Chapter: If one wanted to show a foreigner England, perhaps the wisest course
would be to take him to the final section of the Purbeck Hills, and
stand him on their summit, a few miles to the east of Corfe. Then system
after system of our island would roll together under his feet. Beneath
him is the valley of the Frome, and all the wild lands that come tossing
down from Dorchester, black and gold, to mirror their gorse in the
expanses of Poole. The valley of the Stour is beyond, unaccountable
stream, dirty at Blandford, pure at Wimborne--the Stour, sliding out of
fat fields, to marry the Avon beneath the tower of Christ church. The
valley of the Avon--invisible, but far to the north the trained eye may
see Clearbury Ring that guards it, and the imagination may leap beyond
that on to Salisbury Plain itself, and beyond the Plain to all the
glorious downs of Central England. Nor is Suburbia absent. Bournemouth's
ignoble coast cowers to the right, heralding the pine-trees that mean,
for all their beauty, red houses, and the Stock Exchange, and extend to
the gates of London itself. So tremendous is the City's trail! But the
cliffs of Freshwater it shall never touch, and the island will guard the
Island's purity till the end of time. Seen from the west the Wight is
beautiful beyond all laws of beauty. It is as if a fragment of England
floated forward to greet the foreigner--chalk of our chalk, turf of
our turf, epitome of what will follow. And behind the fragment lies
Southampton, hostess to the nations, and Portsmouth, a latent fire, and
all around it, with double and treble collision of tides, swirls the
sea. How many villages appear in this view! How many castles! How many
churches, vanished or triumphant! How many ships, railways, and roads!
What incredible variety of men working beneath that lucent sky to what
final end! The reason fails, like a wave on the Swanage beach; the
imagination swells, spreads, and deepens, until it becomes geographic
and encircles England.

So Frieda Mosebach, now Frau Architect Liesecke, and mother to her
husband's baby, was brought up to these heights to be impressed, and,
after a prolonged gaze, she said that the hills were more swelling
here than in Pomerania, which was true, but did not seem to Mrs. Munt
apposite. Poole Harbour was dry, which led her to praise the absence of
muddy foreshore at Friedrich Wilhelms Bad, Rugen, where beech-trees hang
over the tideless Baltic, and cows may contemplate the brine. Rather
unhealthy Mrs. Munt thought this would be, water being safer when it
moved about.

"And your English lakes--Vindermere, Grasmere they, then, unhealthy?"

"No, Frau Liesecke; but that is because they are fresh water, and
different. Salt water ought to have tides, and go up and down a great
deal, or else it smells. Look, for instance, at an aquarium."

"An aquarium! Oh, MEESIS Munt, you mean to tell me that fresh aquariums
stink less than salt? Why, then Victor, my brother-in-law, collected
many tadpoles--" "You are not to say 'stink,'" interrupted Helen; "at
least, you may say it, but you must pretend you are being funny while
you say it."

"Then 'smell.' And the mud of your Pool down there--does it not smell,
or may I say 'stink,' ha, ha?"

"There always has been mud in Poole Harbour," said Mrs. Munt, with
a slight frown. "The rivers bring it down, and a most valuable
oyster-fishery depends upon it."

"Yes, that is so," conceded Frieda; and another international incident
was closed.

"'Bournemouth is,'" resumed their hostess, quoting a local rhyme to
which she was much attached--"'Bournemouth is, Poole was, and Swanage
is to be the most important town of all and biggest of the three.' Now,
Frau Liesecke, I have shown you Bournemouth, and I have shown you Poole,
so let us walk backward a little, and look down again at Swanage."

"Aunt Juley, wouldn't that be Meg's train?"

A tiny puff of smoke had been circling the harbour, and now was bearing
southwards towards them over the black and the gold.

"Oh, dearest Margaret, I do hope she won't be overtired."

"Oh, I do wonder--I do wonder whether she's taken the house."

"I hope she hasn't been hasty."

"So do I--oh, SO do I."

"Will it be as beautiful as Wickham Place?" Frieda asked.

"I should think it would. Trust Mr. Wilcox for doing himself proud. All
those Ducie Street houses are beautiful in their modern way, and I can't
think why he doesn't keep on with it. But it's really for Evie that he
went there, and now that Evie's going to be married--"

"Ah!"

"You've never seen Miss Wilcox, Frieda. How absurdly matrimonial you
are!"

"But sister to that Paul?"

"Yes."

