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

know what I’m talking about, and it will make no difference.”

“No difference?” he inquired. “No difference, when you find that I am not the fellow you thought?” He was annoyed with Miss Schlegel here. He would have preferred her to be prostrated by the blow, or even to rage. Against the tide of his sin flowed the feeling that she was not altogether womanly. Her eyes gazed too straight; they had read books that are suitable for men only. And though he had dreaded a scene, and though she had determined against one, there was a scene, all the same. It was somehow imperative.

“I am unworthy of you,” he began. “Had I been worthy, I should not have released you from your engagement. I know what I am talking about. I can’t bear to talk of such things. We had better leave it.”

She kissed his hand. He jerked it from her, and, rising to his feet, went on: “You, with your sheltered life, and refined pursuits, and friends, and books, you and your sister, and women like you⁠—I say, how can you guess the temptations that lie round a man?”

“It is difficult for us,” said Margaret; “but if we are worth marrying, we do guess.”

“Cut off from decent society and family ties, what do you suppose happens to thousands of young fellows overseas? Isolated. No one near. I know by bitter experience, and yet you say it makes ‘no difference.’ ”

“Not to me.”

He laughed bitterly. Margaret went to the sideboard and helped herself to one of the breakfast dishes. Being the last down, she turned out the spirit-lamp that kept them warm. She was tender, but grave. She knew that Henry was not so much confessing his soul as pointing out the gulf between the male soul and the female, and she did not desire to hear him on this point.

“Did Helen come?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“But that won’t do at all, at all! We don’t want her gossiping with Mrs. Bast.”

“Good God! no!” he exclaimed, suddenly natural. Then he caught himself up. “Let them gossip, my game’s up, though I thank you for your unselfishness⁠—little as my thanks are worth.”

“Didn’t she send me a message or anything?”

“I heard of none.”

“Would you ring the bell, please?”

“What to do?”

“Why, to inquire.”

He swaggered up to it tragically, and sounded a peal. Margaret poured herself out some coffee. The butler came, and said that Miss Schlegel had slept at the George, so far as he had heard. Should he go round to the George?

“I’ll go, thank you,” said Margaret, and dismissed him.

“It is no good,” said Henry. “Those things leak out; you cannot stop a story once it has started. I have known cases of other men⁠—I despised them once, I thought that I’m different, I shall never be tempted. Oh, Margaret⁠—” He came and sat down near her, improvising emotion. She could not bear to listen to him. “We fellows all come to grief once in our time. Will you believe that? There are moments when the strongest man⁠—‘Let him who standeth, take heed lest he fall.’ That’s true, isn’t it? If you knew all, you would excuse me. I was far from good influences⁠—far even from England. I was very, very lonely, and longed for a woman’s voice. That’s enough. I have told you too much already for you to forgive me now.”

“Yes, that’s enough, dear.”

“I have”⁠—he lowered his voice⁠—“I have been through hell.”

Gravely she considered this claim. Had he? Had he suffered tortures of remorse, or had it been, “There! that’s over. Now for respectable life again”? The latter, if she read him rightly. A man who has been through hell does not boast of his virility. He is humble and hides it, if, indeed, it still exists. Only in legend does the sinner come forth penitent, but terrible, to conquer pure woman by his resistless power. Henry was anxious to be terrible, but had not got it in him. He was a good average Englishman, who had slipped. The really culpable point⁠—his faithlessness to Mrs. Wilcox⁠—never seemed to strike him. She longed to mention Mrs. Wilcox.

And bit by bit the story was told her. It was a very simple story. Ten years ago was the time, a garrison town in Cyprus the place. Now and then he asked her whether she could possibly forgive him, and she answered, “I have already forgiven you, Henry.” She chose her words carefully, and so saved him from panic. She played the girl, until he could rebuild his fortress and hide his soul from the world. When the butler came to clear away, Henry was in a very different mood⁠—asked the fellow what he was in such a hurry for, complained of the noise last night in the servants’ hall. Margaret looked intently at the butler. He, as a handsome young man, was faintly attractive to her as a woman⁠—an attraction so faint as scarcely to be perceptible, yet the skies would have fallen if she had mentioned it to Henry.

On her return from the George the building operations were complete, and the old Henry fronted her, competent, cynical, and kind. He had made a clean breast, had been forgiven, and the great thing now was to forget his failure, and to send it the way of other unsuccessful investments. Jacky rejoined Howards End and Dude Street, and the vermilion motorcar, and the Argentine Hard Dollars, and all the things and people for whom he had never had much use and had less now. Their memory hampered him. He could scarcely attend to Margaret, who brought back disquieting news from the George. Helen and her clients had gone.

“Well, let them go⁠—the man and his wife, I mean, for the more we see of your sister the better.”

“But they have gone separately⁠—Helen very early, the Basts just before I arrived. They have left no message. They have answered neither of my notes. I don’t like to think what it all means.”

“What did you say in the notes?”

“I