Here Mr. Wilcox reached them. It was several weeks since they had met.
“How do you do?” he cried. “I thought I recognized your voices. Whatever are you both doing down here?”
His tones were protective. He implied that one ought not to sit out on Chelsea Embankment without a male escort. Helen resented this, but Margaret accepted it as part of the good man’s equipment.
“What an age it is since I’ve seen you, Mr. Wilcox. I met Evie in the tube, though, lately. I hope you have good news of your son.”
“Paul?” said Mr. Wilcox, extinguishing his cigarette and sitting down between them. “Oh, Paul’s all right. We had a line from Madeira. He’ll be at work again by now.”
“Ugh—” said Helen, shuddering from complex causes.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Isn’t the climate of Nigeria too horrible?”
“Someone’s got to go,” he said simply. “England will never keep her trade overseas unless she is prepared to make sacrifices. Unless we get firm in West Africa, Ger—untold complications may follow. Now tell me all your news.”
“Oh, we’ve had a splendid evening,” cried Helen, who always woke up at the advent of a visitor. “We belong to a kind of club that reads papers, Margaret and I—all women, but there is a discussion after. This evening it was on how one ought to leave one’s money—whether to one’s family, or to the poor, and if so how—oh, most interesting.”
The man of business smiled. Since his wife’s death he had almost doubled his income. He was an important figure at last, a reassuring name on company prospectuses, and life had treated him very well. The world seemed in his grasp as he listened to the River Thames, which still flowed inland from the sea. So wonderful to the girls, it held no mysteries for him. He had helped to shorten its long tidal trough by taking shares in the lock at Teddington, and if he and other capitalists thought good, some day it could be shortened again. With a good dinner inside him and an amiable but academic woman on either flank, he felt that his hands were on all the ropes of life, and that what he did not know could not be worth knowing.
“Sounds a most original entertainment!” he exclaimed, and laughed in his pleasant way. “I wish Evie would go to that sort of thing. But she hasn’t the time. She’s taken to breeding Aberdeen terriers—jolly little dogs.”
“I expect we’d better be doing the same, really.”
“We pretend we’re improving ourselves, you see,” said Helen a little sharply, for the Wilcox glamour is not of the kind that returns, and she had bitter memories of the days when a speech such as he had just made would have impressed her favourably. “We suppose it is a good thing to waste an evening once a fortnight over a debate, but, as my sister says, it may be better to breed dogs.”
“Not at all. I don’t agree with your sister. There’s nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.”
“Quickness—?”
“Yes. Quickness in argument. Time after time I’ve missed scoring a point because the other man has had the gift of the gab and I haven’t. Oh, I believe in these discussions.”
The patronizing tone, thought Margaret, came well enough from a man who was old enough to be their father. She had always maintained that Mr. Wilcox had a charm. In times of sorrow or emotion his inadequacy had pained her, but it was pleasant to listen to him now; and to watch his thick brown moustache and high forehead confronting the stars. But Helen was nettled. The aim of their debates, she implied, was truth.
“Oh yes, it doesn’t much matter what subject you take,” said he.
Margaret laughed and said: “But this is going to be far better than the debate itself.”
Helen recovered herself and laughed too. “No I won’t go on,” she declared. “I’ll just put our special case to Mr. Wilcox.”
“About Mr. Bast? Yes, do. He’ll be more lenient to a special case.”
“But, Mr. Wilcox, do first light another cigarette. It’s this. We’ve just come across a young fellow who’s evidently very poor, and who seems interest—”
“What’s his profession?”
“Clerk.”
“What in?”
“Do you remember, Margaret?”
“Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company.”
