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

have ruined him, and I suppose you’ll tell me it’s the battle of life. Starving. His wife is ill. Starving. She fainted in the train.”

“Helen, are you mad?”

“Perhaps. Yes. If you like, I’m mad. But I’ve brought them. I’ll stand injustice no longer. I’ll show up the wretchedness that lies under this luxury, this talk of impersonal forces, this cant about God doing what we’re too slack to do ourselves.”

“Have you actually brought two starving people from London to Shropshire, Helen?”

Helen was checked. She had not thought of this, and her hysteria abated. “There was a restaurant car on the train,” she said.

“Don’t be absurd. They aren’t starving, and you know it. Now, begin from the beginning. I won’t have such theatrical nonsense. How dare you! Yes, how dare you!” she repeated, as anger filled her, “bursting in to Evie’s wedding in this heartless way. My goodness! but you’ve a perverted notion of philanthropy. Look”⁠—she indicated the house⁠—“servants, people out of the windows. They think it’s some vulgar scandal, and I must explain, ‘Oh no, it’s only my sister screaming, and only two hangers-on of ours, whom she has brought here for no conceivable reason.’ ”

“Kindly take back that word ‘hangers-on,’ ” said Helen, ominously calm.

“Very well,” conceded Margaret, who for all her wrath was determined to avoid a real quarrel. “I, too, am sorry about them, but it beats me why you’ve brought them here, or why you’re here yourself.”

“It’s our last chance of seeing Mr. Wilcox.”

Margaret moved towards the house at this. She was determined not to worry Henry.

“He’s going to Scotland. I know he is. I insist on seeing him.”

“Yes, tomorrow.”

“I knew it was our last chance.”

“How do you do, Mr. Bast?” said Margaret, trying to control her voice. “This is an odd business. What view do you take of it?”

“There is Mrs. Bast, too,” prompted Helen.

Jacky also shook hands. She, like her husband, was shy, and, furthermore, ill, and furthermore, so bestially stupid that she could not grasp what was happening. She only knew that the lady had swept down like a whirlwind last night, had paid the rent, redeemed the furniture, provided them with a dinner and a breakfast, and ordered them to meet her at Paddington next morning. Leonard had feebly protested, and when the morning came, had suggested that they shouldn’t go. But she, half mesmerised, had obeyed. The lady had told them to, and they must, and their bed-sitting-room had accordingly changed into Paddington, and Paddington into a railway carriage, that shook, and grew hot, and grew cold, and vanished entirely, and reappeared amid torrents of expensive scent. “You have fainted,” said the lady in an awestruck voice. “Perhaps the air will do you good.” And perhaps it had, for here she was, feeling rather better among a lot of flowers.

“I’m sure I don’t want to intrude,” began Leonard, in answer to Margaret’s question. “But you have been so kind to me in the past in warning me about the Porphyrion that I wondered⁠—why, I wondered whether⁠—”

“Whether we could get him back into the Porphyrion again,” supplied Helen. “Meg, this has been a cheerful business. A bright evening’s work that was on Chelsea Embankment.”

Margaret shook her head and returned to Mr. Bast.

“I don’t understand. You left the Porphyrion because we suggested it was a bad concern, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“And went into a bank instead?”

“I told you all that,” said Helen; “and they reduced their staff after he had been in a month, and now he’s penniless, and I consider that we and our informant are directly to blame.”

“I hate all this,” Leonard muttered.

“I hope you do, Mr. Bast. But it’s no good mincing matters. You have done yourself no good by coming here. If you intend to confront Mr. Wilcox, and to call him to account for a chance remark, you will make a very great mistake.”

“I brought them. I did it all,” cried Helen.

“I can only advise you to go at once. My sister has put you in a false position, and it is kindest to tell you so. It’s too late to get to town, but you’ll find a comfortable hotel in Oniton, where Mrs. Bast can rest, and I hope you’ll be my guests there.”

“That isn’t what I want, Miss Schlegel,” said Leonard. “You’re very kind, and no doubt it’s a false position, but you make me miserable. I seem no good at all.”

“It’s work he wants,” interpreted Helen. “Can’t you see?”

Then he said: “Jacky, let’s go. We’re more bother than we’re worth. We’re costing these ladies pounds and pounds already to get work for us, and they never will. There’s nothing we’re good enough to do.”

“We would like to find you work,” said Margaret rather conventionally. “We want to⁠—I, like my sister. You’re only down in your luck. Go to the hotel, have a good night’s rest, and some day you shall pay me back the bill, if you prefer it.”

But Leonard was near the abyss, and at such moments men see clearly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I shall never get work now. If rich people fail at one profession, they can try another. Not I. I had my groove, and I’ve got out of it. I could do one particular branch of insurance in one particular office well enough to command a salary, but that’s all. Poetry’s nothing, Miss Schlegel. One’s thoughts about this and that are nothing. Your money, too, is nothing, if you’ll understand me. I mean if a man over twenty once loses his own particular job, it’s all over with him. I have seen it happen to others. Their friends gave them money for a little, but in the end they fall over the edge. It’s no good. It’s the whole world pulling. There always will be rich and poor.”

He ceased. “Won’t you have something to eat?” said Margaret. “I don’t know what to do. It isn’t my house, and though Mr. Wilcox would have been glad to see you at any other time⁠—as I say, I don’t