Howards End | Page 7

cryptic, a personal visit
seemed each moment more impossible. Now the doctor arrived, and
said that Tibby was quite bad. Might it really be best to accept Aunt
Juley's kind offer, and to send her down to Howards End with a note?
Certainly Margaret was impulsive. She did swing rapidly from one
decision to another. Running downstairs into the library, she cried:
"Yes, I have changed my mind; I do wish that you would go."
There was a train from King's Cross at eleven. At half-past ten Tibby,
with rare self-effacement, fell asleep, and Margaret was able to drive
her aunt to the station.
"You will remember, Aunt Juley, not to be drawn into discussing the
engagement. Give my letter to Helen, and say whatever you feel
yourself, but do keep clear of the relatives. We have scarcely got their
names straight yet, and, besides, that sort of thing is so uncivilised and
wrong."
"So uncivilised?" queried Mrs. Munt, fearing that she was losing the
point of some brilliant remark.
"Oh, I used an affected word. I only meant would you please talk the
thing over only with Helen."

"Only with Helen."
"Because--" But it was no moment to expound the personal nature of
love. Even Margaret shrank from it, and contented herself with stroking
her good aunt's hand, and with meditating, half sensibly and half
poetically, on the journey that was about to begin from King's Cross.
Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, she had strong
feelings about the various railway termini. They are our gates to the
glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure
and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. In Paddington all Cornwall is
latent and the remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street lie
fenlands and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of
Euston; Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo. Italians realise
this, as is natural; those of them who are so unfortunate as to serve as
waiters in Berlin call the Anhalt Bahnhof the Stazione d'Italia, because
by it they must return to their homes. And he is a chilly Londoner who
does not endow his stations with some personality, and extend to them,
however shyly, the emotions of fear and love.
To Margaret--I hope that it will not set the reader against her-- the
station of King's Cross had always suggested Infinity. Its very
situation--withdrawn a little behind the facile splendours of St.
Pancras--implied a comment on the materialism of life. Those two
great arches, colourless, indifferent, shouldering between them an
unlovely clock, were fit portals for some eternal adventure, whose issue
might be prosperous, but would certainly not be expressed in the
ordinary language of prosperity. If you think this ridiculous, remember
that it is not Margaret who is telling you about it; and let me hasten to
add that they were in plenty of time for the train; that Mrs. Munt,
though she took a second-class ticket, was put by the guard into a first
(only two "seconds" on the train, one smoking and the other
babies--one cannot be expected to travel with babies); and that
Margaret, on her return to Wickham Place, was confronted with the
following telegram:
"All over. Wish I had never written. Tell no one--, HELEN."

But Aunt Juley was gone--gone irrevocably, and no power on earth
could stop her.

CHAPTER III
Most complacently did Mrs. Munt rehearse her mission. Her nieces
were independent young women, and it was not often that she was able
to help them. Emily's daughters had never been quite like other girls.
They had been left motherless when Tibby was born, when Helen was
five and Margaret herself but thirteen. It was before the passing of the
Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, so Mrs. Munt could without impropriety
offer to go and keep house at Wickham Place. But her brother-in-law,
who was peculiar and a German, had referred the question to Margaret,
who with the crudity of youth had answered, "No, they could manage
much better alone." Five years later Mr. Schlegel had died too, and Mrs.
Munt had repeated her offer. Margaret, crude no longer, had been
grateful and extremely nice, but the substance of her answer had been
the same. "I must not interfere a third time," thought Mrs. Munt.
However, of course she did. She learnt, to her horror, that Margaret,
now of age, was taking her money out of the old safe investments and
putting it into Foreign Things, which always smash. Silence would
have been criminal. Her own fortune was invested in Home Rails, and
most ardently did she beg her niece to imitate her. "Then we should be
together, dear." Margaret, out of politeness, invested a few hundreds in
the Nottingham and Derby Railway, and