CHAPTER XV

The sisters went out to dinner full of their adventure, and when they

were both full of the same subject, there were few dinner-parties that

could stand up against them. This particular one, which was all ladies,

had more kick in it than most, but succumbed after a struggle. Helen at

one part of the table, Margaret at the other, would talk of Mr. Bast

and of no one else, and somewhere about the entree their monologues

collided, fell ruining, and became common property. Nor was this all.

The dinner-party was really an informal discussion club; there was a

paper after it, read amid coffee-cups and laughter in the drawing-room,

but dealing more or less thoughtfully with some topic of general

interest. After the paper came a debate, and in this debate Mr. Bast

also figured, appearing now as a bright spot in civilisation, now as a

dark spot, according to the temperament of the speaker. The subject of

the paper had been, “How ought I to dispose of my money?” the reader

professing to be a millionaire on the point of death, inclined to

bequeath her fortune for the foundation of local art galleries, but open

to conviction from other sources. The various parts had been assigned

beforehand, and some of the speeches were amusing. The hostess assumed

the ungrateful role of “the millionaire’s eldest son,” and implored her

expiring parent not to dislocate Society by allowing such vast sums

to pass out of the family. Money was the fruit of self-denial, and the

second generation had a right to profit by the self-denial of the first.

What right had “Mr. Bast” to profit? The National Gallery was good

enough for the likes of him. After property had had its say--a saying

that is necessarily ungracious--the various philanthropists stepped

forward. Something must be done for “Mr. Bast”; his conditions must

be improved without impairing his independence; he must have a free

library, or free tennis-courts; his rent must be paid in such a way that

he did not know it was being paid; it must be made worth his while to

join the Territorials; he must be forcibly parted from his uninspiring

wife, the money going to her as compensation; he must be assigned a

Twin Star, some member of the leisured classes who would watch over him

ceaselessly (groans from Helen); he must be given food but no clothes,

clothes but no food, a third-return ticket to Venice, without either

food or clothes when he arrived there. In short, he might be given

anything and everything so long as it was not the money itself.

And here Margaret interrupted.

“Order, order, Miss Schlegel!” said the reader of the paper. “You are

here, I understand, to advise me in the interests of the Society for the

Preservation of Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. I cannot

have you speaking out of your role. It makes my poor head go round, and

I think you forget that I am very ill.”

“Your head won’t go round if only you’ll listen to my argument,” said

Margaret. “Why not give him the money itself? You’re supposed to have

about thirty thousand a year.”

“Have I? I thought I had a million.”

“Wasn’t a million your capital? Dear me! we ought to have settled that.

Still, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve got, I order you to give as

many poor men as you can three hundred a year each.”

“But that would be pauperising them,” said an earnest girl, who liked

the Schlegels, but thought them a little unspiritual at times.

“Not if you gave them so much. A big windfall would not pauperise a man.

It is these little driblets, distributed among too many, that do the

harm. Money’s educational. It’s far more educational than the things

it buys.” There was a protest. “In a sense,” added Margaret, but the

protest continued. “Well, isn’t the most civilized thing going, the man

who has learnt to wear his income properly?”

“Exactly what your Mr. Basts won’t do.”

“Give them a chance. Give them money. Don’t dole them out poetry-books

and railway-tickets like babies. Give them the wherewithal to buy these

things. When your Socialism comes it may be different, and we may think

in terms of commodities instead of cash. Till it comes give people

cash, for it is the warp of civilisation, whatever the woof may be. The

imagination ought to play upon money and realise it vividly, for it’s

the--the second most important thing in the world. It is so slurred over

and hushed up, there is so little clear thinking--oh, political economy,

of course, but so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes,

and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the

result of independent means. Money: give Mr. Bast money, and don’t

bother about his ideals. He’ll pick up those for himself.”

She leant back while the more earnest members of the club began to

misconstrue her. The female mind, though cruelly practical in daily

life, cannot bear to hear ideals belittled in conversation, and Miss

Schlegel was asked however she could say such dreadful things, and what

it would profit Mr. Bast if he gained the whole world and lost his own

soul. She answered, “Nothing, but he would not gain his soul until

he had gained a little of the world.” Then they said, “No, we do not

believe it,” and she admitted that an overworked clerk may save his soul

in the superterrestrial sense, where the effort will be taken for the

deed, but she denied that he will ever explore the spiritual resources

of this world, will ever know the rarer joys of the body, or attain to

clear and passionate intercourse with his fellows. Others had attacked

the fabric of Society--Property, Interest, etc.; she only fixed her eyes

on a few human beings, to see how, under present conditions, they could

be made happier. Doing good to humanity was useless: the many-coloured

efforts thereto spreading over the vast area like films and resulting in

an universal grey. To do good to one, or, as in this case, to a few, was

the utmost she dare hope for.

