Howards End

suppose he worries dreadfully about his part of the tangle."
    "Dreadfully. That is why I wish Dolly had not come, too, to–day. Still, he wanted them all to come. It has to be."
    "Why does he want them?"
    Margaret did not answer.
    "Meg, may I tell you something? I like Henry."
    "You’d be odd if you didn’t," said Margaret.
    "I usen’t to."
    "Usen’t!" She lowered her eyes a moment to the black abyss of the past. They had crossed it, always excepting Leonard and Charles. They were building up a new life, obscure, yet gilded with tranquillity. Leonard was dead; Charles had two years more in prison. One usen’t always to see clearly before that time. It was different now.
    "I like Henry because he does worry."
    "And he likes you because you don’t."
    Helen sighed. She seemed humiliated, and buried her face in her hands. After a time she said: "About love," a transition less abrupt than it appeared.
    Margaret never stopped working.
    "I mean a woman’s love for a man. I supposed I should hang my life on to that once, and was driven up and down and about as if something was worrying through me. But everything is peaceful now; I seem cured. That Herr Forstmeister, whom Frieda keeps writing about, must be a noble character, but he doesn’t see that I shall never marry him or anyone. It isn’t shame or mistrust of myself. I simply couldn’t. I’m ended. I used to be so dreamy about a man’s love as a girl, and think that for good or evil love must be the great thing. But it hasn’t been; it has been itself a dream. Do you agree?"
    "I do not agree. I do not."
    "I ought to remember Leonard as my lover," said Helen, stepping down into the field. "I tempted him, and killed him, and it is surely the least I can do. I would like to throw out all my heart to Leonard on such an afternoon as this. But I cannot. It is no good pretending. I am forgetting him." Her eyes filled with tears. "How nothing seems to match—how, my darling, my precious—" She broke off. "Tommy!"
    "Yes, please?"
    "Baby’s not to try and stand.—There’s something wanting in me. I see you loving Henry, and understanding him better daily, and I know that death wouldn’t part you in the least. But I—Is it some awful, appalling, criminal defect?"
    Margaret silenced her. She said: "It is only that people are far more different than is pretended. All over the world men and women are worrying because they cannot develop as they are supposed to develop. Here and there they have the matter out, and it comforts them. Don’t fret yourself, Helen. Develop what you have; love your child. I do not love children. I am thankful to have none. I can play with their beauty and charm, but that is all—nothing real, not one scrap of what there ought to be. And others—others go farther still, and move outside humanity altogether. A place, as well as a person, may catch the glow. Don’t you see that all this leads to comfort in the end? It is part of the battle against sameness. Differences, eternal differences, planted by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow perhaps, but colour in the daily grey. Then I can’t have you worrying about Leonard. Don’t drag in the personal when it will not come. Forget him."
    "Yes, yes, but what has Leonard got out of life?"
    "Perhaps an adventure."
    "Is that enough?"
    "Not for us. But for him."
    Helen took up a bunch of grass. She looked at the sorrel, and the red and white and yellow clover, and the quaker grass, and the daisies, and the bents that composed it. She raised it to her face.
    "Is it sweetening yet?" asked Margaret.
    "No, only withered."
    "It will sweeten to–morrow."
    Helen smiled. "Oh, Meg, you are a person," she said. "Think of the racket and torture this time last year. But now I couldn’t stop unhappy if I tried. What a change—and all through you!"
    "Oh, we merely settled down. You and Henry learnt to understand one another and to forgive, all through the autumn and the winter."
    "Yes, but who settled us down?"
    Margaret did not reply. The scything had begun, and she took off her pince–nez to watch it.
    "You!" cried Helen. "You did it all, sweetest, though you’re too stupid to see. Living here was your plan—I wanted you; he wanted you; and everyone said it was impossible, but you knew. Just think of our lives without you, Meg—I and baby with Monica, revolting by theory, he handed about from Dolly to Evie. But you picked up the pieces, and made us a home. Can’t