霍华德庄园 英文版 Howards End
爱德华.摩根.福斯特 Edward Morgan Forster
Chapter 4
Helen and her aunt returned to Wickham Place in a state ofcollapse, and for a little time Margaret had three invalidson her hands. Mrs. Munt soon recovered. She possessed to aremarkable degree the power of distorting the past, andbefore many days were over she had forgotten the part playedby her own imprudence in the catastrophe. Even at thecrisis she had cried, "Thank goodness, poor Margaret issaved this!" which during the journey to London evolvedinto, "It had to be gone through by someone," which in itsturn ripened into the permanent form of "The one time Ireally did help Emily's girls was over the Wilcoxbusiness." But Helen was a more serious patient. New ideashad burst upon her like a thunder clap, and by them and byher reverberations she had been stunned.
The truth was that she had fallen in love, not with anindividual, but with a family.
Before Paul arrived she had, as it were, been tuned upinto his key. The energy of the Wilcoxes had fascinatedher, had created new images of beauty in her responsivemind. To be all day with them in the open air, to sleep atnight under their roof, had seemed the supreme joy of life,and had led to that abandonment of personality that is apossible prelude to love. She had liked giving in to Mr.Wilcox, or Evie, or Charles; she had liked being told thather notions of life were sheltered or academic; thatEquality was nonsense, Votes for Women nonsense, Socialismnonsense, Art and Literature, except when conducive tostrengthening the character, nonsense. One by one theSchlegel fetiches had been overthrown, and, thoughprofessing to defend them, she had rejoiced. When Mr.Wilcox said that one sound man of business did more good tothe world than a dozen of your social reformers, she hadswallowed the curious assertion without a gasp, and hadleant back luxuriously among the cushions of his motor-car.When Charles said, "Why be so polite to servants? theydon't understand it," she had not given the Schlegel retortof, "If they don't understand it, I do." No; she had vowedto be less polite to servants in the future. "I am swathedin cant," she thought, "and it is good for me to be strippedof it." And all that she thought or did or breathed was aquiet preparation for Paul. Paul was inevitable. Charleswas taken up with another girl, Mr. Wilcox was so old, Evieso young, Mrs. Wilcox so different. Round the absentbrother she began to throw the halo of Romance, to irradiatehim with all the splendour of those happy days, to feel thatin him she should draw nearest to the robust ideal. He andshe were about the same age, Evie said. Most people thoughtPaul handsomer than his brother. He was certainly a bettershot, though not so good at golf. And when Paul appeared,flushed with the triumph of getting through an examination,and ready to flirt with any pretty girl, Helen met himhalfway, or more than halfway, and turned towards him on theSunday evening.
He had been talking of his approaching exile in Nigeria,and he should have continued to talk of it, and allowedtheir guest to recover. But the heave of her bosomflattered him. Passion was possible, and he becamepassionate. Deep down in him something whispered, "Thisgirl would let you kiss her; you might not have such achance again."
That was "how it happened," or, rather, how Helendescribed it to her sister, using words even moreunsympathetic than my own. But the poetry of that kiss, thewonder of it, the magic that there was in life for hoursafter it--who can describe that? It is so easy for anEnglishman to sneer at these chance collisions of humanbeings. To the insular cynic and the insular moralist theyoffer an equal opportunity. It is so easy to talk of"passing emotion," and how to forget how vivid the emotionwas ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is atroot a good one. We recognize that emotion is not enough,and that men and women are personalities capable ofsustained relations, not mere opportunities for anelectrical discharge. Yet we rate the impulse too highly.We do not admit that by collisions of this trivial sort thedoors of heaven may be shaken open. To Helen, at allevents, her life was to bring nothing more intense than theembrace of this boy who played no part in it. He had drawnher out of the house, where there was danger of surprise andlight; he had led her by a path he knew, until they stoodunder the column of the vast wych-elm. A man in thedarkness, he had whispered "I love you" when she wasdesiring love. In time his slender personality faded, thescene that he had evoked endured. In all the variable yearsthat followed she never saw the like of it again.
"I understand," said Margaret--"at least, I understandas much as ever is understood of these things. Tell me nowwhat happened on the Monday morning."
"It was over at once."
"How, Helen?"
she must have overheard you."think that. The Wilcoxes struck me as beinggenuine.
"I was still happy while I dressed, but as I camedownstairs I got nervous, and when I went into thedining-room I knew it was no good. There was Evie--I can'texplain--managing the tea-urn, and Mr. Wilcox reading theTIMES."