Between the idealists, and the political economists, Margaret had a

bad time. Disagreeing elsewhere, they agreed in disowning her, and

in keeping the administration of the millionaire’s money in their

own hands. The earnest girl brought forward a scheme of “personal

supervision and mutual help,” the effect of which was to alter poor

people until they became exactly like people who were not so poor. The

hostess pertinently remarked that she, as eldest son, might surely rank

among the millionaire’s legatees. Margaret weakly admitted the claim,

and another claim was at once set up by Helen, who declared that she

had been the millionaire’s housemaid for over forty years, overfed and

underpaid; was nothing to be done for her, so corpulent and poor? The

millionaire then read out her last will and testament, in which she left

the whole of her fortune to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then she

died. The serious parts of the discussion had been of higher merit than

the playful--in a men’s debate is the reverse more general?--but the

meeting broke up hilariously enough, and a dozen happy ladies dispersed

to their homes.

Helen and Margaret walked with the earnest girl as far as Battersea

Bridge Station, arguing copiously all the way. When she had gone

they were conscious of an alleviation, and of the great beauty of the

evening. They turned back towards Oakley Street. The lamps and the

plane-trees, following the line of the embankment, struck a note of

dignity that is rare in English cities. The seats, almost deserted, were

here and there occupied by gentlefolk in evening dress, who had strolled

out from the houses behind to enjoy fresh air and the whisper of the

rising tide. There is something continental about Chelsea Embankment. It

is an open space used rightly, a blessing more frequent in Germany than

here. As Margaret and Helen sat down, the city behind them seemed to

be a vast theatre, an opera-house in which some endless trilogy was

performing, and they themselves a pair of satisfied subscribers, who did

not mind losing a little of the second act.

“Cold?”

“No.”

“Tired?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

The earnest girl’s train rumbled away over the bridge.

“I say, Helen--”

“Well?”

“Are we really going to follow up Mr. Bast?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think we won’t.”

“As you like.”

“It’s no good, I think, unless you really mean to know people. The

discussion brought that home to me. We got on well enough with him in a

spirit of excitement, but think of rational intercourse. We mustn’t play

at friendship. No, it’s no good.”

“There’s Mrs. Lanoline, too,” Helen yawned. “So dull.”

“Just so, and possibly worse than dull.”

“I should like to know how he got hold of your card.”

“But he said--something about a concert and an umbrella.”

“Then did the card see the wife--”

“Helen, come to bed.”

“No, just a little longer, it is so beautiful. Tell me; oh yes; did you

say money is the warp of the world?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the woof?”

“Very much what one chooses,” said Margaret. “It’s something that isn’t

money--one can’t say more.”

“Walking at night?”

“Probably.”

“For Tibby, Oxford?”

“It seems so.”

“For you?”

“Now that we have to leave Wickham Place, I begin to think it’s that.

For Mrs. Wilcox it was certainly Howards End.”

One’s own name will carry immense distances. Mr. Wilcox, who was sitting

with friends many seats away, heard this, rose to his feet, and strolled

along towards the speakers.

“It is sad to suppose that places may ever be more important than

people,” continued Margaret.

“Why, Meg? They’re so much nicer generally. I’d rather think of that

forester’s house in Pomerania than of the fat Herr Forstmeister who

lived in it.”

“I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The

more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one

of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a

place.”

Here Mr. Wilcox reached them. It was several weeks since they had met.

“How do you do?” he cried. “I thought I recognised your voices. Whatever

are you both doing down here?”

His tones were protective. He implied that one ought not to sit out

on Chelsea Embankment without a male escort. Helen resented this, but

Margaret accepted it as part of the good man’s equipment.

“What an age it is since I’ve seen you, Mr. Wilcox. I met Evie in the

Tube, though, lately. I hope you have good news of your son.”

“Paul?” said Mr. Wilcox, extinguishing his cigarette, and sitting down

between them. “Oh, Paul’s all right. We had a line from Madeira. He’ll

be at work again by now.”

“Ugh--” said Helen, shuddering from complex causes.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Isn’t the climate of Nigeria too horrible?”

“Some one’s got to go,” he said simply. “England will never keep her

trade overseas unless she is prepared to make sacrifices. Unless we get

firm in West Africa, Ger--untold complications may follow. Now tell me

all your news.”

“Oh, we’ve had a splendid evening,” cried Helen, who always woke up at

the advent of a visitor. “We belong to a kind of club that reads papers,

Margaret and I--all women, but there is a discussion after. This evening

it was on how one ought to leave one’s money--whether to one’s family,

or to the poor, and if so how--oh, most interesting.”

