Howards End

proportion is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to insure sterility.
    Helen, agreeing here, disagreeing there, would have talked till midnight, but Margaret, with her packing to do, focussed the conversation on Henry. She might abuse Henry behind his back, but please would she always be civil to him in company? "I definitely dislike him, but I’ll do what I can," promised Helen. "Do what you can with my friends in return."
    This conversation made Margaret easier. Their inner life was so safe that they could bargain over externals in a way that would have been incredible to Aunt Juley, and impossible for Tibby or Charles. There are moments when the inner life actually "pays," when years of self–scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use. Such moments are still rare in the West; that they come at all promises a fairer future. Margaret, though unable to understand her sister, was assured against estrangement, and returned to London with a more peaceful mind.
    The following morning, at eleven o’clock, she presented herself at the offices of the Imperial and West African Rubber Company. She was glad to go there, for Henry had implied his business rather than described it, and the formlessness and vagueness that one associates with Africa itself had hitherto brooded over the main sources of his wealth. Not that a visit to the office cleared things up. There was just the ordinary surface scum of ledgers and polished counters and brass bars that began and stopped for no possible reason, of electric–light globes blossoming in triplets, of little rabbit–hutches faced with glass or wire, of little rabbits. And even when she penetrated to the inner depths, she found only the ordinary table and Turkey carpet, and though the map over the fireplace did depict a helping of West Africa, it was a very ordinary map. Another map hung opposite, on which the whole continent appeared, looking like a whale marked out for a blubber, and by its side was a door, shut, but Henry’s voice came through it, dictating a "strong" letter. She might have been at the Porphyrion, or Dempster’s Bank, or her own wine–merchant’s. Everything seems just alike in these days. But perhaps she was seeing the Imperial side of the company rather than its West African, and Imperialism always had been one of her difficulties.
    "One minute!" called Mr. Wilcox on receiving her name. He touched a bell, the effect of which was to produce Charles.
    Charles had written his father an adequate letter—more adequate than Evie’s, through which a girlish indignation throbbed. And he greeted his future stepmother with propriety.
    "I hope that my wife—how do you do?—will give you a decent lunch," was his opening. "I left instructions, but we live in a rough–and–ready way. She expects you back to tea, too, after you have had a look at Howards End. I wonder what you’ll think of the place. I wouldn’t touch it with tongs myself. Do sit down! It’s a measly little place."
    "I shall enjoy seeing it," said Margaret, feeling, for the first time, shy.
    "You’ll see it at its worst, for Bryce decamped abroad last Monday without even arranging for a charwoman to clear up after him. I never saw such a disgraceful mess. It’s unbelievable. He wasn’t in the house a month."
    "I’ve more than a little bone to pick with Bryce," called Henry from the inner chamber.
    "Why did he go so suddenly?"
    "Invalid type; couldn’t sleep."
    "Poor fellow!"
    "Poor fiddlesticks!" said Mr. Wilcox, joining them. "He had the impudence to put up notice–boards without as much as saying with your leave or by your leave. Charles flung them down."
    "Yes, I flung them down," said Charles modestly.
    "I’ve sent a telegram after him, and a pretty sharp one, too. He, and he in person, is responsible for the upkeep of that house for the next three years."
    "The keys are at the farm; we wouldn’t have the keys."
    "Quite right."
    "Dolly would have taken them, but I was in, fortunately."
    "What’s Mr. Bryce like?" asked Margaret.
    But nobody cared. Mr. Bryce was the tenant, who had no right to sublet; to have defined him further was a waste of time. On his misdeeds they descanted profusely, until the girl who had been typing the strong letter game out with it. Mr. Wilcox added his signature. "Now we’ll be off," said he.
    A motor–drive, a form of felicity detested by Margaret, awaited her. Charles saw them in, civil to the last,