"And to that Charles," said Mrs. Munt with feeling. "Oh, Helen, Helen,
what a time that was!"

Helen laughed. "Meg and I haven't got such tender hearts. If there's a
chance of a cheap house, we go for it."

"Now look, Frau Liesecke, at my niece's train. You see, it is coming
towards us--coming, coming; and, when it gets to Corfe, it will actually
go THROUGH the downs, on which we are standing, so that, if we walk
over, as I suggested, and look down on Swanage, we shall see it coming
on the other side. Shall we?"

Frieda assented, and in a few minutes they had crossed the ridge and
exchanged the greater view for the lesser. Rather a dull valley lay
below, backed by the slope of the coastward downs. They were looking
across the Isle of Purbeck and on to Swanage, soon to be the most
important town of all, and ugliest of the three. Margaret's train
reappeared as promised, and was greeted with approval by her aunt.
It came to a standstill in the middle distance, and there it had been
planned that Tibby should meet her, and drive her, and a tea-basket, up
to join them.

"You see," continued Helen to her cousin, "the Wilcoxes collect houses
as your Victor collects tadpoles. They have, one, Ducie Street; two,
Howards End, where my great rumpus was; three, a country seat in
Shropshire; four, Charles has a house in Hilton; and five, another near
Epsom; and six, Evie will have a house when she marries, and probably a
pied-a-terre in the country--which makes seven. Oh yes, and Paul a
hut in Africa makes eight. I wish we could get Howards End. That was
something like a dear little house! Didn't you think so, Aunt Juley?"

"I had too much to do, dear, to look at it," said Mrs. Munt, with a
gracious dignity. "I had everything to settle and explain, and Charles
Wilcox to keep in his place besides. It isn't likely I should remember
much. I just remember having lunch in your bedroom."

"Yes, so do I. But, oh dear, dear, how dreadful it all seems! And in the
autumn there began that anti-Pauline movement--you, and Frieda, and
Meg, and Mrs. Wilcox, all obsessed with the idea that I might yet marry
Paul."

"You yet may," said Frieda despondently.

Helen shook her head. "The Great Wilcox Peril will never return. If I'm
certain of anything it's of that."

"One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions."

The remark fell damply on the conversation. But Helen slipped her arm
round her cousin, somehow liking her the better for making it. It was
not an original remark, nor had Frieda appropriated it passionately, for
she had a patriotic rather than a philosophic mind. Yet it betrayed that
interest in the universal which the average Teuton possesses and the
average Englishman does not. It was, however illogically, the good,
the beautiful, the true, as opposed to the respectable, the pretty,
the adequate. It was a landscape of Bocklin's beside a landscape of
Leader's, strident and ill-considered, but quivering into supernatural
life. It sharpened idealism, stirred the soul. It may have been a bad
preparation for what followed.

"Look!" cried Aunt Juley, hurrying away from generalities over the
narrow summit of the down. "Stand where I stand, and you will see the
pony-cart coming. I see the pony-cart coming."

They stood and saw the pony-cart coming. Margaret and Tibby were
presently seen coming in it. Leaving the outskirts of Swanage, it drove
for a little through the budding lanes, and then began the ascent.

"Have you got the house?" they shouted, long before she could possibly
hear.

Helen ran down to meet her. The highroad passed over a saddle, and a
track went thence at right angles alone the ridge of the down.

"Have you got the house?"

Margaret shook her head.

"Oh, what a nuisance! So we're as we were?"

"Not exactly."

She got out, looking tired.

"Some mystery," said Tibby. "We are to be enlightened presently."

Margaret came close up to her and whispered that she had had a proposal
of marriage from Mr. Wilcox.

Helen was amused. She opened the gate on to the downs so that her
brother might lead the pony through. "It's just like a widower," she
remarked. "They've cheek enough for anything, and invariably select one
of their first wife's friends."

Margaret's face flashed despair.

"That type--" She broke off with a cry. "Meg, not anything wrong with
you?"

"Wait one minute," said Margaret, whispering always.

"But you've never conceivably--you've never--" She pulled herself
together. "Tibby, hurry up through; I can't hold this gate indefinitely.
Aunt Juley! I say, Aunt Juley, make the tea, will you, and Frieda; we've
got to talk houses, and will come on afterwards." And then, turning her
face to her sister's, she burst into tears.

Margaret was stupefied. She heard herself saying, "Oh, really--" She
felt herself touched with a hand that trembled.

