Chapter: The mystery, like so many mysteries, was explained. Next day, just as
they were dressed to go out to dinner, a Mr. Bast called. He was a clerk
in the employment of the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company. Thus much
from his card. He had come "about the lady yesterday." Thus much from
Annie, who had shown him into the dining-room.

"Cheers, children!" cried Helen. "It's Mrs. Lanoline."

Tibby was interested. The three hurried downstairs, to find, not the
gay dog they expected, but a young man, colourless, toneless, who had
already the mournful eyes above a drooping moustache that are so
common in London, and that haunt some streets of the city like accusing
presences. One guessed him as the third generation, grandson to the
shepherd or ploughboy whom civilisation had sucked into the town; as one
of the thousands who have lost the life of the body and failed to reach
the life of the spirit. Hints of robustness survived in him, more than a
hint of primitive good looks, and Margaret, noting the spine that might
have been straight, and the chest that might have broadened, wondered
whether it paid to give up the glory of the animal for a tail coat and a
couple of ideas. Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last
few weeks she had doubted whether it humanised the majority, so wide
and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the
philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to
cross it. She knew this type very well--the vague aspirations, the
mental dishonesty, the familiarity with the outsides of books. She knew
the very tones in which he would address her. She was only unprepared
for an example of her own visiting-card.

"You wouldn't remember giving me this, Miss Schlegel?" said he, uneasily
familiar.

"No; I can't say I do."

"Well, that was how it happened, you see."

"Where did we meet, Mr. Bast? For the minute I don't remember."

"It was a concert at the Queen's Hall. I think you will recollect," he
added pretentiously, "when I tell you that it included a performance of
the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven."

"We hear the Fifth practically every time it's done, so I'm not sure--do
you remember, Helen?"

"Was it the time the sandy cat walked round the balustrade?"

He thought not.

"Then I don't remember. That's the only Beethoven I ever remember
specially."

"And you, if I may say so, took away my umbrella, inadvertently of
course."

"Likely enough," Helen laughed, "for I steal umbrellas even oftener than
I hear Beethoven. Did you get it back?"

"Yes, thank you, Miss Schlegel."

"The mistake arose out of my card, did it?" interposed Margaret.

"Yes, the mistake arose--it was a mistake."

"The lady who called here yesterday thought that you were calling too,
and that she could find you?" she continued, pushing him forward, for,
though he had promised an explanation, he seemed unable to give one.

"That's so, calling too--a mistake."

"Then why--?" began Helen, but Margaret laid a hand on her arm.

"I said to my wife," he continued more rapidly "I said to Mrs. Bast, 'I
have to pay a call on some friends,' and Mrs. Bast said to me, 'Do go.'
While I was gone, however, she wanted me on important business, and
thought I had come here, owing to the card, and so came after me, and I
beg to tender my apologies, and hers as well, for any inconvenience we
may have inadvertently caused you."

"No inconvenience," said Helen; "but I still don't understand."

An air of evasion characterised Mr. Bast. He explained again, but was
obviously lying, and Helen didn't see why he should get off. She had the
cruelty of youth. Neglecting her sister's pressure, she said, "I still
don't understand. When did you say you paid this call?"

"Call? What call?" said he, staring as if her question had been a
foolish one, a favourite device of those in mid-stream.

"This afternoon call."

"In the afternoon, of course!" he replied, and looked at Tibby to see
how the repartee went. But Tibby was unsympathetic, and said, "Saturday
afternoon or Sunday afternoon?"

"S--Saturday."

"Really!" said Helen; "and you were still calling on Sunday, when your
wife came here. A long visit."

"I don't call that fair," said Mr. Bast, going scarlet and handsome.
There was fight in his eyes. "I know what you mean, and it isn't so."

"Oh, don't let us mind," said Margaret, distressed again by odours from
the abyss.

"It was something else," he asserted, his elaborate manner breaking
down. "I was somewhere else to what you think, so there!"

"It was good of you to come and explain," she said. "The rest is
naturally no concern of ours."

"Yes, but I want--I wanted--have you ever read The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel?"

Margaret nodded.

"It's a beautiful book. I wanted to get back to the earth, don't you
see, like Richard does in the end. Or have you ever read Stevenson's
Prince Otto?"

Helen and Tibby groaned gently.

"That's another beautiful book. You get back to the earth in that. I
wanted--" He mouthed affectedly. Then through the mists of his culture
came a hard fact, hard as a pebble. "I walked all the Saturday night,"
said Leonard. "I walked." A thrill of approval ran through the sisters.
But culture closed in again. He asked whether they had ever read E. V.
Lucas's Open Road.

Said Helen, "No doubt it's another beautiful book, but I'd rather hear
about your road."

"Oh, I walked."

"How far?"

"I don't know, nor for how long. It got too dark to see my watch."

"Were you walking alone, may I ask?"

"Yes," he said, straightening himself; "but we'd been talking it over at
the office. There's been a lot of talk at the office lately about these
things. The fellows there said one steers by the Pole Star, and I looked
it up in the celestial atlas, but once out of doors everything gets so
mixed."

"Don't talk to me about the Pole Star," interrupted Helen, who was
becoming interested. "I know its little ways. It goes round and round,
and you go round after it."

"Well, I lost it entirely. First of all the street lamps, then the
trees, and towards morning it got cloudy."

Tibby, who preferred his comedy undiluted, slipped from the room. He
knew that this fellow would never attain to poetry, and did not want to
hear him trying.

Margaret and Helen remained. Their brother influenced them more than
they knew; in his absence they were stirred to enthusiasm more easily.

"Where did you start from?" cried Margaret. "Do tell us more."

"I took the Underground to Wimbledon. As I came out of the office I said
to myself, 'I must have a walk once in a way. If I don't take this walk
now, I shall never take it.' I had a bit of dinner at Wimbledon, and
then--"

"But not good country there, is it?"

"It was gas-lamps for hours. Still, I had all the night, and being out
was the great thing. I did get into woods, too, presently."

"Yes, go on," said Helen.

"You've no idea how difficult uneven ground is when it's dark."

"Did you actually go off the roads?"

"Oh yes. I always meant to go off the roads, but the worst of it is that
it's more difficult to find one's way.

"Mr. Bast, you're a born adventurer," laughed Margaret. "No professional
athlete would have attempted what you've done. It's a wonder your walk
didn't end in a broken neck. Whatever did your wife say?"

"Professional athletes never move without lanterns and compasses," said
Helen. "Besides, they can't walk. It tires them. Go on."

"I felt like R. L. S. You probably remember how in Virginibus."

"Yes, but the wood. This 'ere wood. How did you get out of it?"

"I managed one wood, and found a road the other side which went a good
bit uphill. I rather fancy it was those North Downs, for the road went
off into grass, and I got into another wood. That was awful, with gorse
bushes. I did wish I'd never come, but suddenly it got light--just while
I seemed going under one tree. Then I found a road down to a station,
and took the first train I could back to London."

"But was the dawn wonderful?" asked Helen.

With unforgettable sincerity he replied, "No." The word flew again like
a pebble from the sling. Down toppled all that had seemed ignoble or
literary in his talk, down toppled tiresome R. L. S. and the "love of
the earth" and his silk top-hat. In the presence of these women Leonard
had arrived, and he spoke with a flow, an exultation, that he had seldom
known.

"The dawn was only grey, it was nothing to mention."

"Just a grey evening turned upside down. I know."

"--and I was too tired to lift up my head to look at it, and so cold
too. I'm glad I did it, and yet at the time it bored me more than I can
say. And besides--you can believe me or not as you choose--I was very
hungry. That dinner at Wimbledon--I meant it to last me all night
like other dinners. I never thought that walking would make such a
difference. Why, when you're walking you want, as it were, a breakfast
and luncheon and tea during the night as well, and I'd nothing but a
packet of Woodbines. Lord, I did feel bad! Looking back, it wasn't what
you may call enjoyment. It was more a case of sticking to it. I did
stick. I--I was determined. Oh, hang it all! what's the good--I mean,
the good of living in a room for ever? There one goes on day after day,
same old game, same up and down to town, until you forget there is any
other game. You ought to see once in a way what's going on outside, if
it's only nothing particular after all."

"I should just think you ought," said Helen, sitting--on the edge of the
table.

