Chapter: It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the
most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All
sorts and conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs.
Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come--of course, not so as
to disturb the others--or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks
in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or
like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full
score open on his knee; or like their cousin, Fraulein Mosebach, who
remembers all the time that Beethoven is echt Deutsch; or like Fraulein
Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fraulein Mosebach: in
any case, the passion of your life becomes more vivid, and you are bound
to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings. It is cheap, even
if you hear it in the Queen's Hall, dreariest music-room in London,
though not as dreary as the Free Trade Hall, Manchester; and even if
you sit on the extreme left of that hall, so that the brass bumps at you
before the rest of the orchestra arrives, it is still cheap.

"Whom is Margaret talking to?" said Mrs. Munt, at the conclusion of the
first movement. She was again in London on a visit to Wickham Place.

Helen looked down the long line of their party, and said that she did
not know.

"Would it be some young man or other whom she takes an interest in?"

"I expect so," Helen replied. Music enwrapped her, and she could not
enter into the distinction that divides young men whom one takes an
interest in from young men whom one knows.

"You girls are so wonderful in always having--Oh dear! one mustn't
talk."

For the Andante had begun--very beautiful, but bearing a family likeness
to all the other beautiful Andantes that Beethoven had written, and,
to Helen's mind, rather disconnecting the heroes and shipwrecks of the
first movement from the heroes and goblins of the third. She heard the
tune through once, and then her attention wandered, and she gazed at the
audience, or the organ, or the architecture. Much did she censure
the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen's
Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow
pantaloons, on which the October sunlight struck. "How awful to marry a
man like those Cupids!" thought Helen. Here Beethoven started decorating
his tune, so she heard him through once more, and then she smiled at
her Cousin Frieda. But Frieda, listening to Classical Music, could not
respond. Herr Liesecke, too, looked as if wild horses could not make him
inattentive; there were lines across his forehead, his lips were parted,
his pince-nez at right angles to his nose, and he had laid a thick,
white hand on either knee. And next to her was Aunt Juley, so British,
and wanting to tap. How interesting that row of people was! What diverse
influences had gone to the making! Here Beethoven, after humming and
hawing with great sweetness, said "Heigho," and the Andante came to an
end. Applause, and a round of "wunderschoning" and pracht volleying from
the German contingent. Margaret started talking to her new young man;
Helen said to her aunt: "Now comes the wonderful movement: first of all
the goblins, and then a trio of elephants dancing"; and Tibby implored
the company generally to look out for the transitional passage on the
drum.

"On the what, dear?"

"On the drum, Aunt Juley."

"No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the
goblins and they come back," breathed Helen, as the music started with
a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end. Others
followed him. They were not aggressive creatures; it was that that made
them so terrible to Helen. They merely observed in passing that there
was no such thing as splendour or heroism in the world. After the
interlude of elephants dancing, they returned and made the observation
for the second time. Helen could not contradict them, for, once at all
events, she had felt the same, and had seen the reliable walls of youth
collapse. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! The goblins were
right. Her brother raised his finger; it was the transitional passage on
the drum.

For, as if things were going too far, Beethoven took hold of the goblins
and made them do what he wanted. He appeared in person. He gave them
a little push, and they began to walk in a major key instead of in a
minor, and then--he blew with his mouth and they were scattered! Gusts
of splendour, gods and demigods contending with vast swords, colour
and fragrance broadcast on the field of battle, magnificent victory,
magnificent death! Oh, it all burst before the girl, and she even
stretched out her gloved hands as if it was tangible. Any fate was
titanic; any contest desirable; conqueror and conquered would alike be
applauded by the angels of the utmost stars.

And the goblins--they had not really been there at all? They were only
the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief? One healthy human impulse would
dispel them? Men like the Wilcoxes, or ex-President Roosevelt, would
say yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins really had been there. They
might return--and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might
boil over and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the
terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked
quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic
and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall.
Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the ramparts up.
He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were
scattered. He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the
youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of
a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion. But the
goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that
is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.

Helen pushed her way out during the applause. She desired to be alone.
The music had summed up to her all that had happened or could happen in
her career.

She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be superseded.
The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have no other
meaning, and life could have no other meaning. She pushed right out of
the building and walked slowly down the outside staircase, breathing the
autumnal air, and then she strolled home.

