第 二十四 章 · “It gave her quite a turn,” said Mr. Wilcox, when retailing the

. “It gave her quite a turn,” said Mr. Wilcox, when retailing the

incident to Dolly at tea-time. “None of you girls have any nerves,

really. Of course, a word from me put it all right, but silly old Miss

Avery—she frightened you, didn’t she, Margaret? There you stood

clutching a bunch of weeds. She might have said something, instead of

coming down the stairs with that alarming bonnet on. I passed her as I

came in. Enough to make the car shy. I believe Miss Avery goes in for

being a character; some old maids do.” He lit a cigarette. “It is their

last resource. Heaven knows what she was doing in the place; but that’s

Bryce’s business, not mine.”

“I wasn’t as foolish as you suggest,” said Margaret. “She only startled

me, for the house had been silent so long.”

“Did you take her for a spook?” asked Dolly, for whom “spooks” and

“going to church” summarized the unseen.

“Not exactly.”

“She really did frighten you,” said Henry, who was far from

discouraging timidity in females. “Poor Margaret! And very naturally.

Uneducated classes are so stupid.”

“Is Miss Avery uneducated classes?” Margaret asked, and found herself

looking at the decoration scheme of Dolly’s drawing-room.

“She’s just one of the crew at the farm. People like that always assume

things. She assumed you’d know who she was. She left all the Howards

End keys in the front lobby, and assumed that you’d seen them as you

came in, that you’d lock up the house when you’d done, and would bring

them on down to her. And there was her niece hunting for them down at

the farm. Lack of education makes people very casual. Hilton was full

of women like Miss Avery once.”

“I shouldn’t have disliked it, perhaps.”

“Or Miss Avery giving me a wedding present,” said Dolly.

Which was illogical but interesting. Through Dolly, Margaret was

destined to learn a good deal.

“But Charles said I must try not to mind, because she had known his

grandmother.”

“As usual, you’ve got the story wrong, my good Dorothea.”

“I mean great-grandmother—the one who left Mrs. Wilcox the house.

Weren’t both of them and Miss Avery friends when Howards End, too, was

a farm?”

Her father-in-law blew out a shaft of smoke. His attitude to his dead

wife was curious. He would allude to her, and hear her discussed, but

never mentioned her by name. Nor was he interested in the dim, bucolic

past. Dolly was—for the following reason.

“Then hadn’t Mrs. Wilcox a brother—or was it an uncle? Anyhow, he

popped the question, and Miss Avery, she said ‘No.’ Just imagine, if

she’d said ‘Yes,’ she would have been Charles’s aunt. (Oh, I

say,—that’s rather good! ‘Charlie’s Aunt’! I must chaff him about that

this evening.) And the man went out and was killed. Yes, I’m certain

I’ve got it right now. Tom Howard—he was the last of them.”

“I believe so,” said Mr. Wilcox negligently.

“I say! Howards End—Howard’s Ended!” cried Dolly. “I’m rather on the

spot this evening, eh?”

“I wish you’d ask whether Crane’s ended.”

“Oh, Mr. Wilcox, how _can_ you?”

“Because, if he has had enough tea, we ought to go.—Dolly’s a good

little woman,” he continued, “but a little of her goes a long way. I

couldn’t live near her if you paid me.”

Margaret smiled. Though presenting a firm front to outsiders, no Wilcox

could live near, or near the possessions of, any other Wilcox. They had

the colonial spirit, and were always making for some spot where the

white man might carry his burden unobserved. Of course, Howards End was

impossible, so long as the younger couple were established in Hilton.

His objections to the house were plain as daylight now.

Crane had had enough tea, and was sent to the garage, where their car

had been trickling muddy water over Charles’s. The downpour had surely

penetrated the Six Hills by now, bringing news of our restless

civilization. “Curious mounds,” said, Henry, “but in with you now;

another time.” He had to be up in London by seven—if possible, by

six-thirty. Once more she lost the sense of space; once more trees,

houses, people, animals, hills, merged and heaved into one dirtiness,

and she was at Wickham Place.

