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.



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 civilisations
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 slip
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 would 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 that 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
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 jaw's, and positively weighed
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 into the kitchen, where he bathed his hands. The kitchen
was the same size as the sitting-room; beyond 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 a 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 basis 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 the 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. Cunningham?"

"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; some one 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, 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 any one 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 some one, and Aunt some
one, 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 no 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.

"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.



"Oh, Margaret," cried her aunt next morning, "such a most unfortunate
thing has happened. I could not get you alone."

The most unfortunate thing was not very serious. One of the flats in
the ornate block opposite had been taken furnished by the Wilcox family,
"coming up, no doubt, in the hope of getting into London society."
That Mrs. Munt should be the first to discover the misfortune was not
remarkable, for she was so interested in the flats, that she watched
their every mutation with unwearying care. In theory she despised
them--they took away that old-world look--they cut off the sun--flats
house a flashy type of person. But if the truth had been known, she
found her visits to Wickham Place twice as amusing since Wickham
Mansions had arisen, and would in a couple of days learn more about
them than her nieces in a couple of months, or her nephew in a couple
of years. She would stroll across and make friends with the porters, and
inquire what the rents were, exclaiming for example: "What! a hundred
and twenty for a basement? You'll never get it!" And they would answer:
"One can but try, madam." The passenger lifts, the arrangement for coals
(a great temptation for a dishonest porter), were all familiar matters
to her, and perhaps a relief from the politico-economical-esthetic
atmosphere that reigned at the Schlegels.

Margaret received the information calmly, and did not agree that it
would throw a cloud over poor Helen's life.

"Oh, but Helen isn't a girl with no interests," she explained. "She has
plenty of other things and other people to think about. She made a false
start with the Wilcoxes, and she'll be as willing as we are to have
nothing more to do with them."

"For a clever girl, dear, how very oddly you do talk. Helen'll HAVE to
have something more to do with them, now that they 're all opposite. She
may meet that Paul in the street. She cannot very well not bow."

"Of course she must bow. But look here; let's do the flowers. I was
going to say, the will to be interested in him has died, and what else
matters? I look on that disastrous episode (over which you were so
kind) as the killing of a nerve in Helen. It's dead, and she'll never be
troubled with it again. The only things that matter are the things
that interest one. Bowing, even calling and leaving cards, even a
dinner-party--we can do all those things to the Wilcoxes, if they find
it agreeable; but the other thing, the one important thing--never again.
Don't you see?"

Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a most
questionable statement--that any emotion, any interest once vividly
aroused, can wholly die.

"I also have the honour to inform you that the Wilcoxes are bored with
us. I didn't tell you at the time--it might have made you angry, and you
had enough to worry you--but I wrote a letter to Mrs. W, and apologised
for the trouble that Helen had given them. She didn't answer it."

"How very rude!"

"I wonder. Or was it sensible?"

"No, Margaret, most rude."

"In either case one can class it as reassuring."

Mrs. Munt sighed. She was going back to Swanage on the morrow, just as
her nieces were wanting her most. Other regrets crowded upon her: for
instance, how magnificently she would have cut Charles if she had met
him face to face. She had already seen him, giving an order to the
porter--and very common he looked in a tall hat. But unfortunately his
back was turned to her, and though she had cut his back, she could not
regard this as a telling snub.

"But you will be careful, won't you?" she exhorted.

"Oh, certainly. Fiendishly careful."

"And Helen must be careful, too."

"Careful over what?" cried Helen, at that moment coming into the room
with her cousin.

"Nothing" said Margaret, seized with a momentary awkwardness.

"Careful over what, Aunt Juley?"

Mrs. Munt assumed a cryptic air. "It is only that a certain family,
whom we know by name but do not mention, as you said yourself last
night after the concert, have taken the flat opposite from the
Mathesons--where the plants are in the balcony."

Helen began some laughing reply, and then disconcerted them all by
blushing. Mrs. Munt was so disconcerted that she exclaimed, "What,
Helen, you don't mind them coming, do you?" and deepened the blush to
crimson.

"Of course I don't mind," said Helen a little crossly. "It is that you
and Meg are both so absurdly grave about it, when there's nothing to be
grave about at all."

