"There"s nothing rash to do."
"Who ARE the Wilc.o.xes?" said Tibby, a question that sounds silly, but was really extremely subtle as his aunt found to her cost when she tried to answer it. "I don"t MANAGE the Wilc.o.xes; I don"t see where they come IN."
"No more do I," agreed Helen. "It"s funny that we just don"t lose sight of them. Out of all our hotel acquaintances, Mr. Wilc.o.x is the only one who has stuck. It is now over three years, and we have drifted away from far more interesting people in that time."
"Interesting people don"t get one houses."
"Meg, if you start in your honest-English vein, I shall throw the treacle at you."
"It"s a better vein than the cosmopolitan," said Margaret, getting up.
"Now, children, which is it to be? You know the Ducie Street house.
Shall I say yes or shall I say no? Tibby love--which? I"m specially anxious to pin you both."
"It all depends on what meaning you attach to the word "possible""
"It depends on nothing of the sort. Say "yes.""
"Say "no.""
Then Margaret spoke rather seriously. "I think," she said, "that our race is degenerating. We cannot settle even this little thing; what will it be like when we have to settle a big one?"
"It will be as easy as eating," returned Helen.
"I was thinking of father. How could he settle to leave Germany as he did, when he had fought for it as a young man, and all his feelings and friends were Prussian? How could he break loose with Patriotism and begin aiming at something else? It would have killed me. When he was nearly forty he could change countries and ideals--and we, at our age, can"t change houses. It"s humiliating."
"Your father may have been able to change countries," said Mrs. Munt with asperity, "and that may or may not be a good thing. But he could change houses no better than you can, in fact, much worse. Never shall I forget what poor Emily suffered in the move from Manchester."
"I knew it," cried Helen. "I told you so. It is the little things one bungles at. The big, real ones are nothing when they come."
"Bungle, my dear! You are too little to recollect--in fact, you weren"t there. But the furniture was actually in the vans and on the move before the lease for Wickham Place was signed, and Emily took train with baby--who was Margaret then--and the smaller luggage for London, without so much as knowing where her new home would be. Getting away from that house may be hard, but it is nothing to the misery that we all went through getting you into it."
Helen, with her mouth full, cried:
"And that"s the man who beat the Austrians, and the Danes, and the French, and who beat the Germans that were inside himself. And we"re like him."
"Speak for yourself," said Tibby. "Remember that I am cosmopolitan, please."
"Helen may be right."
"Of course she"s right," said Helen.
Helen might be right, but she did not go up to London. Margaret did that. An interrupted holiday is the worst of the minor worries, and one may be pardoned for feeling morbid when a business letter s.n.a.t.c.hes one away from the sea and friends. She could not believe that her father had ever felt the same. Her eyes had been troubling her lately, so that she could not read in the train and it bored her to look at the landscape, which she had seen but yesterday. At Southampton she "waved" to Frieda; Frieda was on her way down to join them at Swanage, and Mrs. Munt had calculated that their trains would cross. But Frieda was looking the other way, and Margaret travelled on to town feeling solitary and old-maidish. How like an old maid to fancy that Mr. Wilc.o.x was courting her! She had once visited a spinster--poor, silly, and unattractive--whose mania it was that every man who approached her fell in love. How Margaret"s heart had bled for the deluded thing! How she had lectured, reasoned, and in despair acquiesced! "I may have been deceived by the curate, my dear, but the young fellow who brings the midday post really is fond of me, and has, as a matter of fact--" It had always seemed to her the most hideous corner of old age, yet she might be driven into it herself by the mere pressure of virginity.
Mr. Wilc.o.x met her at Waterloo himself. She felt certain that he was not the same as usual; for one thing, he took offence at everything she said.
"This is awfully kind of you," she began, "but I"m afraid it"s not going to do. The house has not been built that suits the Schlegel family."
"What! Have you come up determined not to deal?"
"Not exactly."
"Not exactly? In that case let"s be starting."
