Bab Bab 11 · The funeral was over. The carriages rolled away through the soft mud,

. The funeral was over. The carriages rolled away through the soft mud,

and only the poor remained. They approached to the newly-dug shaft and

looked their last at the coffin, now almost hidden beneath the

spadefuls of clay. It was their moment. Most of them were women from

the dead woman’s district, to whom black garments had been served out

by Mr. Wilcox’s orders. Pure curiosity had brought others. They

thrilled with the excitement of a death, and of a rapid death, and

stood in groups or moved between the graves, like drops of ink. The son

of one of them, a wood-cutter, was perched high above their heads,

pollarding one of the churchyard elms. From where he sat he could see

the village of Hilton, strung upon the North Road, with its accreting

suburbs; the sunset beyond, scarlet and orange, winking at him beneath

brows of grey; the church; the plantations; and behind him an unspoilt

country of fields and farms. But he, too, was rolling the event

luxuriously in his mouth. He tried to tell his mother down below all

that he had felt when he saw the coffin approaching: how he could not

leave his work, and yet did not like to go on with it; how he had

almost slipped out of the tree, he was so upset; the rooks had cawed,

and no wonder—it was as if rooks knew too. His mother claimed the

prophetic power herself—she had seen a strange look about Mrs. Wilcox

for some time. London had done the mischief, said others. She had been

a kind lady; her grandmother had been kind, too—a plainer person, but

very kind. Ah, the old sort was dying out! Mr. Wilcox, he was a kind

gentleman. They advanced to the topic again and again, dully, but with

exaltation. The funeral of a rich person was to them what the funeral

of Alcestis or Ophelia is to the educated. It was Art; though remote

from life, it enhanced life’s values, and they witnessed it avidly.

The grave-diggers, who had kept up an undercurrent of disapproval—they

disliked Charles; it was not a moment to speak of such things, but they

did not like Charles Wilcox—the grave-diggers finished their work and

piled up the wreaths and crosses above it. The sun set over Hilton: the

grey brows of the evening flushed a little, and were cleft with one

scarlet frown. Chattering sadly to each other, the mourners passed

through the lych-gate and traversed the chestnut avenues that led down

to the village. The young wood-cutter stayed a little longer, poised

above the silence and swaying rhythmically. At last the bough fell

beneath his saw. With a grunt, he descended, his thoughts dwelling no

longer on death, but on love, for he was mating. He stopped as he

passed the new grave; a sheaf of tawny chrysanthemums had caught his

eye. “They didn’t ought to have coloured flowers at buryings,” he

reflected. Trudging on a few steps, he stopped again, looked furtively

at the dusk, turned back, wrenched a chrysanthemum from the sheaf, and

hid it in his pocket.

After him came silence absolute. The cottage that abutted on the

churchyard was empty, and no other house stood near. Hour after hour

the scene of the interment remained without an eye to witness it.

Clouds drifted over it from the west; or the church may have been a

ship, high-prowed, steering with all its company towards infinity.

Towards morning the air grew colder, the sky clearer, the surface of

the earth hard and sparkling above the prostrate dead. The wood-cutter,

returning after a night of joy, reflected: “They lilies, they

chrysants; it’s a pity I didn’t take them all.”

Up at Howards End they were attempting breakfast. Charles and Evie sat

in the dining-room, with Mrs. Charles. Their father, who could not bear

to see a face, breakfasted upstairs. He suffered acutely. Pain came

over him in spasms, as if it was physical, and even while he was about

to eat, his eyes would fill with tears, and he would lay down the

morsel untasted.

He remembered his wife’s even goodness during thirty years. Not

anything in detail—not courtship or early raptures—but just the

unvarying virtue, that seemed to him a woman’s noblest quality. So many

women are capricious, breaking into odd flaws of passion or frivolity.

