Chapter: As they were seated at Aunt Juley's breakfast-table at The Bays,
parrying her excessive hospitality and enjoying the view of the bay, a
letter came for Margaret and threw her into perturbation. It was from
Mr. Wilcox. It announced an "important change" in his plans. Owing to
Evie's marriage, he had decided to give up his house in Ducie Street,
and was willing to let it on a yearly tenancy. It was a businesslike
letter, and stated frankly what he would do for them and what he would
not do. Also the rent. If they approved, Margaret was to come up AT
ONCE--the words were underlined, as is necessary when dealing with
women--and to go over the house with him. If they disapproved, a wire
would oblige, as he should put it into the hands of an agent.

The letter perturbed, because she was not sure what it meant. If he
liked her, if he had manoeuvred to get her to Simpson's, might this be a
manoeuvre to get her to London, and result in an offer of marriage?
She put it to herself as indelicately as possible, in the hope that her
brain would cry, "Rubbish, you're a self-conscious fool!" But her brain
only tingled a little and was silent, and for a time she sat gazing at
the mincing waves, and wondering whether the news would seem strange to
the others.

As soon as she began speaking, the sound of her own voice reassured her.
There could be nothing in it. The replies also were typical, and in the
burr of conversation her fears vanished.

"You needn't go though--" began her hostess.

"I needn't, but hadn't I better? It's really getting rather serious. We
let chance after chance slip, and the end of it is we shall be bundled
out bag and baggage into the street. We don't know what we WANT, that's
the mischief with us--"

"No, we have no real ties," said Helen, helping herself to toast.

"Shan't I go up to town to-day, take the house if it's the least
possible, and then come down by the afternoon train to-morrow, and start
enjoying myself. I shall be no fun to myself or to others until this
business is off my mind.

"But you won't do anything rash, Margaret?"

"There's nothing rash to do."

"Who ARE the Wilcoxes?" said Tibby, a question that sounds silly, but
was really extremely subtle as his aunt found to her cost when she tried
to answer it. "I don't MANAGE the Wilcoxes; I don't see where they come
IN."

"No more do I," agreed Helen. "It's funny that we just don't lose sight
of them. Out of all our hotel acquaintances, Mr. Wilcox is the only one
who has stuck. It is now over three years, and we have drifted away from
far more interesting people in that time."

"Interesting people don't get one houses."

"Meg, if you start in your honest-English vein, I shall throw the
treacle at you."

"It's a better vein than the cosmopolitan," said Margaret, getting up.
"Now, children, which is it to be? You know the Ducie Street house.
Shall I say yes or shall I say no? Tibby love--which? I'm specially
anxious to pin you both."

"It all depends on what meaning you attach to the word 'possible'"

"It depends on nothing of the sort. Say 'yes.'"

"Say 'no.'"

Then Margaret spoke rather seriously. "I think," she said, "that our
race is degenerating. We cannot settle even this little thing; what will
it be like when we have to settle a big one?"

"It will be as easy as eating," returned Helen.

"I was thinking of father. How could he settle to leave Germany as he
did, when he had fought for it as a young man, and all his feelings
and friends were Prussian? How could he break loose with Patriotism and
begin aiming at something else? It would have killed me. When he was
nearly forty he could change countries and ideals--and we, at our age,
can't change houses. It's humiliating."

"Your father may have been able to change countries," said Mrs. Munt
with asperity, "and that may or may not be a good thing. But he could
change houses no better than you can, in fact, much worse. Never shall I
forget what poor Emily suffered in the move from Manchester."

"I knew it," cried Helen. "I told you so. It is the little things one
bungles at. The big, real ones are nothing when they come."

"Bungle, my dear! You are too little to recollect--in fact, you weren't
there. But the furniture was actually in the vans and on the move
before the lease for Wickham Place was signed, and Emily took train with
baby--who was Margaret then--and the smaller luggage for London, without
so much as knowing where her new home would be. Getting away from that
house may be hard, but it is nothing to the misery that we all went
through getting you into it."

Helen, with her mouth full, cried:

"And that's the man who beat the Austrians, and the Danes, and the
French, and who beat the Germans that were inside himself. And we're
like him."

"Speak for yourself," said Tibby. "Remember that I am cosmopolitan,
please."

"Helen may be right."

"Of course she's right," said Helen.

Helen might be right, but she did not go up to London. Margaret did
that. An interrupted holiday is the worst of the minor worries, and one
may be pardoned for feeling morbid when a business letter snatches one
away from the sea and friends. She could not believe that her father had
ever felt the same. Her eyes had been troubling her lately, so that she
could not read in the train and it bored her to look at the landscape,
which she had seen but yesterday. At Southampton she "waved" to Frieda;
Frieda was on her way down to join them at Swanage, and Mrs. Munt had
calculated that their trains would cross. But Frieda was looking the
other way, and Margaret travelled on to town feeling solitary and
old-maidish. How like an old maid to fancy that Mr. Wilcox was
courting her! She had once visited a spinster--poor, silly, and
unattractive--whose mania it was that every man who approached her fell
in love. How Margaret's heart had bled for the deluded thing! How she
had lectured, reasoned, and in despair acquiesced! "I may have been
deceived by the curate, my dear, but the young fellow who brings the
midday post really is fond of me, and has, as a matter of fact--" It had
always seemed to her the most hideous corner of old age, yet she might
be driven into it herself by the mere pressure of virginity.

Mr. Wilcox met her at Waterloo himself. She felt certain that he was
not the same as usual; for one thing, he took offence at everything she
said.

