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 Christchurch. 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--are 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, when 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 dead it all
seems! And in the autumn there began this 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 along 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 I'll 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--"
"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.
" Meg--"
"I don't know what's happened to either of us," said
Margaret, wiping her eyes. "We must both have gone 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
analyze 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 county 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 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?