Her evening was pleasant. The sense of flux which had haunted her all

the year disappeared for a time. She forgot the luggage and the

motor-cars, and the hurrying men who know so much and connect so

little. She recaptured the sense of space, which is the basis of all

earthly beauty, and, starting from Howards End, she attempted to

realize England. She failed—visions do not come when we try, though

they may come through trying. But an unexpected love of the island

awoke in her, connecting on this side with the joys of the flesh, on

that with the inconceivable. Helen and her father had known this love,

poor Leonard Bast was groping after it, but it had been hidden from

Margaret till this afternoon. It had certainly come through the house

and old Miss Avery. Through them: the notion of “through” persisted;

her mind trembled towards a conclusion which only the unwise have put

into words. Then, veering back into warmth, it dwelt on ruddy bricks,

flowering plum-trees, and all the tangible joys of spring.

Henry, after allaying her agitation, had taken her over his property,

and had explained to her the use and dimensions of the various rooms.

He had sketched the history of the little estate. “It is so unlucky,”

ran the monologue, “that money wasn’t put into it about fifty years

ago. Then it had four—five-times the land—thirty acres at least. One

could have made something out of it then—a small park, or at all events

shrubberies, and rebuilt the house farther away from the road. What’s

the good of taking it in hand now? Nothing but the meadow left, and

even that was heavily mortgaged when I first had to do with things—yes,

and the house too. Oh, it was no joke.” She saw two women as he spoke,

one old, the other young, watching their inheritance melt away. She saw

them greet him as a deliverer. “Mismanagement did it—besides, the days

for small farms are over. It doesn’t pay—except with intensive

cultivation. Small holdings, back to the land—ah! philanthropic bunkum.

Take it as a rule that nothing pays on a small scale. Most of the land

you see (they were standing at an upper window, the only one which

faced west) belongs to the people at the Park—they made their pile over

copper—good chaps. Avery’s Farm, Sishe’s—what they call the Common,

where you see that ruined oak—one after the other fell in, and so did

this, as near as is no matter.” But Henry had saved it; without fine

feelings or deep insight, but he had saved it, and she loved him for

the deed. “When I had more control I did what I could: sold off the two

and a half animals, and the mangy pony, and the superannuated tools;

pulled down the outhouses; drained; thinned out I don’t know how many

guelder-roses and elder-trees; and inside the house I turned the old

kitchen into a hall, and made a kitchen behind where the dairy was.

Garage and so on came later. But one could still tell it’s been an old

farm. And yet it isn’t the place that would fetch one of your artistic

crew.” No, it wasn’t; and if he did not quite understand it, the

artistic crew would still less: it was English, and the wych-elm that

she saw from the window was an English tree. No report had prepared her

for its peculiar glory. It was neither warrior, nor lover, nor god; in

none of these roles do the English excel. It was a comrade, bending

over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost

fingers tenderness, and the girth, that a dozen men could not have

spanned, became in the end evanescent, till pale bud clusters seemed to

float in the air. It was a comrade. House and tree transcended any

similes of sex. Margaret thought of them now, and was to think of them

through many a windy night and London day, but to compare either to

man, to woman, always dwarfed the vision. Yet they kept within limits

of the human. Their message was not of eternity, but of hope on this

side of the grave. As she stood in the one, gazing at the other, truer

relationship had gleamed.

Another touch, and the account of her day is finished. They entered the

garden for a minute, and to Mr. Wilcox’s surprise she was right. Teeth,

pigs’ teeth, could be seen in the bark of the wych-elm tree—just the

white tips of them showing. “Extraordinary!” he cried. “Who told you?”

“I heard of it one winter in London,” was her answer, for she, too,

avoided mentioning Mrs. Wilcox by name.