Not so his wife. Year after year, summer and winter, as bride and

mother, she had been the same, he had always trusted her. Her

tenderness! Her innocence! The wonderful innocence that was hers by the

gift of God. Ruth knew no more of worldly wickedness and wisdom than

did the flowers in her garden, or the grass in her field. Her idea of

business—“Henry, why do people who have enough money try to get more

money?” Her idea of politics—“I am sure that if the mothers of various

nations could meet, there would be no more wars.” Her idea of

religion—ah, this had been a cloud, but a cloud that passed. She came

of Quaker stock, and he and his family, formerly Dissenters, were now

members of the Church of England. The rector’s sermons had at first

repelled her, and she had expressed a desire for “a more inward light,”

adding, “not so much for myself as for baby” (Charles). Inward light

must have been granted, for he heard no complaints in later years. They

brought up their three children without dispute. They had never

disputed.

She lay under the earth now. She had gone, and as if to make her going

the more bitter, had gone with a touch of mystery that was all unlike

her. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew of it?” he had moaned, and her

faint voice had answered: “I didn’t want to, Henry—I might have been

wrong—and every one hates illnesses.” He had been told of the horror by

a strange doctor, whom she had consulted during his absence from town.

Was this altogether just? Without fully explaining, she had died. It

was a fault on her part, and—tears rushed into his eyes—what a little

fault! It was the only time she had deceived him in those thirty years.

He rose to his feet and looked out of the window, for Evie had come in

with the letters, and he could meet no one’s eye. Ah yes—she had been a

good woman—she had been steady. He chose the word deliberately. To him

steadiness included all praise.

He himself, gazing at the wintry garden, is in appearance a steady man.

His face was not as square as his son’s, and, indeed, the chin, though

firm enough in outline, retreated a little, and the lips, ambiguous,

were curtained by a moustache. But there was no external hint of

weakness. The eyes, if capable of kindness and goodfellowship, if ruddy

for the moment with tears, were the eyes of one who could not be

driven. The forehead, too, was like Charles’s. High and straight, brown

and polished, merging abruptly into temples and skull, it has the

effect of a bastion that protected his head from the world. At times it

had the effect of a blank wall. He had dwelt behind it, intact and

happy, for fifty years.

“The post’s come, Father,” said Evie awkwardly.

“Thanks. Put it down.”

“Has the breakfast been all right?”

“Yes, thanks.”

The girl glanced at him and at it with constraint. She did not know

what to do.

“Charles says do you want the _Times_?”

“No, I’ll read it later.”

“Ring if you want anything, Father, won’t you?”

“I’ve all I want.”

Having sorted the letters from the circulars, she went back to the

dining-room.

“Father’s eaten nothing,” she announced, sitting down with wrinkled

brows behind the tea-urn—

Charles did not answer, but after a moment he ran quickly upstairs,

opened the door, and said: “Look here, Father, you must eat, you know”;

and having paused for a reply that did not come, stole down again.

“He’s going to read his letters first, I think,” he said evasively; “I

dare say he will go on with his breakfast afterwards.” Then he took up

the _Times_, and for some time there was no sound except the clink of

cup against saucer and of knife on plate.

Poor Mrs. Charles sat between her silent companions, terrified at the

course of events, and a little bored. She was a rubbishy little

creature, and she knew it. A telegram had dragged her from Naples to

the death-bed of a woman whom she had scarcely known. A word from her

husband had plunged her into mourning. She desired to mourn inwardly as

well, but she wished that Mrs. Wilcox, since fated to die, could have

died before the marriage, for then less would have been expected of

her. Crumbling her toast, and too nervous to ask for the butter, she

remained almost motionless, thankful only for this, that her

father-in-law was having his breakfast upstairs.

At last Charles spoke. “They had no business to be pollarding those

elms yesterday,” he said to his sister.

“No indeed.”

“I must make a note of that,” he continued. “I am surprised that the

rector allowed it.”

“Perhaps it may not be the rector’s affair.”

“Whose else could it be?”

“The lord of the manor.”

“Impossible.”

“Butter, Dolly?”

“Thank you, Evie dear. Charles—”

“Yes, dear?”

