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 someone," 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 thunder clap, and by them and by
her 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 motor-car.
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 how to forget how vivid the emotion
was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at
root a good one. We recognize 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 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 Thibet 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 entirely composed 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
backbone," as their aunt had piously asserted. But, on the
other band, 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
visualizing 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 naturalized 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 backbone. 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 Esterhaz 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 organization, 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 apologized
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.
