Chapter: Helen and her aunt returned to Wickham Place in a state of collapse, and
for a little time Margaret had three invalids on her hands. Mrs. Munt
soon recovered. She possessed to a remarkable degree the power of
distorting the past, and before many days were over she had forgotten
the part played by her own imprudence in the catastrophe. Even at the
crisis she had cried, "Thank goodness, poor Margaret is saved this!"
which during the journey to London evolved into, "It had to be gone
through by some one," which in its turn ripened into the permanent form
of "The one time I really did help Emily's girls was over the Wilcox
business." But Helen was a more serious patient. New ideas had burst
upon her like a thunderclap, and by them and by their reverberations she
had been stunned.

The truth was that she had fallen in love, not with an individual, but
with a family.

Before Paul arrived she had, as it were, been tuned up into his key.
The energy of the Wilcoxes had fascinated her, had created new images of
beauty in her responsive mind. To be all day with them in the open air,
to sleep at night under their roof, had seemed the supreme joy of
life, and had led to that abandonment of personality that is a possible
prelude to love. She had liked giving in to Mr. Wilcox, or Evie,
or Charles; she had liked being told that her notions of life were
sheltered or academic; that Equality was nonsense, Votes for Women
nonsense, Socialism nonsense, Art and Literature, except when conducive
to strengthening the character, nonsense. One by one the Schlegel
fetiches had been overthrown, and, though professing to defend them, she
had rejoiced. When Mr. Wilcox said that one sound man of business did
more good to the world than a dozen of your social reformers, she had
swallowed the curious assertion without a gasp, and had leant back
luxuriously among the cushions of his motorcar. When Charles said, "Why
be so polite to servants? they don't understand it," she had not given
the Schlegel retort of, "If they don't understand it, I do." No; she
had vowed to be less polite to servants in the future. "I am swathed in
cant," she thought, "and it is good for me to be stripped of it." And
all that she thought or did or breathed was a quiet preparation for
Paul. Paul was inevitable. Charles was taken up with another girl, Mr.
Wilcox was so old, Evie so young, Mrs. Wilcox so different. Round the
absent brother she began to throw the halo of Romance, to irradiate
him with all the splendour of those happy days, to feel that in him she
should draw nearest to the robust ideal. He and she were about the same
age, Evie said. Most people thought Paul handsomer than his brother. He
was certainly a better shot, though not so good at golf. And when Paul
appeared, flushed with the triumph of getting through an examination,
and ready to flirt with any pretty girl, Helen met him halfway, or more
than halfway, and turned towards him on the Sunday evening.

He had been talking of his approaching exile in Nigeria, and he should
have continued to talk of it, and allowed their guest to recover. But
the heave of her bosom flattered him. Passion was possible, and he
became passionate. Deep down in him something whispered, "This girl
would let you kiss her; you might not have such a chance again."

That was "how it happened," or, rather, how Helen described it to her
sister, using words even more unsympathetic than my own. But the poetry
of that kiss, the wonder of it, the magic that there was in life for
hours after it--who can describe that? It is so easy for an Englishman
to sneer at these chance collisions of human beings. To the insular
cynic and the insular moralist they offer an equal opportunity. It is so
easy to talk of "passing emotion," and to forget how vivid the emotion
was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at root a good
one. We recognise that emotion is not enough, and that men and women are
personalities capable of sustained relations, not mere opportunities for
an electrical discharge. Yet we rate the impulse too highly. We do not
admit that by collisions of this trivial sort the doors of heaven may be
shaken open. To Helen, at all events, her life was to bring nothing more
intense than the embrace of this boy who played no part in it. He had
drawn her out of the house, where there was danger of surprise and
light; he had led her by a path he knew, until they stood under the
column of the vast wych-elm. A man in the darkness, he had whispered "I
love you" when she was desiring love. In time his slender personality
faded, the scene that he had evoked endured. In all the variable years
that followed she never saw the like of it again.

"I understand," said Margaret-- "at least, I understand as much as ever
is understood of these things. Tell me now what happened on the Monday
morning."

"It was over at once."

"How, Helen?"

"I was still happy while I dressed, but as I came downstairs I got
nervous, and when I went into the dining-room I knew it was no good.
There was Evie--I can't explain--managing the tea-urn, and Mr. Wilcox
reading the Times."

"Was Paul there?"

"Yes; and Charles was talking to him about stocks and shares, and he
looked frightened."

By slight indications the sisters could convey much to each other.
Margaret saw horror latent in the scene, and Helen's next remark did not
surprise her.

"Somehow, when that kind of man looks frightened it is too awful. It is
all right for us to be frightened, or for men of another sort--father,
for instance; but for men like that! When I saw all the others so
placid, and Paul mad with terror in case I said the wrong thing, I felt
for a moment that the whole Wilcox family was a fraud, just a wall of
newspapers and motor-cars and golf-clubs, and that if it fell I should
find nothing behind it but panic and emptiness."

"I don't think that. The Wilcoxes struck me as being genuine people,
particularly the wife."