“I didn’t know one could pollard elms. I thought one only pollarded

willows.”

“Oh no, one can pollard elms.”

“Then why oughtn’t the elms in the churchyard to be pollarded?”

Charles frowned a little, and turned again to his sister. “Another

point. I must speak to Chalkeley.”

“Yes, rather; you must complain to Chalkeley.”

“It’s no good him saying he is not responsible for those men. He is

responsible.”

“Yes, rather.”

Brother and sister were not callous. They spoke thus, partly because

they desired to keep Chalkeley up to the mark—a healthy desire in its

way—partly because they avoided the personal note in life. All Wilcoxes

did. It did not seem to them of supreme importance. Or it may be as

Helen supposed: they realized its importance, but were afraid of it.

Panic and emptiness, could one glance behind. They were not callous,

and they left the breakfast-table with aching hearts. Their mother

never had come in to breakfast. It was in the other rooms, and

especially in the garden, that they felt her loss most. As Charles went

out to the garage, he was reminded at every step of the woman who had

loved him and whom he could never replace. What battles he had fought

against her gentle conservatism! How she had disliked improvements, yet

how loyally she had accepted them when made! He and his father—what

trouble they had had to get this very garage! With what difficulty had

they persuaded her to yield them to the paddock for it—the paddock that

she loved more dearly than the garden itself! The vine—she had got her

way about the vine. It still encumbered the south wall with its

unproductive branches. And so with Evie, as she stood talking to the

cook. Though she could take up her mother’s work inside the house, just

as the man could take it up without, she felt that something unique had

fallen out of her life. Their grief, though less poignant than their

father’s, grew from deeper roots, for a wife may be replaced; a mother

never.

Charles would go back to the office. There was little to do at Howards

End. The contents of his mother’s will had been long known to them.

There were no legacies, no annuities, none of the posthumous bustle

with which some of the dead prolong their activities. Trusting her

husband, she had left him everything without reserve. She was quite a

poor woman—the house had been all her dowry, and the house would come

to Charles in time. Her water-colours Mr. Wilcox intended to reserve

for Paul, while Evie would take the jewellery and lace. How easily she

slipped out of life! Charles thought the habit laudable, though he did

not intend to adopt it himself, whereas Margaret would have seen in it

an almost culpable indifference to earthly fame. Cynicism—not the

superficial cynicism that snarls and sneers, but the cynicism that can

go with courtesy and tenderness—that was the note of Mrs. Wilcox’s

will. She wanted not to vex people. That accomplished, the earth might

freeze over her for ever.

No, there was nothing for Charles to wait for. He could not go on with

his honeymoon, so he would go up to London and work—he felt too

miserable hanging about. He and Dolly would have the furnished flat

while his father rested quietly in the country with Evie. He could also

keep an eye on his own little house, which was being painted and

decorated for him in one of the Surrey suburbs, and in which he hoped

to install himself soon after Christmas. Yes, he would go up after

lunch in his new motor, and the town servants, who had come down for

the funeral, would go up by train.

He found his father’s chauffeur in the garage, said, “Morning” without

looking at the man’s face, and, bending over the car, continued:

“Hullo! my new car’s been driven!”

“Has it, sir?”

“Yes,” said Charles, getting rather red; “and whoever’s driven it

hasn’t cleaned it properly, for there’s mud on the axle. Take it off.”

The man went for the cloths without a word. He was a chauffeur as ugly

as sin—not that this did him disservice with Charles, who thought charm

in a man rather rot, and had soon got rid of the little Italian beast

with whom they had started.

“Charles—” His bride was tripping after him over the hoar-frost, a

dainty black column, her little face and elaborate mourning hat forming

the capital thereof.

“One minute, I’m busy. Well, Crane, who’s been driving it, do you

suppose?”

“Don’t know, I’m sure, sir. No one’s driven it since I’ve been back,

but, of course, there’s the fortnight I’ve been away with the other car

in Yorkshire.”

The mud came off easily.

“Charles, your father’s down. Something’s happened. He wants you in the

house at once. Oh, Charles!”