"I'm not grave," protested Margaret, a little cross in her turn.

"Well, you look grave; doesn't she, Frieda?"

"I don't feel grave, that's all I can say; you're going quite on the
wrong tack."

"No, she does not feel grave," echoed Mrs. Munt. "I can bear witness to
that. She disagrees--"

"Hark!" interrupted Fraulein Mosebach. "I hear Bruno entering the hall."

For Herr Liesecke was due at Wickham Place to call for the two younger
girls. He was not entering the hall--in fact, he did not enter it for
quite five minutes. But Frieda detected a delicate situation, and said
that she and Helen had much better wait for Bruno down below, and
leave Margaret and Mrs. Munt to finish arranging the flowers. Helen
acquiesced. But, as if to prove that the situation was not delicate
really, she stopped in the doorway and said:

"Did you say the Mathesons' flat, Aunt Juley? How wonderful you are!
I never knew that the name of the woman who laced too tightly was
Matheson."

"Come, Helen," said her cousin.

"Go, Helen," said her aunt; and continued to Margaret almost in the same
breath: "Helen cannot deceive me. She does mind."

"Oh, hush!" breathed Margaret. "Frieda'll hear you, and she can be so
tiresome."

"She minds," persisted Mrs. Munt, moving thoughtfully about the room,
and pulling the dead chrysanthemums out of the vases. "I knew she'd
mind--and I'm sure a girl ought to! Such an experience! Such awful
coarse-grained people! I know more about them than you do, which you
forget, and if Charles had taken you that motor drive--well, you'd have
reached the house a perfect wreck. Oh, Margaret, you don't know what
you are in for! They're all bottled up against the drawing-room window.
There's Mrs. Wilcox--I've seen her. There's Paul. There's Evie, who is a
minx. There's Charles--I saw him to start with. And who would an elderly
man with a moustache and a copper-coloured face be?"

"Mr. Wilcox, possibly."

"I knew it. And there's Mr. Wilcox."

"It's a shame to call his face copper colour," complained Margaret. "He
has a remarkably good complexion for a man of his age."

Mrs. Munt, triumphant elsewhere, could afford to concede Mr. Wilcox
his complexion. She passed on from it to the plan of campaign that her
nieces should pursue in the future. Margaret tried to stop her.

"Helen did not take the news quite as I expected, but the Wilcox nerve
is dead in her really, so there's no need for plans."

"It's as well to be prepared."

"No--it's as well not to be prepared."

"Why?"

"Because--"

Her thought drew being from the obscure borderland. She could not
explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all
the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the
expense of joy. It is necessary to prepare for an examination, or
a dinner-party, or a possible fall in the price of stock: those who
attempt human relations must adopt another method, or fail. "Because I'd
sooner risk it," was her lame conclusion.

"But imagine the evenings," exclaimed her aunt, pointing to the Mansions
with the spout of the watering can. "Turn the electric light on here
or there, and it's almost the same room. One evening they may forget to
draw their blinds down, and you'll see them; and the next, you yours,
and they'll see you. Impossible to sit out on the balconies. Impossible
to water the plants, or even speak. Imagine going out of the front-door,
and they come out opposite at the same moment. And yet you tell me that
plans are unnecessary, and you'd rather risk it."

"I hope to risk things all my life."

"Oh, Margaret, most dangerous."

"But after all," she continued with a smile, "there's never any great
risk as long as you have money."

"Oh, shame! What a shocking speech!"

"Money pads the edges of things," said Miss Schlegel. "God help those
who have none."

"But this is something quite new!" said Mrs. Munt, who collected new
ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those
that are portable.

"New for me; sensible people have acknowledged it for years. You and I
and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm beneath
our feet that we forget its very existence. It's only when we see some
one near us tottering that we realise all that an independent income
means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the fire, I began
to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the
lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin."

"I call that rather cynical."

"So do I. But Helen and I, we ought to remember, when we are tempted to
criticise others, that we are standing on these islands, and that most
of the others are down below the surface of the sea. The poor cannot
always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever
escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can. Imagine the
tragedy last June, if Helen and Paul Wilcox had been poor people, and
couldn't invoke railways and motor-cars to part them."

