HOWARDS END
Chapter 6
We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only
to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with
gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are
gentlefolk.
The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the
extreme verge of gentility. He was not in the abyss, but he could see it,
and at times people whom he knew had dropped in, and counted no more. He
knew that he was poor, and would admit it: he would have died sooner than
confess any inferiority to the rich. This may be splendid of him.
But he was inferior to most rich people, there is not the least doubt of
it. He was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent,
nor as healthy, nor as lovable. His mind and his body had been alike
underfed, because he was poor, and because he was modern they were always
craving better food. Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly
coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his
rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of
Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and
proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess
umbrellas," and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slipped into the
abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are
inaudible.
As he walked away from Wickham Place, his
first care was to prove that he was as good as the Miss Schlegels.
Obscurely wounded in his pride, he tried to wound them in return. They
were probably not ladies. Would real ladies have asked him to tea?
They were certainly ill-natured and cold. At each step his feeling of
superiority increased. Would a real lady have talked about stealing an
umbrella? Perhaps they were thieves after all, and if he had gone into the
house they could have clapped a chloroformed handkerchief over his face.
He walked on complacently as far as the Houses of Parliament. There an
empty stomach asserted itself, and told him he was a
fool.
"Evening, Mr.
Bast."
"Evening, Mr.
Dealtry."
"Nice
evening."
"Evening."
Mr.
Dealtry, a fellow clerk, passed on, and Leonard stood wondering whether he would
take the tram as far as a penny would take him, or whether he would walk.
He decided to walk--it is no good giving in, and he had spent money enough at
Queen's Hall--and he walked over Westminster Bridge, in front of St. Thomas's
Hospital, and through the immense tunnel that passes under the South-Western
main line at Vauxhall. In the tunnel he paused and listened to the roar of
the trains. A sharp pain darted through his head, and he was conscious of
the exact form of his eye sockets. He pushed on for another mile, and did
not slacken speed until he stood at the entrance of a road called Camelia Road,
which was at present his home.
Here he stopped again,
and glanced suspiciously to right and left, like a rabbit that is going to bolt
into its hole. A block of flats, constructed with extreme cheapness,
towered on either hand. Farther down the road two more blocks were being
built, and beyond these an old house was being demolished to accommodate another
pair. It was the kind of scene that may be observed all over London,
whatever the locality--bricks and mortar rising and falling with the
restlessness of the water in a fountain, as the city receives more and more men
upon her soil. Camelia Road would soon stand out like a fortress, and
command, for a little, an extensive view. Only for a little. Plans
were out for the erection of flats in Magnolia Road also. And again a few
years, and all the flats in either road might be pulled down, and new buildings,
of a vastness at present unimaginable, might arise where they had
fallen.
"Evening, Mr.
Bast."
"Evening, Mr.
Cunningham."
"Very serious thing this decline of the
birth-rate in Manchester."
"I beg your
pardon?"
"Very serious thing this decline of the
birth-rate in Manchester," repeated Mr. Cunningham, tapping the Sunday paper, in
which the calamity in question had just been announced to
him.
"Ah, yes," said Leonard, who was not going to
let on that he had not bought a Sunday paper.
"If
this kind of thing goes on the population of England will be stationary in
1960."
"You don't say
so."
"I call it a very serious thing,
eh?"
"Good-evening, Mr.
Cunningham."
"Good-evening, Mr.
Bast."
Then Leonard entered Block B of the flats, and
turned, not upstairs, but down, into what is known to house agents as a
semi-basement, and to other men as a cellar. He opened the door, and cried
"Hullo!" with the pseudo-geniality of the Cockney. There was no
reply. "Hullo!" he repeated. The sitting-room was empty, though the
electric light had been left burning. A look of relief came over his face,
and he flung himself into the armchair.
The
sitting-room contained, besides the armchair, two other chairs, a piano, a
three-legged table, and a cosy corner. Of the walls, one was occupied by
the window, the other by a draped mantelshelf bristling with Cupids.