“Oh yes; the nice people who gave Aunt Juley a new hearth-rug. He seems interesting, in some ways very, and one wishes one could help him. He is married to a wife whom he doesn’t seem to care for much. He likes books, and what one may roughly call adventure, and if he had a chance—But he is so poor. He lives a life where all the money is apt to go on nonsense and clothes. One is so afraid that circumstances will be too strong for him and that he will sink. Well, he got mixed up in our debate. He wasn’t the subject of it, but it seemed to bear on his point. Suppose a millionaire died, and desired to leave money to help such a man. How should he be helped? Should he be given three hundred pounds a year direct, which was Margaret’s plan? Most of them thought this would pauperize him. Should he and those like him be given free libraries? I said ‘No!’ He doesn’t want more books to read, but to read books rightly. My suggestion was he should be given something every year towards a summer holiday, but then there is his wife, and they said she would have to go too. Nothing seemed quite right! Now, what do you think? Imagine that you were a millionaire, and wanted to help the poor. What would you do?”
Mr. Wilcox, whose fortune was not so very far below the standard indicated, laughed exuberantly. “My dear Miss Schlegel, I will not rush in where your sex has been unable to tread. I will not add another plan to the numerous excellent ones that have been already suggested. My only contribution is this: let your young friend clear out of the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company with all possible speed.”
“Why?” said Margaret.
He lowered his voice. “This is between friends. It’ll be in the receiver’s hands before Christmas. It’ll smash,” he added, thinking that she had not understood.
“Dear me, Helen, listen to that. And he’ll have to get another place!”
“Will have? Let him leave the ship before it sinks. Let him get one now.”
“Rather than wait, to make sure?”
“Decidedly.”
“Why’s that?”
Again the Olympian laugh, and the lowered voice. “Naturally the man who’s in a situation when he applies stands a better chance, is in a stronger position, than the man who isn’t. It looks as if he’s worth something. I know by myself—(this is letting you into the State secrets)—it affects an employer greatly. Human nature, I’m afraid.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” murmured Margaret, while Helen said: “Our human nature appears to be the other way round. We employ people because they’re unemployed. The boot man, for instance. ”
“And how does he clean the boots?”
“Not well,” confessed Margaret.
“There you are!”
“Then do you really advise us to tell this youth—”
“I advise nothing,” he interrupted, glancing up and down the Embankment, in case his indiscretion had been overheard. “I oughtn’t to have spoken—but I happen to know, being more or less behind the scenes. The Porphyrion’s a bad, bad concern. Now, don’t say I said so. It’s outside the Tariff Ring.”
“Certainly I won’t say. In fact, I don’t know what that means. ”
“I thought an insurance company never smashed,” was Helen’s contribution. “Don’t the others always run in and save them?”
“You’re thinking of reinsurance,” said Mr. Wilcox mildly. “It is exactly there that the Porphyrion is weak. It has tried to undercut, has been badly hit by a long series of small fires, and it hasn’t been able to reinsure. I’m afraid that public companies don’t save one another for love.”
“ ‘Human nature,’ I suppose,” quoted Helen, and he laughed and agreed that it was. When Margaret said that she supposed that clerks,
like everyone else, found it extremely difficult to get situations in these days, he replied: “Yes, extremely,” and rose to rejoin his friends. He knew by his own office—seldom a vacant post, and hundreds of applicants for it; at present no vacant post.
“And how’s Howards End looking?” said Margaret, wishing to change the subject before they parted. Mr. Wilcox was a little apt to think one wanted to get something out of him.
“It’s let.”
“Really. And you wandering homeless in long-haired Chelsea? How strange are the ways of fate!”
“No; it’s let unfurnished. We’ve moved.”
“Why, I thought of you both as anchored there for ever. Evie never told me.”
“I dare say when you met Evie the thing wasn’t settled. We only moved a week ago. Paul has rather a feeling for the old place, and we held on for him to have his holiday there; but, really, it is impossibly small. Endless drawbacks. I forget whether you’ve been up to it?”
“As far as the house, never.”
