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

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 everyone 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 forever. 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