"That's more like Socialism," said Mrs. Munt suspiciously.

"Call it what you like. I call it going through life with one's hand
spread open on the table. I'm tired of these rich people who pretend
to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money
that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred
pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as
fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed--from
the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of
six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don't want to
steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want
to steal them and do steal them sometimes, and that what's a joke up
here is down there reality."

"There they go--there goes Fraulein Mosebach. Really, for a German she
does dress charmingly. Oh!--"

"What is it?"

"Helen was looking up at the Wilcoxes' flat."

"Why shouldn't she?"

"I beg your pardon, I interrupted you. What was it you were saying about
reality?"

"I had worked round to myself, as usual," answered Margaret in tones
that were suddenly preoccupied.

"Do tell me this, at all events. Are you for the rich or for the poor?"

"Too difficult. Ask me another. Am I for poverty or for riches? For
riches. Hurrah for riches!"

"For riches!" echoed Mrs. Munt, having, as it were, at last secured her
nut.

"Yes. For riches. Money for ever!"

"So am I, and so, I am afraid, are most of my acquaintances at Swanage,
but I am surprised that you agree with us."

"Thank you so much, Aunt Juley. While I have talked theories, you have
done the flowers."

"Not at all, dear. I wish you would let me help you in more important
things."

"Well, would you be very kind? Would you come round with me to the
registry office? There's a housemaid who won't say yes but doesn't say
no."

On their way thither they too looked up at the Wilcoxes' flat. Evie was
in the balcony, "staring most rudely," according to Mrs. Munt. Oh yes,
it was a nuisance, there was no doubt of it. Helen was proof against
a passing encounter, but--Margaret began to lose confidence. Might it
reawake the dying nerve if the family were living close against her
eyes? And Frieda Mosebach was stopping with them for another fortnight,
and Frieda was sharp, abominably sharp, and quite capable of remarking,
"You love one of the young gentlemen opposite, yes?" The remark would be
untrue, but of the kind which, if stated often enough, may become true;
just as the remark, "England and Germany are bound to fight," renders
war a little more likely each time that it is made, and is therefore
made the more readily by the gutter press of either nation. Have the
private emotions also their gutter press? Margaret thought so, and
feared that good Aunt Juley and Frieda were typical specimens of it.
They might, by continual chatter, lead Helen into a repetition of the
desires of June. Into a repetition--they could not do more; they
could not lead her into lasting love. They were--she saw it
clearly--Journalism; her father, with all his defects and
wrong-headedness, had been Literature, and had he lived, he would have
persuaded his daughter rightly.

The registry office was holding its morning reception. A string of
carriages filled the street. Miss Schlegel waited her turn, and finally
had to be content with an insidious "temporary," being rejected by
genuine housemaids on the ground of her numerous stairs. Her failure
depressed her, and though she forgot the failure, the depression
remained. On her way home she again glanced up at the Wilcoxes' flat,
and took the rather matronly step of speaking about the matter to Helen.

"Helen, you must tell me whether this thing worries you."

"If what?" said Helen, who was washing her hands for lunch.

"The Ws' coming."

"No, of course not."

"Really?"

"Really." Then she admitted that she was a little worried on Mrs.
Wilcox's account; she implied that Mrs. Wilcox might reach backward
into deep feelings, and be pained by things that never touched the other
members of that clan. "I shan't mind if Paul points at our house and
says, 'There lives the girl who tried to catch me.' But she might."

"If even that worries you, we could arrange something. There's no reason
we should be near people who displease us or whom we displease, thanks
to our money. We might even go away for a little."

"Well, I am going away. Frieda's just asked me to Stettin, and I shan't
be back till after the New Year. Will that do? Or must I fly the country
altogether? Really, Meg, what has come over you to make such a fuss?"

"Oh, I'm getting an old maid, I suppose. I thought I minded nothing, but
really I--I should be bored if you fell in love with the same man twice
and"--she cleared her throat--"you did go red, you know, when Aunt Juley
attacked you this morning. I shouldn't have referred to it otherwise."

