CHAPTER VII

“Oh, Margaret,” cried her aunt next morning, “such a most unfortunate

thing has happened. I could not get you alone.”

The most unfortunate thing was not very serious. One of the flats in

the ornate block opposite had been taken furnished by the Wilcox family,

“coming up, no doubt, in the hope of getting into London society.”

That Mrs. Munt should be the first to discover the misfortune was not

remarkable, for she was so interested in the flats, that she watched

their every mutation with unwearying care. In theory she despised

them--they took away that old-world look--they cut off the sun--flats

house a flashy type of person. But if the truth had been known, she

found her visits to Wickham Place twice as amusing since Wickham

Mansions had arisen, and would in a couple of days learn more about

them than her nieces in a couple of months, or her nephew in a couple

of years. She would stroll across and make friends with the porters, and

inquire what the rents were, exclaiming for example: “What! a hundred

and twenty for a basement? You’ll never get it!” And they would answer:

“One can but try, madam.” The passenger lifts, the arrangement for coals

(a great temptation for a dishonest porter), were all familiar matters

to her, and perhaps a relief from the politico-economical-esthetic

atmosphere that reigned at the Schlegels.

Margaret received the information calmly, and did not agree that it

would throw a cloud over poor Helen’s life.

“Oh, but Helen isn’t a girl with no interests,” she explained. “She has

plenty of other things and other people to think about. She made a false

start with the Wilcoxes, and she’ll be as willing as we are to have

nothing more to do with them.”

“For a clever girl, dear, how very oddly you do talk. Helen’ll HAVE to

have something more to do with them, now that they’re all opposite. She

may meet that Paul in the street. She cannot very well not bow.”

“Of course she must bow. But look here; let’s do the flowers. I was

going to say, the will to be interested in him has died, and what else

matters? I look on that disastrous episode (over which you were so

kind) as the killing of a nerve in Helen. It’s dead, and she’ll never be

troubled with it again. The only things that matter are the things

that interest one. Bowing, even calling and leaving cards, even a

dinner-party--we can do all those things to the Wilcoxes, if they find

it agreeable; but the other thing, the one important thing--never again.

Don’t you see?”

Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a most

questionable statement--that any emotion, any interest once vividly

aroused, can wholly die.

“I also have the honour to inform you that the Wilcoxes are bored with

us. I didn’t tell you at the time--it might have made you angry, and you

had enough to worry you--but I wrote a letter to Mrs. W, and apologised

for the trouble that Helen had given them. She didn’t answer it.”

“How very rude!”

“I wonder. Or was it sensible?”

“No, Margaret, most rude.”

“In either case one can class it as reassuring.”

Mrs. Munt sighed. She was going back to Swanage on the morrow, just as

her nieces were wanting her most. Other regrets crowded upon her: for

instance, how magnificently she would have cut Charles if she had met

him face to face. She had already seen him, giving an order to the

porter--and very common he looked in a tall hat. But unfortunately his

back was turned to her, and though she had cut his back, she could not

regard this as a telling snub.

“But you will be careful, won’t you?” she exhorted.

“Oh, certainly. Fiendishly careful.”

“And Helen must be careful, too.”

“Careful over what?” cried Helen, at that moment coming into the room

with her cousin.

“Nothing” said Margaret, seized with a momentary awkwardness.

“Careful over what, Aunt Juley?”

Mrs. Munt assumed a cryptic air. “It is only that a certain family,

whom we know by name but do not mention, as you said yourself last

night after the concert, have taken the flat opposite from the

Mathesons--where the plants are in the balcony.”

Helen began some laughing reply, and then disconcerted them all by

blushing. Mrs. Munt was so disconcerted that she exclaimed, “What,

Helen, you don’t mind them coming, do you?” and deepened the blush to

crimson.

“Of course I don’t mind,” said Helen a little crossly. “It is that you

and Meg are both so absurdly grave about it, when there’s nothing to be

grave about at all.”

“I’m not grave,” protested Margaret, a little cross in her turn.

“Well, you look grave; doesn’t she, Frieda?”

“I don’t feel grave, that’s all I can say; you’re going quite on the

wrong tack.”