"This is awfully kind of you," she began, "but I'm afraid it's not going
to do. The house has not been built that suits the Schlegel family."

"What! Have you come up determined not to deal?"

"Not exactly."

"Not exactly? In that case let's be starting."

She lingered to admire the motor, which was new, and a fairer creature
than the vermilion giant that had borne Aunt Juley to her doom three
years before.

"Presumably it's very beautiful," she said. "How do you like it, Crane?"

"Come, let's be starting," repeated her host. "How on earth did you know
that my chauffeur was called Crane?"

"Why, I know Crane; I've been for a drive with Evie once. I know that
you've got a parlourmaid called Milton. I know all sorts of things."

"Evie!" he echoed in injured tones. "You won't see her. She's gone out
with Cahill. It's no fun, I can tell you, being left so much alone. I've
got my work all day--indeed, a great deal too much of it--but when I
come home in the evening, I tell you, I can't stand the house."

"In my absurd way, I'm lonely too," Margaret replied. "It's
heart-breaking to leave one's old home. I scarcely remember anything
before Wickham Place, and Helen and Tibby were born there. Helen says--"

"You, too, feel lonely?"

"Horribly. Hullo, Parliament's back!"

Mr. Wilcox glanced at Parliament contemptuously. The more important
ropes of life lay elsewhere. "Yes, they are talking again," said he.
"But you were going to say--"

"Only some rubbish about furniture. Helen says it alone endures while
men and houses perish, and that in the end the world will be a desert of
chairs and sofas--just imagine it!--rolling through infinity with no one
to sit upon them."

"Your sister always likes her little joke."

"She says 'Yes,' my brother says `No,' to Ducie Street. It's no fun
helping us, Mr. Wilcox, I assure you."

"You are not as unpractical as you pretend. I shall never believe it."

Margaret laughed. But she was--quite as unpractical. She could not
concentrate on details. Parliament, the Thames, the irresponsive
chauffeur, would flash into the field of house-hunting, and all demand
some comment or response. It is impossible to see modern life steadily
and see it whole, and she had chosen to see it whole. Mr. Wilcox saw
steadily. He never bothered over the mysterious or the private. The
Thames might run inland from the sea, the chauffeur might conceal all
passion and philosophy beneath his unhealthy skin. They knew their own
business, and he knew his.

Yet she liked being with him. He was not a rebuke, but a stimulus, and
banished morbidity. Some twenty years her senior, he preserved a gift
that she supposed herself to have already lost--not youth's creative
power, but its self-confidence and optimism. He was so sure that it was
a very pleasant world. His complexion was robust, his hair had receded
but not thinned, the thick moustache and the eyes that Helen had
compared to brandy-balls had an agreeable menace in them, whether they
were turned towards the slums or towards the stars. Some day--in the
millennium--there may be no need for his type. At present, homage is due
to it from those who think themselves superior, and who possibly are.

"At all events you responded to my telegram promptly," he remarked.

"Oh, even I know a good thing when I see it."

"I'm glad you don't despise the goods of this world."

"Heavens, no! Only idiots and prigs do that."

"I am glad, very glad," he repeated, suddenly softening and turning to
her, as if the remark had pleased him. "There is so much cant talked in
would-be intellectual circles. I am glad you don't share it. Self-denial
is all very well as a means of strengthening the character. But I can't
stand those people who run down comforts. They have usually some axe to
grind. Can you?"

"Comforts are of two kinds," said Margaret, who was keeping herself in
hand--"those we can share with others, like fire, weather, or music; and
those we can't--food, food, for instance. It depends."

"I mean reasonable comforts, of course. I shouldn't like to think that
you--" He bent nearer; the sentence died unfinished. Margaret's head
turned very stupid, and the inside of it seemed to revolve like the
beacon in a lighthouse. He did not kiss her, for the hour was half-past
twelve, and the car was passing by the stables of Buckingham Palace. But
the atmosphere was so charged with emotion that people only seemed to
exist on her account, and she was surprised that Crane did not realise
this, and turn round. Idiot though she might be, surely Mr. Wilcox was
more--how should one put it?--more psychological than usual. Always a
good judge of character for business purposes, he seemed this afternoon
to enlarge his field, and to note qualities outside neatness, obedience,
and decision.

"I want to go over the whole house," she announced when they arrived.
"As soon as I get back to Swanage, which will be to-morrow afternoon,
I'll talk it over once more with Helen and Tibby, and wire you 'yes' or
'no.'"

"Right. The dining-room." And they began their survey.

The dining-room was big, but over-furnished. Chelsea would have moaned
aloud. Mr. Wilcox had eschewed those decorative schemes that wince,
and relent, and refrain, and achieve beauty by sacrificing comfort and
pluck. After so much self-colour and self-denial, Margaret viewed with
relief the sumptuous dado, the frieze, the gilded wall-paper, amid whose
foliage parrots sang. It would never do with her own furniture, but
those heavy chairs, that immense sideboard loaded with presentation
plate, stood up against its pressure like men. The room suggested men,
and Margaret, keen to derive the modern capitalist from the warriors and
hunters of the past, saw it as an ancient guest-hall, where the lord sat
at meat among his thanes. Even the Bible--the Dutch Bible that Charles
had brought back from the Boer War--fell into position. Such a room
admitted loot.

"Now the entrance-hall."

The entrance-hall was paved.

"Here we fellows smoke."