“Wait, dear, wait a minute. Who had the key to the garage while you

were away, Crane?”

“The gardener, sir.”

“Do you mean to tell me that old Penny can drive a motor?”

“No, sir; no one’s had the motor out, sir.”

“Then how do you account for the mud on the axle?”

“I can’t, of course, say for the time I’ve been in Yorkshire. No more

mud now, sir.”

Charles was vexed. The man was treating him as a fool, and if his heart

had not been so heavy he would have reported him to his father. But it

was not a morning for complaints. Ordering the motor to be round after

lunch, he joined his wife, who had all the while been pouring out some

incoherent story about a letter and a Miss Schlegel.

“Now, Dolly, I can attend to you. Miss Schlegel? What does she want?”

When people wrote a letter Charles always asked what they wanted. Want

was to him the only cause of action. And the question in this case was

correct, for his wife replied, “She wants Howards End.”

“Howards End? Now, Crane, just don’t forget to put on the Stepney

wheel.”

“No, sir.”

“Now, mind you don’t forget, for I—Come, little woman.” When they were

out of the chauffeur’s sight he put his arm around her waist and

pressed her against him. All his affection and half his attention—it

was what he granted her throughout their happy married life.

“But you haven’t listened, Charles—”

“What’s wrong?”

“I keep on telling you—Howards End. Miss Schlegels got it.”

“Got what?” asked Charles, unclasping her. “What the dickens are you

talking about?”

“Now, Charles, you promised not to say those naughty—”

“Look here, I’m in no mood for foolery. It’s no morning for it either.”

“I tell you—I keep on telling you—Miss Schlegel—she’s got it—your

mother’s left it to her—and you’ve all got to move out!”

“_Howards End?_”

“_Howards End!_” she screamed, mimicking him, and as she did so Evie

came dashing out of the shrubbery.

“Dolly, go back at once! My father’s much annoyed with you.

Charles”—she hit herself wildly—“come in at once to Father. He’s had a

letter that’s too awful.”

Charles began to run, but checked himself, and stepped heavily across

the gravel path. There the house was—the nine windows, the unprolific

vine. He exclaimed, “Schlegels again!” and as if to complete chaos,

Dolly said, “Oh no, the matron of the nursing home has written instead

of her.”

“Come in, all three of you!” cried his father, no longer inert. “Dolly,

why have you disobeyed me?”

“Oh, Mr. Wilcox—”

“I told you not to go out to the garage. I’ve heard you all shouting in

the garden. I won’t have it. Come in.”

He stood in the porch, transformed, letters in his hand.

“Into the dining-room, every one of you. We can’t discuss private

matters in the middle of all the servants. Here, Charles, here; read

these. See what you make.”

Charles took two letters, and read them as he followed the procession.

The first was a covering note from the matron. Mrs. Wilcox had desired

her, when the funeral should be over, to forward the enclosed. The

enclosed—it was from his mother herself. She had written: “To my

husband: I should like Miss Schlegel (Margaret) to have Howards End.”

“I suppose we’re going to have a talk about this?” he remarked,

ominously calm.

“Certainly. I was coming out to you when Dolly—”

“Well, let’s sit down.”

“Come, Evie, don’t waste time, sit down.”

In silence they drew up to the breakfast-table. The events of

yesterday—indeed, of this morning—suddenly receded into a past so

remote that they seemed scarcely to have lived in it. Heavy breathings

were heard. They were calming themselves. Charles, to steady them

further, read the enclosure out loud: “A note in my mother’s

handwriting, in an envelope addressed to my father, sealed. Inside: ‘I

should like Miss Schlegel (Margaret) to have Howards End.’ No date, no

signature. Forwarded through the matron of that nursing home. Now, the

question is—”

Dolly interrupted him. “But I say that note isn’t legal. Houses ought

to be done by a lawyer, Charles, surely.”