"Margaret," called Mrs. Munt, "is Helen all right?"

"Oh yes."

"She is always going away in the middle of a programme," said Tibby.

"The music has evidently moved her deeply," said Fraulein Mosebach.

"Excuse me," said Margaret's young man, who had for some time been
preparing a sentence, "but that lady has, quite inadvertently, taken my
umbrella."

"Oh, good gracious me!--I am so sorry. Tibby, run after Helen."

"I shall miss the Four Serious Songs if I do."

"Tibby, love, you must go."

"It isn't of any consequence," said the young man, in truth a little
uneasy about his umbrella.

"But of course it is. Tibby! Tibby!"

Tibby rose to his feet, and wilfully caught his person on the backs of
the chairs. By the time he had tipped up the seat and had found his
hat, and had deposited his full score in safety, it was "too late" to
go after Helen. The Four Serious Songs had begun, and one could not move
during their performance.

"My sister is so careless," whispered Margaret.

"Not at all," replied the young man; but his voice was dead and cold.

"If you would give me your address--"

"Oh, not at all, not at all;" and he wrapped his greatcoat over his
knees.

Then the Four Serious Songs rang shallow in Margaret's ears. Brahms, for
all his grumbling and grizzling, had never guessed what it felt like
to be suspected of stealing an umbrella. For this fool of a young man
thought that she and Helen and Tibby had been playing the confidence
trick on him, and that if he gave his address they would break into
his rooms some midnight or other and steal his walking-stick too. Most
ladies would have laughed, but Margaret really minded, for it gave her
a glimpse into squalor. To trust people is a luxury in which only the
wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. As soon as Brahms had
grunted himself out, she gave him her card and said, "That is where
we live; if you preferred, you could call for the umbrella after the
concert, but I didn't like to trouble you when it has all been our
fault."

His face brightened a little when he saw that Wickham Place was W. It
was sad to see him corroded with suspicion, and yet not daring to be
impolite, in case these well-dressed people were honest after all. She
took it as a good sign that he said to her, "It's a fine programme
this afternoon, is it not?" for this was the remark with which he had
originally opened, before the umbrella intervened.

"The Beethoven's fine," said Margaret, who was not a female of the
encouraging type. "I don't like the Brahms, though, nor the Mendelssohn
that came first and ugh! I don't like this Elgar that's coming."

"What, what?" called Herr Liesecke, overhearing. "The 'Pomp and
Circumstance' will not be fine?"

"Oh, Margaret, you tiresome girl!" cried her aunt.

"Here have I been persuading Herr Liesecke to stop for 'Pomp and
Circumstance,' and you are undoing all my work. I am so anxious for him
to hear what WE are doing in music. Oh,--you musn't run down our English
composers, Margaret."

"For my part, I have heard the composition at Stettin," said Fraulein
Mosebach, "on two occasions. It is dramatic, a little."

"Frieda, you despise English music. You know you do. And English art.
And English literature, except Shakespeare, and he's a German. Very
well, Frieda, you may go."

The lovers laughed and glanced at each other. Moved by a common impulse,
they rose to their feet and fled from "Pomp and Circumstance."

"We have this call to pay in Finsbury Circus, it is true," said Herr
Liesecke, as he edged past her and reached the gangway just as the music
started.

"Margaret--" loudly whispered by Aunt Juley.

"Margaret, Margaret! Fraulein Mosebach has left her beautiful little bag
behind her on the seat."

Sure enough, there was Frieda's reticule, containing her address book,
her pocket dictionary, her map of London, and her money.

"Oh, what a bother--what a family we are! Fr--frieda!"

"Hush!" said all those who thought the music fine.

"But it's the number they want in Finsbury Circus."

"Might I--couldn't I--" said the suspicious young man, and got very red.

"Oh, I would be so grateful."

He took the bag--money clinking inside it--and slipped up the gangway
with it. He was just in time to catch them at the swing-door, and he
received a pretty smile from the German girl and a fine bow from her
cavalier. He returned to his seat upsides with the world. The trust that
they had reposed in him was trivial, but he felt that it cancelled his
mistrust for them, and that probably he would not be "had" over his
umbrella. This young man had been "had" in the past badly, perhaps
overwhelmingly--and now most of his energies went in defending himself
against the unknown. But this afternoon--perhaps on account of music--he
perceived that one must slack off occasionally or what is the good
of being alive? Wickham Place, W., though a risk, was as safe as most
things, and he would risk it.