We fellows smoked in chairs of maroon leather. It was as if a motor-car
had spawned. "Oh, jolly!" said Margaret, sinking into one of them.

"You do like it?" he said, fixing his eyes on her upturned face, and
surely betraying an almost intimate note. "It's all rubbish not making
oneself comfortable. Isn't it?"

"Ye--es. Semi-rubbish. Are those Cruikshanks?"

"Gillrays. Shall we go on upstairs?"

"Does all this furniture come from Howards End?"

"The Howards End furniture has all gone to Oniton."

"Does--However, I'm concerned with the house, not the furniture. How big
is this smoking-room?"

"Thirty by fifteen. No, wait a minute. Fifteen and a half."

"Ah, well. Mr. Wilcox, aren't you ever amused at the solemnity with
which we middle classes approach the subject of houses?"

They proceeded to the drawing-room. Chelsea managed better here. It was
sallow and ineffective. One could visualise the ladies withdrawing
to it, while their lords discussed life's realities below, to the
accompaniment of cigars. Had Mrs. Wilcox's drawing-room at Howards End
looked thus? Just as this thought entered Margaret's brain, Mr. Wilcox
did ask her to be his wife, and the knowledge that she had been right so
overcame her that she nearly fainted.

But the proposal was not to rank among the world's great love scenes.

"Miss Schlegel"--his voice was firm--"I have had you up on false
pretences. I want to speak about a much more serious matter than a
house."

Margaret almost answered: "I know--"

"Could you be induced to share my--is it probable--"

"Oh, Mr. Wilcox!" she interrupted, taking hold of the piano and averting
her eyes. "I see, I see. I will write to you afterwards if I may."

He began to stammer. "Miss Schlegel--Margaret you don't understand."

"Oh yes! Indeed, yes!" said Margaret.

"I am asking you to be my wife."

So deep already was her sympathy, that when he said, "I am asking you
to be my wife," she made herself give a little start. She must show
surprise if he expected it. An immense joy came over her. It was
indescribable. It had nothing to do with humanity, and most resembled
the all-pervading happiness of fine weather. Fine weather is due to the
sun, but Margaret could think of no central radiance here. She stood in
his drawing-room happy, and longing to give happiness. On leaving him
she realised that the central radiance had been love.

"You aren't offended, Miss Schlegel?"

"How could I be offended?"

There was a moment's pause. He was anxious to get rid of her, and she
knew it. She had too much intuition to look at him as he struggled for
possessions that money cannot buy. He desired comradeship and affection,
but he feared them, and she, who had taught herself only to desire, and
could have clothed the struggle with beauty, held back, and hesitated
with him.

"Good-bye," she continued. "You will have a letter from me--I am going
back to Swanage to-morrow."

"Thank you."

"Good-bye, and it's you I thank."

"I may order the motor round, mayn't I?"

"That would be most kind."

"I wish I had written. Ought I to have written?"

"Not at all."

"There's just one question--"

She shook her head. He looked a little bewildered as they parted.

They parted without shaking hands; she had kept the interview, for his
sake, in tints of the quietest grey. She thrilled with happiness ere
she reached her house. Others had loved her in the past, if one apply
to their brief desires so grave a word, but the others had been
"ninnies"--young men who had nothing to do, old men who could find
nobody better. And she had often 'loved,' too, but only so far as
the facts of sex demanded: mere yearnings for the masculine sex to be
dismissed for what they were worth, with a sigh. Never before had her
personality been touched. She was not young or very rich, and it amazed
her that a man of any standing should take her seriously as she sat,
trying to do accounts in her empty house, amidst beautiful pictures and
noble books, waves of emotion broke, as if a tide of passion was flowing
through the night air. She shook her head, tried to concentrate her
attention, and failed. In vain did she repeat: "But I've been through
this sort of thing before." She had never been through it; the big
machinery, as opposed to the little, had been set in motion, and the
idea that Mr. Wilcox loved, obsessed her before she came to love him in
return.

She would come to no decision yet. "Oh, sir, this is so sudden"--that
prudish phrase exactly expressed her when her time came. Premonitions
are not preparation. She must examine more closely her own nature and
his; she must talk it over judicially with Helen. It had been a strange
love-scene--the central radiance unacknowledged from first to last. She,
in his place, would have said Ich liebe dich, but perhaps it was not
his habit to open the heart. He might have done it if she had pressed
him--as a matter of duty, perhaps; England expects every man to open
his heart once; but the effort would have jarred him, and never, if
she could avoid it, should he lose those defences that he had chosen to
raise against the world. He must never be bothered with emotional talk,
or with a display of sympathy. He was an elderly man now, and it would
be futile and impudent to correct him.

Mrs. Wilcox strayed in and out, ever a welcome ghost; surveying the
scene, thought Margaret, without one hint of bitterness.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I hope she hasn't been hasty."

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

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

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

"Ah!"

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

"But sister to that Paul?"

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You yet may," said Frieda despondently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Have you got the house?"

Margaret shook her head.

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

"Not exactly."

She got out, looking tired.

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

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

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

Margaret's face flashed despair.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What do you know?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Look here, sit down."

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

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

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

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

Helen was silent.

"Well?"

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

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

"Then you love him?"

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

"But loved him?"

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

"But you will?"

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

"And have settled to marry him?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margaret made a movement of irritation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Rubbish!"