The sound of a lady's voice recalled him from sincerity, and he said:
"Curious it should all come about from reading something of Richard
Jefferies."

"Excuse me, Mr. Bast, but you're wrong there. It didn't. It came from
something far greater."

But she could not stop him. Borrow was imminent after Jefferies--Borrow,
Thoreau, and sorrow. R. L. S. brought up the rear, and the outburst
ended in a swamp of books. No disrespect to these great names. The fault
is ours, not theirs. They mean us to use them for sign-posts we
mistake the sign-post for the destination. And Leonard had reached the
destination. He had visited the county of Surrey when darkness covered
its amenities, and its cosy villas had re-entered ancient night. Every
twelve hours this miracle happens, but he had troubled to go and see for
himself. Within his cramped little mind dwelt something that was greater
than Jefferies' books--the spirit that led Jefferies to write them;
and his dawn, though revealing nothing but monotones, was part of the
eternal sunrise that shows George Borrow Stonehenge.

"Then you don't think I was foolish?" he asked becoming again the naive
and sweet-tempered boy for whom Nature intended him.

"Heavens, no!" replied Margaret.

"Heaven help us if we do!" replied Helen.

"I'm very glad you say that. Now, my wife would never understand--not if
I explained for days."

"No, it wasn't foolish!" cried Helen, her eyes aflame. "You've pushed
back the boundaries; I think it splendid of you."

"You've not been content to dream as we have--"

"Though we have walked, too--"

"I must show you a picture upstairs--"

Here the door-bell rang. The hansom had come to take them to their
evening party.

"Oh, bother, not to say dash--I had forgotten we were dining out; but
do, do, come round again and have a talk." "Yes, you must--do," echoed
Margaret.

Leonard, with extreme sentiment, replied: "No, I shall not. It's better
like this."

"Why better?" asked Margaret.

"No, it is better not to risk a second interview. I shall always look
back on this talk with you as one of the finest things in my life.
Really. I mean this. We can never repeat. It has done me real good, and
there we had better leave it."

"That's rather a sad view of life, surely."

"Things so often get spoiled."

"I know," flashed Helen, "but people don't."

He could not understand this. He continued in a vein which mingled true
imagination and false. What he said wasn't wrong, but it wasn't right,
and a false note jarred. One little twist, they felt, and the instrument
might be in tune. One little strain, and it might be silent for ever. He
thanked the ladies very much, but he would not call again. There was a
moment's awkwardness, and then Helen said: "Go, then; perhaps you know
best; but never forget you're better than Jefferies." And he went. Their
hansom caught him up at the corner, passed with a waving of hands, and
vanished with its accomplished load into the evening.

London was beginning to illuminate herself against the night. Electric
lights sizzled and jagged in the main thoroughfares, gas-lamps in the
side streets glimmered a canary gold or green. The sky was a crimson
battlefield of spring, but London was not afraid. Her smoke mitigated
the splendour, and the clouds down Oxford Street were a delicately
painted ceiling, which adorned while it did not distract. She had never
known the clear-cut armies of the purer air. Leonard hurried through her
tinted wonders, very much part of the picture. His was a grey life,
and to brighten it he had ruled off few corners for romance. The Miss
Schlegels--or, to speak more accurately, his interview with them--were
to fill such a corner, nor was it by any means the first time that
he had talked intimately to strangers. The habit was analogous to a
debauch, an outlet, though the worst of outlets, for instincts that
would not be denied. Terrifying him, it would beat down his suspicions
and prudence until he was confiding secrets to people whom he had
scarcely seen. It brought him many fears and some pleasant memories.
Perhaps the keenest happiness he had ever known was during a railway
journey to Cambridge, where a decent-mannered undergraduate had spoken
to him. They had got into conversation, and gradually Leonard flung
reticence aside, told some of his domestic troubles and hinted at the
rest. The undergraduate, supposing they could start a friendship, asked
him to "coffee after hall," which he accepted, but afterwards grew shy,
and took care not to stir from the commercial hotel where he lodged.
He did not want Romance to collide with the Porphyrion, still less with
Jacky, and people with fuller, happier lives are slow to understand
this. To the Schlegels, as to the undergraduate, he was an interesting
creature, of whom they wanted to see more. But they to him were denizens
of Romance, who must keep to the corner he had assigned them, pictures
that must not walk out of their frames.

His behaviour over Margaret's visiting-card had been typical. His
had scarcely been a tragic marriage. Where there is no money and no
inclination to violence tragedy cannot be generated. He could not leave
his wife, and he did not want to hit her. Petulance and squalor were
enough. Here "that card" had come in. Leonard, though furtive, was
untidy, and left it lying about. Jacky found it, and then began, "What's
that card, eh?" "Yes, don't you wish you knew what that card was?" "Len,
who's Miss Schlegel?" etc. Months passed, and the card, now as a joke,
now as a grievance, was handed about, getting dirtier and dirtier. It
followed them when they moved from Camelia Road to Tulse Hill. It was
submitted to third parties. A few inches of pasteboard, it became the
battlefield on which the souls of Leonard and his wife contended. Why
did he not say, "A lady took my umbrella, another gave me this that I
might call for my umbrella"? Because Jacky would have disbelieved him?
Partly, but chiefly because he was sentimental. No affection gathered
round the card, but it symbolised the life of culture, that Jacky should
never spoil. At night he would say to himself, "Well, at all events, she
doesn't know about that card. Yah! done her there!"

Poor Jacky! she was not a bad sort, and had a great deal to bear.
She drew her own conclusion--she was only capable of drawing one
conclusion--and in the fulness of time she acted upon it. All the Friday
Leonard had refused to speak to her, and had spent the evening observing
the stars. On the Saturday he went up, as usual, to town, but he came
not back Saturday night, nor Sunday morning, nor Sunday afternoon. The
inconvenience grew intolerable, and though she was now of a retiring
habit, and shy of women, she went up to Wickham Place. Leonard returned
in her absence. The card, the fatal card, was gone from the pages of
Ruskin, and he guessed what had happened.

"Well?" he had exclaimed, greeting her with peals of laughter. "I know
where you've been, but you don't know where I've been."

Jacky sighed, said, "Len, I do think you might explain," and resumed
domesticity.

Explanations were difficult at this stage, and Leonard was too silly--or
it is tempting to write, too sound a chap to attempt them. His reticence
was not entirely the shoddy article that a business life promotes, the
reticence that pretends that nothing is something, and hides behind
the Daily Telegraph. The adventurer, also, is reticent, and it is an
adventure for a clerk to walk for a few hours in darkness. You may laugh
at him, you who have slept nights out on the veldt, with your rifle
beside you and all the atmosphere of adventure pat. And you also may
laugh who think adventures silly. But do not be surprised if Leonard is
shy whenever he meets you, and if the Schlegels rather than Jacky hear
about the dawn.

That the Schlegels had not thought him foolish became a permanent
joy. He was at his best when he thought of them. It buoyed him as he
journeyed home beneath fading heavens. Somehow the barriers of wealth
had fallen, and there had been--he could not phrase it--a general
assertion of the wonder of the world. "My conviction," says the mystic,
"gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it," and they
had agreed that there was something beyond life's daily grey. He took
off his top-hat and smoothed it thoughtfully. He had hitherto supposed
the unknown to be books, literature, clever conversation, culture. One
raised oneself by study, and got upsides with the world. But in that
quick interchange a new light dawned. Was that "something" walking in
the dark among the suburban hills?

He discovered that he was going bareheaded down Regent Street. London
came back with a rush. Few were about at this hour, but all whom he
passed looked at him with a hostility that was the more impressive
because it was unconscious. He put his hat on. It was too big; his head
disappeared like a pudding into a basin, the ears bending outwards at
the touch of the curly brim. He wore it a little backwards, and its
effect was greatly to elongate the face and to bring out the distance
between the eyes and the moustache. Thus equipped, he escaped criticism.
No one felt uneasy as he titupped along the pavements, the heart of a
man ticking fast in his chest.