“Well, Howards End is one of those converted farms. They don’t really do, spend what you will on them. We messed away with a garage all among the wych-elm roots, and last year we enclosed a bit of the meadow and attempted a rockery. Evie got rather keen on Alpine plants. But it didn’t do—no, it didn’t do. You remember, or your sister will remember, the farm with those abominable guinea-fowls, and the hedge that the old woman never would cut properly, so that it all went thin at the bottom. And, inside the house, the beams—and the stair-case through a door—picturesque enough, but not a place to live in.” He glanced over the parapet cheerfully. “Full tide. And the position wasn’t right either. The neighbourhood’s getting suburban. Either be in London or out of it, I say; so we’ve taken a house in Ducie Street, close to Sloane Street, and a place right down in Shropshire—Oniton Grange. Ever heard of Oniton? Do come and see us—right away from everywhere, up towards Wales.”
“What a change!” said Margaret. But the change was in her own voice, which had become most sad. “I can’t imagine Howards End or Hilton without you.”
“Hilton isn’t without us,” he replied. “Charles is there still.”
“Still?” said Margaret, who had not kept up with the Charleses. “But I thought he was still at Epsom. They were furnishing that Christmas—one Christmas. How everything alters! I used to admire Mrs. Charles from our windows very often. Wasn’t it Epsom?”
“Yes, but they moved eighteen months ago. Charles, the good chap”—his voice dropped—“thought I should be lonely. I didn’t want him to move, but he would, and took a house at the other end of Hilton, down by the Six Hills. He had a motor, too. There they all are, a very jolly party—he and she and the two grandchildren.”
“I manage other people’s affairs so much better than they manage them themselves,” said Margaret as they shook hands. “When you moved out of Howards End, I should have moved Mr. Charles Wilcox into it. I should have kept so remarkable a place in the family.”
“So it is,” he replied. “I haven’t sold it, and don’t mean to.”
“No; but none of you are there.”
“Oh, we’ve got a splendid tenant—Hamar Bryce, an invalid. If Charles ever wanted it—but he won’t. Dolly is so dependent on modem conveniences. No, we have all decided against Howards End. We like it in a way, but now we feel that it is neither one thing nor the other. One must have one thing or the other.”
“And some people are lucky enough to have both. You’re doing yourself proud, Mr. Wilcox. My congratulations.”
“And mine,” said Helen.
“Do remind Evie to come and see us—two, Wickham Place. We shan’t be there very long, either.”
“You, too, on the move?”
“Next September,” Margaret sighed.
“Everyone moving! Good-bye.”
The tide had begun to ebb. Margaret leant over the parapet and watched it sadly. Mr. Wilcox had forgotten his wife, Helen her lover; she herself was probably forgetting. Everyone moving. Is it worth while attempting the past when there is this continual flux even in the hearts of men?
Helen roused her by saying: “What a prosperous vulgarian Mr. Wilcox has grown! I have very little use for him in these days. However, he did tell us about the Porphyrion. Let us write to Mr. Bast as soon as ever we get home, and tell him to clear out of it at once.”
“Do; yes, that’s worth doing. Let us.”
“Let’s ask him to tea.”
Chapter XVI
Leonard accepted the invitation to tea next Saturday. But he was right; the visit proved a conspicuous failure.
“Sugar?” said Margaret.
“Cake?” said Helen. “The big cake or the little deadlies? I’m afraid you thought my letter rather odd, but we’ll explain—we aren’t odd, really—nor affected, really. We’re over-expressive: that’s all.”
As a lady’s lap-dog Leonard did not excel. He was not an Italian, still less a Frenchman, in whose blood there runs the very spirit of persiflage and of gracious repartee. His wit was the Cockney’s; it opened no doors into imagination, and Helen was drawn up short by “The more a lady has to say, the better,” administered waggishly.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“Ladies brighten—”
“Yes, I know. The darlings are regular sunbeams. Let me give you a plate.”
“How do you like your work?” interposed Margaret.