"No, I don't really think that. But Paul was so broad-shouldered; all
kinds of extraordinary things made it worse, and I knew that it would
never do--never. I said to him after breakfast, when the others were
practising strokes, 'We rather lost our heads,' and he looked better
at once, though frightfully ashamed. He began a speech about having no
money to marry on, but it hurt him to make it, and I stopped him. Then
he said, 'I must beg your pardon over this, Miss Schlegel; I can't think
what came over me last night.' And I said, 'Nor what over me; never
mind.' And then we parted--at least, until I remembered that I had
written straight off to tell you the night before, and that frightened
him again. I asked him to send a telegram for me, for he knew you would
be coming or something; and he tried to get hold of the motor, but
Charles and Mr. Wilcox wanted it to go to the station; and Charles
offered to send the telegram for me, and then I had to say that the
telegram was of no consequence, for Paul said Charles might read it, and
though I wrote it out several times, he always said people would suspect
something. He took it himself at last, pretending that he must walk down
to get cartridges, and, what with one thing and the other, it was not
handed in at the post-office until too late. It was the most terrible
morning. Paul disliked me more and more, and Evie talked cricket
averages till I nearly screamed. I cannot think how I stood her all the
other days. At last Charles and his father started for the station, and
then came your telegram warning me that Aunt Juley was coming by that
train, and Paul--oh, rather horrible--said that I had muddled it. But
Mrs. Wilcox knew."

"Knew what?"

"Everything; though we neither of us told her a word, and she had known
all along, I think."

"Oh, she must have overheard you."

"I suppose so, but it seemed wonderful. When Charles and Aunt Juley
drove up, calling each other names, Mrs. Wilcox stepped in from the
garden and made everything less terrible. Ugh! but it has been a
disgusting business. To think that--" She sighed.

"To think that because you and a young man meet for a moment, there must
be all these telegrams and anger," supplied Margaret.

Helen nodded.

"I've often thought about it, Helen. It's one of the most interesting
things in the world. The truth is that there is a great outer life that
you and I have never touched--a life in which telegrams and anger count.
Personal relations, that we think supreme, are not supreme there. There
love means marriage settlements, death, death duties. So far I'm clear.
But here my difficulty. This outer life, though obviously horrid; often
seems the real one--there's grit in it. It does breed character. Do
personal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?"

"Oh, Meg--, that's what I felt, only not so clearly, when the Wilcoxes
were so competent, and seemed to have their hands on all the ropes."

"Don't you feel it now?"

"I remember Paul at breakfast," said Helen quietly. "I shall never
forget him. He had nothing to fall back upon. I know that personal
relations are the real life, for ever and ever."

"Amen!"

So the Wilcox episode fell into the background, leaving behind it
memories of sweetness and horror that mingled, and the sisters pursued
the life that Helen had commended. They talked to each other and to
other people, they filled the tall thin house at Wickham Place with
those whom they liked or could befriend. They even attended public
meetings. In their own fashion they cared deeply about politics, though
not as politicians would have us care; they desired that public
life should mirror whatever is good in the life within. Temperance,
tolerance, and sexual equality were intelligible cries to them; whereas
they did not follow our Forward Policy in Tibet with the keen attention
that it merits, and would at times dismiss the whole British Empire with
a puzzled, if reverent, sigh. Not out of them are the shows of history
erected: the world would be a grey, bloodless place were it composed
entirely of Miss Schlegels. But the world being what it is, perhaps they
shine out in it like stars.

A word on their origin. They were not "English to the back-bone," as
their aunt had piously asserted. But, on the other hand, they were not
"Germans of the dreadful sort." Their father had belonged to a type that
was more prominent in Germany fifty years ago than now. He was not the
aggressive German, so dear to the English journalist, nor the domestic
German, so dear to the English wit. If one classed him at all it would
be as the countryman of Hegel and Kant, as the idealist, inclined to be
dreamy, whose Imperialism was the Imperialism of the air. Not that
his life had been inactive. He had fought like blazes against Denmark,
Austria, France. But he had fought without visualising the results of
victory. A hint of the truth broke on him after Sedan, when he saw the
dyed moustaches of Napoleon going grey; another when he entered Paris,
and saw the smashed windows of the Tuileries. Peace came--it was all
very immense, one had turned into an Empire--but he knew that some
quality had vanished for which not all Alsace-Lorraine could compensate
him. Germany a commercial Power, Germany a naval Power, Germany with
colonies here and a Forward Policy there, and legitimate aspirations in
the other place, might appeal to others, and be fitly served by
them; for his own part, he abstained from the fruits of victory, and
naturalised himself in England. The more earnest members of his family
never forgave him, and knew that his children, though scarcely English
of the dreadful sort, would never be German to the back-bone. He had
obtained work in one of our provincial universities, and there married
Poor Emily (or Die Englanderin, as the case may be), and as she had
money, they proceeded to London, and came to know a good many people.
But his gaze was always fixed beyond the sea. It was his hope that the
clouds of materialism obscuring the Fatherland would part in time, and
the mild intellectual light re-emerge. "Do you imply that we Germans are
stupid, Uncle Ernst?" exclaimed a haughty and magnificent nephew. Uncle
Ernst replied, "To my mind. You use the intellect, but you no longer
care about it. That I call stupidity." As the haughty nephew did not
follow, he continued, "You only care about the things that you can use,
and therefore arrange them in the following order: Money, supremely
useful; intellect, rather useful; imagination, of no use at all.
No"--for the other had protested--"your Pan-Germanism is no more
imaginative than is our Imperialism over here. It is the vice of a
vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square
miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and
that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven. That is
not imagination. No, it kills it. When their poets over here try to
celebrate bigness they are dead at once, and naturally. Your poets
too are dying, your philosophers, your musicians, to whom Europe has
listened for two hundred years. Gone. Gone with the little courts that
nurtured them--gone with Esterhazy and Weimar. What? What's that? Your
universities? Oh yes, you have learned men, who collect more facts
than do the learned men of England. They collect facts, and facts, and
empires of facts. But which of them will rekindle the light within?"

