Howards End (40 page)

“I cannot make it out,” said Margaret for the hundredth time.

“Finish your coffee, dear. We must be off.”

“Yes, Margaret, you know you must take plenty,” said Dolly.

Margaret tried, but suddenly lifted her hand to her eyes. Dolly stole glances at her father-in-law which he did not answer. In the silence the motor came round to the door.

“You're not fit for it,” he said anxiously. “Let me go alone. I know exactly what to do.”

“Oh yes, I am fit,” said Margaret, uncovering her face. “Only most frightfully worried. I cannot feel that Helen is really alive. Her letters and telegrams seem to have come from someone else. Her voice isn't in them. I don't believe your driver really saw her at the station. I wish I'd never mentioned it. I know that Charles is vexed. Yes, he is—” She seized Dolly's hand and kissed it. “There, Dolly will forgive me. There. Now we'll be off.”

Henry had been looking at her closely. He did not like this breakdown.

“Don't you want to tidy yourself?” he asked.

“Have I time?”

“Yes, plenty.”

She went to the lavatory by the front door, and as soon as the bolt slipped, Mr. Wilcox said quietly:

“Dolly, I'm going without her.”

Dolly's eyes lit up with vulgar excitement. She followed him on tip-toe out to the car.

“Tell her I thought it best.”

“Yes, Mr. Wilcox, I see.”

“Say anything you like. All right.”

The car started well, and with ordinary luck would have got away. But Porgly-woggles, who was playing in the garden, chose this moment to sit down in the middle of the path. Crane, in trying to pass him, ran one wheel over a bed of wallflowers. Dolly screamed. Margaret, hearing the noise, rushed out hatless, and was in time to jump on the footboard. She said not a single word: he was only treating her as she had treated Helen, and her rage at his dishonesty only helped to indicate what Helen would feel against them. She thought: “I deserve it: I am punished for lowering my colours.” And she accepted his apologies with a calmness that astonished him.

“I still consider you are not fit for it,” he kept saying.

“Perhaps I was not at lunch. But the whole thing is spread clearly before me now.”

“I was meaning to act for the best.”

“Just lend me your scarf, will you? This wind takes one's hair so.”

“Certainly, dear girl. Are you all right now?”

“Look! My hands have stopped trembling.”

“And have quite forgiven me? Then listen. Her cab should already have arrived at Howards End. (We're a little late, but no matter.) Our first move will be to send it down to wait at the farm, as, if possible, one doesn't want a scene before servants. A certain gentleman”—he pointed at Crane's back—“won't drive in, but will wait a little short of the front gate, behind the laurels. Have you still the keys of the house?”

“Yes.”

“Well, they aren't wanted. Do you remember how the house stands?”

“Yes.”

“If we don't find her in the porch, we can stroll round into the garden. Our object—”

Here they stopped to pick up the doctor.

“I was just saying to my wife, Mansbridge, that our main object is not to frighten Miss Schlegel. The house, as you know, is my property, so it should seem quite natural for us to be there. The trouble is evidently nervous—wouldn't you say so, Margaret?”

The doctor, a very young man, began to ask questions about Helen. Was she normal? Was there anything congenital or hereditary? Had anything occurred that was likely to alienate her from her family?

“Nothing,” answered Margaret, wondering what would have happened if she had added: “Though she did resent my husband's immorality.”

“She always was highly strung,” pursued Henry, leaning back in the car as it shot past the church. “A tendency to spiritualism and those things, though nothing serious. Musical, literary, artistic, but I should say normal—a very charming girl.”

Margaret's anger and terror increased every moment. How dare these men label her sister! What horrors lay ahead! What impertinences that shelter under the name of science! The pack was turning on Helen, to deny her human rights, and it seemed to Margaret that all Schlegels were threatened with her. Were they normal? What a question to ask! And it is always those who know nothing about human nature, who are bored by psychology and shocked by physiology, who ask it. However piteous her sister's state, she knew that she must be on her side. They would be mad together if the world chose to consider them so.

