HOWARDS END
Chapter 29
"Henry dear--" was her greeting.
He had finished
his breakfast, and was beginning the Times. His sister-in-law was
packing. She knelt by him and took the paper from him, feeling that it was
unusually heavy and thick. Then, putting her face where it had been, she
looked up in his eyes.
"Henry dear, look at me.
No, I won't have you shirking. Look at me. There. That's
all."
"You're referring to last evening," he said
huskily. "I have released you from your engagement. I could find
excuses, but I won't. No, I won't. A thousand times no. I'm a
bad lot, and must be left at that."
Expelled from his
old fortress, Mr. Wilcox was building a new one. He could no longer appear
respectable to her, so he defended himself instead in a lurid past. It was
not true repentance.
"Leave it where you will,
boy. It's not going to trouble us: I know what I'm talking about, and it
will make no difference."
"No difference?" he
inquired. "No difference, when you find that I am not the fellow you
thought?" He was annoyed with Miss Schlegel here. He would have
preferred her to be prostrated by the blow, or even to rage. Against the
tide of his sin flowed the feeling that she was not altogether womanly.
Her eyes gazed too straight; they had read books that are suitable for men
only. And though he had dreaded a scene, and though she had determined
against one, there was a scene, all the same. It was somehow
imperative.
"I am unworthy of you," he began.
"Had I been worthy, I should not have released you from your engagement. I
know what I am talking about. I can't bear to talk of such things.
We had better leave it. "
She kissed his
hand. He jerked it from her, and, rising to his feet, went on: "You, with
your sheltered life, and refined pursuits, and friends, and books, you and your
sister, and women like you--I say, how can you guess the temptations that lie
round a man?"
"It is difficult for us," said
Margaret; "but if we are worth marrying, we do
guess."
"Cut off from decent society and family ties,
what do you suppose happens to thousands of young fellows overseas?
Isolated. No one near. I know by bitter experience, and yet you say
it makes 'no difference.'"
"Not to
me."
He laughed bitterly. Margaret went to the
side-board and helped herself to one of the breakfast dishes. Being the
last down, she turned out the spirit-lamp that kept them warm. She was
tender, but grave. She knew that Henry was not so much confessing his soul
as pointing out the gulf between the male soul and the female, and she did not
desire to hear him on this point.
"Did Helen come?"
she asked.
He shook his
head.
"But that won't do at all, at all! We
don't want her gossiping with Mrs. Bast."
"Good
God! no!" he exclaimed, suddenly natural. Then he caught himself
up. "Let them gossip. My game's up, though I thank you for your
unselfishness--little as my thanks are
worth."
"Didn't she send me a message or
anything?"
"I heard of
none."
"Would you ring the bell,
please?"
"What to
do?"
"Why, to inquire."
He
swaggered up to it tragically, and sounded a peal. Margaret poured herself
out some coffee. The butler came, and said that Miss Schlegel had slept at
the George, so far as he had heard. Should he go round to the
George?
"I'll go, thank you," said Margaret,
and dismissed him.
"It is no good," said Henry.
"Those things leak out; you cannot stop a story once it has started. I
have known cases of other men--I despised them once, I thought that I'm
different, I shall never be tempted. Oh, Margaret--" He came and sat down
near her, improvising emotion. She could not bear to listen to him.
"We fellows all come to grief once in our time. Will you believe
that? There are moments when the strongest man--'Let him who standeth,
take heed lest he fall.' That's true, isn't it? If you knew all, you would
excuse me. I was far from good influences--far even from England. I
was very, very lonely, and longed for a woman's voice. That's
enough. I have told you too much already for you to forgive me
now."
"Yes, that's enough,
dear."
"I have"--he lowered his voice--"I have been
through hell."
Gravely she considered this
claim. Had he? Had he suffered tortures of remorse, or had it been,
"There! that's over. Now for respectable life again"? The
latter, if she read him rightly. A man who has been through hell does not
boast of his virility. He is humble and hides it, if, indeed, it still
exists. Only in legend does the sinner come forth penitent, but terrible,
to conquer pure woman by his resistless power. Henry was anxious to be
terrible, but had not got it in him. He was a good average Englishman, who
had slipped. The really culpable point--his faithlessness to Mrs.
Wilcox--never seemed to strike him. She longed to mention Mrs.
Wilcox.
And bit by bit the story was told her.
It was a very simple story. Ten years ago was the time, a garrison town in
Cyprus the place. Now and then he asked her whether she could possibly
forgive him, and she answered, "I have already forgiven you, Henry." She chose
her words carefully, and so saved him from panic. She played the girl,
until he could rebuild his fortress and hide his soul from the world. When
the butler came to clear away, Henry was in a very different mood--asked the
fellow what he was in such a hurry for, complained of the noise last night in
the servants' hall. Margaret looked intently at the butler. He, as a
handsome young man, was faintly attractive to her as a woman--an attraction so
faint as scarcely to be perceptible, yet the skies would have fallen if she had
mentioned it to Henry.
