Tom's father was cutting the big meadow. He passed again
and again amid whirring blades and sweet odours of grass,
encompassing with narrowing circles the sacred centre of the
field. Tom was negotiating with Helen.
"I haven't any idea," she replied. "Do you suppose baby
may, Meg?"
Margaret put down her work and regarded them absently.
"What was that?" she asked.
"Tom wants to know whether baby is old enough to play
with hay?"
"I haven't the least notion," answered Margaret, and
took up her work again.
"Now, Tom, baby is not to stand; he is not to lie on his
face; he is not to lie so that his head wags; he is not to
be teased or tickled; and he is not to be cut into two or
more pieces by the cutter. Will you be as careful as all that?"
Tom held out his arms.
"That child is a wonderful nursemaid," remarked Margaret.
"He is fond of baby. That's why he does it!" was
Helen's answer. They're going to be lifelong friends."
"Starting at the ages of six and one?"
"Of course. It will be a great thing for Tom."
"It may be a greater thing for baby."
Fourteen months had passed, but Margaret still stopped
at Howards End. No better plan had occurred to her. The
meadow was being recut, the great red poppies were reopening
in the garden. July would follow with the little red
poppies among the wheat, August with the cutting of the
wheat. These little events would become part of her year
after year. Every summer she would fear lest the well
should give out, every winter lest the pipes should freeze;
every westerly gale might blow the wych-elm down and bring
the end of all things, and so she could not read or talk
during a westerly gale. The air was tranquil now. She and
her sister were sitting on the remains of Evie's mockery,
where the lawn merged into the field.
"What a time they all are!" said Helen. "What can they
be doing inside?" Margaret, who was growing less talkative,
made no answer. The noise of the cutter came
intermittently, like the breaking of waves. Close by them a
man was preparing to scythe out one of the dell-holes.
"I wish Henry was out to enjoy this," said Helen. "This
lovely weather and to be shut up in the house! It's very hard."
"It has to be," said Margaret. "The hay-fever is his
chief objection against living here, but he thinks it worth while."
"Meg, is or isn't he ill? I can't make out."
"Not ill. Eternally tired. He has worked very hard all
his life, and noticed nothing. Those are the people who
collapse when they do notice a thing."
"I suppose he worries dreadfully about his part of the tangle."
"Dreadfully. That is why I wish Dolly had not come,
too, today. Still, he wanted them all to come. It has to be."
"Why does he want them?"
Margaret did not answer.
"Meg, may I tell you something? I like Henry."
"You'd be odd if you didn't," said Margaret.
"I usen't to."
"Usen't!" She lowered her eyes a moment to the black
abyss of the past. They had crossed it, always excepting
Leonard and Charles. They were building up a new life,
obscure, yet gilded with tranquillity. Leonard was dead;
Charles had two years more in prison. One usen't always to
see clearly before that time. It was different now.
"I like Henry because he does worry."
"And he likes you because you don't."
Helen sighed. She seemed humiliated, and buried her
face in her hands. After a time she said: "Above love," a
transition less abrupt than it appeared.
Margaret never stopped working.
"I mean a woman's love for a man. I supposed I should
hang my life on to that once, and was driven up and down and
about as if something was worrying through me. But
everything is peaceful now; I seem cured. That Herr
Forstmeister, whom Frieda keeps writing about, must be a
noble character, but he doesn't see that I shall never marry
him or anyone. It isn't shame or mistrust of myself. I
simply couldn't. I'm ended. I used to be so dreamy about a
man's love as a girl, and think that for good or evil love
must be the great thing. But it hasn't been; it has been
itself a dream. Do you agree?"
"I do not agree. I do not."
"I ought to remember Leonard as my lover," said Helen,
stepping down into the field. "I tempted him, and killed
him and it is surely the least I can do. I would like to
throw out all my heart to Leonard on such an afternoon as
this. But I cannot. It is no good pretending. I am
forgetting him." Her eyes filled with tears. "How nothing
seems to match--how, my darling, my precious--" She broke
off. "Tommy!"
"Yes, please?"
"Baby's not to try and stand.--There's something wanting
in me. I see you loving Henry, and understanding him better
daily, and I know that death wouldn't part you in the
least. But I--Is it some awful appalling, criminal defect?"