The sisters went out to dinner full of their adventure, and when they
were both full of the same subject, there were few dinner-parties that
could stand up against them. This particular one, which was all ladies,
had more kick in it than most, but succumbed after a struggle. Helen at
one part of the table, Margaret at the other, would talk of Mr. Bast
and of no one else, and somewhere about the entree their monologues
collided, fell ruining, and became common property. Nor was this all.
The dinner-party was really an informal discussion club; there was a
paper after it, read amid coffee-cups and laughter in the drawing-room,
but dealing more or less thoughtfully with some topic of general
interest. After the paper came a debate, and in this debate Mr. Bast
also figured, appearing now as a bright spot in civilisation, now as a
dark spot, according to the temperament of the speaker. The subject of
the paper had been, "How ought I to dispose of my money?" the reader
professing to be a millionaire on the point of death, inclined to
bequeath her fortune for the foundation of local art galleries, but open
to conviction from other sources. The various parts had been assigned
beforehand, and some of the speeches were amusing. The hostess assumed
the ungrateful role of "the millionaire's eldest son," and implored her
expiring parent not to dislocate Society by allowing such vast sums
to pass out of the family. Money was the fruit of self-denial, and the
second generation had a right to profit by the self-denial of the first.
What right had "Mr. Bast" to profit? The National Gallery was good
enough for the likes of him. After property had had its say--a saying
that is necessarily ungracious--the various philanthropists stepped
forward. Something must be done for "Mr. Bast"; his conditions must
be improved without impairing his independence; he must have a free
library, or free tennis-courts; his rent must be paid in such a way that
he did not know it was being paid; it must be made worth his while to
join the Territorials; he must be forcibly parted from his uninspiring
wife, the money going to her as compensation; he must be assigned a
Twin Star, some member of the leisured classes who would watch over him
ceaselessly (groans from Helen); he must be given food but no clothes,
clothes but no food, a third-return ticket to Venice, without either
food or clothes when he arrived there. In short, he might be given
anything and everything so long as it was not the money itself.

And here Margaret interrupted.

"Order, order, Miss Schlegel!" said the reader of the paper. "You are
here, I understand, to advise me in the interests of the Society for the
Preservation of Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. I cannot
have you speaking out of your role. It makes my poor head go round, and
I think you forget that I am very ill."

"Your head won't go round if only you'll listen to my argument," said
Margaret. "Why not give him the money itself? You're supposed to have
about thirty thousand a year."

"Have I? I thought I had a million."

"Wasn't a million your capital? Dear me! we ought to have settled that.
Still, it doesn't matter. Whatever you've got, I order you to give as
many poor men as you can three hundred a year each."

"But that would be pauperising them," said an earnest girl, who liked
the Schlegels, but thought them a little unspiritual at times.

"Not if you gave them so much. A big windfall would not pauperise a man.
It is these little driblets, distributed among too many, that do the
harm. Money's educational. It's far more educational than the things
it buys." There was a protest. "In a sense," added Margaret, but the
protest continued. "Well, isn't the most civilized thing going, the man
who has learnt to wear his income properly?"

"Exactly what your Mr. Basts won't do."

"Give them a chance. Give them money. Don't dole them out poetry-books
and railway-tickets like babies. Give them the wherewithal to buy these
things. When your Socialism comes it may be different, and we may think
in terms of commodities instead of cash. Till it comes give people
cash, for it is the warp of civilisation, whatever the woof may be. The
imagination ought to play upon money and realise it vividly, for it's
the--the second most important thing in the world. It is so slurred over
and hushed up, there is so little clear thinking--oh, political economy,
of course, but so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes,
and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the
result of independent means. Money: give Mr. Bast money, and don't
bother about his ideals. He'll pick up those for himself."

She leant back while the more earnest members of the club began to
misconstrue her. The female mind, though cruelly practical in daily
life, cannot bear to hear ideals belittled in conversation, and Miss
Schlegel was asked however she could say such dreadful things, and what
it would profit Mr. Bast if he gained the whole world and lost his own
soul. She answered, "Nothing, but he would not gain his soul until
he had gained a little of the world." Then they said, "No, we do not
believe it," and she admitted that an overworked clerk may save his soul
in the superterrestrial sense, where the effort will be taken for the
deed, but she denied that he will ever explore the spiritual resources
of this world, will ever know the rarer joys of the body, or attain to
clear and passionate intercourse with his fellows. Others had attacked
the fabric of Society--Property, Interest, etc.; she only fixed her eyes
on a few human beings, to see how, under present conditions, they could
be made happier. Doing good to humanity was useless: the many-coloured
efforts thereto spreading over the vast area like films and resulting in
an universal grey. To do good to one, or, as in this case, to a few, was
the utmost she dare hope for.

Between the idealists, and the political economists, Margaret had a
bad time. Disagreeing elsewhere, they agreed in disowning her, and
in keeping the administration of the millionaire's money in their
own hands. The earnest girl brought forward a scheme of "personal
supervision and mutual help," the effect of which was to alter poor
people until they became exactly like people who were not so poor. The
hostess pertinently remarked that she, as eldest son, might surely rank
among the millionaire's legatees. Margaret weakly admitted the claim,
and another claim was at once set up by Helen, who declared that she
had been the millionaire's housemaid for over forty years, overfed and
underpaid; was nothing to be done for her, so corpulent and poor? The
millionaire then read out her last will and testament, in which she left
the whole of her fortune to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then she
died. The serious parts of the discussion had been of higher merit than
the playful--in a men's debate is the reverse more general?--but the
meeting broke up hilariously enough, and a dozen happy ladies dispersed
to their homes.

Helen and Margaret walked with the earnest girl as far as Battersea
Bridge Station, arguing copiously all the way. When she had gone
they were conscious of an alleviation, and of the great beauty of the
evening. They turned back towards Oakley Street. The lamps and the
plane-trees, following the line of the embankment, struck a note of
dignity that is rare in English cities. The seats, almost deserted, were
here and there occupied by gentlefolk in evening dress, who had strolled
out from the houses behind to enjoy fresh air and the whisper of the
rising tide. There is something continental about Chelsea Embankment. It
is an open space used rightly, a blessing more frequent in Germany than
here. As Margaret and Helen sat down, the city behind them seemed to
be a vast theatre, an opera-house in which some endless trilogy was
performing, and they themselves a pair of satisfied subscribers, who did
not mind losing a little of the second act.

"Cold?"

"No."

"Tired?"

"Doesn't matter."

The earnest girl's train rumbled away over the bridge, "I say, Helen--"

"Well?"

"Are we really going to follow up Mr. Bast?"

"I don't know."

"I think we won't."

"As you like."

"It's no good, I think, unless you really mean to know people. The
discussion brought that home to me. We got on well enough with him in a
spirit of excitement, but think of rational intercourse. We mustn't play
at friendship. No, it's no good."

"There's Mrs. Lanoline, too," Helen yawned. "So dull."

"Just so, and possibly worse than dull."

"I should like to know how he got hold of your card."

"But he said--something about a concert and an umbrella."

"Then did the card see the wife--"

"Helen, come to bed."

"No, just a little longer, it is so beautiful. Tell me; oh yes; did you
say money is the warp of the world?"

"Yes."

"Then what's the woof?"

"Very much what one chooses," said Margaret. "It's something that isn't
money--one can't say more."

"Walking at night?"

"Probably."

"For Tibby, Oxford?"

"It seems so."

"For you?"

"Now that we have to leave Wickham Place, I begin to think it's that.
For Mrs. Wilcox it was certainly Howards End."

One's own name will carry immense distances. Mr. Wilcox, who was sitting
with friends many seats away, heard this, rose to his feet, and strolled
along towards the speakers.

"It is sad to suppose that places may ever be more important than
people," continued Margaret.

"Why, Meg? They're so much nicer generally. I'd rather think of that
forester's house in Pomerania than of the fat Herr Forstmeister who
lived in it."

"I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The
more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one
of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a
place."

Here Mr. Wilcox reached them. It was several weeks since they had met.

"How do you do?" he cried. "I thought I recognised your voices. Whatever
are you both doing down here?"

His tones were protective. He implied that one ought not to sit out
on Chelsea Embankment without a male escort. Helen resented this, but
Margaret accepted it as part of the good man's equipment.

"What an age it is since I've seen you, Mr. Wilcox. I met Evie in the
Tube, though, lately. I hope you have good news of your son."

"Paul?" said Mr. Wilcox, extinguishing his cigarette, and sitting down
between them. "Oh, Paul's all right. We had a line from Madeira. He'll
be at work again by now."

"Ugh--" said Helen, shuddering from complex causes.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Isn't the climate of Nigeria too horrible?"

