Several days passed.
Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people--there
are many of them--who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it?
They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life
of the spirit dawdling round them. Then they withdraw.
When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name
for such behaviour--flirting--and if carried far enough it
is punishable by law. But no law--not public opinion
even--punishes those who coquette with friendship, though
the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected
effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one
of these?
Margaret feared so at first, for, with a Londoner's
impatience, she wanted everything to be settled up
immediately. She mistrusted the periods of quiet that are
essential to true growth. Desiring to book Mrs. Wilcox as a
friend, she pressed on the ceremony, pencil, as it were, in
hand, pressing the more because the rest of the family were
away, and the opportunity seemed favourable. But the elder
woman would not be hurried. She refused to fit in with the
Wickham Place set, or to reopen discussion of Helen and
Paul, whom Margaret would have utilized as a short-cut. She
took her time, or perhaps let time take her, and when the
crisis did come all was ready.
The crisis opened with a message: would Miss Schlegel
come shopping? Christmas was nearing, and Mrs. Wilcox felt
behind-hand with the presents. She had taken some more days
in bed, and must make up for lost time. Margaret accepted,
and at eleven o'clock one cheerless morning they started out
in a brougham.
"First of all," began Margaret, "we must make a list and
tick off the people's names. My aunt always does, and this
fog may thicken up any moment. Have you any ideas?"
"I thought we would go to Harrod's or the Haymarket
Stores," said Mrs. Wilcox rather hopelessly. "Everything is
sure to be there. I am not a good shopper. The din is so
confusing, and your aunt is quite right--one ought to make a
list. Take my notebook, then, and write your own name at
the top of the page."
"Oh, hooray!" said Margaret, writing it. "How very kind
of you to start with me!" But she did not want to receive
anything expensive. Their acquaintance was singular rather
than intimate, and she divined that the Wilcox clan would
resent any expenditure on outsiders; the more compact
families do. She did not want to be thought a second Helen,
who would snatch presents since she could not snatch young
men, nor to be exposed, like a second Aunt Juley, to the
insults of Charles. A certain austerity of demeanour was
best, and she added: "I don't really want a Yuletide gift,
though. In fact, I'd rather not."
"Why?"
"Because I've odd ideas about Christmas. Because I have
all that money can buy. I want more people, but no more things."
"I should like to give you something worth your
acquaintance, Miss Schlegel, in memory of your kindness to
me during my lonely fortnight. It has so happened that I
have been left alone, and you have stopped me from
brooding. I am too apt to brood."
"If that is so," said Margaret, "if I have happened to
be of use to you, which I didn't know, you cannot pay me
back with anything tangible."
" I suppose not, but one would like to. Perhaps I shall
think of something as we go about."
Her name remained at the head of the list, but nothing
was written opposite it. They drove from shop to shop. The
air was white, and when they alighted it tasted like cold
pennies. At times they passed through a clot of grey. Mrs.
Wilcox's vitality was low that morning, and it was Margaret
who decided on a horse for this little girl, a golliwog for
that, for the rector's wife a copper warming-tray. "We
always give the servants money." "Yes, do you, yes, much
easier," replied Margaret, but felt the grotesque impact of
the unseen upon the seen, and saw issuing from a forgotten
manger at Bethlehem this torrent of coins and toys.
Vulgarity reigned. Public-houses, besides their usual
exhortation against temperance reform, invited men to "Join
our Christmas goose club"--one bottle of gin, etc., or two,
according to subscription. A poster of a woman in tights
heralded the Christmas pantomime, and little red devils, who
had come in again that year, were prevalent upon the
Christmas-cards. Margaret was no morbid idealist. She did
not wish this spate of business and self-advertisement
checked. It was only the occasion of it that struck her
with amazement annually. How many of these vacillating
shoppers and tired shop-assistants realized that it was a
divine event that drew them together? She realized it,
though standing outside in the matter. She was not a
Christian in the accepted sense; she did not believe that
God had ever worked among us as a young artisan. These
people, or most of them, believed it, and if pressed, would
affirm it in words. But the visible signs of their belief
were Regent Street or Drury Lane, a little mud displaced, a
little money spent, a little food cooked, eaten, and
forgotten. Inadequate. But in public who shall express the
unseen adequately? It is private life that holds out the
mirror to infinity; personal intercourse, and that alone,
that ever hints at a personality beyond our daily vision.
"No, I do like Christmas on the whole," she announced.
"In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill.
But oh, it is clumsier every year."
"Is it? I am only used to country Christmases."