So when the concert was over and Margaret said, "We live quite near; I
am going there now. Could you walk round with me, and we'll find your
umbrella?" he said, "Thank you," peaceably, and followed her out of
the Queen's Hall. She wished that he was not so anxious to hand a lady
downstairs, or to carry a lady's programme for her--his class was near
enough her own for its manners to vex her. But she found him interesting
on the whole--every one interested the Schlegels on the whole at that
time--and while her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to
invite him to tea.

"How tired one gets after music!" she began.

"Do you find the atmosphere of Queen's Hall oppressive?"

"Yes, horribly."

"But surely the atmosphere of Covent Garden is even more oppressive."

"Do you go there much?"

"When my work permits, I attend the gallery for the Royal Opera."

Helen would have exclaimed, "So do I. I love the gallery," and thus
have endeared herself to the young man. Helen could do these things. But
Margaret had an almost morbid horror of "drawing people out," of "making
things go." She had been to the gallery at Covent Garden, but she did
not "attend" it, preferring the more expensive seats; still less did she
love it. So she made no reply.

"This year I have been three times--to 'Faust,' 'Tosca,' and--" Was it
"Tannhouser" or "Tannhoyser"? Better not risk the word.

Margaret disliked "Tosca" and "Faust." And so, for one reason and
another, they walked on in silence, chaperoned by the voice of Mrs.
Munt, who was getting into difficulties with her nephew.

"I do in a WAY remember the passage, Tibby, but when every instrument is
so beautiful, it is difficult to pick out one thing rather than another.
I am sure that you and Helen take me to the very nicest concerts. Not a
dull note from beginning to end. I only wish that our German friends had
stayed till it finished."

"But surely you haven't forgotten the drum steadily beating on the low
C, Aunt Juley?" came Tibby's voice. "No one could. It's unmistakable."

"A specially loud part?" hazarded Mrs. Munt. "Of course I do not go
in for being musical," she added, the shot failing. "I only care for
music--a very different thing. But still I will say this for myself--I
do know when I like a thing and when I don't. Some people are the same
about pictures. They can go into a picture gallery--Miss Conder can--and
say straight off what they feel, all round the wall. I never could do
that. But music is so different from pictures, to my mind. When it comes
to music I am as safe as houses, and I assure you, Tibby, I am by no
means pleased by everything. There was a thing--something about a faun
in French--which Helen went into ecstasies over, but I thought it most
tinkling and superficial, and said so, and I held to my opinion too."

"Do you agree?" asked Margaret. "Do you think music is so different from
pictures?"

"I--I should have thought so, kind of," he said.

"So should I. Now, my sister declares they're just the same. We have
great arguments over it. She says I'm dense; I say she's sloppy."
Getting under way, she cried: "Now, doesn't it seem absurd to you? What
is the good of the Arts if they 're interchangeable? What is the good
of the ear if it tells you the same as the eye? Helen's one aim is to
translate tunes into the language of painting, and pictures into the
language of music. It's very ingenious, and she says several pretty
things in the process, but what's gained, I'd like to know? Oh, it's
all rubbish, radically false. If Monet's really Debussy, and Debussy's
really Monet, neither gentleman is worth his salt--that's my opinion."

Evidently these sisters quarrelled.

"Now, this very symphony that we've just been having--she won't let it
alone. She labels it with meanings from start to finish; turns it into
literature. I wonder if the day will ever return when music will be
treated as music. Yet I don't know. There's my brother--behind us. He
treats music as music, and oh, my goodness! He makes me angrier than any
one, simply furious. With him I daren't even argue."

An unhappy family, if talented.

"But, of course, the real villain is Wagner. He has done more than any
man in the nineteenth century towards the muddling of the arts. I
do feel that music is in a very serious state just now, though
extraordinarily interesting. Every now and then in history there do
come these terrible geniuses, like Wagner, who stir up all the wells of
thought at once. For a moment it's splendid. Such a splash as never
was. But afterwards--such a lot of mud; and the wells--as it were, they
communicate with each other too easily now, and not one of them will run
quite clear. That's what Wagner's done."