"Some one's got to go," he said simply. "England will never keep her
trade overseas unless she is prepared to make sacrifices. Unless we get
firm in West Africa, Ger--untold complications may follow. Now tell me
all your news."

"Oh, we've had a splendid evening," cried Helen, who always woke up at
the advent of a visitor. "We belong to a kind of club that reads papers,
Margaret and I--all women, but there is a discussion after. This evening
it was on how one ought to leave one's money--whether to one's family,
or to the poor, and if so how--oh, most interesting."

The man of business smiled. Since his wife's death he had almost doubled
his income. He was an important figure at last, a reassuring name on
company prospectuses, and life had treated him very well. The world
seemed in his grasp as he listened to the River Thames, which still
flowed inland from the sea. So wonderful to the girls, it held no
mysteries for him. He had helped to shorten its long tidal trough by
taking shares in the lock at Teddington, and if he and other capitalists
thought good, some day it could be shortened again. With a good dinner
inside him and an amiable but academic woman on either flank, he felt
that his hands were on all the ropes of life, and that what he did not
know could not be worth knowing.

"Sounds a most original entertainment!" he exclaimed, and laughed in
his pleasant way. "I wish Evie would go to that sort of thing. But she
hasn't the time. She's taken to breeding Aberdeen terriers--jolly little
dogs."

"I expect we'd better be doing the same, really."

"We pretend we're improving ourselves, you see," said Helen a little
sharply, for the Wilcox glamour is not of the kind that returns, and she
had bitter memories of the days when a speech such as he had just made
would have impressed her favourably. "We suppose it a good thing to
waste an evening once a fortnight over a debate, but, as my sister says,
it may be better to breed dogs."

"Not at all. I don't agree with your sister. There's nothing like a
debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when
I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end."

"Quickness--?"

"Yes. Quickness in argument. Time after time I've missed scoring a point
because the other man has had the gift of the gab and I haven't. Oh, I
believe in these discussions."

The patronising tone, thought Margaret, came well enough from a man who
was old enough to be their father. She had always maintained that Mr.
Wilcox had a charm. In times of sorrow or emotion his inadequacy had
pained her, but it was pleasant to listen to him now, and to watch his
thick brown moustache and high forehead confronting the stars. But Helen
was nettled. The aim of their debates she implied was Truth.

"Oh yes, it doesn't much matter what subject you take," said he.

Margaret laughed and said, "But this is going to be far better than the
debate itself." Helen recovered herself and laughed too. "No, I won't go
on," she declared. "I'll just put our special case to Mr. Wilcox."

"About Mr. Bast? Yes, do. He'll be more lenient to a special case."

"But, Mr. Wilcox, do first light another cigarette. It's this. We've
just come across a young fellow, who's evidently very poor, and who
seems interest--"

"What's his profession?"

"Clerk."

"What in?"

"Do you remember, Margaret?"

"Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company."

"Oh yes; the nice people who gave Aunt Juley a new hearth rug. He seems
interesting, in some ways very, and one wishes one could help him. He is
married to a wife whom he doesn't seem to care for much. He likes books,
and what one may roughly call adventure, and if he had a chance--But he
is so poor. He lives a life where all the money is apt to go on nonsense
and clothes. One is so afraid that circumstances will be too strong
for him and that he will sink. Well, he got mixed up in our debate. He
wasn't the subject of it, but it seemed to bear on his point. Suppose
a millionaire died, and desired to leave money to help such a man. How
should he be helped? Should he be given three hundred pounds a year
direct, which was Margaret's plan? Most of them thought this would
pauperise him. Should he and those like him be given free libraries?
I said 'No!' He doesn't want more books to read, but to read books
rightly. My suggestion was he should be given something every year
towards a summer holiday, but then there is his wife, and they said she
would have to go too. Nothing seemed quite right! Now what do you think?
Imagine that you were a millionaire, and wanted to help the poor. What
would you do?"

Mr. Wilcox, whose fortune was not so very far below the standard
indicated, laughed exuberantly. "My dear Miss Schlegel, I will not rush
in where your sex has been unable to tread. I will not add another plan
to the numerous excellent ones that have been already suggested. My only
contribution is this: let your young friend clear out of the Porphyrion
Fire Insurance Company with all possible speed."

"Why?" said Margaret.

He lowered his voice. "This is between friends. It'll be in the
Receiver's hands before Christmas. It'll smash," he added, thinking that
she had not understood.

"Dear me, Helen, listen to that. And he'll have to get another place!"

"WILL have? Let him leave the ship before it sinks. Let him get one
now."

"Rather than wait, to make sure?"

"Decidedly."

"Why's that?"

Again the Olympian laugh, and the lowered voice. "Naturally the man
who's in a situation when he applies stands a better chance, is in a
stronger position, that the man who isn't. It looks as if he's worth
something. I know by myself--(this is letting you into the State
secrets)--it affects an employer greatly. Human nature, I'm afraid."

"I hadn't thought of that," murmured Margaret, while Helen said, "Our
human nature appears to be the other way round. We employ people because
they're unemployed. The boot man, for instance."

"And how does he clean the boots?"

"Not well," confessed Margaret.

"There you are!"

"Then do you really advise us to tell this youth--?"

"I advise nothing," he interrupted, glancing up and down the Embankment,
in case his indiscretion had been overheard. "I oughtn't to have
spoken--but I happen to know, being more or less behind the scenes. The
Porphyrion's a bad, bad concern--Now, don't say I said so. It's outside
the Tariff Ring."

"Certainly I won't say. In fact, I don't know what that means."

"I thought an insurance company never smashed," was Helen's
contribution. "Don't the others always run in and save them?"

"You're thinking of reinsurance," said Mr. Wilcox mildly. "It is exactly
there that the Porphyrion is weak. It has tried to undercut, has been
badly hit by a long series of small fires, and it hasn't been able to
reinsure. I'm afraid that public companies don't save one another for
love."

"'Human nature,' I suppose," quoted Helen, and he laughed and agreed
that it was. When Margaret said that she supposed that clerks, like
every one else, found it extremely difficult to get situations in these
days, he replied, "Yes, extremely," and rose to rejoin his friends. He
knew by his own office--seldom a vacant post, and hundreds of applicants
for it; at present no vacant post.

"And how's Howards End looking?" said Margaret, wishing to change the
subject before they parted. Mr. Wilcox was a little apt to think one
wanted to get something out of him.

"It's let."

"Really. And you wandering homeless in longhaired Chelsea? How strange
are the ways of Fate!"

"No; it's let unfurnished. We've moved."

"Why, I thought of you both as anchored there for ever. Evie never told
me."

"I dare say when you met Evie the thing wasn't settled. We only moved
a week ago. Paul has rather a feeling for the old place, and we held on
for him to have his holiday there; but, really, it is impossibly small.
Endless drawbacks. I forget whether you've been up to it?"

"As far as the house, never."

"Well, Howards End is one of those converted farms. They don't really
do, spend what you will on them. We messed away with a garage all among
the wych-elm roots, and last year we enclosed a bit of the meadow and
attempted a rockery. Evie got rather keen on Alpine plants. But it
didn't do--no, it didn't do. You remember, your sister will remember,
the farm with those abominable guinea-fowls, and the hedge that the old
woman never would cut properly, so that it all went thin at the
bottom. And, inside the house, the beams--and the staircase through a
door--picturesque enough, but not a place to live in." He glanced
over the parapet cheerfully. "Full tide. And the position wasn't right
either. The neighbourhood's getting suburban. Either be in London or out
of it, I say; so we've taken a house in Ducie Street, close to Sloane
Street, and a place right down in Shropshire--Oniton Grange. Ever heard
of Oniton? Do come and see us--right away from everywhere, up towards
Wales."

"What a change!" said Margaret. But the change was in her own voice,
which had become most sad. "I can't imagine Howards End or Hilton
without you."

"Hilton isn't without us," he replied. "Charles is there still."

"Still?" said Margaret, who had not kept up with the Charles's. "But I
thought he was still at Epsom. They were furnishing that Christmas--one
Christmas. How everything alters! I used to admire Mrs. Charles from our
windows very often. Wasn't it Epsom?"

"Yes, but they moved eighteen months ago. Charles, the good chap"--his
voice dropped--"thought I should be lonely. I didn't want him to move,
but he would, and took a house at the other end of Hilton, down by
the Six Hills. He had a motor, too. There they all are, a very jolly
party--he and she and the two grandchildren."

