Howards End: Chapters 6–11

He opened the door, and cried, “Hullo!” with the pseudo geniality of the Cockney.

Take my word for it, that smile was simply stunning, and it is only you and I who will be fastidious, and complain that true joy begins in the eyes, and that the eyes of Jacky did not accord with her smile, but were anxious and hungry.

He was renting the flat furnished; of all the objects that encumbered it none were his own except the photograph frame, the Cupids, and the books.

How supreme its command of admonition and of poetry!

“Seven miles to the north of Venice the banks of sand which nearer the city rise little above low-water mark attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.”

“Been out?” he asked. The question sounds superfluous, but it cannot have been really, for the lady answered, “No,” adding, “Oh, I am so tired.”

Her secret being at last given—to the world, and the name of the lady friend being even adumbrated, Jacky made no further experiments in the difficult and tiring art of conversation.

“But you will be careful, won’t you?” she exhorted.

But Frieda detected a delicate situation, and said that she and Helen had much better wait for Bruno down below, and leave Margaret and Mrs. Munt to finish arranging the flowers. Helen acquiesced.

Her lips were compressed, the letter remained in her hand, and in this state she crossed the street, entered the marble vestibule of the flats, eluded the concierges, and ran up the stairs till she reached the second floor.

“Yes. My husband built a little one only last month, to the west of the house, not far from the wych-elm, in what used to be the paddock for the pony.”

“What makes you say that? Do you mean that I have been gauche and rude?”

Twice she deplored the weather, twice criticised the train service on the Great Northern Railway.

I think it’s affectation to compare the Oder to music, and so do you, but the overhanging warehouses of Stettin take beauty seriously, which we don’t, and the average Englishman doesn’t, and despises all who do.

At Heidelberg I met a fat veterinary surgeon whose voice broke with sobs as he repeated some mawkish poetry.

Its Literature and Art have what one might call the kink of the unseen about them, and this persists even through decadence and affectation.

When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour—flirting—and if carried far enough it is punishable by law. But no law—not public opinion even—punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable.

A certain austerity of demeanour was best, and she added: “I don’t really want a Yuletide gift, though. In fact, I’d rather not.”

They drove from shop to shop. The air was white, and when they alighted it tasted like cold pennies.

A poster of a woman in tights heralded the Christmas pantomime, and little red devils, who had come in again that year, were prevalent upon the Christmas-cards.

She did not wish this spate of business and self-advertisement checked.

How many of these vacillating shoppers and tired shop-assistants realised that it was a divine event that drew them together?

At the counter she found a friend, bent on the same errand, and conversed with her insipidly, wasting much time.

“Again my lack of experience, I suppose!” said Margaret, easing away from the subject. “I can’t say anything when you take up that line, Mrs. Wilcox. I wish I could see myself as you see me—foreshortened into a backfisch. Quite the ingenue. Very charming—wonderfully well read for my age, but incapable—”

They advanced to the topic again and again, dully, but with exaltation.

He stopped as he passed the new grave; a sheaf of tawny chrysanthemums had caught his eye.

Trudging on a few steps, he stopped again, looked furtively at the dusk, turned back, wrenched a chrysanthemum from the sheaf, and hid it in his pocket.

The cottage that abutted on the churchyard was empty, and no other house stood near.

Hour after hour the scene of the interment remained without an eye to witness it.

Towards morning the air grew colder, the sky clearer, the surface of the earth hard and sparkling above the prostrate dead.

So many women are capricious, breaking into odd flaws of passion or frivolity.

The forehead, too, was like Charles’s. High and straight, brown and polished, merging abruptly into temples and skull, it had the effect of a bastion that protected his head from the world.

They were not callous, and they left the breakfast-table with aching hearts.

Their grief, though less poignant than their father’s, grew from deeper roots, for a wife may be replaced; a mother never.

How easily she slipped out of life! Charles thought the habit laudable, though he did not intend to adopt it himself, whereas Margaret would have seen in it an almost culpable indifference to earthly fame.

Charles, after a little demur, accepted the writing as genuine, and they passed on to the next point.

Is it credible that the possessions of the spirit can be bequeathed at all?

Margaret Schlegel has been officious and tiresome during this terrible week, and we have all suffered under her, but upon my soul she’s honest.

She’s NOT in collusion with the matron. I’m absolutely certain of it. Nor was she with the doctor, I’m equally certain of that. She did not hide anything from us, for up to that very afternoon she was as ignorant as we are.

“She’s a cosmopolitan,” said Charles, looking at his watch. “I admit I’m rather down on cosmopolitans. My fault, doubtless. I cannot stand them, and a German cosmopolitan is the limit..."