Her husband worked his jaw severely. Little lumps appeared in front of

either ear—a symptom that she had not yet learnt to respect, and she

asked whether she might see the note. Charles looked at his father for

permission, who said abstractedly, “Give it her.” She seized it, and at

once exclaimed: “Why, it’s only in pencil! I said so. Pencil never

counts.”

“We know that it is not legally binding, Dolly,” said Mr. Wilcox,

speaking from out of his fortress. “We are aware of that. Legally, I

should be justified in tearing it up and throwing it into the fire. Of

course, my dear, we consider you as one of the family, but it will be

better if you do not interfere with what you do not understand.”

Charles, vexed both with his father and his wife, then repeated: “The

question is—” He had cleared a space of the breakfast-table from plates

and knives, so that he could draw patterns on the tablecloth. “The

question is whether Miss Schlegel, during the fortnight we were all

away, whether she unduly—” He stopped.

“I don’t think that,” said his father, whose nature was nobler than his

son’s.

“Don’t think what?”

“That she would have—that it is a case of undue influence. No, to my

mind the question is the—the invalid’s condition at the time she

wrote.”

“My dear father, consult an expert if you like, but I don’t admit it is

my mother’s writing.”

“Why, you just said it was!” cried Dolly.

“Never mind if I did,” he blazed out; “and hold your tongue.”

The poor little wife coloured at this, and, drawing her handkerchief

from her pocket, shed a few tears. No one noticed her. Evie was

scowling like an angry boy. The two men were gradually assuming the

manner of the committee-room. They were both at their best when serving

on committees. They did not make the mistake of handling human affairs

in the bulk, but disposed of them item by item, sharply. Calligraphy

was the item before them now, and on it they turned their well-trained

brains. Charles, after a little demur, accepted the writing as genuine,

and they passed on to the next point. It is the best—perhaps the

only—way of dodging emotion. They were the average human article, and

had they considered the note as a whole it would have driven them

miserable or mad. Considered item by item, the emotional content was

minimized, and all went forward smoothly. The clock ticked, the coals

blazed higher, and contended with the white radiance that poured in

through the windows. Unnoticed, the sun occupied his sky, and the

shadows of the tree stems, extraordinarily solid, fell like trenches of

purple across the frosted lawn. It was a glorious winter morning.

Evie’s fox terrier, who had passed for white, was only a dirty grey dog

now, so intense was the purity that surrounded him. He was discredited,

but the blackbirds that he was chasing glowed with Arabian darkness,

for all the conventional colouring of life had been altered. Inside,

the clock struck ten with a rich and confident note. Other clocks

confirmed it, and the discussion moved towards its close.

To follow it is unnecessary. It is rather a moment when the commentator

should step forward. Ought the Wilcoxes to have offered their home to

Margaret? I think not. The appeal was too flimsy. It was not legal; it

had been written in illness, and under the spell of a sudden

friendship; it was contrary to the dead woman’s intentions in the past,

contrary to her very nature, so far as that nature was understood by

them. To them Howards End was a house: they could not know that to her

it had been a spirit, for which she sought a spiritual heir.

And—pushing one step farther in these mists—may they not have decided

even better than they supposed? Is it credible that the possessions of

the spirit can be bequeathed at all? Has the soul offspring? A wych-elm

tree, a vine, a wisp of hay with dew on it—can passion for such things

be transmitted where there is no bond of blood? No; the Wilcoxes are

not to be blamed. The problem is too terrific, and they could not even

perceive a problem. No; it is natural and fitting that after due debate

they should tear the note up and throw it on to their dining-room fire.

The practical moralist may acquit them absolutely. He who strives to

look deeper may acquit them—almost. For one hard fact remains. They did

neglect a personal appeal. The woman who had died did say to them, “Do

this,” and they answered, “We will not.”

