"Yes, that is so," conceded Frieda; and another international incident was closed.
""Bournemouth is,"" resumed their hostess, quoting a local rhyme to which she was much attached--""Bournemouth is, Poole was, and Swanage is to be the most important town of all and biggest of the three." Now, Frau Liesecke, I have shown you Bournemouth, and I have shown you Poole, so let us walk backward a little, and look down again at Swanage."
"Aunt Juley, wouldn"t that be Meg"s train?"
A tiny puff of smoke had been circling the harbour, and now was bearing southwards towards them over the black and the gold.
"Oh, dearest Margaret, I do hope she won"t be overtired."
"Oh, I do wonder--I do wonder whether she"s taken the house."
"I hope she hasn"t been hasty."
"So do I--oh, SO do I."
"Will it be as beautiful as Wickham Place?" Frieda asked.
"I should think it would. Trust Mr. Wilc.o.x for doing himself proud. All those Ducie Street houses are beautiful in their modern way, and I can"t think why he doesn"t keep on with it. But it"s really for Evie that he went there, and now that Evie"s going to be married--"
"Ah!"
"You"ve never seen Miss Wilc.o.x, Frieda. How absurdly matrimonial you are!"
"But sister to that Paul?"
"Yes."
"And to that Charles," said Mrs. Munt with feeling. "Oh, Helen, Helen, what a time that was!"
Helen laughed. "Meg and I haven"t got such tender hearts. If there"s a chance of a cheap house, we go for it."
"Now look, Frau Liesecke, at my niece"s train. You see, it is coming towards us--coming, coming; and, when it gets to Corfe, it will actually go THROUGH the downs, on which we are standing, so that, if we walk over, as I suggested, and look down on Swanage, we shall see it coming on the other side. Shall we?"
Frieda a.s.sented, and in a few minutes they had crossed the ridge and exchanged the greater view for the lesser. Rather a dull valley lay below, backed by the slope of the coastward downs. They were looking across the Isle of Purbeck and on to Swanage, soon to be the most important town of all, and ugliest of the three. Margaret"s train reappeared as promised, and was greeted with approval by her aunt.
It came to a standstill in the middle distance, and there it had been planned that Tibby should meet her, and drive her, and a tea-basket, up to join them.
"You see," continued Helen to her cousin, "the Wilc.o.xes collect houses as your Victor collects tadpoles. They have, one, Ducie Street; two, Howards End, where my great rumpus was; three, a country seat in Shropshire; four, Charles has a house in Hilton; and five, another near Epsom; and six, Evie will have a house when she marries, and probably a pied-a-terre in the country--which makes seven. Oh yes, and Paul a hut in Africa makes eight. I wish we could get Howards End. That was something like a dear little house! Didn"t you think so, Aunt Juley?"
"I had too much to do, dear, to look at it," said Mrs. Munt, with a gracious dignity. "I had everything to settle and explain, and Charles Wilc.o.x to keep in his place besides. It isn"t likely I should remember much. I just remember having lunch in your bedroom."
"Yes, so do I. But, oh dear, dear, how dreadful it all seems! And in the autumn there began that anti-Pauline movement--you, and Frieda, and Meg, and Mrs. Wilc.o.x, all obsessed with the idea that I might yet marry Paul."
"You yet may," said Frieda despondently.
Helen shook her head. "The Great Wilc.o.x Peril will never return. If I"m certain of anything it"s of that."
"One is certain of nothing but the truth of one"s own emotions."
The remark fell damply on the conversation. But Helen slipped her arm round her cousin, somehow liking her the better for making it. It was not an original remark, nor had Frieda appropriated it pa.s.sionately, for she had a patriotic rather than a philosophic mind. Yet it betrayed that interest in the universal which the average Teuton possesses and the average Englishman does not. It was, however illogically, the good, the beautiful, the true, as opposed to the respectable, the pretty, the adequate. It was a landscape of Bocklin"s beside a landscape of Leader"s, strident and ill-considered, but quivering into supernatural life. It sharpened idealism, stirred the soul. It may have been a bad preparation for what followed.
"Look!" cried Aunt Juley, hurrying away from generalities over the narrow summit of the down. "Stand where I stand, and you will see the pony-cart coming. I see the pony-cart coming."
They stood and saw the pony-cart coming. Margaret and Tibby were presently seen coming in it. Leaving the outskirts of Swanage, it drove for a little through the budding lanes, and then began the ascent.
"Have you got the house?" they shouted, long before she could possibly hear.
Helen ran down to meet her. The highroad pa.s.sed over a saddle, and a track went thence at right angles alone the ridge of the down.
"Have you got the house?"
Margaret shook her head.
"Oh, what a nuisance! So we"re as we were?"
"Not exactly."
She got out, looking tired.
"Some mystery," said Tibby. "We are to be enlightened presently."
Margaret came close up to her and whispered that she had had a proposal of marriage from Mr. Wilc.o.x.
Helen was amused. She opened the gate on to the downs so that her brother might lead the pony through. "It"s just like a widower," she remarked. "They"ve cheek enough for anything, and invariably select one of their first wife"s friends."
Margaret"s face flashed despair.
"That type--" She broke off with a cry. "Meg, not anything wrong with you?"
"Wait one minute," said Margaret, whispering always.
"But you"ve never conceivably--you"ve never--" She pulled herself together. "Tibby, hurry up through; I can"t hold this gate indefinitely.
Aunt Juley! I say, Aunt Juley, make the tea, will you, and Frieda; we"ve got to talk houses, and will come on afterwards." And then, turning her face to her sister"s, she burst into tears.
Margaret was stupefied. She heard herself saying, "Oh, really--" She felt herself touched with a hand that trembled.
"Don"t," sobbed Helen, "don"t, don"t, Meg, don"t!" She seemed incapable of saying any other word. Margaret, trembling herself, led her forward up the road, till they strayed through another gate on to the down.
"Don"t, don"t do such a thing! I tell you not to--don"t! I know--don"t!"
"What do you know?"
"Panic and emptiness," sobbed Helen. "Don"t!"
Then Margaret thought, "Helen is a little selfish. I have never behaved like this when there has seemed a chance of her marrying." She said: "But we would still see each other very--often, and you--"
"It"s not a thing like that," sobbed Helen. And she broke right away and wandered distractedly upwards, stretching her hands towards the view and crying.
"What"s happened to you?" called Margaret, following through the wind that gathers at sundown on the northern slopes of hills. "But it"s stupid!" And suddenly stupidity seized her, and the immense landscape was blurred. But Helen turned back.