Howards End by E. M. Forster Page A

Dame.”
    â€œBother the whole family!” snapped Margaret. “Helen, stop giggling and pirouetting, and go and finish your packing. Why can’t the woman leave us alone?”
    â€œI don’t know what I shall do with Meg,” Helen retorted, collapsing upon the stairs. “She’s got Wilcox and Box upon the brain. Meg, Meg, I don’t love the young gentleman; I don’t love the young gentleman, Meg, Meg. Can a body speak plainer?”
    â€œMost certainly her love has died,” asserted Fräulein Mosebach.
    â€œMost certainly it has, Frieda, but that will not prevent me from being bored with the Wilcoxes if I return the call.”
    Then Helen simulated tears, and Fräulein Mosebach, who thought her extremely amusing, did the same. “Oh, boo hoo! boo hoo hoo! Meg’s going to return the call, and I can’t. ‘Cos why? ’Cos I’m going to German-eye.”
    â€œIf you are going to Germany, go and pack; if you aren‘t, go and call on the Wilcoxes instead of me.”
    â€œBut, Meg, Meg, I don’t love the young gentleman; I don’t love the young—O lud, who’s that coming down the stairs? I vow ‘tis my brother. O crimini!”
    A male—even such a male as Tibby—was enough to stop the foolery. The barrier of sex, though decreasing among the civilized, is still high, and higher on the side of women. Helen could tell her sister all, and her cousin much about Paul; she told her brother nothing. It was not prudishness, for she now spoke of “the Wilcox ideal” with laughter, and even with a growing brutality. Nor was it precaution, for Tibby seldom repeated any news that did not concern himself. It was rather the feeling that she betrayed a secret into the camp of men, and that, however trivial it was on this side of the barrier, it would become important on that. So she stopped, or rather began to fool on other subjects, until her long-suffering relatives drove her upstairs. Fräulein Mosebach followed her, but lingered to say heavily over the banisters to Margaret: “It is all right—she does not love the young man—he has not been worthy of her.”
    â€œYes, I know; thanks very much.”
    â€œI thought I did right to tell you.”
    â€œEver so many thanks.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” asked Tibby. No one told him, and he proceeded into the dining-room, to eat Elvas plums.
    That evening Margaret took decisive action. The house was very quiet, and the fog—we are in November now—pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost. Frieda and Helen and all their luggage had gone. Tibby, who was not feeling well, lay stretched on a sofa by the fire. Margaret sat by him, thinking. Her mind darted from impulse to impulse, and finally marshalled them all in review. The practical person, who knows what he wants at once, and generally knows nothing else, will excuse her of indecision. But this was the way her mind worked. And when she did act, no one could accuse her of indecision then. She hit out as lustily as if she had not considered the matter at all. The letter that she wrote Mrs. Wilcox glowed with the native hue of resolution. The pale cast of thought was with her a breath rather than a tarnish, a breath that leaves the colours all the more vivid when it has been wiped away.
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    DEAR MRS. WILCOX,
    I have to write something discourteous. It would be better if we did not meet. Both my sister and my aunt have given displeasure to your family, and , in my sister’s case, the grounds for displeasure might recur. As far as I know, she no longer occupies her thoughts with your son. But it would not be fair, either to her or to you, if they met, and it is therefore right that our acquaintance, which began so pleasantly, should end.
    I fear that you will not agree with this; indeed, I know that you will not, since you have been good enough to call on us. It is only an instinct on