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

tragical, while the servant shouted, and was misunderstood by another servant in the garden. Then came a difficulty about a springboard, and soon three people were running backwards and forwards over the meadow, with orders and counter orders and recriminations and apologies. If Margaret wanted to jump from a motorcar, she jumped; if Tibby thought paddling would benefit his ankles, he paddled; if a clerk desired adventure, he took a walk in the dark. But these athletes seemed paralysed. They could not bathe without their appliances, though the morning sun was calling and the last mists were rising from the dimpling stream. Had they found the life of the body after all? Could not the men whom they despised as milksops beat them, even on their own ground?

She thought of the bathing arrangements as they should be in her day⁠—no worrying of servants, no appliances, beyond good sense. Her reflections were disturbed by the quiet child, who had come out to speak to the cat, but was now watching her watch the men. She called, “Good morning, dear,” a little sharply. Her voice spread consternation. Charles looked round, and though completely attired in indigo blue, vanished into the shed, and was seen no more.

“Miss Wilcox is up⁠—” the child whispered, and then became unintelligible.

“What is that?” it sounded like, “⁠—cut-yoke⁠—sack-back⁠—”

“I can’t hear.”

“⁠—On the bed⁠—tissue-paper⁠—”

Gathering that the wedding-dress was on view, and that a visit would be seemly, she went to Evie’s room. All was hilarity here. Evie, in a petticoat, was dancing with one of the Anglo-Indian ladies, while the other was adoring yards of white satin. They screamed, they laughed, they sang, and the dog barked.

Margaret screamed a little too, but without conviction. She could not feel that a wedding was so funny. Perhaps something was missing in her equipment.

Evie gasped: “Dolly is a rotter not to be here! Oh, we would rag just then!” Then Margaret went down to breakfast.

Henry was already installed; he ate slowly and spoke little, and was, in Margaret’s eyes, the only member of their party who dodged emotion successfully. She could not suppose him indifferent either to the loss of his daughter or to the presence of his future wife. Yet he dwelt intact, only issuing orders occasionally⁠—orders that promoted the comfort of his guests. He inquired after her hand; he set her to pour out the coffee and Mrs. Warrington to pour out the tea. When Evie came down there was a moment’s awkwardness, and both ladies rose to vacate their places. “Burton,” called Henry, “serve tea and coffee from the sideboard!” It wasn’t genuine tact, but it was tact, of a sort⁠—the sort that is as useful as the genuine, and saves even more situations at Board meetings. Henry treated a marriage like a funeral, item by item, never raising his eyes to the whole, and “Death, where is thy sting? Love, where is thy victory?” one would exclaim at the close.

After breakfast Margaret claimed a few words with him. It was always best to approach him formally. She asked for the interview, because he was going on to shoot grouse tomorrow, and she was returning to Helen in town.

“Certainly, dear,” said he. “Of course, I have the time. What do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“I was afraid something had gone wrong.”

“No; I have nothing to say, but you may talk.”

Glancing at his watch, he talked of the nasty curve at the lychgate. She heard him with interest. Her surface could always respond to his without contempt, though all her deeper being might be yearning to help him. She had abandoned any plan of action. Love is the best, and the more she let herself love him, the more chance was there that he would set his soul in order. Such a moment as this, when they sat under fair weather by the walks of their future home, was so sweet to her that its sweetness would surely pierce to him. Each lift of his eyes, each parting of the thatched lip from the clean-shaven, must prelude the tenderness that kills the Monk and the Beast at a single blow. Disappointed a hundred times, she still hoped. She loved him with too clear a vision to fear his cloudiness. Whether he droned trivialities, as today, or sprang kisses on her in the twilight, she could pardon him, she could respond.

“If there is this nasty curve,” she suggested, “couldn’t we walk to the church? Not, of course, you and Evie; but the rest of us might very well go on first, and that would mean fewer carriages.”

“One can’t have ladies walking through the Market Square. The Fussells wouldn’t like it; they were awfully particular at Charles’s wedding. My⁠—she⁠—our party was anxious to walk, and certainly the church was just round the corner, and I shouldn’t have minded; but the Colonel made a great point of it.”

“You men shouldn’t be so chivalrous,” said Margaret thoughtfully.

“Why not?”

She knew why not, but said that she did not know. He then announced that, unless she had anything special to say, he must visit the wine-cellar, and they went off together in search of Burton. Though clumsy and a little inconvenient, Oniton was a genuine country-house. They clattered down flagged passages, looking into room after room, and scaring unknown maids from the performance of obscure duties. The wedding-breakfast must be in readiness when they come back from church, and tea would be served in the garden. The sight of so many agitated and serious people made Margaret smile, but she reflected that they were paid to be serious, and enjoyed being agitated. Here were the lower wheels of the machine that was tossing Evie up into nuptial glory. A little boy blocked their way with pig-pails. His mind could not grasp their greatness, and he said: “By your leave; let me pass, please.” Henry asked him where Burton was. But the servants were so new that they did not know one another’s names. In the still-room sat the band, who had