“No, she does not feel grave,” echoed Mrs. Munt. “I can bear witness to

that. She disagrees--”

“Hark!” interrupted Fraulein Mosebach. “I hear Bruno entering the hall.”

For Herr Liesecke was due at Wickham Place to call for the two younger

girls. He was not entering the hall--in fact, he did not enter it for

quite five minutes. But Frieda detected a delicate situation, and said

that she and Helen had much better wait for Bruno down below, and

leave Margaret and Mrs. Munt to finish arranging the flowers. Helen

acquiesced. But, as if to prove that the situation was not delicate

really, she stopped in the doorway and said:

“Did you say the Mathesons’ flat, Aunt Juley? How wonderful you are!

I never knew that the name of the woman who laced too tightly was

Matheson.”

“Come, Helen,” said her cousin.

“Go, Helen,” said her aunt; and continued to Margaret almost in the same

breath: “Helen cannot deceive me. She does mind.”

“Oh, hush!” breathed Margaret. “Frieda’ll hear you, and she can be so

tiresome.”

“She minds,” persisted Mrs. Munt, moving thoughtfully about the room,

and pulling the dead chrysanthemums out of the vases. “I knew she’d

mind--and I’m sure a girl ought to! Such an experience! Such awful

coarse-grained people! I know more about them than you do, which you

forget, and if Charles had taken you that motor drive--well, you’d have

reached the house a perfect wreck. Oh, Margaret, you don’t know what

you are in for! They’re all bottled up against the drawing-room window.

There’s Mrs. Wilcox--I’ve seen her. There’s Paul. There’s Evie, who is a

minx. There’s Charles--I saw him to start with. And who would an elderly

man with a moustache and a copper-coloured face be?”

“Mr. Wilcox, possibly.”

“I knew it. And there’s Mr. Wilcox.”

“It’s a shame to call his face copper colour,” complained Margaret. “He

has a remarkably good complexion for a man of his age.”

Mrs. Munt, triumphant elsewhere, could afford to concede Mr. Wilcox

his complexion. She passed on from it to the plan of campaign that her

nieces should pursue in the future. Margaret tried to stop her.

“Helen did not take the news quite as I expected, but the Wilcox nerve

is dead in her really, so there’s no need for plans.”

“It’s as well to be prepared.”

“No--it’s as well not to be prepared.”

“Why?”

“Because--”

Her thought drew being from the obscure borderland. She could not

explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all

the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the

expense of joy. It is necessary to prepare for an examination, or

a dinner-party, or a possible fall in the price of stock: those who

attempt human relations must adopt another method, or fail. “Because I’d

sooner risk it,” was her lame conclusion.

“But imagine the evenings,” exclaimed her aunt, pointing to the Mansions

with the spout of the watering can. “Turn the electric light on here

or there, and it’s almost the same room. One evening they may forget to

draw their blinds down, and you’ll see them; and the next, you yours,

and they’ll see you. Impossible to sit out on the balconies. Impossible

to water the plants, or even speak. Imagine going out of the front-door,

and they come out opposite at the same moment. And yet you tell me that

plans are unnecessary, and you’d rather risk it.”

“I hope to risk things all my life.”

“Oh, Margaret, most dangerous.”

“But after all,” she continued with a smile, “there’s never any great

risk as long as you have money.”

“Oh, shame! What a shocking speech!”

“Money pads the edges of things,” said Miss Schlegel. “God help those

who have none.”

“But this is something quite new!” said Mrs. Munt, who collected new

ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those

that are portable.

“New for me; sensible people have acknowledged it for years. You and I

and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm beneath

our feet that we forget its very existence. It’s only when we see some

one near us tottering that we realise all that an independent income

means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the fire, I began

to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the

lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin.”

“I call that rather cynical.”

“So do I. But Helen and I, we ought to remember, when we are tempted to

criticise others, that we are standing on these islands, and that most

of the others are down below the surface of the sea. The poor cannot

always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever

escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can. Imagine the

tragedy last June, if Helen and Paul Wilcox had been poor people, and

couldn’t invoke railways and motor-cars to part them.”

“That’s more like Socialism,” said Mrs. Munt suspiciously.

