Chapter: 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.



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?

 As he feared, Leonard Bast's visit for tea at Wickham Place is indeed a disaster. He initially considers himself fortunate to be amidst people as interesting as the Schlegels, and he thinks of them as "Romance." He is expecting an enjoyable follow-up to their last encounter, full of lively and literary conversation. When the Schlegels bring up the situation of his employment, then, Leonard is extremely frustrated and disappointed. Their frank way of speaking to him about the matter makes him suspicious. He finds it unfair that once he is able to be in their company, they choose to talk about practical rather than intellectual things. His anger intensifies when Mr. Wilcox and Evie arrive with two dogs. Since Mrs. Wilcox's death, Evie has taken to training canines in addition to keeping her father company. Against his better judgment, Leonard begins to make a scene before leaving. He draws Mr. Wilcox into the argument, which culminates in a heated exchange between Leonard and Margaret. Margaret reminds him that a true friendship cannot exist solely on cultural interactions, for there is also the need for the mundane. That, she says, is simply the nature of life. Outraged, Leonard storms off. Mr. Wilcox compliments Margaret on her handling of the situation. The Schlegel sisters are upset over the incident because they cannot stand for anybody to be vexed, and Helen attempts to go after Leonard. As he feared, Leonard Bast's visit for tea at Wickham Place is indeed a disaster. He initially considers himself fortunate to be amidst people as interesting as the Schlegels, and he thinks of them as "Romance." He is expecting an enjoyable follow-up to their last encounter, full of lively and literary conversation. Then, when the Schlegels bring up the situation of his employment, Leonard is extremely frustrated and disappointed. Their frank way of speaking to him about the matter makes him suspicious. He finds it unfair that once he is able to be in their company, they choose to talk about practical rather than intellectual things. His anger intensifies when Mr. Wilcox and Evie arrive with two dogs. Since Mrs. Wilcox's death, Evie has taken to training canines in addition to keeping her father company. Against his better judgment, Leonard begins to make a scene before leaving. He draws Mr. Wilcox into the argument, which culminates in a heated exchange between Leonard and Margaret. Margaret reminds him that a true friendship cannot exist solely on cultural interactions, for there is also the need for the mundane. That, she says, is simply the nature of life. Outraged, Leonard storms off. Mr. Wilcox compliments Margaret on her handling of the situation. The Schlegel sisters are upset over the incident because they cannot stand for anybody to be vexed, and Helen attempts to go after Leonard. The Wilcoxes and Margaret discuss the afternoon's events. Mr. Wilcox maintains that some people are rich and some people are poor, which is simply a fact of live. In his view, poverty does not necessarily mean unhappiness. Whenever Margaret tries to defend Leonard Bast, Mr. Wilcox reacts with jealousy. Margaret realizes that she is in the midst of a figurative "triangle of sex" and is mildly amused. When the Wilcoxes depart, Margaret goes to find Helen, who reports that Leonard left long ago. Helen feels very badly for Leonard and is quite annoyed with Mr. Wilcox. On the other hand, Mr. Wilcox admits to Evie when departing that he worries about the Schlegels and wants to make sure that they do not get into any trouble. Evie announces that while Helen is somewhat tolerable, she cannot stand Margaret. Soon after this encounter, Evie strikes up a relationship with one of Dolly's uncles, Percy Cahill. In the days that follow, Margaret has an incredibly difficult time finding a house for her family. She is exasperated by the hunt, for she finds that she is not even sure of what she is looking for. Despite having resolved to spend every moment of her time on the task, she accepts an invitation to have lunch with Evie and her fiancA Percy Cahill. Upon arriving at this luncheon, Margaret sees that Mr. Wilcox will also be joining them. She ends up chatting with him throughout the lunch, as Evie and her intended are flirting incessantly. Margaret finds her conversation with Mr. Wilcox surprisingly agreeable, and realizes it must have been he, not Evie, who desired her company. After having such a pleasant time, Margaret mentions to Mr. Wilcox that she knows of another place where they should take lunch together one day. Margaret and Mr. Wilcox have a second lunch, and shortly afterwards, the Schlegels depart for their annual visit to Swanage and Aunt Juley. Barely into her holiday, Margaret receives a letter from Mr. Wilcox. He informs her that since Evie's impending nuptials will take place at their house near Wales, Oniton Grange, he will be letting his property on Ducie Street in London. After consulting her siblings, Margaret accepts Mr. Wilcox's offer to return to London to examine the house. She suspects he might have another reason for contacting her. In the midst of showing her the property, Mr. Wilcox admits that he has asked Margaret to come to London so he can ask her something. He proposes. The moment is neither romantic nor dramatic, but still manages to delight Margaret. She resolves to return to Swanage to discuss the situation with her family and then give him her response by post. Unaware of what has happened at Ducie Street, Helen, Aunt Juley, Frieda and her husband and child are waiting for Margaret's train. Tibby has been instructed to pick her up at that station and then join the family for a picnic. As they wait, they look out over the landscape and recall with some amusement the entire Wilcox affair between Helen and Paul. The family witness Margaret's train pass, and soon afterwards Tibby arrives with his sister. Margaret has saved the engagement news for Helen, and she immediately takes her aside in order to tell her of the proposal. Initially horrified, Helen pleads with Margaret not to marry Mr. Wilcox. She is surprised that Margaret would even consider it. Helen has extremely negative feelings towards Mr. Wilcox, and it takes Margaret a great deal of effort to convince Helen to listen to her side of the situation. Once Helen consents to hear her out, Margaret explains how she came to recognize his affection for her in the time between Leonard Bast's visit and her departure for Swanage. Margaret claims to see and understand his faults, and is resolved not to become the typical married woman who is closed off from the world and entirely dependent on her husband. Margaret assures Helen that she will in no way compromise herself or her ideals. Helen, however, is not so sure this is possible.