Margaret silenced her. She said: "It is only that
people are far more different than is pretended. All over
the world men and women are worrying because they cannot
develop as they are supposed to develop. Here and there
they have the matter out, and it comforts them. Don't fret
yourself, Helen. Develop what you have; love your child. I
do not love children. I am thankful to have none. I can
play with their beauty and charm, but that is all--nothing
real, not one scrap of what there ought to be. And
others--others go farther still, and move outside humanity
altogether. A place, as well as a person, may catch the
glow. Don't you see that all this leads to comfort in the
end? It is part of the battle against sameness.
Differences--eternal differences, planted by God in a single
family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow perhaps,
but colour in the daily grey. Then I can't have you
worrying about Leonard. Don't drag in the personal when it
will not come. Forget him."
"Yes, yes, but what has Leonard got out of life?"
"Perhaps an adventure."
"Is that enough?"
"Not for us. But for him."
Helen took up a bunch of grass. She looked at the
sorrel, and the red and white and yellow clover, and the
quaker grass, and the daisies, and the bents that composed
it. She raised it to her face.
"Is it sweetening yet?" asked Margaret.
"No, only withered."
"It will sweeten tomorrow."
Helen smiled. "Oh, Meg, you are a person," she said.
"Think of the racket and torture this time last year. But
now I couldn't stop unhappy if I tried. What a change--and
all through you!"
"Oh, we merely settled down. You and Henry learnt to
understand one another and to forgive, all through the
autumn and the winter."
"Yes, but who settled us down?"
Margaret did not reply. The scything had begun, and she
took off her pince-nez to watch it.
"You!" cried Helen. "You did it all, sweetest, though
you're too stupid to see. Living here was your plan--I
wanted you; he wanted you; and every one said it was
impossible, but you knew. Just think of our lives without
you, Meg--I and baby with Monica, revolting by theory, he
handed about from Dolly to Evie. But you picked up the
pieces, and made us a home. Can't it strike you--even for a
moment--that your life has been heroic? Can't you remember
the two months after Charles's arrest, when you began to
act, and did all?"
"You were both ill at the time," said Margaret. "I did
the obvious things. I had two invalids to nurse. Here was
a house, ready furnished and empty. It was obvious. I
didn't know myself it would turn into a permanent home. No
doubt I have done a little towards straightening the tangle,
but things that I can't phrase have helped me."
"I hope it will be permanent," said Helen, drifting away
to other thoughts.
"I think so. There are moments when I feel Howards End
peculiarly our own."
"All the same, London's creeping."
She pointed over the meadow--over eight or nine meadows,
but at the end of them was a red rust.
"You see that in Surrey and even Hampshire now," she
continued. "I can see it from the Purbeck Downs. And
London is only part of something else, I'm afraid. Life's
going to be melted down, all over the world."
Margaret knew that her sister spoke truly. Howards End,
Oniton, the Purbeck Downs, the Oderberge, were all
survivals, and the melting-pot was being prepared for them.
Logically, they had no right to be alive. One's hope was in
the weakness of logic. Were they possibly the earth beating
time?
"Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go
strong for ever," she said. "This craze for motion has only
set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by
a civilization that won't be a movement, because it will
rest on the earth. All the signs are against it now, but I
can't help hoping, and very early in the morning in the
garden I feel that our house is the future as well as the past."
They turned and looked at it. Their own memories
coloured it now, for Helen's child had been born in the
central room of the nine. Then Margaret said, "Oh, take
care--!" for something moved behind the window of the hall,
and the door opened.
"The conclave's breaking at last. I'll go."
It was Paul.
Helen retreated with the children far into the field.
Friendly voices greeted her. Margaret rose, to encounter a
man with a heavy black moustache.
"My father has asked for you," he said with hostility.
She took her work and followed him.
"We have been talking business," he continued, "but I
dare say you knew all about it beforehand."
"Yes, I did."
Clumsy of movement--for he had spent all his life in the
saddle--Paul drove his foot against the paint of the front
door. Mrs. Wilcox gave a little cry of annoyance. She did
not like anything scratched; she stopped in the hall to take
Dolly's boa and gloves out of a vase.