The incident made a most painful impression on them. Grief mounted into

the brain and worked there disquietingly. Yesterday they had lamented:

“She was a dear mother, a true wife: in our absence she neglected her

health and died.” Today they thought: “She was not as true, as dear, as

we supposed.” The desire for a more inward light had found expression

at last, the unseen had impacted on the seen, and all that they could

say was “Treachery.” Mrs. Wilcox had been treacherous to the family, to

the laws of property, to her own written word. How did she expect

Howards End to be conveyed to Miss Schlegel? Was her husband, to whom

it legally belonged, to make it over to her as a free gift? Was the

said Miss Schlegel to have a life interest in it, or to own it

absolutely? Was there to be no compensation for the garage and other

improvements that they had made under the assumption that all would be

theirs some day? Treacherous! treacherous and absurd! When we think the

dead both treacherous and absurd, we have gone far towards reconciling

ourselves to their departure. That note, scribbled in pencil, sent

through the matron, was unbusinesslike as well as cruel, and decreased

at once the value of the woman who had written it.

“Ah, well!” said Mr. Wilcox, rising from the table. “I shouldn’t have

thought it possible.”

“Mother couldn’t have meant it,” said Evie, still frowning.

“No, my girl, of course not.”

“Mother believed so in ancestors too—it isn’t like her to leave

anything to an outsider, who’d never appreciate.”

“The whole thing is unlike her,” he announced. “If Miss Schlegel had

been poor, if she had wanted a house, I could understand it a little.

But she has a house of her own. Why should she want another? She

wouldn’t have any use of Howards End.”

“That time may prove,” murmured Charles.

“How?” asked his sister.

“Presumably she knows—mother will have told her. She got twice or three

times into the nursing home. Presumably she is awaiting developments.”

“What a horrid woman!” And Dolly, who had recovered, cried, “Why, she

may be coming down to turn us out now!”

Charles put her right. “I wish she would,” he said ominously. “I could

then deal with her.”

“So could I,” echoed his father, who was feeling rather in the cold.

Charles had been kind in undertaking the funeral arrangements and in

telling him to eat his breakfast, but the boy as he grew up was a

little dictatorial, and assumed the post of chairman too readily. “I

could deal with her, if she comes, but she won’t come. You’re all a bit

hard on Miss Schlegel.”

“That Paul business was pretty scandalous, though.”

“I want no more of the Paul business, Charles, as I said at the time,

and besides, it is quite apart from this business. Margaret Schlegel

has been officious and tiresome during this terrible week, and we have

all suffered under her, but upon my soul she’s honest. She’s not in

collusion with the matron. I’m absolutely certain of it. Nor was she

with the doctor. I’m equally certain of that. She did not hide anything

from us, for up to that very afternoon she was as ignorant as we are.

She, like ourselves, was a dupe—” He stopped for a moment. “You see,

Charles, in her terrible pain your poor mother put us all in false

positions. Paul would not have left England, you would not have gone to

Italy, nor Evie and I into Yorkshire, if only we had known. Well, Miss

Schlegel’s position has been equally false. Take all in all, she has

not come out of it badly.”

Evie said: “But those chrysanthemums—”

“Or coming down to the funeral at all—” echoed Dolly.

“Why shouldn’t she come down? She had the right to, and she stood far

back among the Hilton women. The flowers—certainly we should not have

sent such flowers, but they may have seemed the right thing to her,

Evie, and for all you know they may be the custom in Germany.”

“Oh, I forget she isn’t really English,” cried Evie. “That would

explain a lot.”

“She’s a cosmopolitan,” said Charles, looking at his watch. “I admit

I’m rather down on cosmopolitans. My fault, doubtless. I cannot stand

them, and a German cosmopolitan is the limit. I think that’s about all,

isn’t it? I want to run down and see Chalkeley. A bicycle will do. And,

by the way, I wish you’d speak to Crane some time. I’m certain he’s had

my new car out.”

“Has he done it any harm?”

“No.”

“In that case I shall let it pass. It’s not worth while having a row.”

Charles and his father sometimes disagreed. But they always parted with

an increased regard for one another, and each desired no doughtier

comrade when it was necessary to voyage for a little past the emotions.

So the sailors of Ulysses voyaged past the Sirens, having first stopped

one another’s ears with wool.