"Oh, Margaret," cried her aunt next morning, "such a most
unfortunate thing has happened. I could not get you alone."
The most unfortunate thing was not very serious. One of
the flats in the ornate block opposite had been taken
furnished by the Wilcox family, "coming up, no doubt, in the
hope of getting into London society." That Mrs. Munt should
be the first to discover the misfortune was not remarkable,
for she was so interested in the flats, that she watched
their every mutation with unwearying care. In theory she
despised them--they took away that old-world look--they cut
off the sun--flats house a flashy type of person. But if
the truth had been known, she found her visits to Wickham
Place twice as amusing since Wickham Mansions had arisen,
and would in a couple of days learn more about them than her
nieces in a couple of months, or her nephew in a couple of
years. She would stroll across and make friends with the
porters, and inquire what the rents were, exclaiming for
example: "What! a hundred and twenty for a basement?
You'll never get it!" And they would answer: "One can but
try, madam." The passenger lifts, the provision lifts, the
arrangement for coals (a great temptation for a dishonest
porter), were all familiar matters to her, and perhaps a
relief from the politico-economical-aesthetic atmosphere that
reigned at the Schlegels'.
Margaret received the information calmly, and did not
agree that it would throw a cloud over poor Helen's life.
"Oh, but Helen isn't a girl with no interests," she
explained. "She has plenty of other things and other people
to think about. She made a false start with the Wilcoxes,
and she'll be as willing as we are to have nothing more to
do with them."
"For a clever girl, dear, how very oddly you do talk.
Helen'll HAVE to have something more to do with them, now
that they're all opposite. She may meet that Paul in the
street. She cannot very well not bow."
"Of course she must bow. But look here; let's do the
flowers. I was going to say, the will to be interested in
him has died, and what else matters? I look on that
disastrous episode (over which you were so kind) as the
killing of a nerve in Helen. It's dead, and she'll never be
troubled with it again. The only things that matter are the
things that interest one. Bowing, even calling and leaving
cards, even a dinner-party--we can do all those things to
the Wilcoxes, if they find it agreeable; but the other
thing, the one important thing--never again. Don't you see?"
Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a
most questionable statement--that any emotion, any interest
once vividly aroused, can wholly die.
"I also have the honour to inform you that the Wilcoxes
are bored with us. I didn't tell you at the time--it might
have made you angry, and you had enough to worry you--but I
wrote a letter to Mrs. W., and apologized for the trouble
that Helen had given them. She didn't answer it."
"How very rude!"
"I wonder. Or was it sensible?"
"No, Margaret, most rude."
"In either case one can class it as reassuring."
Mrs. Munt sighed. She was going back to Swanage on the
morrow, just as her nieces were wanting her most. Other
regrets crowded upon her: for instance, how magnificently
she would have cut Charles if she had met him face to face.
She had already seen him, giving an order to the porter--and
very common he looked in a tall hat. But unfortunately his
back was turned to her, and though she had cut his back, she
could not regard this as a telling snub.
"But you will be careful, won't you?" she exhorted.
"Oh, certainly. Fiendishly careful."
"And Helen must be careful, too,"
"Careful over what?" cried Helen, at that moment coming
into the room with her cousin.
"Nothing," said Margaret, seized with a momentary awkwardness.
"Careful over what, Aunt Juley?"
Mrs. Munt assumed a cryptic air. "It is only that a
certain family, whom we know by name but do not mention, as
you said yourself last night after the concert, have taken
the flat opposite from the Mathesons--where the plants are
in the balcony."
Helen began some laughing reply, and then disconcerted
them all by blushing. Mrs. Munt was so disconcerted that
she exclaimed, "What, Helen, you don't mind them coming, do
you?" and deepened the blush to crimson.
"Of course I don't mind," said Helen a little crossly.
"It is that you and Meg are both so absurdly grave about it,
when there's nothing to be grave about at all."
"I'm not grave," protested Margaret, a little cross in
her turn.
"Well, you look grave; doesn't she, Frieda?"
"I don't feel grave, that's all I can say; you're going
quite on the wrong tack."
"No, she does not feel grave," echoed Mrs. Munt. "I can
bear witness to that. She disagrees--"
"Hark!" interrupted Fraulein Mosebach. "I hear Bruno
entering the hall."