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



Margaret had often wondered at the disturbance that takes place in the
world's waters, when Love, who seems so tiny a pebble, slips in. Whom
does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact
deluges a hundred shores. No doubt the disturbance is really the spirit
of the generations, welcoming the new generation, and chafing against
the ultimate Fate, who holds all the seas in the palm of her hand. But
Love cannot understand this. He cannot comprehend another's infinity; he
is conscious only of his own--flying sunbeam, falling rose, pebble that
asks for one quiet plunge below the fretting interplay of space and
time. He knows that he will survive at the end of things, and be
gathered by Fate as a jewel from the slime, and be handed with
admiration round the assembly of the gods. "Men did produce this"
they will say, and, saying, they will give men immortality. But
meanwhile--what agitations meanwhile! The foundations of Property and
Propriety are laid bare, twin rocks; Family Pride flounders to the
surface, puffing and blowing and refusing to be comforted; Theology,
vaguely ascetic, gets up a nasty ground swell. Then the lawyers are
aroused--cold brood--and creep out of their holes. They do what they
can; they tidy up Property and Propriety, reassure Theology and Family
Pride. Half-guineas are poured on the troubled waters, the lawyers creep
back, and, if all has gone well, Love joins one man and woman together
in Matrimony.

Margaret had expected the disturbance, and was not irritated by it.
For a sensitive woman she had steady nerves, and could bear with the
incongruous and the grotesque; and, besides, there was nothing excessive
about her love-affair. Good-humour was the dominant note of her
relations with Mr. Wilcox, or, as I must now call him, Henry. Henry
did not encourage romance, and she was no girl to fidget for it. An
acquaintance had become a lover, might become a husband, but would
retain all that she had noted in the acquaintance; and love must confirm
an old relation rather than reveal a new one.

In this spirit she promised to marry him.

He was in Swanage on the morrow bearing the engagement ring.

They greeted one another with a hearty cordiality that impressed
Aunt Juley. Henry dined at The Bays, but had engaged a bedroom in the
principal hotel; he was one of those men who know the principal hotel by
instinct. After dinner he asked Margaret if she wouldn't care for a turn
on the Parade. She accepted, and could not repress a little tremor; it
would be her first real love scene. But as she put on her hat she burst
out laughing. Love was so unlike the article served up in books; the
joy, though genuine was different; the mystery an unexpected mystery.
For one thing, Mr. Wilcox still seemed a stranger.

For a time they talked about the ring; then she said: "Do you remember
the Embankment at Chelsea? It can't be ten days ago."

"Yes," he said, laughing. "And you and your sister were head and ears
deep in some Quixotic scheme. Ah well!"

"I little thought then, certainly. Did you?"

"I don't know about that; I shouldn't like to say."

"Why, was it earlier?" she cried. "Did you think of me this way earlier!
How extraordinarily interesting, Henry! Tell me."

But Henry had no intention of telling. Perhaps he could not have told,
for his mental states became obscure as soon as he had passed through
them. He misliked the very word "interesting," connoting it with wasted
energy and even with morbidity. Hard facts were enough for him.

"I didn't think of it," she pursued. "No; when you spoke to me in the
drawing-room, that was practically the first. It was all so different
from what it's supposed to be. On the stage, or in books, a proposal
is--how shall I put it?--a full-blown affair, a hind of bouquet;
it loses its literal meaning. But in life a proposal really is a
proposal--"

"By the way--"

"Oh, very well."

"I am so glad," she answered, a little surprised. "What did you talk
about? Me, presumably."

"About Greece too."

"Greece was a very good card, Henry. Tibby's only a boy still, and one
has to pick and choose subjects a little. Well done."

"I was telling him I have shares in a currant-farm near Calamata."

"What a delightful thing to have shares in! Can't we go there for our
honeymoon?"

"What to do?"

"To eat the currants. And isn't there marvellous scenery?"

"Moderately, but it's not the kind of place one could possibly go to
with a lady."

"Why not?"

"No hotels."

"Some ladies do without hotels. Are you aware that Helen and I have
walked alone over the Apennines, with our luggage on our backs?"

"I wasn't aware, and, if I can manage it, you will never do such a thing
again."

She said more gravely: "You haven't found time for a talk with Helen
yet, I suppose?"

"No."

"Do, before you go. I am so anxious you two should be friends."

"Your sister and I have always hit it off," he said negligently. "But
we're drifting away from our business. Let me begin at the beginning.
You know that Evie is going to marry Percy Cahill."

"Dolly's uncle."

"Exactly. The girl's madly in love with him. A very good sort of fellow,
but he demands--and rightly--a suitable provision with her. And in the
second place you will naturally understand, there is Charles. Before
leaving town, I wrote Charles a very careful letter. You see, he has
an increasing family and increasing expenses, and the I. and W. A. is
nothing particular just now, though capable of development."

"Poor fellow!" murmured Margaret, looking out to sea, and not
understanding.

"Charles being the elder son, some day Charles will have Howards End;
but I am anxious, in my own happiness, not to be unjust to others."

"Of course not," she began, and then gave a little cry. "you mean money.
How stupid I am! Of course not!"

Oddly enough, he winced a little at the word. "Yes, Money, since you put
it so frankly. I am determined to be just to all--just to you, just to
them. I am determined that my children shall have me."

"Be generous to them," she said sharply. "Bother justice!"

"I am determined--and have already written to Charles to that effect--"

"But how much have you got?"

"What?"

"How much have you a year? I've six hundred."

"My income?"

"Yes. We must begin with how much you have, before we can settle how
much you can give Charles. Justice, and even generosity, depend on
that."