Opposite the window was the door, and beside the door a bookcase, while over the
piano there extended one of the masterpieces of Maud Goodman. It was an
amorous and not unpleasant little hole when the curtains were drawn, and the
lights turned on, and the gas-stove unlit. But it struck that shallow
makeshift note that is so often heard in the modem dwelling-place. It had
been too easily gained, and could be relinquished too
easily.
As Leonard was kicking off his boots he
jarred the three-legged table, and a photograph frame, honourably poised upon
it, slid sideways, fell off into the fireplace, and smashed. He swore in a
colourless sort of way, and picked the photograph up. It represented a
young lady called Jacky, and had been taken at the time when young ladies called
Jacky were often photographed with their mouths open. Teeth of dazzling
whiteness extended along either of Jacky's jaws, and positively weighted her
head sideways, so large were they and so numerous. Take my word for it,
that smile was simply stunning, and it is only you and I who will be fastidious,
and complain that true joy begins in the eyes, and that the eyes of Jacky did
not accord with her smile, but were anxious and
hungry.
Leonard tried to pull out the fragments of
glass, and cut his fingers and swore again. A drop of blood fell on the
frame, another followed, spilling over on to the exposed photograph. He
swore more vigorously, and dashed to the kitchen, where he bathed his
hands. The kitchen was the same size as the sitting room; through it was a
bedroom. This completed his home. He was renting the flat furnished:
of all the objects that encumbered it none were his own except the photograph
frame, the Cupids, and the books.
"Damn, damn,
damnation!" he murmured, together with such other words as he had learnt from
older men. Then he raised his hand to his forehead and said, "Oh, damn it
all--" which meant something different. He pulled himself together.
He drank a little tea, black and silent, that still survived upon an upper
shelf. He swallowed some dusty crumbs of cake. Then he went back to
the sitting-room, settled himself anew, and began to read a volume of
Ruskin.
"Seven miles to the north of
Venice--"
How perfectly the famous chapter
opens! How supreme its command of admonition and of poetry! The rich
man is speaking to us from his gondola.
"Seven miles
to the north of Venice the banks of sand which nearer the city rise little above
low-water mark attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last
into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and
intercepted by narrow creeks of sea."
Leonard was
trying to form his style on Ruskin: he understood him to be the greatest master
of English Prose. He read forward steadily, occasionally making a few
notes.
"Let us consider a little each of these
characters in succession, and first (for of the shafts enough has been said
already), what is very peculiar to this church--its
luminousness."
Was there anything to be learnt from
this fine sentence? Could he adapt it to the needs of daily life?
Could he introduce it, with modifications, when he next wrote a letter to his
brother, the lay-reader? For example--
"Let us
consider a little each of these characters in succession, and first (for of the
absence of ventilation enough has been said already), what is very peculiar to
this flat--its obscurity. "
Something told him
that the modifications would not do; and that something, had he known it, was
the spirit of English Prose. "My flat is dark as well as stuffy." Those
were the words for him.
And the voice in the gondola
rolled on, piping melodiously of Effort and Self-Sacrifice, full of high
purpose, full of beauty, full even of sympathy and the love of men, yet somehow
eluding all that was actual and insistent in Leonard's life. For it was
the voice of one who had never been dirty or hungry, and had not guessed
successfully what dirt and hunger are.
Leonard
listened to it with reverence. He felt that he was being done good to, and
that if he kept on with Ruskin, and the Queen's Hall Concerts, and some pictures
by Watts, he would one day push his head out of the grey waters and see the
universe. He believed in sudden conversion, a belief which may be right,
but which is peculiarly attractive to a half-baked mind. It is the bias of
much popular religion: in the domain of business it dominates the Stock
Exchange, and becomes that "bit of luck" by which all successes and failures are
explained. "If only I had a bit of luck, the whole thing would come
straight. . . . He's got a most magnificent place down at Streatham and a
20 h.-p. Fiat, but then, mind you, he's had luck. . . . I'm sorry the
wife's so late, but she never has any luck over catching trains." Leonard was
superior to these people; he did believe in effort and in a steady preparation
for the change that he desired. But of a heritage that may expand
gradually, he had no conception: he hoped to come to Culture suddenly, much as
the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus. Those Miss Schlegels had come to
it; they had done the trick; their hands were upon the ropes, once and for
all. And meanwhile, his flat was dark, as well as
stuffy.
