mind trembled
towards a conclusion which only the unwise have put into words. Then,
veering back into warmth, it dwelt on ruddy bricks, flowering plum-trees, and
all the tangible joys of, spring.
Henry, after
allaying her agitation, had taken her over his property, and had explained to
her the use and dimensions of the various rooms. He had sketched the
history of the little estate. "It is so unlucky," ran the monologue, "that
money wasn't put into it about fifty years ago. Then it had
four--five-times the land--thirty acres at least. One could have made
something out of it then--a small park, or at all events shrubberies, and
rebuilt the house farther away from the road. What's the good of taking it
in hand now? Nothing but the meadow left, and even that was heavily
mortgaged when I first had to do with things--yes, and the house too. Oh,
it was no joke." She saw two women as he spoke, one old, the other young,
watching their inheritance melt away. She saw them greet him as a
deliverer. "Mismanagement did it--besides, the days for small farms are
over. It doesn't pay--except with intensive cultivation. Small
holdings, back to the land--ah! philanthropic bunkum. Take it as a
rule that nothing pays on a small scale. Most of the land you see (they
were standing at an upper window, the only one which faced west) belongs to the
people at the Park--they made their pile over copper--good chaps. Avery's
Farm, Sishe's--what they call the Common, where you see that ruined oak--one
after the other fell in, and so did this, as near as is no matter. "But
Henry had saved it; without fine feelings or deep insight, but he had saved it,
and she loved him for the deed. "When I had more control I did what I
could: sold off the two and a half animals, and the mangy pony, and the
superannuated tools; pulled down the outhouses; drained; thinned out I don't
know how many guelder-roses and elder-trees; and inside the house I turned the
old kitchen into a hall, and made a kitchen behind where the dairy was.
Garage and so on came later. But one could still tell it's been an old
farm. And yet it isn't the place that would fetch one of your artistic
crew." No, it wasn't; and if he did not quite understand it, the artistic crew
would still less: it was English, and the wych-elm that she saw from the window
was an English tree. No report had prepared her for its peculiar
glory. It was neither warrior, nor lover, nor god; in none of these roles
do the English excel. It was a comrade, bending over the house, strength
and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost fingers tenderness, and the girth,
that a dozen men could not have spanned, became in the end evanescent, till pale
bud clusters seemed to float in the air. It was a comrade. House and
tree transcended any similes of sex. Margaret thought of them now, and was
to think of them through many a windy night and London day, but to compare
either to man, to woman, always dwarfed the vision. Yet they kept within
limits of the human. Their message was not of eternity, but of hope on
this side of the grave. As she stood in the one, gazing at the other,
truer relationship had gleamed.
Another touch, and
the account of her day is finished. They entered the garden for a minute,
and to Mr. Wilcox's surprise she was right. Teeth, pigs' teeth, could be
seen in the bark of the wych-elm tree--just the white tips of them
showing. "Extraordinary!" he cried. "Who told
you?"
"I heard of it one winter in London," was her
answer, for she, too, avoided mentioning Mrs. Wilcox by name.