On her return from the George
the building operations were complete, and the old Henry fronted her, competent,
cynical, and kind. He had made a clean breast, had been forgiven, and the
great thing now was to forget his failure, and to send it the way of other
unsuccessful investments. Jacky rejoined Howards End and Ducie Street, and
the vermilion motor-car, and the Argentine Hard Dollars, and all the things and
people for whom he had never had much use and had less now. Their memory
hampered him. He could scarcely attend to Margaret who brought back
disquieting news from the George. Helen and her clients had
gone.
"Well, let them go--the man and his wife, I
mean, for the more we see of your sister the
better."
"But they have gone separately--Helen very
early, the Basts just before I arrived. They have left no message.
They have answered neither of my notes. I don't like to think what it all
means."
"What did you say in the
notes?"
"I told you last
night."
"Oh--ah--yes! Dear, would you like one
turn in the garden?"
Margaret took his arm. The
beautiful weather soothed her. But the wheels of Evie's wedding were still
at work, tossing the guests outwards as deftly as they had drawn them in, and
she could not be with him long. It had been arranged that they should
motor to Shrewsbury, whence he would go north, and she back to London with the
Warringtons. For a fraction of time she was happy. Then her brain
recommenced.
"I am afraid there has been gossiping of
some kind at the George. Helen would not have left unless she had heard
something. I mismanaged that. It is wretched. I ought to--have
parted her from that woman at once.
"Margaret!" he
exclaimed, loosing her arm impressively.
"Yes--yes,
Henry?"
"I am far from a saint--in fact, the
reverse--but you have taken me, for better or worse. Bygones must be
bygones. You have promised to forgive me. Margaret, a promise is a
promise. Never mention that woman
again."
"Except for some practical
reason--never."
"Practical! You
practical!"
"Yes, I'm practical," she murmured,
stooping over the mowing-machine and playing with the grass which trickled
through her fingers like sand.
He had silenced her,
but her fears made him uneasy. Not for the first time, he was threatened
with blackmail. He was rich and supposed to be moral; the Basts knew that
he was not, and might find it profitable to hint as
much.
"At all events, you mustn't worry," he
said. "This is a man's business." He thought intently. "On no
account mention it to anybody."
Margaret flushed at
advice so elementary, but he was really paving the way for a lie. If
necessary he would deny that he had ever known Mrs. Bast, and prosecute her for
libel. Perhaps he never had known her. Here was Margaret, who
behaved as if he had not. There the house. Round them were half a
dozen gardeners, clearing up after his daughter's wedding. All was so
solid and spruce, that the past flew up out of sight like a spring-blind,
leaving only the last five minutes unrolled.
Glancing
at these, he saw that the car would be round during the next five, and plunged
into action. Gongs were tapped, orders issued, Margaret was sent to dress,
and the housemaid to sweep up the long trickle of grass that she had left across
the hall. As is Man to the Universe, so was the mind of Mr. Wilcox to the
minds of some men--a concentrated light upon a tiny spot, a little Ten Minutes
moving self-contained through its appointed years. No Pagan he, who lives
for the Now, and may be wiser than all philosophers. He lived for the five
minutes that have past, and the five to come; he had the business
mind.
How did he stand now, as his motor slipped out
of Oniton and breasted the great round hills? Margaret had heard a certain
rumour, but was all right. She had forgiven him, God bless her, and he
felt the manlier for it. Charles and Evie had not heard it, and never must
hear. No more must Paul. Over his children he felt great tenderness,
which he did not try to track to a cause: Mrs. Wilcox was too far back in his
life. He did not connect her with the sudden aching love that he felt for
Evie. Poor little Evie! he trusted that Cahill would make her a
decent husband.
And Margaret? How did she
stand?
She had several minor worries.
Clearly her sister had heard something. She dreaded meeting her in
town. And she was anxious about Leonard, for whom they certainly were
responsible. Nor ought Mrs. Bast to starve. But the main situation
had not altered. She still loved Henry. His actions, not his
disposition, had disappointed her, and she could bear that. And she loved
her future home. Standing up in the car, just where she had leapt from it
two days before, she gazed back with deep emotion upon Oniton. Besides the
Grange and the Castle keep, she could now pick out the church and the
black-and-white gables of the George. There was the bridge, and the river
nibbling its green peninsula. She could even see the bathing-shed, but
while she was looking for Charles's new springboard, the forehead of the hill
rose up and hid the whole scene.
She never saw it
again. Day and night the river flows down into England, day after day the
sun retreats into the Welsh mountains, and the tower chimes, "See the Conquering
Hero." But the Wilcoxes have no part in the place, nor in any place. It is
not their names that recur in the parish register. It is not their ghosts
that sigh among the alders at evening. They have swept into the valley and
swept out of it, leaving a little dust and a little money behind.