The man of business smiled. Since his wife’s death he had almost doubled

his income. He was an important figure at last, a reassuring name on

company prospectuses, and life had treated him very well. The world

seemed in his grasp as he listened to the River Thames, which still

flowed inland from the sea. So wonderful to the girls, it held no

mysteries for him. He had helped to shorten its long tidal trough by

taking shares in the lock at Teddington, and if he and other capitalists

thought good, some day it could be shortened again. With a good dinner

inside him and an amiable but academic woman on either flank, he felt

that his hands were on all the ropes of life, and that what he did not

know could not be worth knowing.

“Sounds a most original entertainment!” he exclaimed, and laughed in

his pleasant way. “I wish Evie would go to that sort of thing. But she

hasn’t the time. She’s taken to breeding Aberdeen terriers--jolly little

dogs.”

“I expect we’d better be doing the same, really.”

“We pretend we’re improving ourselves, you see,” said Helen a little

sharply, for the Wilcox glamour is not of the kind that returns, and she

had bitter memories of the days when a speech such as he had just made

would have impressed her favourably. “We suppose it a good thing to

waste an evening once a fortnight over a debate, but, as my sister says,

it may be better to breed dogs.”

“Not at all. I don’t agree with your sister. There’s nothing like a

debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when

I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.”

“Quickness--?”

“Yes. Quickness in argument. Time after time I’ve missed scoring a point

because the other man has had the gift of the gab and I haven’t. Oh, I

believe in these discussions.”

The patronising tone, thought Margaret, came well enough from a man who

was old enough to be their father. She had always maintained that Mr.

Wilcox had a charm. In times of sorrow or emotion his inadequacy had

pained her, but it was pleasant to listen to him now, and to watch his

thick brown moustache and high forehead confronting the stars. But Helen

was nettled. The aim of their debates she implied was Truth.

“Oh yes, it doesn’t much matter what subject you take,” said he.

Margaret laughed and said, “But this is going to be far better than the

debate itself.” Helen recovered herself and laughed too. “No, I won’t go

on,” she declared. “I’ll just put our special case to Mr. Wilcox.”

“About Mr. Bast? Yes, do. He’ll be more lenient to a special case.”

“But, Mr. Wilcox, do first light another cigarette. It’s this. We’ve

just come across a young fellow, who’s evidently very poor, and who

seems interest--”

“What’s his profession?”

“Clerk.”

“What in?”

“Do you remember, Margaret?”

“Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company.”

“Oh yes; the nice people who gave Aunt Juley a new hearth rug. He seems

interesting, in some ways very, and one wishes one could help him. He is

married to a wife whom he doesn’t seem to care for much. He likes books,

and what one may roughly call adventure, and if he had a chance--But he

is so poor. He lives a life where all the money is apt to go on nonsense

and clothes. One is so afraid that circumstances will be too strong

for him and that he will sink. Well, he got mixed up in our debate. He

wasn’t the subject of it, but it seemed to bear on his point. Suppose

a millionaire died, and desired to leave money to help such a man. How

should he be helped? Should he be given three hundred pounds a year

direct, which was Margaret’s plan? Most of them thought this would

pauperise him. Should he and those like him be given free libraries?

I said ‘No!’ He doesn’t want more books to read, but to read books

rightly. My suggestion was he should be given something every year

towards a summer holiday, but then there is his wife, and they said she

would have to go too. Nothing seemed quite right! Now what do you think?

Imagine that you were a millionaire, and wanted to help the poor. What

would you do?”

Mr. Wilcox, whose fortune was not so very far below the standard

indicated, laughed exuberantly. “My dear Miss Schlegel, I will not rush

in where your sex has been unable to tread. I will not add another plan

to the numerous excellent ones that have been already suggested. My only

contribution is this: let your young friend clear out of the Porphyrion

Fire Insurance Company with all possible speed.”

“Why?” said Margaret.

He lowered his voice. “This is between friends. It’ll be in the

Receiver’s hands before Christmas. It’ll smash,” he added, thinking that

she had not understood.

“Dear me, Helen, listen to that. And he’ll have to get another place!”

“WILL have? Let him leave the ship before it sinks. Let him get one

now.”

“Rather than wait, to make sure?”

“Decidedly.”

“Why’s that?”

Again the Olympian laugh, and the lowered voice. “Naturally the man

who’s in a situation when he applies stands a better chance, is in a

stronger position, that the man who isn’t. It looks as if he’s worth

something. I know by myself--(this is letting you into the State

secrets)--it affects an employer greatly. Human nature, I’m afraid.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” murmured Margaret, while Helen said, “Our

human nature appears to be the other way round. We employ people because

they’re unemployed. The boot man, for instance.”

“And how does he clean the boots?”

“Not well,” confessed Margaret.

“There you are!”

“Then do you really advise us to tell this youth--?”

“I advise nothing,” he interrupted, glancing up and down the Embankment,

in case his indiscretion had been overheard. “I oughtn’t to have

spoken--but I happen to know, being more or less behind the scenes. The

Porphyrion’s a bad, bad concern--Now, don’t say I said so. It’s outside

the Tariff Ring.”