"I must say you're a downright young woman," he observed, patting her
arm and laughing a little. "What a question to spring on a fellow!"

"Don't you know your income? Or don't you want to tell it me?"

"I--"

"That's all right"--now she patted him--"don't tell me. I don't want to
know. I can do the sum just as well by proportion. Divide your income
into ten parts. How many parts would you give to Evie, how many to
Charles, how many to Paul?"

"The fact is, my dear, I hadn't any intention of bothering you with
details. I only wanted to let you know that--well, that something must
be done for the others, and you've understood me perfectly, so let's
pass on to the next point."

"Yes, we've settled that," said Margaret, undisturbed by his strategic
blunderings. "Go ahead; give away all you can, bearing in mind that I've
a clear six hundred. What a mercy it is to have all this money about
one."

"We've none too much, I assure you; you're marrying a poor man."

"Helen wouldn't agree with me here," she continued. "Helen daren't slang
the rich, being rich herself, but she would like to. There's an odd
notion, that I haven't yet got hold of, running about at the back of her
brain, that poverty is somehow 'real.' She dislikes all organisation,
and probably confuses wealth with the technique of wealth. Sovereigns in
a stocking wouldn't bother her; cheques do. Helen is too relentless. One
can't deal in her high-handed manner with the world."

"There's this other point, and then I must go back to my hotel and write
some letters. What's to be done now about the house in Ducie Street?"

"Keep it on--at least, it depends. When do you want to marry me?"

She raised her voice, as too often, and some youths, who were also
taking the evening air, overheard her. "Getting a bit hot, eh?" said
one. Mr. Wilcox turned on them, and said sharply, "I say!" There was
silence. "Take care I don't report you to the police." They moved away
quietly enough, but were only biding their time, and the rest of the
conversation was punctuated by peals of ungovernable laughter.

Lowering his voice and infusing a hint of reproof into it, he said:
"Evie will probably be married in September. We could scarcely think of
anything before then."

"The earlier the nicer, Henry. Females are not supposed to say such
things, but the earlier the nicer."

"How about September for us too?" he asked, rather dryly.

"Right. Shall we go into Ducie Street ourselves in September? Or shall
we try to bounce Helen and Tibby into it? That's rather an idea. They
are so unbusinesslike, we could make them do anything by judicious
management. Look here--yes. We'll do that. And we ourselves could live
at Howards End or Shropshire."

He blew out his cheeks. "Heavens! how you women do fly round! My head's
in a whirl. Point by point, Margaret. Howards End's impossible. I let
it to Hamar Bryce on a three years' agreement last March. Don't you
remember? Oniton. Well, that is much, much too far away to rely on
entirely. You will be able to be down there entertaining a certain
amount, but we must have a house within easy reach of Town. Only Ducie
Street has huge drawbacks. There's a mews behind."

Margaret could not help laughing. It was the first she had heard of
the mews behind Ducie Street. When she was a possible tenant it had
suppressed itself, not consciously, but automatically. The breezy
Wilcox manner, though genuine, lacked the clearness of vision that is
imperative for truth. When Henry lived in Ducie Street he remembered
the mews; when he tried to let he forgot it; and if any one had remarked
that the mews must be either there or not, he would have felt annoyed,
and afterwards have found some opportunity of stigmatising the speaker
as academic. So does my grocer stigmatise me when I complain of the
quality of his sultanas, and he answers in one breath that they are the
best sultanas, and how can I expect the best sultanas at that price? It
is a flaw inherent in the business mind, and Margaret may do well to
be tender to it, considering all that the business mind has done for
England.

"Yes, in summer especially, the mews is a serious nuisance. The
smoking-room, too, is an abominable little den. The house opposite
has been taken by operatic people. Ducie Street's going down, it's my
private opinion."

"How sad! It's only a few years since they built those pretty houses."

"Shows things are moving. Good for trade."

"I hate this continual flux of London. It is an epitome of us at
our worst--eternal formlessness; all the qualities, good, bad, and
indifferent, streaming away--streaming, streaming for ever. That's why I
dread it so. I mistrust rivers, even in scenery. Now, the sea--"

"High tide, yes."

"Hoy toid"--from the promenading youths.

"And these are the men to whom we give the vote," observed Mr. Wilcox,
omitting to add that they were also the men to whom he gave work as
clerks--work that scarcely encouraged them to grow into other men.
"However, they have their own lives and interests. Let's get on."

He turned as he spoke, and prepared to see her back to The Bays. The
business was over. His hotel was in the opposite direction, and if he
accompanied her his letters would be late for the post. She implored him
not to come, but he was obdurate.

"A nice beginning, if your aunt saw you slip in alone!"

"But I always do go about alone. Considering I've walked over the
Apennines, it's common sense. You will make me so angry. I don't the
least take it as a compliment."

He laughed, and lit a cigar. "It isn't meant as a compliment, my dear. I
just won't have you going about in the dark. Such people about too! It's
dangerous."

"Can't I look after myself? I do wish--"

"Come along, Margaret; no wheedling."

A younger woman might have resented his masterly ways, but Margaret
had too firm a grip of life to make a fuss. She was, in her own way, as
masterly. If he was a fortress she was a mountain peak, whom all might
tread, but whom the snows made nightly virginal. Disdaining the heroic
outfit, excitable in her methods, garrulous, episodical, shrill,
she misled her lover much as she had misled her aunt. He mistook her
fertility for Weakness. He supposed her "as clever as they make them,"
but no more, not realising that she was penetrating to the depths of his
soul, and approving of what she found there.