Her speeches fluttered away from the young man like birds. If only he
could talk like this, he would have caught the world. Oh, to acquire
culture! Oh, to pronounce foreign names correctly! Oh, to be well
informed, discoursing at ease on every subject that a lady started! But
it would take one years. With an hour at lunch and a few shattered hours
in the evening, how was it possible to catch up with leisured women,
who had been reading steadily from childhood? His brain might be full
of names, he might have even heard of Monet and Debussy; the trouble
was that he could not string them together into a sentence, he could not
make them "tell," he could not quite forget about his stolen umbrella.
Yes, the umbrella was the real trouble. Behind Monet and Debussy the
umbrella persisted, with the steady beat of a drum. "I suppose my
umbrella will be all right," he was thinking. "I don't really mind about
it. I will think about music instead. I suppose my umbrella will be all
right." Earlier in the afternoon he had worried about seats. Ought he
to have paid as much as two shillings? Earlier still he had wondered,
"Shall I try to do without a programme?" There had always been something
to worry him ever since he could remember, always something that
distracted him in the pursuit of beauty. For he did pursue beauty, and,
therefore, Margaret's speeches did flutter away from him like birds.

Margaret talked ahead, occasionally saying, "Don't you think so? don't
you feel the same?" And once she stopped, and said, "Oh, do interrupt
me!" which terrified him. She did not attract him, though she filled him
with awe. Her figure was meagre, her face seemed all teeth and eyes, her
references to her sister and her brother were uncharitable. For all
her cleverness and culture, she was probably one of those soulless,
atheistical women who have been so shown up by Miss Corelli. It was
surprising (and alarming) that she should suddenly say, "I do hope that
you'll come in and have some tea. We should be so glad. I have dragged
you so far out of your way."

They had arrived at Wickham Place. The sun had set, and the backwater,
in deep shadow, was filling with a gentle haze. To the right the
fantastic sky-line of the flats towered black against the hues of
evening; to the left the older houses raised a square-cut, irregular
parapet against the grey. Margaret fumbled for her latch-key. Of course
she had forgotten it. So, grasping her umbrella by its ferrule, she
leant over the area and tapped at the dining-room window.

"Helen! Let us in!"

"All right," said a voice.

"You've been taking this gentleman's umbrella."

"Taken a what?" said Helen, opening the door. "Oh, what's that? Do come
in! How do you do?"

"Helen, you must not be so ramshackly. You took this gentleman's
umbrella away from Queen's Hall, and he has had the trouble of coming
round for it."

"Oh, I am so sorry!" cried Helen, all her hair flying. She had pulled
off her hat as soon as she returned, and had flung herself into the
big dining-room chair. "I do nothing but steal umbrellas. I am so very
sorry! Do come in and choose one. Is yours a hooky or a nobbly? Mine's a
nobbly--at least, I THINK it is."

The light was turned on, and they began to search the hall, Helen, who
had abruptly parted with the Fifth Symphony, commenting with shrill
little cries.

"Don't you talk, Meg! You stole an old gentleman's silk top-hat. Yes,
she did, Aunt Juley. It is a positive fact. She thought it was a muff.
Oh, heavens! I've knocked the In-and-Out card down. Where's Frieda?
Tibby, why don't you ever--No, I can't remember what I was going to say.
That wasn't it, but do tell the maids to hurry tea up. What about this
umbrella?" She opened it. "No, it's all gone along the seams. It's an
appalling umbrella. It must be mine."

But it was not.

He took it from her, murmured a few words of thanks, and then fled, with
the lilting step of the clerk.

"But if you will stop--" cried Margaret. "Now, Helen, how stupid you've
been!"

"Whatever have I done?"

"Don't you see that you've frightened him away? I meant him to stop to
tea. You oughtn't to talk about stealing or holes in an umbrella. I saw
his nice eyes getting so miserable. No, it's not a bit of good now." For
Helen had darted out into the street, shouting, "Oh, do stop!"

"I dare say it is all for the best," opined Mrs. Munt. "We know nothing
about the young man, Margaret, and your drawing-room is full of very
tempting little things."

But Helen cried: "Aunt Juley, how can you! You make me more and more
ashamed. I'd rather he had been a thief and taken all the apostle spoons
than that I--Well, I must shut the front-door, I suppose. One more
failure for Helen."