"Was Paul there?"
"Yes; and Charles was talking to him about Stocks andShares, and he looked frightened."
By slight indications the sisters could convey much toeach other. Margaret saw horror latent in the scene, andHelen's next remark did not surprise her.
"Somehow, when that kind of man looks frightened it istoo awful. It is all right for us to be frightened, or formen of another sort--father, for instance; but for men likethat! When I saw all the others so placid, and Paul madwith terror in case I said the wrong thing, I felt for amoment that the whole Wilcox family was a fraud, just a wallof newspapers and motor-cars and golf-clubs, and that if itfell I should find nothing behind it but panic andemptiness. "
"I don't think that. The Wilcoxes struck me as beinggenuine people, particularly the wife."
"No, I don't really think that. But Paul was sobroad-shouldered; all kinds of extraordinary things made itworse, and I knew that it would never do--never. I said tohim after breakfast, when the others were practisingstrokes, 'We rather lost our heads,' and he looked better atonce, though frightfully ashamed. He began a speech abouthaving no money to marry on, but it hurt him to make it, andI--stopped him. Then he said, 'I must beg your pardon overthis, Miss Schlegel; I can't think what came over me lastnight.' And I said, 'Nor what over me; never mind.' And thenwe parted--at least, until I remembered that I had writtenstraight off to tell you the night before, and thatfrightened him again. I asked him to send a telegram forme, for he knew you would be coming or something; and hetried to get hold of the motor, but Charles and Mr. Wilcoxwanted it to go to the station; and Charles offered to sendthe telegram for me, and then I had to say that the telegramwas of no consequence, for Paul said Charles might read it,and though I wrote it out several times, he always saidpeople would suspect something. He took it himself at last,pretending that he must walk down to get cartridges, and,what with one thing and the other, it was not handed in atthe Post Office until too late. It was the most terriblemorning. Paul disliked me more and more, and Evie talkedcricket averages till I nearly screamed. I cannot think howI stood her all the other days. At last Charles and hisfather started for the station, and then came your telegramwarning me that Aunt Juley was coming by that train, andPaul--oh, rather horrible--said that I had muddled it. ButMrs. Wilcox knew."
"Knew what?"
"Everything; though we neither of us told her a word,and had known all along, I think."
"Oh, she must have overheard you."
"I suppose so, but it seemed wonderful. When Charles andAunt Juley drove up, calling each other names, Mrs. Wilcoxstepped in from the garden and made everything lessterrible. Ugh! but it has been a disgusting business. Tothink that--" She sighed.
"To think that because you and a young man meet for amoment, there must be all these telegrams and anger,"supplied Margaret.
Helen nodded.
"I've often thought about it, Helen. It's one of themost interesting things in the world. The truth is thatthere is a great outer life that you and I have nevertouched--a life in which telegrams and anger count.Personal relations, that we think supreme, are not supremethere. There love means marriage settlements, death, deathduties. So far I'm clear. But here my difficulty. Thisouter life, though obviously horrid, often seems the realone--there's grit in it. It does breed character. Dopersonal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?"
"Oh, Meg, that's what I felt, only not so clearly, whenthe Wilcoxes were so competent, and seemed to have theirhands on all the ropes. "
"Don't you feel it now?"
"Amen!"
So the Wilcox episode fell into the background, leavingbehind it memories of sweetness and horror that mingled, andthe sisters pursued the life that Helen had commended. Theytalked to each other and to other people, they filled thetall thin house at Wickham Place with those whom they likedor could befriend. They even attended public meetings. Intheir own fashion they cared deeply about politics, thoughnot as politicians would have us care; they desired thatpublic life should mirror whatever is good in the lifewithin. Temperance, tolerance, and sexual equality wereintelligible cries to them; whereas they did not follow ourForward Policy in Thibet with the keen attention that itmerits, and would at times dismiss the whole British Empirewith a puzzled, if reverent, sigh. Not out of them are theshows of history erected: the world would be a grey,bloodless place were it entirely composed of MissSchlegels. But the world being what it is, perhaps theyshine out in it like stars.