"Don't," sobbed Helen, "don't, don't, Meg, don't!" She seemed incapable
of saying any other word. Margaret, trembling herself, led her forward
up the road, till they strayed through another gate on to the down.

"Don't, don't do such a thing! I tell you not to--don't! I know--don't!"

"What do you know?"

"Panic and emptiness," sobbed Helen. "Don't!"

Then Margaret thought, "Helen is a little selfish. I have never behaved
like this when there has seemed a chance of her marrying." She said:
"But we would still see each other very--often, and you--"

"It's not a thing like that," sobbed Helen. And she broke right away and
wandered distractedly upwards, stretching her hands towards the view and
crying.

"What's happened to you?" called Margaret, following through the wind
that gathers at sundown on the northern slopes of hills. "But it's
stupid!" And suddenly stupidity seized her, and the immense landscape
was blurred. But Helen turned back.

"I don't know what's happened to either of us," said Margaret, wiping
her eyes. "We must both have done mad." Then Helen wiped hers, and they
even laughed a little.

"Look here, sit down."

"All right; I'll sit down if you'll sit down."

"There. (One kiss.) Now, whatever, whatever is the matter?"

"I do mean what I said. Don't; it wouldn't do."

"Oh, Helen, stop saying 'don't'! It's ignorant. It's as if your head
wasn't out of the slime. 'Don't' is probably what Mrs. Bast says all the
day to Mr. Bast."

Helen was silent.

"Well?"

"Tell me about it first, and meanwhile perhaps I'll have got my head out
of the slime."

"That's better. Well, where shall I begin? When I arrived at
Waterloo--no, I'll go back before that, because I'm anxious you should
know everything from the first. The 'first' was about ten days ago. It
was the day Mr. Bast came to tea and lost his temper. I was defending
him, and Mr. Wilcox became jealous about me, however slightly. I thought
it was the involuntary thing, which men can't help any more than we can.
You know--at least, I know in my own case--when a man has said to me,
'So-and-so's a pretty girl,' I am seized with a momentary sourness
against So-and-so, and long to tweak her ear. It's a tiresome feeling,
but not an important one, and one easily manages it. But it wasn't only
this in Mr. Wilcox's case, I gather now."

"Then you love him?"

Margaret considered. "It is wonderful knowing that a real man cares for
you," she said. "The mere fact of that grows more tremendous. Remember,
I've known and liked him steadily for nearly three years."

"But loved him?"

Margaret peered into her past. It is pleasant to analyse feelings while
they are still only feelings, and unembodied in the social fabric. With
her arm round Helen, and her eyes shifting over the view, as if this
country or that could reveal the secret of her own heart, she meditated
honestly, and said, "No."

"But you will?"

"Yes," said Margaret, "of that I'm pretty sure. Indeed, I began the
moment he spoke to me."

"And have settled to marry him?"

"I had, but am wanting a long talk about it now. What is it against him,
Helen? You must try and say."

Helen, in her turn, looked outwards. "It is ever since Paul," she said
finally.

"But what has Mr. Wilcox to do with Paul?"

"But he was there, they were all there that morning when I came down
to breakfast, and saw that Paul was frightened--the man who loved me
frightened and all his paraphernalia fallen, so that I knew it was
impossible, because personal relations are the important thing for ever
and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger."

She poured the sentence forth in one breath, but her sister understood
it, because it touched on thoughts that were familiar between them.

"That's foolish. In the first place, I disagree about the outer life.
Well, we've often argued that. The real point is that there is the
widest gulf between my love-making and yours. Yours was romance; mine
will be prose. I'm not running it down--a very good kind of prose, but
well considered, well thought out. For instance, I know all Mr. Wilcox's
faults. He's afraid of emotion. He cares too much about success, too
little about the past. His sympathy lacks poetry, and so isn't sympathy
really. I'd even say "--she looked at the shining lagoons--"that,
spiritually, he's not as honest as I am. Doesn't that satisfy you?"

"No, it doesn't," said Helen. "It makes me feel worse and worse. You
must be mad."

Margaret made a movement of irritation.

"I don't intend him, or any man or any woman, to be all my life--good
heavens, no! There are heaps of things in me that he doesn't, and shall
never, understand."