To all this Margaret listened, sitting on the haughty nephew's knee.

It was a unique education for the little girls. The haughty nephew would
be at Wickham Place one day, bringing with him an even haughtier wife,
both convinced that Germany was appointed by God to govern the world.
Aunt Juley would come the next day, convinced that Great Britain had
been appointed to the same post by the same authority. Were both these
loud-voiced parties right? On one occasion they had met and Margaret
with clasped hands had implored them to argue the subject out in her
presence. Whereat they blushed, and began to talk about the weather.
"Papa," she cried--she was a most offensive child--"why will they not
discuss this most clear question?" Her father, surveying the parties
grimly, replied that he did not know. Putting her head on one side,
Margaret then remarked, "To me one of two things is very clear; either
God does not know his own mind about England and Germany, or else these
do not know the mind of God." A hateful little girl, but at thirteen
she had grasped a dilemma that most people travel through life without
perceiving. Her brain darted up and down; it grew pliant and strong. Her
conclusion was, that any human being lies nearer to the unseen than any
organisation, and from this she never varied.

Helen advanced along the same lines, though with a more irresponsible
tread. In character she resembled her sister, but she was pretty, and so
apt to have a more amusing time. People gathered round her more readily,
especially when they were new acquaintances, and she did enjoy a little
homage very much. When their father died and they ruled alone at Wickham
Place, she often absorbed the whole of the company, while Margaret--both
were tremendous talkers--fell flat. Neither sister bothered about this.
Helen never apologised afterwards, Margaret did not feel the slightest
rancour. But looks have their influence upon character. The sisters
were alike as little girls, but at the time of the Wilcox episode their
methods were beginning to diverge; the younger was rather apt to entice
people, and, in enticing them, to be herself enticed; the elder went
straight ahead, and accepted an occasional failure as part of the game.

Little need be premised about Tibby. He was now an intelligent man of
sixteen, but dyspeptic and difficile.

 Back in the Schlegel home at Wickham Place, London, Helen and Aunt Juley both break down. Counting Tibby, Margaret has three people to take care of. Aunt Juley quickly forgets that she herself was largely the cause of the troubles at Howards End, and starts to look at the situation in a more positive light - she tells herself that she's done all she can to help her nieces. Helen, on the other hand, doesn't get over it quite so fast. Her whole life has been altered by the Wilcoxes, and it's hard for her to shake them off. For the first time, Helen was among people with ideas different from her own - while the Schlegels live sheltered, academic, liberal lives, the Wilcoxes are people of business, and their conservative ideas about the world are vastly different. Helen actually enjoyed arguing with them, even when they shot her down. Even before Paul arrived, Helen was ready to focus all of her love for the Wilcoxes on someone - and he was the right age and handsome enough, so she immediately allowed herself to fall in love with him. Paul himself was in a flirtatious mode; he was waiting to go earn some money through business in Nigeria and he basically had nothing to lose. So, to cut to the chase, he kissed Helen and told her he loved her. On Monday morning, though, things were different. As soon as Helen saw Paul in the morning, she noticed that he looked afraid - and for a man of the Wilcox sort, that's a pretty alarming thing. Helen, horrified, defused the situation by having a little chat with Paul - they agree that they'd been silly the night before. Helen gets Paul to send a telegram to Margaret for her, saying that there's nothing to worry about. However, as we know, Aunt Juley was already on her way, and her dramatic arrival with Charles troubles Helen. The Schlegels resolve to leave this episode behind them. They take up their ordinary lives again, entertaining interesting people and following liberal politics. The narrator gives us a little background on the Schlegel sisters. They're half-German and their father was a romantic figure - an idealistic, academic type. He didn't believe in the aggressive, imperial kind of Germany he saw emerging, so he moved to England and married an Englishwoman. There, he educated his children in his philosophical ways, which explains why Margaret and Helen are the way they are. Helen is prettier than Margaret, but similarly intelligent and forward. Margaret is more blunt than her sister and less of a social success. Tibby, their younger brother, doesn't merit much mention - he's a smart sixteen year old boy, but is somewhat persnickety and difficult.