She lingered to admire the motor, which was new, and a fairer creature than the vermilion giant that had borne Aunt Juley to her doom three years before.
"Presumably it"s very beautiful," she said. "How do you like it, Crane?"
"Come, let"s be starting," repeated her host. "How on earth did you know that my chauffeur was called Crane?"
"Why, I know Crane; I"ve been for a drive with Evie once. I know that you"ve got a parlourmaid called Milton. I know all sorts of things."
"Evie!" he echoed in injured tones. "You won"t see her. She"s gone out with Cahill. It"s no fun, I can tell you, being left so much alone. I"ve got my work all day--indeed, a great deal too much of it--but when I come home in the evening, I tell you, I can"t stand the house."
"In my absurd way, I"m lonely too," Margaret replied. "It"s heart-breaking to leave one"s old home. I scarcely remember anything before Wickham Place, and Helen and Tibby were born there. Helen says--"
"You, too, feel lonely?"
"Horribly. Hullo, Parliament"s back!"
Mr. Wilc.o.x glanced at Parliament contemptuously. The more important ropes of life lay elsewhere. "Yes, they are talking again," said he.
"But you were going to say--"
"Only some rubbish about furniture. Helen says it alone endures while men and houses perish, and that in the end the world will be a desert of chairs and sofas--just imagine it!--rolling through infinity with no one to sit upon them."
"Your sister always likes her little joke."
"She says "Yes," my brother says "No," to Ducie Street. It"s no fun helping us, Mr. Wilc.o.x, I a.s.sure you."
"You are not as unpractical as you pretend. I shall never believe it."
Margaret laughed. But she was--quite as unpractical. She could not concentrate on details. Parliament, the Thames, the irresponsive chauffeur, would flash into the field of house-hunting, and all demand some comment or response. It is impossible to see modern life steadily and see it whole, and she had chosen to see it whole. Mr. Wilc.o.x saw steadily. He never bothered over the mysterious or the private. The Thames might run inland from the sea, the chauffeur might conceal all pa.s.sion and philosophy beneath his unhealthy skin. They knew their own business, and he knew his.
Yet she liked being with him. He was not a rebuke, but a stimulus, and banished morbidity. Some twenty years her senior, he preserved a gift that she supposed herself to have already lost--not youth"s creative power, but its self-confidence and optimism. He was so sure that it was a very pleasant world. His complexion was robust, his hair had receded but not thinned, the thick moustache and the eyes that Helen had compared to brandy-b.a.l.l.s had an agreeable menace in them, whether they were turned towards the slums or towards the stars. Some day--in the millennium--there may be no need for his type. At present, homage is due to it from those who think themselves superior, and who possibly are.
"At all events you responded to my telegram promptly," he remarked.
"Oh, even I know a good thing when I see it."
"I"m glad you don"t despise the goods of this world."
"Heavens, no! Only idiots and prigs do that."
"I am glad, very glad," he repeated, suddenly softening and turning to her, as if the remark had pleased him. "There is so much cant talked in would-be intellectual circles. I am glad you don"t share it. Self-denial is all very well as a means of strengthening the character. But I can"t stand those people who run down comforts. They have usually some axe to grind. Can you?"
"Comforts are of two kinds," said Margaret, who was keeping herself in hand--"those we can share with others, like fire, weather, or music; and those we can"t--food, food, for instance. It depends."
"I mean reasonable comforts, of course. I shouldn"t like to think that you--" He bent nearer; the sentence died unfinished. Margaret"s head turned very stupid, and the inside of it seemed to revolve like the beacon in a lighthouse. He did not kiss her, for the hour was half-past twelve, and the car was pa.s.sing by the stables of Buckingham Palace. But the atmosphere was so charged with emotion that people only seemed to exist on her account, and she was surprised that Crane did not realise this, and turn round. Idiot though she might be, surely Mr. Wilc.o.x was more--how should one put it?--more psychological than usual. Always a good judge of character for business purposes, he seemed this afternoon to enlarge his field, and to note qualities outside neatness, obedience, and decision.