“Certainly I won’t say. In fact, I don’t know what that means.”

“I thought an insurance company never smashed,” was Helen’s

contribution. “Don’t the others always run in and save them?”

“You’re thinking of reinsurance,” said Mr. Wilcox mildly. “It is exactly

there that the Porphyrion is weak. It has tried to undercut, has been

badly hit by a long series of small fires, and it hasn’t been able to

reinsure. I’m afraid that public companies don’t save one another for

love.”

“‘Human nature,’ I suppose,” quoted Helen, and he laughed and agreed

that it was. When Margaret said that she supposed that clerks, like

every one else, found it extremely difficult to get situations in these

days, he replied, “Yes, extremely,” and rose to rejoin his friends. He

knew by his own office--seldom a vacant post, and hundreds of applicants

for it; at present no vacant post.

“And how’s Howards End looking?” said Margaret, wishing to change the

subject before they parted. Mr. Wilcox was a little apt to think one

wanted to get something out of him.

“It’s let.”

“Really. And you wandering homeless in longhaired Chelsea? How strange

are the ways of Fate!”

“No; it’s let unfurnished. We’ve moved.”

“Why, I thought of you both as anchored there for ever. Evie never told

me.”

“I dare say when you met Evie the thing wasn’t settled. We only moved

a week ago. Paul has rather a feeling for the old place, and we held on

for him to have his holiday there; but, really, it is impossibly small.

Endless drawbacks. I forget whether you’ve been up to it?”

“As far as the house, never.”

“Well, Howards End is one of those converted farms. They don’t really

do, spend what you will on them. We messed away with a garage all among

the wych-elm roots, and last year we enclosed a bit of the meadow and

attempted a rockery. Evie got rather keen on Alpine plants. But it

didn’t do--no, it didn’t do. You remember, your sister will remember,

the farm with those abominable guinea-fowls, and the hedge that the old

woman never would cut properly, so that it all went thin at the

bottom. And, inside the house, the beams--and the staircase through a

door--picturesque enough, but not a place to live in.” He glanced

over the parapet cheerfully. “Full tide. And the position wasn’t right

either. The neighbourhood’s getting suburban. Either be in London or out

of it, I say; so we’ve taken a house in Ducie Street, close to Sloane

Street, and a place right down in Shropshire--Oniton Grange. Ever heard

of Oniton? Do come and see us--right away from everywhere, up towards

Wales.”

“What a change!” said Margaret. But the change was in her own voice,

which had become most sad. “I can’t imagine Howards End or Hilton

without you.”

“Hilton isn’t without us,” he replied. “Charles is there still.”

“Still?” said Margaret, who had not kept up with the Charles’s. “But I

thought he was still at Epsom. They were furnishing that Christmas--one

Christmas. How everything alters! I used to admire Mrs. Charles from our

windows very often. Wasn’t it Epsom?”

“Yes, but they moved eighteen months ago. Charles, the good chap”--his

voice dropped--“thought I should be lonely. I didn’t want him to move,

but he would, and took a house at the other end of Hilton, down by

the Six Hills. He had a motor, too. There they all are, a very jolly

party--he and she and the two grandchildren.”

“I manage other people’s affairs so much better than they manage them

themselves,” said Margaret as they shook hands. “When you moved out of

Howards End, I should have moved Mr. Charles Wilcox into it. I should

have kept so remarkable a place in the family.”

“So it is,” he replied. “I haven’t sold it, and don’t mean to.”

“No; but none of you are there.”

“Oh, we’ve got a splendid tenant--Hamar Bryce, an invalid. If

Charles ever wanted it--but he won’t. Dolly is so dependent on modern

conveniences. No, we have all decided against Howards End. We like it in

a way, but now we feel that it is neither one thing nor the other. One

must have one thing or the other.”

“And some people are lucky enough to have both. You’re doing yourself

proud, Mr. Wilcox. My congratulations.”

“And mine,” said Helen.

“Do remind Evie to come and see us--2 Wickham Place. We shan’t be there

very long, either.”

“You, too, on the move?”

“Next September,” Margaret sighed.

“Every one moving! Good-bye.”

The tide had begun to ebb. Margaret leant over the parapet and watched

it sadly. Mr. Wilcox had forgotten his wife, Helen her lover; she

herself was probably forgetting. Every one moving. Is it worth while

attempting the past when there is this continual flux even in the hearts

of men?

Helen roused her by saying: “What a prosperous vulgarian Mr. Wilcox has

grown! I have very little use for him in these days. However, he did

tell us about the Porphyrion. Let us write to Mr. Bast as soon as ever

we get home, and tell him to clear out of it at once.”

“Do; yes, that’s worth doing. Let us.”