Howards End - E. M. Forster (world of reading .txt) 📗

due civilities, and Margaret watched the tall, lonely figure sweep up the hall to the lift. As the glass doors closed on it she had the sense of an imprisonment The beautiful head disappeared first, still buried in the muff; the long trailing skirt followed. A woman of undefinable rarity was going up heavenward, like a specimen in a bottle. And into what a heaven⁠—a vault as of hell, sooty black, from which soot descended!

At lunch her brother, seeing her inclined for silence, insisted on talking. Tibby was not ill-natured, but from babyhood something drove him to do the unwelcome and the unexpected. Now he gave her a long account of the day-school that he sometimes patronised. The account was interesting, and she had often pressed him for it before, but she could not attend now, for her mind was focused on the invisible. She discerned that Mrs. Wilcox, though a loving wife and mother, had only one passion in life⁠—her house⁠—and that the moment was solemn when she invited a friend to share this passion with her. To answer “another day” was to answer as a fool. “Another day” will do for brick and mortar, but not for the Holy of Holies into which Howards End had been transfigured. Her own curiosity was slight. She had heard more than enough about it in the summer. The nine windows, the vine, and the wych-elm had no pleasant connections for her, and she would have preferred to spend the afternoon at a concert. But imagination triumphed. While her brother held forth she determined to go, at whatever cost, and to compel Mrs. Wilcox to go, too. When lunch was over she stepped over to the flats.

Mrs. Wilcox had just gone away for the night.

Margaret said that it was of no consequence, hurried downstairs, and took a hansom to King’s Cross. She was convinced that the escapade was important, though it would have puzzled her to say why. There was question of imprisonment and escape, and though she did not know the time of the train, she strained her eyes for St. Pancras’s clock.

Then the clock of King’s Cross swung into sight, a second moon in that infernal sky, and her cab drew up at the station. There was a train for Hilton in five minutes. She took a ticket, asking in her agitation for a single. As she did so, a grave and happy voice saluted her and thanked her.

“I will come if I still may,” said Margaret, laughing nervously.

“You are coming to sleep, dear, too. It is in the morning that my house is most beautiful. You are coming to stop. I cannot show you my meadow properly except at sunrise. These fogs”⁠—she pointed at the station roof⁠—“never spread far. I dare say they are sitting in the sun in Hertfordshire, and you will never repent joining them.”

“I shall never repent joining you.”

“It is the same.”

They began the walk up the long platform. Far at its end stood the train, breasting the darkness without. They never reached it. Before imagination could triumph, there were cries of “Mother! mother!” and a heavy-browed girl darted out of the cloakroom and seized Mrs. Wilcox by the arm.

“Evie!” she gasped⁠—“Evie, my pet⁠—”

The girl called, “Father! I say! look who’s here.”

“Evie, dearest girl, why aren’t you in Yorkshire?”

“No⁠—motor smash⁠—changed plans⁠—father’s coming.”

“Why, Ruth!” cried Mr. Wilcox, joining them, “what in the name of all that’s wonderful are you doing here, Ruth?”

Mrs. Wilcox had recovered herself.

“Oh, Henry dear!⁠—here’s a lovely surprise⁠—but let me introduce⁠—but I think you know Miss Schlegel.”

“Oh yes,” he replied, not greatly interested. “But how’s yourself, Ruth?”

“Fit as a fiddle,” she answered gaily.

“So are we, and so was our car, which ran A1 as far as Ripon, but there a wretched horse and cart which a fool of a driver⁠—”

“Miss Schlegel, our little outing must be for another day.”

“I was saying that this fool of a driver, as the policeman himself admits.”

“Another day, Mrs. Wilcox. Of course.”

“⁠—But as we’ve insured against third party risks, it won’t so much matter⁠—”

“⁠—Cart and car being practically at right angles⁠—”

The voices of the happy family rose high. Margaret was left alone. No one wanted her. Mrs. Wilcox walked out of King’s Cross between her husband and her daughter, listening to both of them.

XI

The funeral was over. The carriages had 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 woodcutter, 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.