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

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 gravediggers, 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 gravediggers 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 lychgate and traversed the chestnut avenues that led down to the village. The young woodcutter 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 woodcutter, 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 everyone 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 good-fellowship, 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 had 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,