"I manage other people's affairs so much better than they manage them
themselves," said Margaret as they shook hands. "When you moved out of
Howards End, I should have moved Mr. Charles Wilcox into it. I should
have kept so remarkable a place in the family."

"So it is," he replied. "I haven't sold it, and don't mean to."

"No; but none of you are there."

"Oh, we've got a splendid tenant--Hamar Bryce, an invalid. If
Charles ever wanted it--but he won't. Dolly is so dependent on modern
conveniences. No, we have all decided against Howards End. We like it in
a way, but now we feel that it is neither one thing nor the other. One
must have one thing or the other."

"And some people are lucky enough to have both. You're doing yourself
proud, Mr. Wilcox. My congratulations."

"And mine," said Helen.

"Do remind Evie to come and see us--2 Wickham Place. We shan't be there
very long, either."

"You, too, on the move?"

"Next September," Margaret sighed.

"Every one moving! Good-bye."

The tide had begun to ebb. Margaret leant over the parapet and watched
it sadly. Mr. Wilcox had forgotten his wife, Helen her lover; she
herself was probably forgetting. Every one moving. Is it worth while
attempting the past when there is this continual flux even in the hearts
of men?

Helen roused her by saying: "What a prosperous vulgarian Mr. Wilcox has
grown! I have very little use for him in these days. However, he did
tell us about the Porphyrion. Let us write to Mr. Bast as soon as ever
we get home, and tell him to clear out of it at once."

"Do; yes, that's worth doing. Let us."



Leonard accepted the invitation to tea next Saturday. But he was right;
the visit proved a conspicuous failure.

"Sugar?" said Margaret.

"Cake?" said Helen. "The big cake or the little deadlies? I'm afraid
you thought my letter rather odd, but we'll explain--we aren't odd,
really--nor affected, really. We're over-expressive--that's all."

As a lady's lap-dog Leonard did not excel. He was not an Italian,
still less a Frenchman, in whose blood there runs the very spirit of
persiflage and of gracious repartee. His wit was the Cockney's; it
opened no doors into imagination, and Helen was drawn up short by "The
more a lady has to say, the better," administered waggishly.

"Oh yes," she said.

"Ladies brighten--"

"Yes, I know. The darlings are regular sunbeams. Let me give you a
plate."

"How do you like your work?" interposed Margaret.

He, too, was drawn up short. He would not have these women prying into
his work. They were Romance, and so was the room to which he had at last
penetrated, with the queer sketches of people bathing upon its walls,
and so were the very tea-cups, with their delicate borders of wild
strawberries. But he would not let romance interfere with his life.
There is the devil to pay then.

"Oh, well enough," he answered.

"Your company is the Porphyrion, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's so."--becoming rather offended. "It's funny how things get
round."

"Why funny?" asked Helen, who did not follow the workings of his mind.
"It was written as large as life on your card, and considering we wrote
to you there, and that you replied on the stamped paper--"

"Would you call the Porphyrion one of the big Insurance Companies?"
pursued Margaret.

"It depends on what you call big."

"I mean by big, a solid, well-established concern, that offers a
reasonably good career to its employes."

"I couldn't say--some would tell you one thing and others another," said
the employe uneasily. "For my own part"--he shook his head--"I only
believe half I hear. Not that even; it's safer. Those clever ones come
to the worse grief, I've often noticed. Ah, you can't be too careful."

He drank, and wiped his moustache, which was going to be one of those
moustaches that always droop into tea-cups--more bother than they're
worth, surely, and not fashionable either.

"I quite agree, and that's why I was curious to know; is it a solid,
well-established concern?"

Leonard had no idea. He understood his own corner of the machine,
but nothing beyond it. He desired to confess neither knowledge nor
ignorance, and under these circumstances, another motion of the head
seemed safest. To him, as to the British public, the Porphyrion was the
Porphyrion of the advertisement--a giant, in the classical style, but
draped sufficiently, who held in one hand a burning torch, and pointed
with the other to St. Paul's and Windsor Castle. A large sum of money
was inscribed below, and you drew your own conclusions. This giant
caused Leonard to do arithmetic and write letters, to explain the
regulations to new clients, and re-explain them to old ones. A giant
was of an impulsive morality--one knew that much. He would pay for
Mrs. Munt's hearthrug with ostentatious haste, a large claim he would
repudiate quietly, and fight court by court. But his true fighting
weight, his antecedents, his amours with other members of the commercial
Pantheon--all these were as uncertain to ordinary mortals as were the
escapades of Zeus. While the gods are powerful, we learn little about
them. It is only in the days of their decadence that a strong light
beats into heaven.

"We were told the Porphyrion's no go," blurted Helen. "We wanted to tell
you; that's why we wrote."

"A friend of ours did think that it is insufficiently reinsured," said
Margaret.

Now Leonard had his clue.

He must praise the Porphyrion. "You can tell your friend," he said,
"that he's quite wrong."

"Oh, good!"

The young man coloured a little. In his circle to be wrong was fatal.
The Miss Schlegels did not mind being wrong. They were genuinely glad
that they had been misinformed. To them nothing was fatal but evil.

"Wrong, so to speak," he added.

"How 'so to speak'?"

"I mean I wouldn't say he's right altogether."

But this was a blunder. "Then he is right partly," said the elder woman,
quick as lightning.

Leonard replied that every one was right partly, if it came to that.

"Mr. Bast, I don't understand business, and I dare say my questions are
stupid, but can you tell me what makes a concern 'right' or 'wrong'?"

Leonard sat back with a sigh.

"Our friend, who is also a business man, was so positive. He said before
Christmas--"

"And advised you to clear out of it," concluded Helen. "But I don't see
why he should know better than you do."

Leonard rubbed his hands. He was tempted to say that he knew nothing
about the thing at all. But a commercial training was too strong for
him. Nor could he say it was a bad thing, for this would be giving
it away; nor yet that it was good, for this would be giving it away
equally. He attempted to suggest that it was something between the two,
with vast possibilities in either direction, but broke down under the
gaze of four sincere eyes. And yet he scarcely distinguished between
the two sisters. One was more beautiful and more lively, but "the Miss
Schlegels" still remained a composite Indian god, whose waving arms and
contradictory speeches were the product of a single mind.

"One can but see," he remarked, adding, "as Ibsen says, 'things
happen.'" He was itching to talk about books and make the most of his
romantic hour. Minute after minute slipped away, while the ladies, with
imperfect skill, discussed the subject of reinsurance or praised their
anonymous friend. Leonard grew annoyed--perhaps rightly. He made vague
remarks about not being one of those who minded their affairs being
talked over by others, but they did not take the hint. Men might have
shown more tact. Women, however tactful elsewhere, are heavy-handed
here. They cannot see why we should shroud our incomes and our prospects
in a veil. "How much exactly have you, and how much do you expect to
have next June?" And these were women with a theory, who held that
reticence about money matters is absurd, and that life would be truer
if each would state the exact size of the golden island upon which he
stands, the exact stretch of warp over which he throws the woof that is
not money. How can we do justice to the pattern otherwise?

And the precious minutes slipped away, and Jacky and squalor came
nearer. At last he could bear it no longer, and broke in, reciting
the names of books feverishly. There was a moment of piercing joy when
Margaret said, "So YOU like Carlyle" and then the door opened, and "Mr.
Wilcox, Miss Wilcox" entered, preceded by two prancing puppies.

"Oh, the dears! Oh, Evie, how too impossibly sweet!" screamed Helen,
falling on her hands and knees.

"We brought the little fellows round," said Mr. Wilcox.

"I bred 'em myself."

"Oh, really! Mr. Bast, come and play with puppies."

"I've got to be going now," said Leonard sourly.

"But play with puppies a little first."

"This is Ahab, that's Jezebel," said Evie, who was one of those who name
animals after the less successful characters of Old Testament history.

"I've got to be going."

Helen was too much occupied with puppies to notice him.

"Mr. Wilcox, Mr. Ba---- Must you be really?

"Good-bye!"

"Come again," said Helen from the floor.

Then Leonard's gorge arose. Why should he come again? What was the good
of it? He said roundly: "No, I shan't; I knew it would be a failure."

Most people would have let him go. "A little mistake. We tried knowing
another class--impossible."