Presently there was a noise on the
staircase. He shut up Margaret's card in the pages of Ruskin, and opened
the door. A woman entered, of whom it is simplest to say that she was not
respectable. Her appearance was awesome. She seemed all strings and
bell-pulls--ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that clinked and caught--and a boa
of azure feathers hung round her neck, with the ends uneven. Her throat
was bare, wound with a double row of pearls, her arms were bare to the elbows,
and might again be detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat,
which was flowery, resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we sowed
with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which germinated here yes, and
there no. She wore it on the back of her head. As for her hair, or
rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down her
back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny,
rippled around her forehead. The face--the face does not signify. It
was the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth were not so numerous as
the photographer had suggested, and certainly not so white. Yes, Jacky was
past her prime, whatever that prime may have been. She was descending
quicker than most women into the colourless years, and the look in her eyes
confessed it.
"What ho!" said Leonard, greeting that
apparition with much spirit, and helping it off with its
boa.
Jacky, in husky tones, replied, "What
ho!"
"Been out?" he asked. The question sounds
superfluous, but it cannot have been really, for the lady answered, "No,"
adding, "Oh, I am so tired."
"You
tired?"
"Eh?"
"I'm tired,"
said he, hanging the boa up.
"Oh, Len, I am so
tired."
"I've been to that classical concert I told
you about," said Leonard.
"What's
that?"
"I came back as soon as it was
over."
"Any one been round to our place?" asked
Jacky.
"Not that I've seen. I met Mr.
Cunningham outside, and we passed a few
remarks."
"What, not Mr.
Cunnginham?"
"Yes."
"Oh,
you mean Mr. Cunningham."
"Yes. Mr.
Cunningham."
"I've been out to tea at a lady
friend's."
Her secret being at last given to the
world, and the name of the lady-friend being even adumbrated, Jacky made no
further experiments in the difficult and tiring art of conversation. She
never had been a great talker. Even in her photographic days she had
relied upon her smile and her figure to attract, and now that she was--
"On the shelf,
On the shelf,
Boys, boys, I'm on the
shelf,"
she was not likely to find her tongue.
Occasional bursts of song (of which the above is an example) still issued from
her lips, but the spoken word was rare.
She sat down
on Leonard's knee, and began to fondle him. She was now a massive woman of
thirty-three, and her weight hurt him, but he could not very well say
anything. Then she said, "Is that a book you're reading?" and he said,
"That's a book," and drew it from her unreluctant grasp. Margaret's card
fell out of it. It fell face downwards, and he murmured,
"Bookmarker."
"Len--"
"What
is it?" he asked, a little wearily, for she only had one topic of conversation
when she sat upon his knee.
"You do love
me?"
"Jacky, you know that I do. How can you
ask such questions!"
"But you do love me, Len, don't
you?"
"Of course I do."
A
pause. The other remark was still
due.
"Len--"
"Well?
What is it?"
"Len, you will make it all
right?"
"I can't have you ask me that again," said
the boy, flaring up into a sudden passion. "I've promised to marry you
when I'm of age, and that's enough. My word's my word. I've promised
to marry you as soon as ever I'm twenty-one, and I can't keep on being
worried. I've worries enough. It isn't likely I'd throw you over,
let alone my word, when I've spent all this money. Besides, I'm an
Englishman, and I never go back on my word. Jacky, do be reasonable.
Of course I'll marry you. Only do stop badgering
me."
"When's your birthday,
Len?"
"I've told you again and again, the eleventh of
November next. Now get off my knee a bit; someone must get supper, I
suppose."
Jacky went through to the bedroom, and
began to see to her hat. This meant blowing at it with short sharp
puffs. Leonard tidied up the sitting-room, and began to prepare their
evening meal. He put a penny into the slot of the gas-meter, and soon the
flat was reeking with metallic fumes. Somehow he could not recover his
temper, and all the time he was cooking he continued to complain
bitterly.