"Yes, I think the apostle spoons could have gone as rent," said
Margaret. Seeing that her aunt did not understand, she added: "You
remember 'rent'? It was one of father's words--Rent to the ideal, to his
own faith in human nature. You remember how he would trust strangers,
and if they fooled him he would say, 'It's better to be fooled than to
be suspicious'--that the confidence trick is the work of man, but the
want-of-confidence trick is the work of the devil."

"I remember something of the sort now," said Mrs. Munt, rather tartly,
for she longed to add, "It was lucky that your father married a wife
with money." But this was unkind, and she contented herself with, "Why,
he might have stolen the little Ricketts picture as well."

"Better that he had," said Helen stoutly.

"No, I agree with Aunt Juley," said Margaret. "I'd rather mistrust
people than lose my little Ricketts. There are limits."

Their brother, finding the incident commonplace, had stolen upstairs to
see whether there were scones for tea. He warmed the teapot--almost too
deftly--rejected the orange pekoe that the parlour-maid had provided,
poured in five spoonfuls of a superior blend, filled up with really
boiling water, and now called to the ladies to be quick or they would
lose the aroma.

"All right, Auntie Tibby," called Heien, while Margaret, thoughtful
again, said: "In a way, I wish we had a real boy in the house--the kind
of boy who cares for men. It would make entertaining so much easier."

"So do I," said her sister. "Tibby only cares for cultured females
singing Brahms." And when they joined him she said rather sharply: "Why
didn't you make that young man welcome, Tibby? You must do the host a
little, you know. You ought to have taken his hat and coaxed him into
stopping, instead of letting him be swamped by screaming women."

Tibby sighed, and drew a long strand of hair over his forehead.

"Oh, it's no good looking superior. I mean what I say."

"Leave Tibby alone!" said Margaret, who could not bear her brother to be
scolded.

"Here's the house a regular hen-coop!" grumbled Helen.

"Oh, my dear!" protested Mrs. Munt. "How can you say such dreadful
things! The number of men you get here has always astonished me. If
there is any danger it's the other way round."

"Yes, but it's the wrong sort of men, Helen means."

"No, I don't," corrected Helen. "We get the right sort of man, but the
wrong side of him, and I say that's Tibby's fault. There ought to be a
something about the house--an--I don't know what."

"A touch of the W's, perhaps?"

Helen put out her tongue.

"Who are the W's?" asked Tibby.

"The W's are things I and Meg and Aunt Juley know about and you don't,
so there!"

"I suppose that ours is a female house," said Margaret, "and one must
just accept it. No, Aunt Juley, I don't mean that this house is full of
women. I am trying to say something much more clever. I mean that it
was irrevocably feminine, even in father's time. Now I'm sure you
understand! Well, I'll give you another example. It'll shock you, but
I don't care. Suppose Queen Victoria gave a dinner-party, and that
the guests had been Leighton, Millais, Swinburne, Rossetti, Meredith,
Fitzgerald, etc. Do you suppose that the atmosphere of that dinner would
have been artistic? Heavens, no! The very chairs on which they sat would
have seen to that. So with out house--it must be feminine, and all we
can do is to see that it isn't effeminate. Just as another house that
I can mention, but won't, sounded irrevocably masculine, and all its
inmates can do is to see that it isn't brutal."

"That house being the W's house, I presume," said Tibby.

"You're not going to be told about the W's, my child," Helen cried, "so
don't you think it. And on the other hand, I don't the least mind if
you find out, so don't you think you've done anything clever, in either
case. Give me a cigarette."

"You do what you can for the house," said Margaret. "The drawing-room
reeks of smoke."

"If you smoked too, the house might suddenly turn masculine. Atmosphere
is probably a question of touch and go. Even at Queen Victoria's
dinner-party--if something had been just a little Different--perhaps if
she'd worn a clinging Liberty tea-gown instead of a magenta satin."

"With an India shawl over her shoulders--"

"Fastened at the bosom with a Cairngorm-pin."

Bursts of disloyal laughter--you must remember that they are half
German--greeted these suggestions, and Margaret said pensively, "How
inconceivable it would be if the Royal Family cared about Art." And the
conversation drifted away and away, and Helen's cigarette turned to
a spot in the darkness, and the great flats opposite were sown with
lighted windows which vanished and were refit again, and vanished
incessantly. Beyond them the thoroughfare roared gently--a tide that
could never be quiet, while in the east, invisible behind the smokes of
Wapping, the moon was rising.