For Herr Liesecke was due at Wickham Place to call for
the two younger girls. He was not entering the hall--in
fact, he did not enter it for quite five minutes. But
Frieda detected a delicate situation, and said that she and
Helen had much better wait for Bruno down below, and leave
Margaret and Mrs. Munt to finish arranging the flowers.
Helen acquiesced. But, as if to prove that the situation
was not delicate really, she stopped in the doorway and said:
"Did you say the Mathesons' flat, Aunt Juley? How
wonderful you are! I never knew that the woman who laced
too tightly's name was Matheson."
"Come, Helen," said her cousin.
"Go, Helen," said her aunt; and continued to Margaret
almost in the same breath: "Helen cannot deceive me, She
does mind."
"Oh, hush!" breathed Margaret. "Frieda'll hear you, and
she can be so tiresome."
"She minds," persisted Mrs. Munt, moving thoughtfully
about the room, and pulling the dead chrysanthemums out of
the vases. "I knew she'd mind--and I'm sure a girl ought
to! Such an experience! Such awful coarse-grained people!
I know more about them than you do, which you forget, and if
Charles had taken you that motor drive--well, you'd have
reached the house a perfect wreck. Oh, Margaret, you don't
know what you are in for. They're all bottled up against
the drawing-room window. There's Mrs. Wilcox--I've seen
her. There's Paul. There's Evie, who is a minx. There's
Charles--I saw him to start with. And who would an elderly
man with a moustache and a copper-coloured face be?"
"Mr. Wilcox, possibly."
"I knew it. And there's Mr. Wilcox."
"It's a shame to call his face copper colour,"
complained Margaret. "He has a remarkably good complexion
for a man of his age."
Mrs. Munt, triumphant elsewhere, could afford to concede
Mr. Wilcox his complexion. She passed on from it to the
plan of campaign that her nieces should pursue in the
future. Margaret tried to stop her.
"Helen did not take the news quite as I expected, but
the Wilcox nerve is dead in her really, so there's no need
for plans."
"It's as well to be prepared."
"No--it's as well not to be prepared."
"Because--'
Her thought drew being from the obscure borderland. She
could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those
who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may
equip themselves at the expense of joy. It is necessary to
prepare for an examination, or a dinner-party, or a possible
fall in the price of stock: those who attempt human
relations must adopt another method, or fail. "Because I'd
sooner risk it," was her lame conclusion.
"But imagine the evenings," exclaimed her aunt, pointing
to the Mansions with the spout of the watering-can. "Turn
the electric light on her or there, and it's almost the same
room. One evening they may forget to draw their blinds
down, and you'll see them; and the next, you yours, and
they'll see you. Impossible to sit out on the balconies.
Impossible to water the plants, or even speak. Imagine
going out of the front-door, and they come out opposite at
the same moment. And yet you tell me that plans are
unnecessary, and you'd rather risk it."
"I hope to risk things all my life."
"Oh, Margaret, most dangerous."
"But after all," she continued with a smile, "there's
never any great risk as long as you have money."
"Oh, shame! What a shocking speech!"
"Money pads the edges of things," said Miss Schlegel.
"God help those who have none."
"But this is something quite new!" said Mrs. Munt, who
collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was
especially attracted by those that are portable.
"New for me; sensible people have acknowledged it for
years. You and I and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon
islands. It is so firm beneath our feet that we forget its
very existence. It's only when we see someone near us
tottering that we realize all that an independent income
means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the
fire, I began to think that the very soul of the world is
economic, and that the lowest abyss is not the absence of
love, but the absence of coin."
"I call that rather cynical."
"So do I. But Helen and I, we ought to remember, when we
are tempted to criticize others, that we are standing on
these islands, and that most of the others, are down below
the surface of the sea. The poor cannot always reach those
whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from
those whom they love no longer. We rich can. Imagine the
tragedy last June, if Helen and Paul Wilcox had been poor
people, and couldn't invoke railways and motor-cars to part them."
"That's more like Socialism," said Mrs. Munt suspiciously.