Her husband was lying in a great leather chair in the
dining-room, and by his side, holding his hand rather
ostentatiously, was Evie. Dolly, dressed in purple, sat
near the window. The room was a little dark and airless;
they were obliged to keep it like this until the carting of
the hay. Margaret joined the family without speaking; the
five of them had met already at tea, and she knew quite well
what was going to be said. Averse to wasting her time, she
went on sewing. The clock struck six.
"Is this going to suit every one?" said Henry in a weary
voice. He used the old phrases, but their effect was
unexpected and shadowy. "Because I don't want you all
coming here later on and complaining that I have been unfair."
"It's apparently got to suit us," said Paul.
"I beg your pardon, my boy. You have only to speak, and
I will leave the house to you instead."
Paul frowned ill-temperedly, and began scratching at his
arm. "As I've given up the outdoor life that suited me, and
I have come home to look after the business, it's no good my
settling down here," he said at last. "It's not really the
country, and it's not the town."
"Very well. Does my arrangement suit you, Evie?"
"Of course, Father."
"And you, Dolly?"
Dolly raised her faded little face, which sorrow could
wither but not steady. "Perfectly splendidly," she said.
"I thought Charles wanted it for the boys, but last time I
saw him he said no, because we cannot possibly live in this
part of England again. Charles says we ought to change our
name, but I cannot think what to, for Wilcox just suits
Charles and me, and I can't think of any other name."
There was a general silence. Dolly looked nervously
round, fearing that she had been inappropriate. Paul
continued to scratch his arm.
"Then I leave Howards End to my wife absolutely," said
Henry. "And let every one understand that; and after I am
dead let there be no jealousy and no surprise."
Margaret did not answer. There was something uncanny in
her triumph. She, who had never expected to conquer anyone,
had charged straight through these Wilcoxes and broken up
their lives.
"In consequence, I leave my wife no money," said Henry.
"That is her own wish. All that she would have had will be
divided among you. I am also giving you a great deal in my
lifetime, so that you may be independent of me. That is her
wish, too. She also is giving away a great deal of money.
She intends to diminish her income by half during the next
ten years; she intends when she dies to leave the house to
her--to her nephew, down in the field. Is all that clear?
Does every one understand?"
Paul rose to his feet. He was accustomed to natives,
and a very little shook him out of the Englishman. Feeling
manly and cynical, he said: "Down in the field? Oh, come!
I think we might have had the whole establishment,
piccaninnies included."
Mrs. Cahill whispered: "Don't, Paul. You promised you'd
take care." Feeling a woman of the world, she rose and
prepared to take her leave.
Her father kissed her. "Good-bye, old girl," he said;
"don't you worry about me. "
"Good-bye, Dad."
Then it was Dolly's turn. Anxious to contribute, she
laughed nervously, and said: "Good-bye, Mr. Wilcox. It does
seem curious that Mrs. Wilcox should have left Margaret
Howards End, and yet she get it, after all."
From Evie came a sharply-drawn breath. "Good-bye," she
said to Margaret, and kissed her.
And again and again fell the word, like the ebb of a
dying sea.
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Dolly."
"So long, Father."
"Good-bye, my boy; always take care of yourself."
"Good-bye, Mrs. Wilcox."
"Good-bye.
Margaret saw their visitors to the gate. Then she
returned to her husband and laid her head in his hands. He
was pitiably tired. But Dolly's remark had interested her.
At last she said: "Could you tell me, Henry, what was that
about Mrs. Wilcox having left me Howards End?"
Tranquilly he replied: "Yes, she did. But that is a
very old story. When she was ill and you were so kind to
her she wanted to make you some return, and, not being
herself at the time, scribbled 'Howards End' on a piece of
paper. I went into it thoroughly, and, as it was clearly
fanciful, I set it aside, little knowing what my Margaret
would be to me in the future."
Margaret was silent. Something shook her life in its
inmost recesses, and she shivered.
"I didn't do wrong, did I?" he asked, bending down.
"You didn't, darling. Nothing has been done wrong."
From the garden came laughter. "Here they are at last!"
exclaimed Henry, disengaging himself with a smile. Helen
rushed into the gloom, holding Tom by one hand and carrying
her baby on the other. There were shouts of infectious joy.
"The field's cut!" Helen cried excitedly--"the big
meadow! We've seen to the very end, and it'll be such a
crop of hay as never!"
Weybridge, 1908-1910.
