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

could avoid it, should he lose those defences that he had chosen to raise against the world. He must never be bothered with emotional talk, or with a display of sympathy. He was an elderly man now, and it would be futile and impudent to correct him.

Mrs. Wilcox strayed in and out, ever a welcome ghost; surveying the scene, thought Margaret, without one hint of bitterness.

XIX

If one wanted to show a foreigner England, perhaps the wisest course would be to take him to the final section of the Purbeck Hills, and stand him on their summit, a few miles to the east of Corfe. Then system after system of our island would roll together under his feet. Beneath him is the valley of the Frome, and all the wild lands that come tossing down from Dorchester, black and gold, to mirror their gorse in the expanses of Poole. The valley of the Stour is beyond, unaccountable stream, dirty at Blandford, pure at Wimborne⁠—the Stour, sliding out of fat fields, to marry the Avon beneath the tower of Christ church. The valley of the Avon⁠—invisible, but far to the north the trained eye may see Clearbury Ring that guards it, and the imagination may leap beyond that on to Salisbury Plain itself, and beyond the Plain to all the glorious downs of Central England. Nor is suburbia absent. Bournemouth’s ignoble coast cowers to the right, heralding the pine-trees that mean, for all their beauty, red houses, and the Stock Exchange, and extend to the gates of London itself. So tremendous is the City’s trail! But the cliffs of Freshwater it shall never touch, and the island will guard the Island’s purity till the end of time. Seen from the west the Wight is beautiful beyond all laws of beauty. It is as if a fragment of England floated forward to greet the foreigner⁠—chalk of our chalk, turf of our turf, epitome of what will follow. And behind the fragment lies Southampton, hostess to the nations, and Portsmouth, a latent fire, and all around it, with double and treble collision of tides, swirls the sea. How many villages appear in this view! How many castles! How many churches, vanished or triumphant! How many ships, railways, and roads! What incredible variety of men working beneath that lucent sky to what final end! The reason fails, like a wave on the Swanage beach; the imagination swells, spreads, and deepens, until it becomes geographic and encircles England.

So Frieda Mosebach, now Frau Architect Liesecke, and mother to her husband’s baby, was brought up to these heights to be impressed, and, after a prolonged gaze, she said that the hills were more swelling here than in Pomerania, which was true, but did not seem to Mrs. Munt apposite. Poole Harbour was dry, which led her to praise the absence of muddy foreshore at Friedrich Wilhelms Bad, Rügen, where beech-trees hang over the tideless Baltic, and cows may contemplate the brine. Rather unhealthy Mrs. Munt thought this would be, water being safer when it moved about.

“And your English lakes⁠—Vindermere, Grasmere⁠—are they, then, unhealthy?”

“No, Frau Liesecke; but that is because they are fresh water, and different. Salt water ought to have tides, and go up and down a great deal, or else it smells. Look, for instance, at an aquarium.”

“An aquarium! Oh, Meesis Munt, you mean to tell me that fresh aquariums stink less than salt? Why, then Victor, my brother-in-law, collected many tadpoles⁠—” “You are not to say ‘stink,’ ” interrupted Helen; “at least, you may say it, but you must pretend you are being funny while you say it.”

“Then ‘smell.’ And the mud of your Pool down there⁠—does it not smell, or may I say ‘stink,’ ha, ha?”

“There always has been mud in Poole Harbour,” said Mrs. Munt, with a slight frown. “The rivers bring it down, and a most valuable oyster-fishery depends upon it.”

“Yes, that is so,” conceded Frieda; and another international incident was closed.

“ ‘Bournemouth is,’ ” resumed their hostess, quoting a local rhyme to which she was much attached⁠—“ ‘Bournemouth is, Poole was, and Swanage is to be the most important town of all and biggest of the three.’ Now, Frau Liesecke, I have shown you Bournemouth, and I have shown you Poole, so let us walk backward a little, and look down again at Swanage.”

“Aunt Juley, wouldn’t that be Meg’s train?”

A tiny puff of smoke had been circling the harbour, and now was bearing southwards towards them over the black and the gold.

“Oh, dearest Margaret, I do hope she won’t be overtired.”

“Oh, I do wonder⁠—I do wonder whether she’s taken the house.”

“I hope she hasn’t been hasty.”

“So do I⁠—oh, so do I.”

“Will it be as beautiful as Wickham Place?” Frieda asked.

“I should think it would. Trust Mr. Wilcox for doing himself proud. All those Ducie Street houses are beautiful in their modern way, and I can’t think why he doesn’t keep on with it. But it’s really for Evie that he went there, and now that Evie’s going to be married⁠—”

“Ah!”

“You’ve never seen Miss Wilcox, Frieda. How absurdly matrimonial you are!”

“But sister to that Paul?”

“Yes.”

“And to that Charles,” said Mrs. Munt with feeling. “Oh, Helen, Helen, what a time that was!”

Helen laughed. “Meg and I haven’t got such tender hearts. If there’s a chance of a cheap house, we go for it.”

“Now look, Frau Liesecke, at my niece’s train. You see, it is coming towards us⁠—coming, coming; and, when it gets to Corfe, it will actually go through the downs, on which we are standing, so that, if we walk over, as I suggested, and look down on Swanage, we shall see it coming on the other side. Shall we?”

Frieda assented, and in a few minutes they had crossed the ridge and exchanged the greater view for the lesser. Rather a dull valley lay below, backed by the slope of the coastward downs. They were looking across the Isle of Purbeck and on to Swanage, soon to be the most important town of all, and ugliest of