And if insight were sufficient, if the inner life were the whole of
life, their happiness had been assured.

They walked ahead briskly. The parade and the road after it were well
lighted, but it was darker in Aunt Juley's garden. As they were going
up by the side-paths, through some rhododendrons, Mr. Wilcox, who was
in front, said "Margaret" rather huskily, turned, dropped his cigar, and
took her in his arms.

She was startled, and nearly screamed, but recovered herself at once,
and kissed with genuine love the lips that were pressed against her own.
It was their first kiss, and when it was over he saw her safely to the
door and rang the bell for her but disappeared into the night before the
maid answered it. On looking back, the incident displeased her. It was
so isolated. Nothing in their previous conversation had heralded it,
and, worse still, no tenderness had ensued. If a man cannot lead up to
passion he can at all events lead down from it, and she had hoped,
after her complaisance, for some interchange of gentle words. But he had
hurried away as if ashamed, and for an instant she was reminded of Helen
and Paul.



Charles had just been scolding his Dolly. She deserved the scolding, and
had bent before it, but her head, though bloody was unsubdued and her
began to mingle with his retreating thunder.

"You've waked the baby. I knew you would. (Rum-ti-foo,
Rackety-tackety-Tompkin!) I'm not responsible for what Uncle Percy does,
nor for anybody else or anything, so there!"

"Who asked him while I was away? Who asked my sister down to meet him?
Who sent them out in the motor day after day?"

"Charles, that reminds me of some poem."

"Does it indeed? We shall all be dancing to a very different music
presently. Miss Schlegel has fairly got us on toast."

"I could simply scratch that woman's eyes out, and to say it's my fault
is most unfair."

"It's your fault, and five months ago you admitted it."

"I didn't."

"You did."

"Tootle, tootle, playing on the pootle!" exclaimed Dolly, suddenly
devoting herself to the child.

"It's all very well to turn the conversation, but father would
never have dreamt of marrying as long as Evie was there to make him
comfortable. But you must needs start match-making. Besides, Cahill's
too old."

"Of course, if you're going to be rude to Uncle Percy."

"Miss Schlegel always meant to get hold of Howards End, and, thanks to
you, she's got it."

"I call the way you twist things round and make them hang together most
unfair. You couldn't have been nastier if you'd caught me flirting.
Could he, diddums?"

"We're in a bad hole, and must make the best of it. I shall answer the
pater's letter civilly. He's evidently anxious to do the decent thing.
But I do not intend to forget these Schlegels in a hurry. As long
as they're on their best behaviour--Dolly, are you listening?--we'll
behave, too. But if I find them giving themselves airs or monopolising
my father, or at all ill-treating him, or worrying him with their
artistic beastliness, I intend to put my foot down, yes, firmly. Taking
my mother's place! Heaven knows what poor old Paul will say when the
news reaches him."

The interlude closes. It has taken place in Charles's garden at Hilton.
He and Dolly are sitting in deckchairs, and their motor is regarding
them placidly from its garage across the lawn. A short-frocked edition
of Charles also regards them placidly; a perambulator edition is
squeaking; a third edition is expected shortly. Nature is turning out
Wilcoxes in this peaceful abode, so that they may inherit the earth.



Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature
as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the
rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion.
Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts,
unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is
born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober
against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of
these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his
friends shall find easy-going.

It was hard-going in the roads of Mr. Wilcox's soul. From boyhood he
had neglected them. "I am not a fellow who bothers about my own inside."
Outwardly he was cheerful, reliable, and brave; but within, all
had reverted to chaos, ruled, so far as it was ruled at all, by an
incomplete asceticism. Whether as boy, husband, or widower, he had
always the sneaking belief that bodily passion is bad, a belief that is
desirable only when held passionately. Religion had confirmed him. The
words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable men
were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catherine and St.
Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could not be as the
saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a
little ashamed of loving a wife. Amabat, amare timebat. And it was here
that Margaret hoped to help him.

It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her
own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own
soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole
of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be
exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no
longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation
that is life to either, will die.

Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take the form of a
good "talking." By quiet indications the bridge would be built and span
their lives with beauty.

But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for which she was
never prepared, however much she reminded herself of it: his obtuseness.
He simply did not notice things, and there was no more to be said. He
never noticed that Helen and Frieda were hostile, or that Tibby was
not interested in currant plantations; he never noticed the lights and
shades that exist in the greyest conversation, the finger-posts, the
milestones, the collisions, the illimitable views. Once--on another
occasion--she scolded him about it. He was puzzled, but replied with a
laugh: "My motto is Concentrate. I've no intention of frittering away
my strength on that sort of thing." "It isn't frittering away the
strength," she protested. "It's enlarging the space in which you may
be strong." He answered: "You're a clever little woman, but my motto's
Concentrate." And this morning he concentrated with a vengeance.

They met in the rhododendrons of yesterday. In the daylight the bushes
were inconsiderable and the path was bright in the morning sun. She was
with Helen, who had been ominously quiet since the affair was settled.
"Here we all are!" she cried, and took him by one hand, retaining her
sister's in the other.

"Here we are. Good-morning, Helen."

Helen replied, "Good-morning, Mr. Wilcox."

"Henry, she has had such a nice letter from the queer, cross boy. Do
you remember him? He had a sad moustache, but the back of his head was
young."

"I have had a letter too. Not a nice one--I want to talk it over with
you"; for Leonard Bast was nothing to him now that she had given him her
word; the triangle of sex was broken for ever.