But the Schlegels had never played with life. They had attempted
friendship, and they would take the consequences. Helen retorted, "I
call that a very rude remark. What do you want to turn on me like that
for?" and suddenly the drawing-room re-echoed to a vulgar row.

"You ask me why I turn on you?"

"Yes."

"What do you want to have me here for?'

"To help you, you silly boy!" cried Helen. "And don't shout."

"I don't want your patronage. I don't want your tea. I was quite happy.
What do you want to unsettle me for?" He turned to Mr. Wilcox. "I put it
to this gentleman. I ask you, sir, am I to have my brain picked?"

Mr. Wilcox turned to Margaret with the air of humorous strength that he
could so well command. "Are we intruding, Miss Schlegel? Can we be of
any use, or shall we go?"

But Margaret ignored him.

"I'm connected with a leading insurance company, sir. I receive what I
take to be an invitation from these--ladies" (he drawled the word). "I
come, and it's to have my brain picked. I ask you, is it fair?"

"Highly unfair," said Mr. Wilcox, drawing a gasp from Evie, who knew
that her father was becoming dangerous.

"There, you hear that? Most unfair, the gentleman says. There! Not
content with"--pointing at Margaret--"you can't deny it." His voice
rose; he was falling into the rhythm of a scene with Jacky. "But as
soon as I'm useful it's a very different thing. 'Oh yes, send for him.
Cross-question him. Pick his brains.' Oh yes. Now, take me on the whole,
I'm a quiet fellow: I'm law-abiding, I don't wish any unpleasantness;
but I--I--"

"You," said Margaret--"you--you--"

Laughter from Evie as at a repartee.

"You are the man who tried to walk by the Pole Star."

More laughter.

"You saw the sunrise."

Laughter.

"You tried to get away from the fogs that are stifling us all--away past
books and houses to the truth. You were looking for a real home."

"I fail to see the connection," said Leonard, hot with stupid anger.

"So do I." There was a pause. "You were that last Sunday--you are this
to-day. Mr. Bast! I and my sister have talked you over. We wanted to
help you; we also supposed you might help us. We did not have you here
out of charity--which bores us--but because we hoped there would be a
connection between last Sunday and other days. What is the good of your
stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into
our daily lives? They have never entered into mine, but into yours,
we thought--Haven't we all to struggle against life's daily greyness,
against pettiness, against mechanical cheerfulness, against suspicion?
I struggle by remembering my friends; others I have known by remembering
some place--some beloved place or tree--we thought you one of these."

"Of course, if there's been any misunderstanding," mumbled Leonard, "all
I can do is to go. But I beg to state--" He paused. Ahab and Jezebel
danced at his boots and made him look ridiculous. "You were picking my
brain for official information--I can prove it--I--" He blew his nose
and left them.

"Can I help you now?" said Mr. Wilcox, turning to Margaret. "May I have
one quiet word with him in the hall?"

"Helen, go after him--do anything--anything--to make the noodle
understand."

Helen hesitated.

"But really--" said their visitor. "Ought she to?"

At once she went.

He resumed. "I would have chimed in, but I felt that you could polish
him off for yourselves--I didn't interfere. You were splendid, Miss
Schlegel--absolutely splendid. You can take my word for it, but there
are very few women who could have managed him."

"Oh yes," said Margaret distractedly.

"Bowling him over with those long sentences was what fetched me," cried
Evie.

"Yes, indeed," chuckled her father; "all that part about 'mechanical
cheerfulness'--oh, fine!"

"I'm very sorry," said Margaret, collecting herself. "He's a nice
creature really. I cannot think what set him off. It has been most
unpleasant for you."

"Oh, I didn't mind." Then he changed his mood. He asked if he might
speak as an old friend, and, permission given, said: "Oughtn't you
really to be more careful?"

Margaret laughed, though her thoughts still strayed after Helen. "Do you
realise that it's all your fault?" she said. "You're responsible."

"I?"

"This is the young man whom we were to warn against the Porphyrion. We
warn him, and--look!"

Mr. Wilcox was annoyed. "I hardly consider that a fair deduction," he
said.

"Obviously unfair," said Margaret. "I was only thinking how tangled
things are. It's our fault mostly--neither yours nor his."

"Not his?"

"No."

"Miss Schlegel, you are too kind."

"Yes, indeed," nodded Evie, a little contemptuously.

"You behave much too well to people, and then they impose on you. I know
the world and that type of man, and as soon as I entered the room I saw
you had not been treating him properly. You must keep that type at a
distance. Otherwise they forget themselves. Sad, but true. They aren't
our sort, and one must face the fact."

"Ye--es."

"Do admit that we should never have had the outburst if he was a
gentleman."

"I admit it willingly," said Margaret, who was pacing up and down the
room. "A gentleman would have kept his suspicions to himself."

Mr. Wilcox watched her with a vague uneasiness.

"What did he suspect you of?"

"Of wanting to make money out of him."

"Intolerable brute! But how were you to benefit?"

"Exactly. How indeed! Just horrible, corroding suspicion. One touch of
thought or of goodwill would have brushed it away. Just the senseless
fear that does make men intolerable brutes."

"I come back to my original point. You ought to be more careful, Miss
Schlegel. Your servants ought to have orders not to let such people in."

She turned to him frankly. "Let me explain exactly why we like this man,
and want to see him again."

"That's your clever way of talking. I shall never believe you like him."

"I do. Firstly, because he cares for physical adventure, just as you
do. Yes, you go motoring and shooting; he would like to go camping out.
Secondly, he cares for something special IN adventure. It is quickest to
call that special something poetry--"

"Oh, he's one of that writer sort."

"No--oh no! I mean he may be, but it would be loathsome stuff. His brain
is filled with the husks of books, culture--horrible; we want him to
wash out his brain and go to the real thing. We want to show him how
he may get upsides with life. As I said, either friends or the country,
some"--she hesitated--"either some very dear person or some very dear
place seems necessary to relieve life's daily grey, and to show that it
is grey. If possible, one should have both."

Some of her words ran past Mr. Wilcox. He let them run past. Others he
caught and criticised with admirable lucidity.

"Your mistake is this, and it is a very common mistake. This young
bounder has a life of his own. What right have you to conclude it is an
unsuccessful life, or, as you call it, 'grey'?"

"Because--"

"One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own
joys and interests--wife, children, snug little home. That's where we
practical fellows" he smiled--"are more tolerant than you intellectuals.
We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well
elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after
his own affairs. I quite grant--I look at the faces of the clerks in my
own office, and observe them to be dull, but I don't know what's going
on beneath. So, by the way, with London. I have heard you rail against
London, Miss Schlegel, and it seems a funny thing to say but I was very
angry with you. What do you know about London? You only see civilisation
from the outside. I don't say in your case, but in too many cases that
attitude leads to morbidity, discontent, and Socialism."

She admitted the strength of his position, though it undermined
imagination. As he spoke, some outposts of poetry and perhaps of
sympathy fell ruining, and she retreated to what she called her "second
line"--to the special facts of the case.

"His wife is an old bore," she said simply. "He never came home last
Saturday night because he wanted to be alone, and she thought he was
with us."

"With YOU?"

"Yes." Evie tittered. "He hasn't got the cosy home that you assumed. He
needs outside interests."

"Naughty young man!" cried the girl.

"Naughty?" said Margaret, who hated naughtiness more than sin. "When
you're married Miss Wilcox, won't you want outside interests?"

"He has apparently got them," put in Mr. Wilcox slyly.

"Yes, indeed, father."

"He was tramping in Surrey, if you mean that," said Margaret, pacing
away rather crossly.

"Oh, I dare say!"

"Miss Wilcox, he was!"

"M--m--m--m!" from Mr. Wilcox, who thought the episode amusing, if
risque. With most ladies he would not have discussed it, but he was
trading on Margaret's reputation as an emancipated woman.

"He said so, and about such a thing he wouldn't lie."

They both began to laugh.

"That's where I differ from you. Men lie about their positions and
prospects, but not about a thing of that sort."

He shook his head. "Miss Schlegel, excuse me, but I know the type."

"I said before--he isn't a type. He cares about adventures rightly. He
's certain that our smug existence isn't all. He's vulgar and hysterical
and bookish, but don't think that sums him up. There's manhood in him as
well. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. He's a real man."