But Helen's laugh rang true, as she raised a soapy hand to heaven and
swore that never, nowhere and nohow, would she again fall in love with
any of the Wilcox family, down to its remotest collaterals.

 With the Wilcox incident behind them, Margaret and Helen Schlegel move on with their lives. They attend a concert at Queens Hall with Tibby, Aunt Juley, their German cousin Frieda Mosebach, and their cousin's suitor, Herr Liesecke. Throughout the performance, Margaret chats with a young man, Tibby follows the music with a score, and Helen envisions goblins battling over Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Helen is so moved by both the music and her imagination that she suddenly gets up and leaves, which, according to her siblings, is nothing out of the ordinary. As she departs, she absentmindedly takes with her an umbrella that in fact does not belong to her. The young man that Margaret has been chatting with is Leonard Bast. He soon discovers that Helen as taken his umbrella. Because it is too late to go after her, Margaret requests his address so that she may later return his umbrella to him. Slightly suspicious and awkward by nature, Leonard declines. After the concert, Margaret invites him to Wickham Place to fetch his umbrella. She finds him interesting and intends to serve him tea. As they walk, she discusses the arts, causing Leonard to envy her life of culture and privilege. He is uneasy throughout their conversation, for he feels that he is unable to contribute. He longs to be part of such an intellectual world. When they arrive at the Schlegel residence, Margaret informs Helen of her mistake. Embarrassed and apologetic, Helen begins to search the house for the umbrella in question. Upon finding one, she announces that it is so tattered that it could not possible belong to Leonard, but indeed it does. The uncomfortable situation immediately erases any hope of his staying for tea, and after mumbling some words of gratitude, Leonard quickly departs. The Schlegel sisters realize that they have offended Leonard and are embarrassed by the incident. They have a conversation with Aunt Juley about trust and suspicion, where Margaret recalls her father's statement about the importance of taking the risk of trusting people. Tibby then calls them to tea, during which Helen finds fault with him for not having been more of a host to Leonard Bast since he is the only male in the house. The discussion moves to Margaret's conclusion that their home is female in nature, yet not because there are more women than men in it. Rather, she suggests that the house has a personality beyond the people that live in it. In contrast, she mentions that the Wilcox house is masculine in nature. As the Schlegels enjoy tea, Leonard Bast walks home, thinking bitterly about the umbrella incident. His financial status is much lower than that of the Schlegel family, and he had to refrain from buying a newspaper in order to be able to afford the concert where he met them. When he arrives at his home, a basement apartment in an area made up of hastily built flats called Camelia Road, he sits down to read Ruskin. Leonard is hoping to improve his skills in English prose through his reading. While he is far from financially comfortable, he is also not entirely poor, and thinks he can maintain social respectability by becoming cultured. Upon hearing somebody enter the house, he closes the book, putting the calling card that he received from Margaret into it as a bookmark. Jacky has arrived. Not as attractive as she was in her youth, she is in her thirties and suffers from some hearing loss. Leonard, not yet twenty-one, has promised to marry her as soon as he comes of age. She does not fit into his ideals of attaining high culture, but he claims that he would never be capable of abandoning a woman in trouble. After a meager dinner, Leonard is relieved when Jacky goes to bed so that he can focus on his Ruskin. He regards her as a distraction in his attempts to improve his education, for she incessantly questions his love for her, especially after she sees Margaret's calling card fall out of his book. The next day, Aunt Juley, who has been all but spying on the flats across the way, informs Margaret that the Wilcoxes have moved into one of them. Helen makes an untimely entrance and discovers the news, leading her to blush severely as she remembers the embarrassing incident with Paul. Margaret and Aunt Juley fear for her wellbeing under the awkward circumstances and Aunt Juley is especially worried, as she is departing in the morning and will be leaving her nieces unattended. Margaret maintains that everything will be fine and that no planning ahead is necessary. She does, however, confront Helen about how intensely she blushed upon hearing the news. Helen says that there is nothing to worry about, for she has been invited to go to Germany with Frieda for a little while, and moreover, there is no chance of her ever again esteeming a Wilcox.