"Thanks to your hint, he's clearing out of the Porphyrion."

"Not a bad business that Porphyrion," he said absently, as he took his
own letter out of his pocket.

"Not a BAD--" she exclaimed, dropping his hand. "Surely, on Chelsea
Embankment--"

"Here's our hostess. Good-morning, Mrs. Munt. Fine rhododendrons.
Good-morning, Frau Liesecke; we manage to grow flowers in England, don't
we?"

"Not a BAD business?"

"No. My letter's about Howards End. Bryce has been ordered abroad, and
wants to sublet it--I am far from sure that I shall give him permission.
There was no clause in the agreement. In my opinion, subletting is a
mistake. If he can find me another tenant, whom I consider suitable,
I may cancel the agreement. Morning, Schlegel. Don't you think that's
better than subletting?"

Helen had dropped her hand now, and he had steered her past the whole
party to the seaward side of the house. Beneath them was the bourgeois
little bay, which must have yearned all through the centuries for just
such a watering-place as Swanage to be built on its margin.

The waves were colourless, and the Bournemouth steamer gave a further
touch of insipidity, drawn up against the pier and hooting wildly for
excursionists.

"When there is a sublet I find that damage--"

"Do excuse me, but about the Porphyrion. I don't feel easy--might I just
bother you, Henry?"

Her manner was so serious that he stopped, and asked her a little
sharply what she wanted.

"You said on Chelsea Embankment, surely, that it was a bad concern, so
we advised this clerk to clear out. He writes this morning that he's
taken our advice, and now you say it's not a bad concern."

"A clerk who clears out of any concern, good or bad, without securing a
berth somewhere else first, is a fool, and I've no pity for him."

"He has not done that. He's going into a bank in Camden Town, he says.
The salary's much lower, but he hopes to manage--a branch of Dempster's
Bank. Is that all right?"

"Dempster! Why goodness me, yes."

"More right than the Porphyrion?"

"Yes, yes, yes; safe as houses--safer."

"Very many thanks. I'm sorry--if you sublet--?"

"If he sublets, I shan't have the same control. In theory there should
be no more damage done at Howards End; in practice there will be. Things
may be done for which no money can compensate. For instance, I shouldn't
want that fine wych-elm spoilt. It hangs--Margaret, we must go and see
the old place some time. It's pretty in its way. We'll motor down and
have lunch with Charles."

"I should enjoy that," said Margaret bravely.

"What about next Wednesday?"

"Wednesday? No, I couldn't well do that. Aunt Juley expects us to stop
here another week at least."

"But you can give that up now."

"Er--no," said Margaret, after a moment's thought.

"Oh, that'll be all right. I'll speak to her."

"This visit is a high solemnity. My aunt counts on it year after
year. She turns the house upside down for us; she invites our special
friends--she scarcely knows Frieda, and we can't leave her on her hands.
I missed one day, and she would be so hurt if I didn't stay the full
ten."

"But I'll say a word to her. Don't you bother."

"Henry, I won't go. Don't bully me."

"You want to see the house, though?"

"Very much--I've heard so much about it, one way or the other. Aren't
there pigs' teeth in the wych-elm?"

"PIGS TEETH?"

"And you chew the bark for toothache."

"What a rum notion! Of course not!"

"Perhaps I have confused it with some other tree. There are still a
great number of sacred trees in England, it seems."

But he left her to intercept Mrs. Munt, whose voice could be heard in
the distance; to be intercepted himself by Helen.

"Oh. Mr. Wilcox, about the Porphyrion--" she began and went scarlet all
over her face.

"It's all right," called Margaret, catching them up. "Dempster's Bank's
better."

"But I think you told us the Porphyrion was bad, and would smash before
Christmas."

"Did I? It was still outside the Tariff Ring, and had to take rotten
policies. Lately it came in--safe as houses now."

"In other words, Mr. Bast need never have left it."

"No, the fellow needn't."

"--and needn't have started life elsewhere at a greatly reduced salary."

"He only says 'reduced,'" corrected Margaret, seeing trouble ahead.

"With a man so poor, every reduction must be great. I consider it a
deplorable misfortune."

Mr. Wilcox, intent on his business with Mrs. Munt, was going steadily
on, but the last remark made him say: "What? What's that? Do you mean
that I'm responsible?"

"You're ridiculous, Helen."

"You seem to think--" He looked at his watch. "Let me explain the point
to you. It is like this. You seem to assume, when a business concern is
conducting a delicate negotiation, it ought to keep the public informed
stage by stage. The Porphyrion, according to you, was bound to say, 'I
am trying all I can to get into the Tariff Ring. I am not sure that
I shall succeed, but it is the only thing that will save me from
insolvency, and I am trying.' My dear Helen--"

"Is that your point? A man who had little money has less--that's mine."

"I am grieved for your clerk. But it is all in the days work. It's part
of the battle of life."

"A man who had little money--" she repeated, "has less, owing to
us. Under these circumstances I consider 'the battle of life' a happy
expression.

"Oh come, come!" he protested pleasantly, "you're not to blame. No one's
to blame."

"Is no one to blame for anything?"

"I wouldn't say that, but you're taking it far too seriously. Who is
this fellow?"

"We have told you about the fellow twice already," said Helen. "You
have even met the fellow. He is very poor and his wife is an
extravagant imbecile. He is capable of better things. We--we, the upper
classes--thought we would help him from the height of our superior
knowledge--and here's the result!"