As she spoke their eyes met, and it was as if Mr. Wilcox's defences
fell. She saw back to the real man in him. Unwittingly she had touched
his emotions.

A woman and two men--they had formed the magic triangle of sex, and
the male was thrilled to jealousy, in case the female was attracted by
another male. Love, say the ascetics, reveals our shameful kinship with
the beasts. Be it so: one can bear that; jealousy is the real shame. It
is jealousy, not love, that connects us with the farmyard intolerably,
and calls up visions of two angry cocks and a complacent hen. Margaret
crushed complacency down because she was civilised. Mr. Wilcox,
uncivilised, continued to feel anger long after he had rebuilt his
defences, and was again presenting a bastion to the world.

"Miss Schlegel, you're a pair of dear creatures, but you really MUST be
careful in this uncharitable world. What does your brother say?"

"I forget."

"Surely he has some opinion?"

"He laughs, if I remember correctly."

"He's very clever, isn't he?" said Evie, who had met and detested Tibby
at Oxford.

"Yes, pretty well--but I wonder what Helen's doing."

"She is very young to undertake this sort of thing," said Mr. Wilcox.

Margaret went out to the landing. She heard no sound, and Mr. Bast's
topper was missing from the hall.

"Helen!" she called.

"Yes!" replied a voice from the library.

"You in there?"

"Yes--he's gone some time."

Margaret went to her. "Why, you're all alone," she said.

"Yes--it's all right, Meg. Poor, poor creature--"

"Come back to the Wilcoxes and tell me later--Mr. W much concerned, and
slightly titillated."

"Oh, I've no patience with him. I hate him. Poor dear Mr. Bast! he
wanted to talk literature, and we would talk business. Such a muddle of
a man, and yet so worth pulling through. I like him extraordinarily."

"Well done," said Margaret, kissing her, "but come into the drawing-room
now, and don't talk about him to the Wilcoxes. Make light of the whole
thing."

Helen came and behaved with a cheerfulness that reassured their
visitor--this hen at all events was fancy-free.

"He's gone with my blessing," she cried, "and now for puppies."

As they drove away, Mr. Wilcox said to his daughter:

"I am really concerned at the way those girls go on. They are as clever
as you make 'em, but unpractical--God bless me! One of these days
they'll go too far. Girls like that oughtn't to live alone in London.
Until they marry, they ought to have some one to look after them. We
must look in more often--we're better than no one. You like them, don't
you, Evie?"

Evie replied: "Helen's right enough, but I can't stand the toothy one.
And I shouldn't have called either of them girls."

Evie had grown up handsome. Dark-eyed, with the glow of youth under
sunburn, built firmly and firm-lipped, she was the best the Wilcoxes
could do in the way of feminine beauty. For the present, puppies and
her father were the only things she loved, but the net of matrimony was
being prepared for her, and a few days later she was attracted to a Mr.
Percy Cahill, an uncle of Mrs. Charles's, and he was attracted to her.



The Age of Property holds bitter moments even for a proprietor. When
a move is imminent, furniture becomes ridiculous, and Margaret now
lay awake at nights wondering where, where on earth they and all
their belongings would be deposited in September next. Chairs, tables,
pictures, books, that had rumbled down to them through the generations,
must rumble forward again like a slide of rubbish to which she longed to
give the final push, and send toppling into the sea. But there were
all their father's books--they never read them, but they were
their father's, and must be kept. There was the marble-topped
chiffonier--their mother had set store by it, they could not remember
why. Round every knob and cushion in the house gathered a sentiment
that was at times personal, but more often a faint piety to the dead, a
prolongation of rites that might have ended at the grave.

It was absurd, if you came to think of it; Helen and Tibby came to think
of it; Margaret was too busy with the house-agents. The feudal ownership
of land did bring dignity, whereas the modern ownership of movables
is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We are reverting to the
civilisation of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the
middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth,
and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty. The
Schlegels were certainly the poorer for the loss of Wickham Place. It
had helped to balance their lives, and almost to counsel them. Nor is
their ground-landlord spiritually the richer. He has built flats on
its site, his motor-cars grow swifter, his exposures of Socialism more
trenchant. But he has spilt the precious distillation of the years, and
no chemistry of his can give it back to society again.

Margaret grew depressed; she was anxious to settle on a house before
they left town to pay their annual visit to Mrs. Munt. She enjoyed this
visit, and wanted to have her mind at ease for it. Swanage, though dull,
was stable, and this year she longed more than usual for its fresh air
and for the magnificent downs that guard it on the north. But London
thwarted her; in its atmosphere she could not concentrate. London only
stimulates, it cannot sustain; and Margaret, hurrying over its surface
for a house without knowing what sort of a house she wanted, was paying
for many a thrilling sensation in the past. She could not even break
loose from culture, and her time was wasted by concerts which it would
be a sin to miss, and invitations which it would never do to refuse. At
last she grew desperate; she resolved that she would go nowhere and be
at home to no one until she found a house, and broke the resolution in
half an hour.

Once she had humorously lamented that she had never been to Simpson's
restaurant in the Strand. Now a note arrived from Miss Wilcox, asking
her to lunch there. Mr Cahill was coming and the three would have such a
jolly chat, and perhaps end up at the Hippodrome. Margaret had no strong
regard for Evie, and no desire to meet her fiance, and she was surprised
that Helen, who had been far funnier about Simpson's, had not been asked
instead. But the invitation touched her by its intimate tone. She
must know Evie Wilcox better than she supposed, and declaring that she
"simply must," she accepted.

But when she saw Evie at the entrance of the restaurant, staring
fiercely at nothing after the fashion of athletic women, her heart
failed her anew. Miss Wilcox had changed perceptibly since her
engagement. Her voice was gruffer, her manner more downright, and she
was inclined to patronise the more foolish virgin. Margaret was silly
enough to be pained at this. Depressed at her isolation, she saw not
only houses and furniture, but the vessel of life itself slipping past
her, with people like Evie and Mr. Cahill on board.

There are moments when virtue and wisdom fail us, and one of them came
to her at Simpson's in the Strand. As she trod the staircase, narrow,
but carpeted thickly, as she entered the eating-room, where saddles of
mutton were being trundled up to expectant clergymen, she had a strong,
if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never
come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and
literature, and where no one ever got married or succeeded in
remaining engaged. Then came a little surprise. "Father might be of the
party--yes, father was." With a smile of pleasure she moved forward to
greet him, and her feeling of loneliness vanished.

"I thought I'd get round if I could," said he. "Evie told me of her
little plan, so I just slipped in and secured a table. Always secure
a table first. Evie, don't pretend you want to sit by your old father,
because you don't. Miss Schlegel, come in my side, out of pity. My
goodness, but you look tired! Been worrying round after your young
clerks?"

"No, after houses," said Margaret, edging past him into the box. "I'm
hungry, not tired; I want to eat heaps."

"That's good. What'll you have?"

"Fish pie," said she, with a glance at the menu.

"Fish pie! Fancy coming for fish pie to Simpson's. It's not a bit the
thing to go for here."

"Go for something for me, then," said Margaret, pulling off her gloves.
Her spirits were rising, and his reference to Leonard Bast had warmed
her curiously.

"Saddle of mutton," said he after profound reflection; "and cider to
drink. That's the type of thing. I like this place, for a joke, once in
a way. It is so thoroughly Old English. Don't you agree?"

"Yes," said Margaret, who didn't. The order was given, the joint rolled
up, and the carver, under Mr. Wilcox's direction, cut the meat where
it was succulent, and piled their plates high. Mr. Cahill insisted on
sirloin, but admitted that he had made a mistake later on. He and
Evie soon fell into a conversation of the "No, I didn't; yes, you did"
type--conversation which, though fascinating to those who are engaged in
it, neither desires nor deserves the attention of others.

"It's a golden rule to tip the carver. Tip everywhere's my motto."

"Perhaps it does make life more human."

"Then the fellows know one again. Especially in the East, if you tip,
they remember you from year's end to year's end."

"Have you been in the East?"

"Oh, Greece and the Levant. I used to go out for sport and business to
Cyprus; some military society of a sort there. A few piastres, properly
distributed, help to keep one's memory green. But you, of course, think
this shockingly cynical. How's your discussion society getting on? Any
new Utopias lately?"

