霍华德庄园 英文版 Howards End
爱德华.摩根.福斯特 Edward Morgan Forster
Chapter 27
Helen began to wonder why she had spent a matter of eightpounds in making some people ill and others angry. Now thatthe wave of excitement was ebbing, and had left her, Mr.Bast, and Mrs. Bast stranded for the night in a Shropshirehotel, she asked herself what forces had made the waveflow. At all events, no harm was done. Margaret would playthe game properly now, and though Helen disapproved of hersister's methods, she knew that the Basts would benefit bythem in the long run.
"Mr. Wilcox is so illogical," she explained to Leonard,who had put his wife to bed, and was sitting with her in theempty coffee-room. "If we told him it was his duty to takeyou on, he might refuse to do it. The fact is, he isn'tproperly educated. I don't want to set you against him, butyou'll find him a trial."
"I can never thank you sufficiently, Miss Schlegel," wasall that Leonard felt equal to.
"I believe in personal responsibility. Don't you? Andin personal everything. I hate--I suppose I oughtn't to saythat--but the Wilcoxes are on the wrong tack surely. Orperhaps it isn't their fault. Perhaps the little thing thatsays 'I' is missing out of the middle of their heads, andthen it's a waste of time to blame them. There's anightmare of a theory that says a special race is being bornwhich will rule the rest of us in the future just because itlacks the little thing that says 'I.' Had you heard that?"
"I get no time for reading."
"Had you thought it, then? That there are two kinds ofpeople--our kind, who live straight from the middle of theirheads, and the other kind who can't, because their headshave no middle? They can't say 'I.' They AREN'T in fact,and so they're supermen. Pierpont Morgan has never said 'I'in his life."
Leonard roused himself. If his benefactress wantedintellectual conversation, she must have it. She was moreimportant than his ruined past. "I never got on toNietzsche," he said. "But I always understood that thosesupermen were rather what you may call egoists."
"Oh, no, that's wrong," replied Helen. "No supermanever said 'I want,' because 'I want' must lead to thequestion, 'Who am I?' and so to Pity and to Justice. Heonly says 'want.' 'Want Europe,' if he's Napoleon; 'wantwives,' if he's Bluebeard; 'want Botticelli,' if he'sPierpont Morgan. Never the 'I'; and if you could piercethrough him, you'd find panic and emptiness in the middle."
Leonard was silent for a moment. Then he said: "May Itake it, Miss Schlegel, that you and I are both the sortthat say 'I'?"
"Of course."
"And your sister too?"
"Of course," repeated Helen, a little sharply. She wasannoyed with Margaret, but did not want her discussed. "Allpresentable people say 'I.'"
"But Mr. Wilcox--he is not perhaps--"
"I don't know that it's any good discussing Mr. Wilcox either."
"Quite so, quite so," he agreed. Helen asked herselfwhy she had snubbed him. Once or twice during the day shehad encouraged him to criticize, and then had pulled him upshort. Was she afraid of him presuming? If so, it wasdisgusting of her.
But he was thinking the snub quite natural. Everythingshe did was natural, and incapable of causing offence.While the Miss Schlegels were together he had felt themscarcely human--a sort of admonitory whirligig. But a MissSchlegel alone was different. She was in Helen's caseunmarried, in Margaret's about to be married, in neithercase an echo of her sister. A light had fallen at last intothis rich upper world, and he saw that it was full of menand women, some of whom were more friendly to him thanothers. Helen had become "his" Miss Schlegel, who scoldedhim and corresponded with him, and had swept down yesterdaywith grateful vehemence. Margaret, though not unkind, wassevere and remote. He would not presume to help her, forinstance. He had never liked her, and began to think thathis original impression was true, and that her sister didnot like her either. Helen was certainly lonely. She, whogave away so much, was receiving too little. Leonard waspleased to think that he could spare her vexation by holdinghis tongue and concealing what he knew about Mr. Wilcox.Jacky had announced her discovery when he fetched her fromthe lawn. After the first shock, he did not mind forhimself. By now he had no illusions about his wife, andthis was only one new stain on the face of a love that hadnever been pure. To keep perfection perfect, that should behis ideal, if the future gave him time to have ideals.Helen, and Margaret for Helen's sake, must not know.
Helen disconcerted him by fuming the conversation to hiswife. "Mrs. Bast--does she ever say 'I'?" she asked, halfmischievously, and then, "Is she very tired?"
"It's better she stops in her room," said Leonard.
"Shall I sit up with her?"
"No, thank you; she does not need company."
and remote. He would not presume to help .
"Mr. Bast, what kind of woman is your wife?"
Leonard blushed up to his eyes.
"You ought to know my ways by now. Does that questionoffend you?"
"No, oh no, Miss Schlegel, no."
"Because I love honesty. Don't pretend your marriagehas been a happy one. You and she can have nothing in common."
not of the idea of Death.