A word on their origin. They were not "English to thebackbone," as their aunt had piously asserted. But, on theother band, they were not "Germans of the dreadful sort."Their father had belonged to a type that was more prominentin Germany fifty years ago than now. He was not theaggressive German, so dear to the English journalist, northe domestic German, so dear to the English wit. If oneclassed him at all it would be as the countryman of Hegeland Kant, as the idealist, inclined to be dreamy, whoseImperialism was the Imperialism of the air. Not that hislife had been inactive. He had fought like blazes againstDenmark, Austria, France. But he had fought withoutvisualizing the results of victory. A hint of the truthbroke on him after Sedan, when he saw the dyed moustaches ofNapoleon going grey; another when he entered Paris, and sawthe smashed windows of the Tuileries. Peace came--it wasall very immense, one had turned into an Empire--but he knewthat some quality had vanished for which not allAlsace-Lorraine could compensate him. Germany a commercialPower, Germany a naval Power, Germany with colonies here anda Forward Policy there, and legitimate aspirations in theother place, might appeal to others, and be fitly served bythem; for his own part, he abstained from the fruits ofvictory, and naturalized himself in England. The moreearnest members of his family never forgave him, and knewthat his children, though scarcely English of the dreadfulsort, would never be German to the backbone. He hadobtained work in one of our provincial Universities, andthere married Poor Emily (or Die Englanderin as the case maybe), and as she had money, they proceeded to London, andcame to know a good many people. But his gaze was alwaysfixed beyond the sea. It was his hope that the clouds ofmaterialism obscuring the Fatherland would part in time, andthe mild intellectual light re-emerge. "Do you imply thatwe Germans are stupid, Uncle Ernst?" exclaimed a haughty andmagnificent nephew. Uncle Ernst replied, "To my mind. Youuse the intellect, but you no longer care about it. That Icall stupidity." As the haughty nephew did not follow, hecontinued, "You only care about the' things that you canuse, and therefore arrange them in the following order:Money, supremely useful; intellect, rather useful;imagination, of no use at all. No"--for the other hadprotested--"your Pan-Germanism is no more imaginative thanis our Imperialism over here. It is the vice of a vulgarmind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousandsquare miles are a thousand times more wonderful than onesquare mile, and that a million square miles are almost thesame as heaven. That is not imagination. No, it kills it.When their poets over here try to celebrate bigness they aredead at once, and naturally. Your poets too are dying, yourphilosophers, your musicians, to whom Europe has listenedfor two hundred years. Gone. Gone with the little courtsthat nurtured them--gone with Esterhaz and Weimar. What?What's that? Your Universities? Oh, yes, you have learnedmen, who collect more facts than do the learned men ofEngland. They collect facts, and facts, and empires offacts. But which of them will rekindle the light within?"
To all this Margaret listened, sitting on the haughtynephew's knee.
It was a unique education for the little girls. Thehaughty nephew would be at Wickham Place one day, bringingwith him an even haughtier wife, both convinced that Germanywas appointed by God to govern the world. Aunt Juley wouldcome the next day, convinced that Great Britain had beenappointed to the same post by the same authority. Were boththese loud-voiced parties right? On one occasion they hadmet, and Margaret with clasped hands had implored them toargue the subject out in her presence. Whereat theyblushed, and began to talk about the weather. "Papa" shecried--she was a most offensive child--"why will they notdiscuss this most clear question?" Her father, surveyingthe parties grimly, replied that he did not know. Puttingher head on one side, Margaret then remarked, "To me one oftwo things is very clear; either God does not know his ownmind about England and Germany, or else these do not knowthe mind of God." A hateful little girl, but at thirteen shehad grasped a dilemma that most people travel through lifewithout perceiving. Her brain darted up and down; it grewpliant and strong. Her conclusion was, that any human beinglies nearer to the unseen than any organization, and fromthis she never varied.
Helen advanced along the same lines, though with a moreirresponsible tread. In character she resembled her sister,but she was pretty, and so apt to have a more amusing time.People gathered round her more readily, especially when theywere new acquaintances, and she did enjoy a little homagevery much. When their father died and they ruled alone atWickham Place, she often absorbed the whole of the company,while Margaret--both were tremendous talkers--fell flat.Neither sister bothered about this. Helen never apologizedafterwards, Margaret did not feel the slightest rancour.But looks have their influence upon character. The sisterswere alike as little girls, but at the time of the Wilcoxepisode their methods were beginning to diverge; the youngerwas rather apt to entice people, and, in enticing them, tobe herself enticed; the elder went straight ahead, andaccepted an occasional failure as part of the game.
Little need be premised about Tibby. He was now anintelligent man of sixteen, but dyspeptic and difficile.