Thus she spoke before the wedding ceremony and the physical union,
before the astonishing glass shade had fallen that interposes between
married couples and the world. She was to keep her independence more
than do most women as yet. Marriage was to alter her fortunes rather
than her character, and she was not far wrong in boasting that she
understood her future husband. Yet he did alter her character--a little.
There was an unforeseen surprise, a cessation of the winds and odours of
life, a social pressure that would have her think conjugally.

"So with him," she continued. "There are heaps of things in him--more
especially things that he does that will always be hidden from me. He
has all those public qualities which you so despise and which enable all
this--" She waved her hand at the landscape, which confirmed anything.
"If Wilcoxes hadn't worked and died in England for thousands of years,
you and I couldn't sit here without having our throats cut. There would
be no trains, no ships to carry us literary people about in, no fields
even. Just savagery. No--perhaps not even that. Without their spirit
life might never have moved out of protoplasm. More and more do I refuse
to draw my income and sneer at those who guarantee it. There are times
when it seems to me--"

"And to me, and to all women. So one kissed Paul."

"That's brutal." said 'Margaret. "Mine is an absolutely different case.
I've thought things out."

"It makes no difference thinking things out. They come to the same."

"Rubbish!"

There was a long silence, during which the tide returned into Poole
Harbour. "One would lose something," murmured Helen, apparently to
herself. The water crept over the mud-flats towards the gorse and the
blackened heather. Branksea Island lost its immense foreshores, and
became a sombre episode of trees. Frome was forced inward towards
Dorchester, Stour against Wimborne, Avon towards Salisbury, and over the
immense displacement the sun presided, leading it to triumph ere he sank
to rest. England was alive, throbbing through all her estuaries, crying
for joy through the mouths of all her gulls, and the north wind, with
contrary motion, blew stronger against her rising seas. What did it
mean? For what end are her fair complexities, her changes of soil, her
sinuous coast? Does she belong to those who have moulded her and made
her feared by other lands, or to those who have added nothing to her
power, but have somehow seen her, seen the whole island at once, lying
as a jewel in a silver sea, sailing as a ship of souls, with all the
brave world's fleet accompanying her towards eternity?

 The narrator waxes lyrical about the beauties of the English countryside for a little while. The reason, we learn, is that Frieda is visiting the Schlegels and Aunt Juley at Swanage, but she doesn't admire the scene as fervently as Aunt Juley would like. Frieda and Aunt Juley have a silly almost-argument about the virtues of German salt marshes versus English lakes - this is clearly a national matter. The party observes a train coming towards them, and Helen wonders if Margaret is on it. They wonder about the Wilcoxes' house - will it do for the Schlegels? They have a little laugh over the Paul/Helen incident, and Helen declares that it doesn't matter anymore, as long as the Ducie Street house is nice. Helen wishes absently that they might have Howards End, since it's such a nice house. They discuss what Helen calls the "Great Wilcox Peril" of two summers ago as they wait for Tibby and Margaret to join them for tea on the hillside. Frieda makes a comment on the nature of love and emotional truth that reveals - to Helen and to the narrator - the essential difference between Germans and the English: the Germans are interested in Truth, while the English are interested in respectability. Or so it seems. Margaret and Tibby approach in a pony cart, and Helen, who can't wait to hear the news, wants to know if she got them a house. Margaret wearily says no, and explains quietly to Helen that she's had a marriage proposal from Mr. Wilcox. Helen is amused - then distinctly unamused when she realizes that Margaret is having feelings for her suitor. Helen throws a fit, telling Margaret that she mustn't marry Mr. Wilcox. Margaret thinks she's being a bit unreasonable. Helen can't explain exactly why she is so upset. Both sisters take a minute to calm down. Margaret explains how it happened. She feels sure that he loves her, and that she has started to love him. Helen tries to explain, in turn, her dislike for Mr. Wilcox, which began when she saw Paul frightened by his father - the Wilcoxes deal too much in the outside world of respectability and doing the proper thing, not the thing that one feels is right. Margaret has no romantic illusions about her relationship; she knows that it will be prose, not poetry, as she phrases it. But she's OK with this - the important thing is that Mr. Wilcox is a good man, and a real man. Margaret is determined not to let her marriage take over her whole life, and expects that he and she will continue to be independent characters. She respects the Wilcoxes for what they've done - ancestrally, in a weird sense. They're the kind of people that make England what it is, and she values that. Helen tries to dismiss that impulse, but Margaret will have none of it. Again, the narrator wonders poetically what makes England England - the land itself is somehow alive and animated by something.