It was now five minutes past three. The car slowed down by the farm, in the yard of which Miss Avery was standing. Henry asked her whether a cab had gone past. She nodded, and the next moment they caught sight of it at the end of the lane. The car ran silently like a beast of prey. So unsuspicious was Helen that she was sitting on the porch, with her back to the road. She had come. Only her head and shoulders were visible. She sat framed in the vine, and one of her hands played with the buds. The wind ruffled her hair, the sun glorified it; she was as she had always been.

Margaret was seated next to the door. Before her husband could prevent her, she slipped out. She ran to the garden gate, which was shut, passed through it, and deliberately pushed it in his face. The noise alarmed Helen. Margaret saw her rise with an unfamiliar movement, and, rushing into the porch, learnt the simple explanation of all their fears—her sister was with child.

“Is the truant all right?” called Henry.

She had time to whisper. “Oh, my darling—” The keys of the house were in her hand. She unlocked Howards End and thrust Helen into it. “Yes, all right,” she said, and stood with her back to the door.

“Margaret, you look upset!” said Henry. Mansbridge had followed. Crane was at the gate, and the flyman had stood up on the box. Margaret shook her head at them; she could not speak any more. She remained clutching the keys, as if all their future depended on them. Henry was asking more questions. She shook her head again. His words had no sense. She heard him wonder why she had let Helen in. “You might have given me a knock with the gate,” was another of his remarks. Presently she heard herself speaking. She, or someone for her, said: “Go away.” Henry came nearer. He repeated: “Margaret, you look upset again. My dear, give me the keys. What are you doing with Helen?”

“Oh, dearest, do go away, and I will manage it all.”

“Manage what?”

He stretched out his hand for the keys. She might have obeyed if it had not been for the doctor.

“Stop that at least,” she said piteously; the doctor had turned back, and was questioning the driver of Helen's cab. A new feeling came over her; she was fighting for women against men. She did not care about rights, but if men came into Howards End, it should be over her body.

“Come, this is an odd beginning,” said her husband.

The doctor came forward now, and whispered two words to Mr. Wilcox—the scandal was out. Sincerely horrified, Henry stood gazing at the earth.

“I cannot help it,” said Margaret. “Do wait. It's not my fault. Please all four of you to go away now.”

Now the flyman was whispering to Crane.

“We are relying on you to help us, Mrs. Wilcox,” said the young doctor. “Could you go in and persuade your sister to come out?”

“On what grounds?” said Margaret, suddenly looking him straight in the eyes.

Thinking it professional to prevaricate, he murmured some thing about a nervous breakdown.

“I beg your pardon, but it is nothing of the sort. You are not qualified to attend my sister, Mr. Mansbridge. If we require your services, we will let you know.”

“I can diagnose the case more bluntly if you wish,” he retorted.

“You could, but you have not. You are, therefore, not qualified to attend my sister.”

“Come, come, Margaret!” said Henry, never raising his eyes. “This is a terrible business, an appalling business. It's doctor's orders. Open the door.”

“Forgive me, but I will not.”

“I don't agree.”

Margaret was silent.

“This business is as broad as it's long,” contributed the doctor. “We had better all work together. You need us, Mrs. Wilcox, and we need you.”

“Quite so,” said Henry.

“I do not need you in the least,” said Margaret.

The two men looked at each other anxiously.

“No more does my sister, who is still many weeks from her confinement. ”

“Margaret, Margaret!”

“Well, Henry, send your doctor away. What possible use is he now?”

Mr. Wilcox ran his eye over the house. He had a vague feeling that he must stand firm and support the doctor. He himself might need support, for there was trouble ahead.