"We are usually in London, and play the game with
vigour--carols at the Abbey, clumsy midday meal, clumsy
dinner for the maids, followed by Christmas-tree and dancing
of poor children, with songs from Helen. The drawing-room
does very well for that. We put the tree in the
powder-closet, and draw a curtain when the candles are
lighted, and with the looking-glass behind it looks quite
pretty. I wish we might have a powder-closet in our next
house. Of course, the tree has to be very small, and the
presents don't hang on it. No; the presents reside in a
sort of rocky landscape made of crumpled brown paper."
"You spoke of your 'next house,' Miss Schlegel. Then
are you leaving Wickham Place?"
"Yes, in two or three years, when the lease expires. We
must."
"Have you been there long?"
"All our lives."
"You will be very sorry to leave it."
"I suppose so. We scarcely realize it yet. My
father--" She broke off, for they had reached the stationery
department of the Haymarket Stores, and Mrs. Wilcox wanted
to order some private greeting cards.
"If possible, something distinctive," she sighed. At
the counter she found a friend, bent on the same errand, and
conversed with her insipidly, wasting much time. "My
husband and our daughter are motoring."
"Bertha too? Oh, fancy, what a coincidence!" Margaret,
though not practical, could shine in such company as this.
While they talked, she went through a volume of specimen
cards, and submitted one for Mrs. Wilcox's inspection. Mrs.
Wilcox was delighted--so original, words so sweet; she would
order a hundred like that, and could never be sufficiently
grateful. Then, just as the assistant was booking the
order, she said: "Do you know, I'll wait. On second
thoughts, I'll wait. There's plenty of time still, isn't
there, and I shall be able to get Evie's opinion."
They returned to the carriage by devious paths; when
they were in, she said, "But couldn't you get it renewed?"
"I beg your pardon?" asked Margaret.
"The lease, I mean."
"Oh, the lease! Have you been thinking of that all the
time? How very kind of you!"
"Surely something could be done."
"No; values have risen too enormously. They mean to
pull down Wickham Place, and build flats like yours."
"But how horrible!"
"Landlords are horrible."
Then she said vehemently: "It is monstrous, Miss
Schlegel; it isn't right. I had no idea that this was
hanging over you. I do pity you from the bottom of my
heart. To be parted from your house, your father's
house--it oughtn't to be allowed. It is worse than dying.
I would rather die than--Oh, poor girls! Can what they call
civilization be right, if people mayn't die in the room
where they were born? My dear, I am so sorry--"
Margaret did not know what to say. Mrs. Wilcox had been
overtired by the shopping, and was inclined to hysteria.
"Howards End was nearly pulled down once. It would have
killed me."
"Howards End must be a very different house to ours. We
are fond of ours, but there is nothing distinctive about
it. As you saw, it is an ordinary London house. We shall
easily find another."
"So you think."
"Again my lack of experience, I suppose!" said Margaret,
easing away from the subject. "I can't say anything when
you take up that line, Mrs. Wilcox. I wish I could see
myself as you see me--foreshortened into a backfisch. Quite
the ingenue. Very charming--wonderfully well read for my
age, but incapable--"
Mrs. Wilcox would not be deterred. "Come down with me
to Howards End now," she said, more vehemently than ever.
"I want you to see it. You have never seen it. I want to
hear what you say about it, for you do put things so wonderfully."
Margaret glanced at the pitiless air and then at the
tired face of her companion. "Later on I should love it,"
she continued, "but it's hardly the weather for such an
expedition, and we ought to start when we're fresh. Isn't
the house shut up, too?"
She received no answer. Mrs. Wilcox appeared to be annoyed.
"Might I come some other day?"
Mrs. Wilcox bent forward and tapped the glass. "Back to
Wickham Place, please!" was her order to the coachman.
Margaret had been snubbed.
"A thousand thanks, Miss Schlegel, for all your help."
"Not at all."
"It is such a comfort to get the presents off my
mind--the Christmas-cards especially. I do admire your choice."
It was her turn to receive no answer. In her turn
Margaret became annoyed.
"My husband and Evie will be back the day after
tomorrow. That is why I dragged you out shopping today. I
stayed in town chiefly to shop, but got through nothing, and
now he writes that they must cut their tour short, the
weather is so bad, and the police-traps have been so
bad--nearly as bad as in Surrey. Ours is such a careful
chauffeur, and my husband feels it particularly hard that
they should be treated like roadhogs."
"Why?"
"Well, naturally he--he isn't a road-hog."
"He was exceeding the speed-limit, I conclude. He must
expect to suffer with the lower animals."
Mrs. Wilcox was silenced. In growing discomfort they
drove homewards. The city seemed Satanic, the narrower
streets oppressing like the galleries of a mine. No harm
was done by the fog to trade, for it lay high, and the
lighted windows of the shops were thronged with customers.