“Call it what you like. I call it going through life with one’s hand

spread open on the table. I’m tired of these rich people who pretend

to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money

that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred

pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as

fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed--from

the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of

six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don’t want to

steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want

to steal them and do steal them sometimes, and that what’s a joke up

here is down there reality.”

“There they go--there goes Fraulein Mosebach. Really, for a German she

does dress charmingly. Oh!--”

“What is it?”

“Helen was looking up at the Wilcoxes’ flat.”

“Why shouldn’t she?”

“I beg your pardon, I interrupted you. What was it you were saying about

reality?”

“I had worked round to myself, as usual,” answered Margaret in tones

that were suddenly preoccupied.

“Do tell me this, at all events. Are you for the rich or for the poor?”

“Too difficult. Ask me another. Am I for poverty or for riches? For

riches. Hurrah for riches!”

“For riches!” echoed Mrs. Munt, having, as it were, at last secured her

nut.

“Yes. For riches. Money for ever!”

“So am I, and so, I am afraid, are most of my acquaintances at Swanage,

but I am surprised that you agree with us.”

“Thank you so much, Aunt Juley. While I have talked theories, you have

done the flowers.”

“Not at all, dear. I wish you would let me help you in more important

things.”

“Well, would you be very kind? Would you come round with me to the

registry office? There’s a housemaid who won’t say yes but doesn’t say

no.”

On their way thither they too looked up at the Wilcoxes’ flat. Evie was

in the balcony, “staring most rudely,” according to Mrs. Munt. Oh yes,

it was a nuisance, there was no doubt of it. Helen was proof against

a passing encounter, but--Margaret began to lose confidence. Might it

reawake the dying nerve if the family were living close against her

eyes? And Frieda Mosebach was stopping with them for another fortnight,

and Frieda was sharp, abominably sharp, and quite capable of remarking,

“You love one of the young gentlemen opposite, yes?” The remark would be

untrue, but of the kind which, if stated often enough, may become true;

just as the remark, “England and Germany are bound to fight,” renders

war a little more likely each time that it is made, and is therefore

made the more readily by the gutter press of either nation. Have the

private emotions also their gutter press? Margaret thought so, and

feared that good Aunt Juley and Frieda were typical specimens of it.

They might, by continual chatter, lead Helen into a repetition of the

desires of June. Into a repetition--they could not do more; they

could not lead her into lasting love. They were--she saw it

clearly--Journalism; her father, with all his defects and

wrong-headedness, had been Literature, and had he lived, he would have

persuaded his daughter rightly.

The registry office was holding its morning reception. A string of

carriages filled the street. Miss Schlegel waited her turn, and finally

had to be content with an insidious “temporary,” being rejected by

genuine housemaids on the ground of her numerous stairs. Her failure

depressed her, and though she forgot the failure, the depression

remained. On her way home she again glanced up at the Wilcoxes’ flat,

and took the rather matronly step of speaking about the matter to Helen.

“Helen, you must tell me whether this thing worries you.”

“If what?” said Helen, who was washing her hands for lunch.

“The Ws’ coming.”

“No, of course not.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Then she admitted that she was a little worried on Mrs.

Wilcox’s account; she implied that Mrs. Wilcox might reach backward

into deep feelings, and be pained by things that never touched the other

members of that clan. “I shan’t mind if Paul points at our house and

says, ‘There lives the girl who tried to catch me.’ But she might.”

“If even that worries you, we could arrange something. There’s no reason

we should be near people who displease us or whom we displease, thanks

to our money. We might even go away for a little.”

“Well, I am going away. Frieda’s just asked me to Stettin, and I shan’t

be back till after the New Year. Will that do? Or must I fly the country

altogether? Really, Meg, what has come over you to make such a fuss?”

“Oh, I’m getting an old maid, I suppose. I thought I minded nothing, but

really I--I should be bored if you fell in love with the same man twice

and”--she cleared her throat--“you did go red, you know, when Aunt Juley

attacked you this morning. I shouldn’t have referred to it otherwise.”

But Helen’s laugh rang true, as she raised a soapy hand to heaven and

swore that never, nowhere and nohow, would she again fall in love with

any of the Wilcox family, down to its remotest collaterals.