"No, I'm house-hunting, Mr. Wilcox, as I've already told you once. Do
you know of any houses?"

"Afraid I don't."

"Well, what's the point of being practical if you can't find two
distressed females a house? We merely want a small house with large
rooms, and plenty of them."

"Evie, I like that! Miss Schlegel expects me to turn house-agent for
her!"

"What's that, father?"

"I want a new home in September, and some one must find it. I can't."

"Percy, do you know of anything?"

"I can't say I do," said Mr. Cahill.

"How like you! You're never any good."

"Never any good. Just listen to her! Never any good. Oh, come!"

"Well, you aren't. Miss Schlegel, is he?"

The torrent of their love, having splashed these drops at Margaret,
swept away on its habitual course. She sympathised with it now, for a
little comfort had restored her geniality. Speech and silence pleased
her equally, and while Mr. Wilcox made some preliminary inquiries about
cheese, her eyes surveyed the restaurant, and aired its well-calculated
tributes to the solidity of our past. Though no more Old English than
the works of Kipling, it had selected its reminiscences so adroitly
that her criticism was lulled, and the guests whom it was nourishing for
imperial purposes bore the outer semblance of Parson Adams or Tom Jones.
Scraps of their talk jarred oddly on the ear. "Right you are! I'll cable
out to Uganda this evening," came from the table behind. "Their Emperor
wants war; well, let him have it," was the opinion of a clergyman. She
smiled at such incongruities. "Next time," she said to Mr. Wilcox, "you
shall come to lunch with me at Mr. Eustace Miles's."

"With pleasure."

"No, you'd hate it," she said, pushing her glass towards him for some
more cider. "It's all proteids and body buildings, and people come up to
you and beg your pardon, but you have such a beautiful aura."

"A what?"

"Never heard of an aura? Oh, happy, happy man! I scrub at mine for
hours. Nor of an astral plane?"

He had heard of astral planes, and censured them.

"Just so. Luckily it was Helen's aura, not mine, and she had to
chaperone it and do the politenesses. I just sat with my handkerchief in
my mouth till the man went."

"Funny experiences seem to come to you two girls. No one's ever asked me
about my--what d'ye call it? Perhaps I've not got one."

"You're bound to have one, but it may be such a terrible colour that no
one dares mention it."

"Tell me, though, Miss Schlegel, do you really believe in the
supernatural and all that?"

"Too difficult a question."

"Why's that? Gruyere or Stilton?"

"Gruyere, please."

"Better have Stilton.

"Stilton. Because, though I don't believe in auras, and think
Theosophy's only a halfway-house--"

"--Yet there may be something in it all the same," he concluded, with a
frown.

"Not even that. It may be halfway in the wrong direction. I can't
explain. I don't believe in all these fads, and yet I don't like saying
that I don't believe in them."

He seemed unsatisfied, and said: "So you wouldn't give me your word that
you DON'T hold with astral bodies and all the rest of it?"

"I could," said Margaret, surprised that the point was of any importance
to him. "Indeed, I will. When I talked about scrubbing my aura, I was
only trying to be funny. But why do you want this settled?"

"I don't know."

"Now, Mr. Wilcox, you do know."

"Yes, I am," "No, you're not," burst from the lovers opposite. Margaret
was silent for a moment, and then changed the subject.

"How's your house?"

"Much the same as when you honoured it last week."

"I don't mean Ducie Street. Howards End, of course."

"Why 'of course'?"

"Can't you turn out your tenant and let it to us? We're nearly demented."

"Let me think. I wish I could help you. But I thought you wanted to be
in town. One bit of advice: fix your district, then fix your price, and
then don't budge. That's how I got both Ducie Street and Oniton. I said
to myself, 'I mean to be exactly here,' and I was, and Oniton's a place
in a thousand."

"But I do budge. Gentlemen seem to mesmerise houses--cow them with an
eye, and up they come, trembling. Ladies can't. It's the houses that are
mesmerising me. I've no control over the saucy things. Houses are alive.
No?"

"I'm out of my depth," he said, and added: "Didn't you talk rather like
that to your office boy?"

"Did I?--I mean I did, more or less. I talk the same way to every
one--or try to."

"Yes, I know. And how much of it do you suppose he understood?"

"That's his lookout. I don't believe in suiting my conversation to my
company. One can doubtless hit upon some medium of exchange that seems
to do well enough, but it's no more like the real thing than money
is like food. There's no nourishment in it. You pass it to the lower
classes, and they pass it back to you, and this you call 'social
intercourse' or 'mutual endeavour,' when it's mutual priggishness if
it's anything. Our friends at Chelsea don't see this. They say one ought
to be at all costs intelligible, and sacrifice--"

"Lower classes," interrupted Mr. Wilcox, as it were thrusting his hand
into her speech. "Well, you do admit that there are rich and poor.
That's something."

Margaret could not reply. Was he incredibly stupid, or did he understand
her better than she understood herself?

"You do admit that, if wealth was divided up equally, in a few years
there would be rich and poor again just the same. The hard-working man
would come to the top, the wastrel sink to the bottom."

"Every one admits that."

"Your Socialists don't."

"My Socialists do. Yours mayn't; but I strongly suspect yours of being
not Socialists, but ninepins, which you have constructed for your own
amusement. I can't imagine any living creature who would bowl over quite
so easily."

He would have resented this had she not been a woman. But women may say
anything--it was one of his holiest beliefs--and he only retorted, with
a gay smile: "I don't care. You've made two damaging admissions, and I'm
heartily with you in both."

In time they finished lunch, and Margaret, who had excused herself from
the Hippodrome, took her leave. Evie had scarcely addressed her, and she
suspected that the entertainment had been planned by the father. He
and she were advancing out of their respective families towards a more
intimate acquaintance. It had begun long ago. She had been his wife's
friend and, as such, he had given her that silver vinaigrette as a
memento. It was pretty of him to have given that vinaigrette, and he had
always preferred her to Helen--unlike most men. But the advance had been
astonishing lately. They had done more in a week than in two years, and
were really beginning to know each other.

She did not forget his promise to sample Eustace Miles, and asked him as
soon as she could secure Tibby as his chaperon. He came, and partook of
body-building dishes with humility.

Next morning the Schlegels left for Swanage. They had not succeeded in
finding a new home.

 The next day, Leonard comes to visit the  Schlegels to apologize for his wife's intrusion. Trying to speak loftily, he first refuses to explain  why Jacky thought he was at Wickham Place. Eventually, he drops his awkward affectations and  starts talking about how, in an attempt to get back  to nature, he walked all night and much of the next  day. Intrigued, the Schlegels think that he has  made a heroic attempt to break through the dullness  of his daily life and to connect with something  spiritually real. That night, Margaret and  Helen go to a dinner party discussion group, at  which they debate the question of allocating money  to the poor; they talk so much about Leonard that  everyone at the party begins using his name as a  kind of shorthand for the poor in general. Afterward, they meet Mr. Wilcox, who has doubled  his fortune since Mrs. Wilcox's death. He tells  them that he and Evie have rented Howards End to  an invalid and moved to a much larger home. When  they tell him about Leonard, he warns them that the  Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company, where Leonard is  a clerk, is an unsound operation that will crash  before Christmas. The Schlegels agree to advise  Leonard to find a new job. They invite Leonard to tea, but the encounter is a  disaster; associating the Schlegels with an abstract  idea of wealth and romance, he blanches at  discussing business with them, and they have no  interest in listening to his ramblings about his  reading when there is such an important  consideration at stake. After Mr. Wilcox and Evie  arrive unexpectedly, Leonard loses his temper and  accuses Margaret and Helen of trying to pry into his  knowledge of the insurance company to make money for  themselves. He storms away, and the Schlegel  sisters are left to play with the Wilcoxes' puppies. As lapsing of the lease on the Schlegels' Wickham Place  residence draws near, Margaret begins frantically  searching for a new house. She hopes to find one  before the siblings depart for their annual visit to  Aunt Juley, but has no success. She dines with  Mr. Wilcox, Evie, and Evie's fiance, Percy Cahill,  and realizes that she and Mr. Wilcox are beginning to  be real friends. She and Tibby take him to a  faddish restaurant where all the people discuss  spiritual auras and astral planes, a display which he  tolerates with good humor. Eventually, it is time to  visit Aunt Juley at Swanage, and the Schlegels have  still not found a new house.