"Call it what you like. I call it going through life
with one's hand spread open on the table. I'm tired of
these rich people who pretend to be poor, and think it shows
a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their
feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred
pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon
eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea
they are renewed--from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all
our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred-pounders, and
all our speeches; and because we don't want to steal
umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do
want to steal them, and do steal them sometimes, and that
what's a joke up here is down there reality--"
"There they go--there goes Fraulein Mosebach. Really,
for a German she does dress charmingly. Oh--!"
"What is it?"
"Helen was looking up at the Wilcoxes' flat."
"Why shouldn't she?"
"I beg your pardon, I interrupted you. What was it you
were saying about reality?"
"I had worked round to myself, as usual," answered
Margaret in tones that were suddenly preoccupied.
"Do tell me this, at all events. Are you for the rich
or for the poor?"
"Too difficult. Ask me another. Am I for poverty or
for riches? For riches. Hurrah for riches!"
"For riches!" echoed Mrs. Munt, having, as it were, at
last secured her nut.
"Yes. For riches. Money for ever!"
"So am I, and so, I am afraid, are most of my
acquaintances at Swanage, but I am surprised that you agree
with us."
"Thank you so much, Aunt Juley. While I have talked
theories, you have done the flowers."
"Not at all, dear. I wish you would let me help you in
more important things."
"Well, would you be very kind? Would you come round
with me to the registry office? There's a housemaid who
won't say yes but doesn't say no."
On their way thither they too looked up at the Wilcoxes'
flat. Evie was in the balcony, "staring most rudely,"
according to Mrs. Munt. Oh yes, it was a nuisance, there
was no doubt of it. Helen was proof against a passing
encounter but--Margaret began to lose confidence. Might it
reawake the dying nerve if the family were living close
against her eyes? And Frieda Mosebach was stopping with
them for another fortnight, and Frieda was sharp, abominably
sharp, and quite capable of remarking, "You love one of the
young gentlemen opposite, yes?" The remark would be untrue,
but of the kind which, if stated often enough, may become
true; just as the remark, "England and Germany are bound to
fight," renders war a little more likely each time that it
is made, and is therefore made the more readily by the
gutter press of either nation. Have the private emotions
also their gutter press? Margaret thought so, and feared
that good Aunt Juley and Frieda were typical specimens of
it. They might, by continual chatter, lead Helen into a
repetition of the desires of June. Into a repetition--they
could not do more; they could not lead her into lasting
love. They were--she saw it clearly--Journalism; her
father, with all his defects and wrong-headedness, had been
Literature, and had he lived, he would have persuaded his
daughter rightly.
The registry office was holding its morning reception.
A string of carriages filled the street. Miss Schlegel
waited her turn, and finally had to be content with an
insidious "temporary," being rejected by genuine housemaids
on the ground of her numerous stairs. Her failure depressed
her, and though she forgot the failure, the depression
remained. On her way home she again glanced up at the
Wilcoxes' flat, and took the rather matronly step of
speaking about the matter to Helen.
"Helen, you must tell me whether this thing worries you."
"If what?" said Helen, who was washing her hands for lunch.
"The W.'s coming."
"No, of course not."
"Really?"
"Really." Then she admitted that she was a little
worried on Mrs. Wilcox's account; she implied that Mrs.
Wilcox might reach backward into deep feelings, and be
pained by things that never touched the other members of
that clan. "I shan't mind if Paul points at our house and
says, 'There lives the girl who tried to catch me.' But she might."
"If even that worries you, we could arrange something.
There's no reason we should be near people who displease us
or whom we displease, thanks to our money. We might even go
away for a little."
"Well, I am going away. Frieda's just asked me to
Stettin, and I shan't be back till after the New Year. Will
that do? Or must I fly the country altogether? Really,
Meg, what has come over you to make such a fuss?"
"Oh, I'm getting an old maid, I suppose. I thought I
minded nothing, but really I--I should be bored if you fell
in love with the same man twice and"--she cleared her
throat--"you did go red, you know, when Aunt Juley attacked
you this morning. I shouldn't have referred to it otherwise."
But Helen's laugh rang true, as she raised a soapy hand
to heaven and swore that never, nowhere and nohow, would she
again fall in love with any of the Wilcox family, down to
its remotest collaterals.