"That reminds me, Margaret. We might have taken that young man into
the dining-room, at all events. Only the majolica plate--and that is so
firmly set in the wall. I am really distressed that he had no tea."

For that little incident had impressed the three women more than might
be supposed. It remained as a goblin footfall, as a hint that all is not
for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and that beneath these
superstructures of wealth and art there wanders an ill-fed boy, who has
recovered his umbrella indeed, but who has left no address behind him,
and no name.

 The chapter opens on the scene of the extended Schlegel family attentively listening to a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, each in their own way. Helen romantically infuses the music with her own imagination, and sees a whole fantastical string of images that accompany it. Margaret hears only the music. Tibby, always academic, knowledgeably ponders the musical score as he listens. They are accompanied by their cousin Frieda Mosebach, her "young man," Herr Liesecke, and Aunt Juley. In between movements, Aunt Juley notices Margaret talking to an unknown young man, about whom she asks Helen. They're interrupted by the start of the second movement, the Andante. We are treated to the narrator's observations of these various listeners, all of whom have different ways of responding to the music. To whimsical Helen, the movement speaks of pessimistic goblins walking around the world, only to be blown away by Beethoven's ending . Helen is overcome by the music, and she escapes during the applause to go home alone. The young man Margaret's speaking to pipes up, noticing that Helen has stolen his umbrella in her quick escape. Margaret tries to make Tibby run after Helen to fetch it, but he refuses. The next piece, the Four Serious Songs by Brahms, prevents anyone from going anywhere. When the Brahms ends, Margaret gives her calling card to the young man, in case he'd like to come by and pick up his umbrella after the concert. The two of them make small talk, and Margaret comments that she doesn't like the next piece in the concert program, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance. At this, Frieda and Herr Liesecke dash away to go meet up with some friends, to Aunt Juley's dismay. Frieda leaves her bag behind, and the young man dashes out to give it to her. He feels good about the fact that Margaret trusted him with Frieda's purse, and decides to go with the Schlegels to pick up his umbrella from their house after the concert. Margaret finds the young man quite intriguing, despite the fact that his over-eager manners make her feel their class difference , and she wants to invite him to tea. As they walk, they further discuss music, and Tibby and Aunt Juley steal the show, arguing about the music they've just heard. The discussion spreads to Margaret, who asks whether or not music and other art forms are the same or different. Helen, apparently, believes them to be the same, while Margaret maintains that there's a difference. The young man is intrigued by these odd siblings in turn. Margaret goes on, trash talking German composer Richard Wagner for blending all of the arts together. The young man, meanwhile, is overwhelmed by this high-flown discussion. He can't imagine what it must be like to be as cultured and knowledgeable as Margaret. He then begins to worry about his umbrella - apparently, he's quite a worrier. The party arrives at Wickham Place, and Margaret asks the young man to come in and have some tea. He's distraught by this crazy family. Helen flies downstairs to let them into the house, and apologizes for taking the man's umbrella. Apparently, the inadvertent theft of other people's hats and umbrellas is pretty commonplace for Margaret and Helen. She finds a particularly ratty umbrella in their collection, and, though she says it must be hers, it's actually the young man's. He takes it and dashes off. Margaret blames Helen for scaring the stranger off, and she runs out to try and stop him, but it's no use. Aunt Juley thinks it's a good thing he left - after all, she reasons, he might have stolen some of the valuable knickknacks lying about the house, including a precious picture by the painter Charles Ricketts. Tibby is bored by this and goes upstairs to tend to the tea and scones. He's obviously an expert at this duty. On their way upstairs to join their brother, Helen remarks that she wishes they had a "real" boy in the house, not just the opera-loving Tibby. When they get to him, Margaret accuses Tibby of not making their visitor feel at home enough; the house, in her opinion, is too full of "screaming women." Tibby has no defense. They argue over what kind of man they should have around the house - Margaret teases Helen that they might be better off with some men like the "W."s . Margaret comes to the conclusion that their home is irrevocably feminine, but they should try and keep it from being effeminate, a fine distinction. The sisters laugh about the idea of stuffy Queen Victoria hosting a dinner party full of Pre-Raphaelite artists, and the conversation is derailed. Though they move onto other subjects, it's clear that the young man of the stolen umbrella left quite an impression.