He did not deny it, but said shyly: "I suppose that'spretty obvious; but Jacky never meant to do anybody anyharm. When things went wrong, or I heard things, I used tothink it was her fault, but, looking back, it's more mine.I needn't have married her, but as I have I must stick toher and keep her."
"How long have you been married?"
"Nearly three years."
"What did your people say?"
"They will not have anything to do with us. They had asort of family council when they heard I was married, andcut us off altogether."
Helen began to pace up and down the room. "My good boy,what a mess!" she said gently. "Who are your people?"
He could answer this. His parents, who were dead, hadbeen in trade; his sisters had married commercialtravellers; his brother was a lay-reader.
"And your grandparents?"
Leonard told her a secret that he had held shameful upto now. "They were just nothing at all," he said,"--agricultural labourers and that sort."
"So! From which part?"
"Lincolnshire mostly, but my mother's father--he, oddlyenough, came from these parts round here."
"From this very Shropshire. Yes, that is odd. Mymother's people were Lancashire. But why do your brotherand your sisters object to Mrs. Bast?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"Excuse me, you do know. I am not a baby. I can bearanything you tell me, and the more you tell the more I shallbe able to help. Have they heard anything against her?"
He was silent.
"I think I have guessed now," said Helen very gravely.
"I don't think so, Miss Schlegel; I hope not."
"We must be honest, even over these things. I haveguessed. I am frightfully, dreadfully sorry, but it doesnot make the least difference to me. I shall feel just thesame to both of you. I blame, not your wife for thesethings, but men."
Leonard left it at that--so long as she did not guessthe man. She stood at the window and slowly pulled up theblinds. The hotel looked over a dark square. The mists hadbegun. When she turned back to him her eyes were shining.
"Don't you worry," he pleaded. "I can't bear that. Weshall be all right if I get work. If I could only getwork--something regular to do. Then it wouldn't be so badagain. I don't trouble after books as I used. I canimagine that with regular work we should settle down again.It stops one thinking. "
"Settle down to what?"
"Oh, just settle down."
"And that's to be life!" said Helen, with a catch in herthroat. "How can you, with all the beautiful things to seeand do--with music--with walking at night--"
"Walking is well enough when a man's in work," heanswered. "Oh, I did talk a lot of nonsense once, butthere's nothing like a bailiff in the house to drive it outof you. When I saw him fingering my Ruskins and Stevensons,I seemed to see life straight real, and it isn't a prettysight. My books are back again, thanks to you, but they'llnever be the same to me again, and I shan't ever again thinknight in the woods is wonderful."
"Why not?" asked Helen, throwing up the window.
"Because I see one must have money."
"Well, you're wrong."
"I wish I was wrong, but--the clergyman--he has money ofhis own, or else he's paid; the poet or the musician--justthe same; the tramp--he's no different. The tramp goes tothe workhouse in the end, and is paid for with otherpeople's money. Miss Schlegel, the real thing's money andall the rest is a dream."
"You're still wrong. You've forgotten Death."
Leonard could not understand.
"If we lived for ever what you say would be true. Butwe have to die, we have to leave life presently. Injusticeand greed would be the real thing if we lived for ever. Asit is, we must hold to other things, because Death iscoming. I love Death--not morbidly, but because Heexplains. He shows me the emptiness of Money. Death andMoney are the eternal foes. Not Death and Life. Never mindwhat lies behind Death, Mr. Bast, but be sure that the poetand the musician and the tramp will be happier in it thanthe man who has never learnt to say, 'I am I.'"
"I wonder."
"We are all in a mist--I know but I can help you thisfar--men like the Wilcoxes are deeper in the mist than any.Sane, sound Englishmen! building up empires, levelling allthe world into what they call common sense. But mentionDeath to them and they're offended, because Death's reallyImperial, and He cries out against them for ever."
"I am as afraid of Death as any one."
"But not of the idea of Death."
"But what is the difference?"
"Infinite difference," said Helen, more gravely than before.
Leonard looked at her wondering, and had the sense ofgreat things sweeping out of the shrouded night. But hecould not receive them, because his heart was still full oflittle things. As the lost umbrella had spoilt the concertat Queen's Hall, so the lost situation was obscuring thediviner harmonies now. Death, Life and Materialism werefine words, but would Mr. Wilcox take him on as a clerk?Talk as one would, Mr. Wilcox was king of this world, thesuperman, with his own morality, whose head remained in the clouds.
"I must be stupid," he said apologetically.
While to Helen the paradox became clearer and clearer."Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him." Behindthe coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind liessomething so immense that all that is great in us respondsto it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-housethat they will one day enter, but Love knows better. Deathis his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle thethews of Love have been strengthened, and his visioncleared, until there is no one who can stand against him.
"So never give in," continued the girl, and restatedagain and again the vague yet convincing plea that theInvisible lodges against the Visible. Her excitement grewas she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to theearth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her.Presently the waitress entered and gave her a letter fromMargaret. Another note, addressed to Leonard, was inside.They read them, listening to the murmurings of the river.