It was rather a darkening of the spirit which fell back upon
itself, to find a more grievous darkness within. Margaret
nearly spoke a dozen times, but something throttled her.
She felt petty and awkward, and her meditations on Christmas
grew more cynical. Peace? It may bring other gifts, but is
there a single Londoner to whom Christmas is peaceful? The
craving for excitement and for elaboration has ruined that
blessing. Goodwill? Had she seen any example of it in the
hordes of purchasers? Or in herself. She had failed to
respond to this invitation merely because it was a little
queer and imaginative--she, whose birthright it was to
nourish imagination! Better to have accepted, to have tired
themselves a little by the journey, than coldly to reply,
"Might I come some other day?" Her cynicism left her.
There would be no other day. This shadowy woman would never
ask her again.
They parted at the Mansions. Mrs. Wilcox went in after
due civilities, and Margaret watched the tall, lonely figure
sweep up the hall to the lift. As the glass doors closed on
it she had the sense of an imprisonment. The beautiful head
disappeared first, still buried in the muff, the long
trailing skirt followed. A woman of undefinable rarity was
going up heaven-ward, like a specimen in a bottle. And into
what a heaven--a vault as of hell, sooty black, from which
soots descended!
At lunch her brother, seeing her inclined for silence,
insisted on talking. Tibby was not ill-natured, but from
babyhood something drove him to do the unwelcome and the
unexpected. Now he gave her a long account of the
day-school that he sometimes patronized. The account was
interesting, and she had often pressed him for it before,
but she could not attend now, for her mind was focussed on
the invisible. She discerned that Mrs. Wilcox, though a
loving wife and mother, had only one passion in life--her
house--and that the moment was solemn when she invited a
friend to share this passion with her. To answer "another
day" was to answer as a fool. "Another day" will do for
brick and mortar, but not for the Holy of Holies into which
Howards End had been transfigured. Her own curiosity was
slight. She had heard more than enough about it in the
summer. The nine windows, the vine, and the wych-elm had no
pleasant connections for her, and she would have preferred
to spend the afternoon at a concert. But imagination
triumphed. While her brother held forth she determined to
go, at whatever cost, and to compel Mrs. Wilcox to go, too.
When lunch was over she stepped over to the flats.
Mrs. Wilcox had just gone away for the night.
Margaret said that it was of no consequence, hurried
downstairs, and took a hansom to King's Cross. She was
convinced that the escapade was important, though it would
have puzzled her to say why. There was a question of
imprisonment and escape, and though she did not know the
time of the train, she strained her eyes for the St.
Pancras' clock.
Then the clock of King's Cross swung into sight, a
second moon in that infernal sky, and her cab drew up at the
station. There was a train for Hilton in five minutes. She
took a ticket, asking in her agitation for a single. As she
did so, a grave and happy voice saluted her and thanked her.
"I will come if I still may," said Margaret, laughing nervously.
"You are coming to sleep, dear, too. It is in the
morning that my house is most beautiful. You are coming to
stop. I cannot show you my meadow properly except at
sunrise. These fogs"--she pointed at the station
roof--"never spread far. I dare say they are sitting in the
sun in Hertfordshire, and you will never repent joining them.
"I shall never repent joining you."
"It is the same."
They began the walk up the long platform. Far at its
end stood the train, breasting the darkness without. They
never reached it. Before imagination could triumph, there
were cries of "Mother! Mother!" and a heavy-browed girl
darted out of the cloak-room and seized Mrs. Wilcox by the arm.
"Evie!" she gasped. "Evie, my pet--"
The girl called, "Father! I say! look who's here."
"Evie, dearest girl, why aren't you in Yorkshire?"
"No--motor smash--changed plans--Father's coming."
"Why, Ruth!" cried Mr. Wilcox, joining them. "What in
the name of all that's wonderful are you doing here, Ruth?"
Mrs. Wilcox had recovered herself.
"Oh, Henry dear! --here's a lovely surprise--but let me
introduce--but I think you know Miss Schlegel."
"Oh, yes," he replied, not greatly interested. "But
how's yourself, Ruth?"
"Fit as a fiddle," she answered gaily.
"So are we and so was our car, which ran A-1 as far as
Ripon, but there a wretched horse and cart which a fool of a
driver--"
"Miss Schlegel, our little outing must be for another day."
"I was saying that this fool of a driver, as the
policeman himself admits--"
"Another day, Mrs. Wilcox. Of course."
"--But as we've insured against third party risks, it
won't so much matter--"
"--Cart and car being practically at right angles--"
The voices of the happy family rose high. Margaret was
left alone. No one wanted her. Mrs. Wilcox walked out of
King's Cross between her husband and her daughter, listening
to both of them.