“It all turns on affection now,” said Margaret. “Affection. Don't you see?” Resuming her usual methods, she wrote the word on the house with her finger. “Surely you see. I like Helen very much, you not so much. Mr. Mansbridge doesn't know her. That's all. And affection, when reciprocated, gives rights. Put that down in your note-book, Mr. Mansbridge. It's a useful formula.”

Henry told her to be calm.

“You don't know what you want yourselves,” said Margaret, folding her arms. “For one sensible remark I will let you in. But you cannot make it. You would trouble my sister for no reason. I will not permit it. I'll stand here all the day sooner.”

“Mansbridge,” said Henry in a low voice, “perhaps not now.”

The pack was breaking up. At a sign from his master, Crane also went back into the car.

“Now, Henry, you,” she said gently. None of her bitterness had been directed at him. “Go away now, dear. I shall want your advice later, no doubt. Forgive me if I have been cross. But, seriously, you must go.”

He was too stupid to leave her. Now it was Mr. Mansbridge who called in a low voice to him.

“I shall soon find you down at Dolly‘s,” she called, as the gate at last clanged between them. The fly moved out of the way, the motor backed, turned a little, backed again, and turned in the narrow road. A string of farm carts came up in the middle; but she waited through all, for there was no hurry. When all was over and the car had started, she opened the door. “Oh, my darling!” she said. “My darling, forgive me.” Helen was standing in the hall.

Margaret bolted the door on the inside. Then she would have kissed her sister, but Helen, in a dignified voice that came strangely from her, said:

“Convenient! You did not tell me that the books were unpacked. I have found nearly everything that I want.”

“I told you nothing that was true.”

“It has been a great surprise, certainly. Has Aunt Juley been ill?”

“Helen, you wouldn't think I'd invent that?”

“I suppose not,” said Helen, turning away, and crying a very little. “But one loses faith in everything after this.”

“We thought it was illness, but even then—I haven't behaved worthily.”

Helen selected another book.

“I ought not to have consulted anyone. What would our father have thought of me?”

She did not think of questioning her sister, nor of rebuking her. Both might be necessary in the future, but she had first to purge a greater crime than any that Helen could have committed—that want of confidence that is the work of the devil.

“Yes, I am annoyed,” replied Helen. “My wishes should have been respected. I would have gone through this meeting if it was necessary, but after Aunt Juley recovered, it was not necessary. Planning my life, as I now have to do—”

“Come away from those books,” called Margaret. “Helen, do talk to me.”

“I was just saying that I have stopped living haphazard. One can't go through a great deal of—” she missed out the noun—“without planning one's actions in advance. I am going to have a child in June, and, in the first place, conversations, discussions, excitement, are not good for me. I will go through them if necessary, but only then. In the second place, I have no right to trouble people. I cannot fit in with England as I know it. I have done something that the English never pardon. It would not be right for them to pardon it. So I must live where I am not known. ”

“But why didn't you tell me, dearest?”

“Yes,” replied Helen judicially. “I might have, but decided to wait.”

“I believe you would never have told me.”

“Oh yes, I should. We have taken a flat in Munich.”

Margaret glanced out of the window.

“By ‘we' I mean myself and Monica. But for her, I am and have been and always wish to be alone.”

“I have not heard of Monica.”

“You wouldn't have. She's an Italian—by birth, at least. She makes her living by journalism. I met her originally on Garda. Monica is much the best person to see me through.”

“You are very fond of her, then.”

“She has been extraordinarily sensible with me.”

Margaret guessed at Monica's type—“Italiano Inglesiato” they had named it: the crude feminist of the South, whom one respects but avoids. And Helen had turned to it in her need!

“You must not think that we shall never meet,” said Helen, with a measured kindness. “I shall always have a room for you when you can be spared, and the longer you can be with me the better. But you haven't understood yet, Meg, and of course it is very difficult for you. This is a shock to you. It isn't to me, who have been thinking over our futures for many months, and they won't be changed by a slight contretemps such as this. I cannot live in England.”