He raised his finger. "Now, a word of advice."

"I require no more advice."

"A word of advice. Don't take up that sentimental attitude over the
poor. See that she doesn't, Margaret. The poor are poor, and one's sorry
for them, but there it is. As civilisation moves forward, the shoe is
bound to pinch in places, and it's absurd to pretend that any one is
responsible personally. Neither you, nor I, nor my informant, nor the
man who informed him, nor the directors of the Porphyrion, are to blame
for this clerk's loss of salary. It's just the shoe pinching--no one can
help it; and it might easily have been worse."

Helen quivered with indignation.

"By all means subscribe to charities--subscribe to them largely--but
don't get carried away by absurd schemes of Social Reform. I see a good
deal behind the scenes, and you can take it from me that there is no
Social Question--except for a few journalists who try to get a living
out of the phrase. There are just rich and poor, as there always have
been and always will be. Point me out a time when men have been equal--"

"I didn't say--"

"Point me out a time when desire for equality has made them happier. No,
no. You can't. There always have been rich and poor. I'm no fatalist.
Heaven forbid! But our civilisation is moulded by great impersonal
forces" (his voice grew complacent; it always did when he eliminated the
personal), "and there always will be rich and poor. You can't deny it"
(and now it was a respectful voice)--"and you can't deny that, in spite
of all, the tendency of civilisation has on the whole been upward."

"Owing to God, I suppose," flashed Helen.

He stared at her.

"You grab the dollars. God does the rest."

It was no good instructing the girl if she was going to talk about God
in that neurotic modern way. Fraternal to the last, he left her for
the quieter company of Mrs. Munt. He thought, "She rather reminds me of
Dolly."

Helen looked out at the sea.

"Don't ever discuss political economy with Henry," advised her sister.
"It'll only end in a cry."

"But he must be one of those men who have reconciled science with
religion," said Helen slowly. "I don't like those men. They are
scientific themselves, and talk of the survival of the fittest, and cut
down the salaries of their clerks, and stunt the independence of all who
may menace their comfort, but yet they believe that somehow good--it
is always that sloppy 'somehow' will be the outcome, and that in some
mystical way the Mr. Basts of the future will benefit because the Mr.
Brits of today are in pain."

"He is such a man in theory. But oh, Helen, in theory!"

"But oh, Meg, what a theory!"

"Why should you put things so bitterly, dearie?"

"Because I'm an old maid," said Helen, biting her lip. "I can't think
why I go on like this myself." She shook off her sister's hand and went
into the house. Margaret, distressed at the day's beginning, followed
the Bournemouth steamer with her eyes. She saw that Helen's nerves
were exasperated by the unlucky Bast business beyond the bounds of
politeness. There might at any minute be a real explosion, which even
Henry would notice. Henry must be removed.

"Margaret!" her aunt called. "Magsy! It isn't true, surely, what Mr.
Wilcox says, that you want to go away early next week?"

"Not 'want,'" was Margaret's prompt reply; "but there is so much to be
settled, and I do want to see the Charles's."

"But going away without taking the Weymouth trip, or even the Lulworth?"
said Mrs. Munt, coming nearer. "Without going once more up Nine Barrows
Down?"

"I'm afraid so."

Mr. Wilcox rejoined her with, "Good! I did the breaking of the ice."

A wave of tenderness came over her. She put a hand on either shoulder,
and looked deeply into the black, bright eyes. What was behind their
competent stare? She knew, but was not disquieted.

 Vacationing with Aunt Juley in Swanage,  Margaret receives a letter from Mr. Wilcox,  saying that he is moving to a different house and  would be willing to rent the Schlegels his old one. He asks Margaret to come and inspect it. Margaret  has a sudden premonition that he means to propose to  her, but she dismisses the notion as silly. She  makes the trip back to London, and takes a tour of  the house with Mr. Wilcox--who, quite suddenly,  does propose. Margaret is overcome with a  surprising joy. She promises to write to him  the next day with an answer, and returns to Swanage to  talk things over with Helen. Helen is appalled, thinking that, beneath their  veneer of competence and confidence, the Wilcox men  are made of "panic and emptiness." But Margaret  defends Mr. Wilcox, and finally accepts his proposal. She is determined not to lose her independence, and  thinks that love must solidify rather than transform  their friendship. Mr. Wilcox travels to Swanage at  once with the engagement ring, and he and Margaret  take a walk together by the sea. Margaret realizes  that Mr. Wilcox is afraid of emotion. His motto is  "Concentrate," while hers is "Only connect." He  kisses her suddenly, and she thinks that if she could  only teach him to connect his passionate subconscious  to his restrained, moralistic exterior self, she  could help him, but he is too obdurate to be helped. When Helen tells him that she has received a letter  from Leonard, saying that on Mr. Wilcox's  advice he has left the Porphyrion for a much  lower-paying job at a bank, Mr. Wilcox replies that the  Porphyrion is not a bad company. Helen is outraged:   Not long before, Mr. Wilcox had said that the  Porphyrion was doomed to fail. Mr. Wilcox refuses to  take responsibility for the matter, arguing that the  struggles of the poor are merely part of the "battle  of life." When Charles receives the note from his father  announcing the engagement, he blames Dolly: If  she had not introduced Evie to her fiance, Mr.  Wilcox would not have been lonely, and would not have  been inclined to propose to Margaret. Charles  suspects Margaret of wanting to get her hands on  Howards End, and says that he will only tolerate her  as long as she behaves herself.