He, too, was drawn up short. He would not have these women prying into his work. They were Romance, and so was the room to which he had at last penetrated, with the queer sketches of people bathing upon its walls, and so were the very tea-cups, with their delicate borders of wild strawberries. But he would not let Romance interfere with his life. There is the devil to pay then.
“Oh, well enough,” he answered.
“Your company is the Porphyrion, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s so”—becoming rather offended. “It’s funny how things get round.”
“Why funny?” asked Helen, who did not follow the workings of his mind. “It was written as large as life on your card, and considering we wrote to you there, and that you replied on the stamped paper—”
“Would you call the Porphyrion one of the big Insurance Companies?” pursued Margaret.
“It depends what you call big.”
“I mean by big, a solid, well-established concern that offers a reasonably good career to its employés.”
“I couldn’t say—some would tell you one thing and others another,” said the employé uneasily. “For my own part”—he shook his head—“I only believe half I hear. Not that even; it’s safer. Those clever ones come to the worse grief, I’ve often noticed. Ah, you can’t be too careful.”
He drank, and wiped his moustache, which was going to be one of those moustaches that always droop into tea-cups—more bother than they’re worth, surely, and not fashionable either.
“I quite agree, and that’s why I was curious to know: is it a solid, well-established concern?”
Leonard had no idea. He understood his own comer of the machine, but nothing beyond it. He desired to confess neither knowledge nor ignorance, and under these circumstances, another motion of the head seemed safest. To him, as to the British public, the Porphyrion was the Porphyrion of the advertisement—a giant, in the classical style, but draped sufficiently, who held in one hand a burning torch, and pointed with the other to St. Paul’s and Windsor Castle. A large sum of money was inscribed below, and you drew your own conclusions. This giant caused Leonard to do arithmetic and write letters, to explain the regulations to new clients, and re-explain them to old ones. A giant was of an impulsive morality—one knew that much. He would pay for Mrs. Munt’s hearth-rug with ostentatious haste, a large claim he would repudiate quietly and fight court by court. But his true fighting weight, his antecedents, his amours with other members of the commercial Pantheon—all these were as uncertain to ordinary mortals as were the escapades of Zeus. While the god
s are powerful, we learn little about them. It is only in the days of their decadence that a strong light beats into heaven.
“We were told the Porphyrion’s no go,” blurted Helen. “We wanted to tell you; that’s why we wrote.”
“A friend of ours did think that it is unsufficiently reinsured,” said Margaret.
Now Leonard had his clue. He must praise the Porphyrion. “You can tell your friend,” he said, “that he’s quite wrong.”
“Oh, good!”
The young man coloured a little. In his circle to be wrong was fatal. The Miss Schlegels did not mind being wrong. They were genuinely glad that they had been misinformed. To them nothing was fatal but evil.
“Wrong, so to speak,” he added.
“How’s ‘so to speak’?”
“I mean I wouldn’t say he’s right altogether.”
But this was a blunder. “Then he is right partly,” said the elder woman, quick as lightning.
Leonard replied that everyone was right partly, if it came to that.
“Mr. Bast, I don’t understand business, and I dare say my questions are stupid, but can you tell me what makes a concern ‘right’ or ’wrong‘?”
Leonard sat back with a sigh.
“Our friend, who is also a business man, was so positive. He said before Christmas—”
“And advised you to clear out of it,” concluded Helen. “But I don’t see why he should know better than you do.”
Leonard rubbed his hands. He was tempted to say that he knew nothing about the thing at all. But a commercial training was too strong for him. Nor could he say it was a bad thing, for this would be giving it away; nor yet that it was good, for this would be giving it away equally. He attempted to suggest that it was something between the two, with vast possibilities in either direction, but broke down under the gaze of four sincere eyes. As yet he scarcely distinguished between the two sisters. One was more beautiful and more lively, but “the Miss Schlegels” still remained a composite Indian god whose waving arms and contradictory speeches were the product of a single mind.