"It really is too bad when a fellow isn't
trusted. It makes one feel so wild, when I've pretended to the people here
that you're my wife--all right, you shall be my wife--and I've bought you the
ring to wear, and I've taken this flat furnished, and it's far more than I can
afford, and yet you aren't content, and I've also not told the truth when I've
written home." He lowered his voice. "He'd stop it." In a tone of horror,
that was a little luxurious, he repeated: "My brother'd stop it. I'm going
against the whole world, Jacky.
"That's what I am,
Jacky. I don't take any heed of what anyone says. I just go straight
forward, I do. That's always been my way. I'm not one of your weak
knock-kneed chaps. If a woman's in trouble, I don't leave her in the
lurch. That's not my street. No, thank
you.
"I'll tell you another thing too. I care a
good deal about improving myself by means of Literature and Art, and so getting
a wider outlook. For instance, when you came in I was reading Ruskin's
Stones of Venice. I don't say this to boast, but just to show you the
kind of man I am. I can tell you, I enjoyed that classical concert this
afternoon."
To all his moods Jacky remained equally
indifferent. When supper was ready--and not before--she emerged from the
bedroom, saying: "But you do love me, don't
you?"
They began with a soup square, which Leonard
had just dissolved in some hot water. It was followed by the tongue--a
freckled cylinder of meat, with a little jelly at the top, and a great deal of
yellow fat at the bottom--ending with another square dissolved in water (jelly:
pineapple), which Leonard had prepared earlier in the day. Jacky ate
contentedly enough, occasionally looking at her man with those anxious eyes, to
which nothing else in her appearance corresponded, and which yet seemed to
mirror her soul. And Leonard managed to convince his stomach that it was
having a nourishing meal.
After supper they smoked
cigarettes and exchanged a few statements. She observed that her
"likeness" had been broken. He found occasion to remark, for the second
time, that he had come straight back home after the concert at Queen's
Hall. Presently she sat upon his knee. The inhabitants of Camelia
Road tramped to and fro outside the window, just on a level with their heads,
and the family in the flat on the ground-floor began to sing, "Hark, my soul, it
is the Lord."
"That tune fairly gives me the hump,"
said Leonard.
Jacky followed this, and said that, for
her part, she thought it a lovely tune.
"No; I'll
play you something lovely. Get up, dear, for a
minute."
He went to the piano and jingled out a
little Grieg. He played badly and vulgarly, but the performance was not
without its effect, for Jacky said she thought she'd be going to bed. As
she receded, a new set of interests possessed the boy, and he began to think of
what had been said about music by that odd Miss Schlegel--the one that twisted
her face about so when she spoke. Then the thoughts grew sad and
envious. There was the girl named Helen, who had pinched his umbrella, and
the German girl who had smiled at him pleasantly, and Herr someone, and Aunt
someone, and the brother--all, all with their hands on the ropes. They had
all passed up that narrow, rich staircase at Wickham Place, to some ample room,
whither he could never follow them, not if he read for ten hours a day.
Oh, it was not good, this continual aspiration. Some are born cultured;
the rest had better go in for whatever comes easy. To see life steadily
and to see it whole was not for the likes of
him.
From the darkness beyond the kitchen a voice
called, "Len?"
"You in bed?" he asked, his forehead
twitching.
"M'm."
"All
right."
Presently she called him
again.
"I must clean my boots ready for the morning,"
he answered.
Presently she called him
again.
"I rather want to get this chapter
done."
"What?"
He closed
his ears against her.
"What's
that?"
"All right, Jacky, nothing; I'm reading a
book."
"What?"
"What?" he
answered, catching her degraded deafness.
Presently
she called him again.
Ruskin had visited Torcello by
this time, and was ordering his gondoliers to take him to Murano. It
occurred to him, as he glided over the whispering lagoons, that the power of
Nature could not be shortened by the folly, nor her beauty altogether saddened
by the misery, of such as Leonard.