第72章

"Well,I never!In years ago it seemed so far away."Smiling,but somehow disillusioned,she jumped out,and her impetus carried her to the front-door.She was about to open it,when Henry said:"That's no good;it's locked.Who's got the key?"As he had himself forgotten to call for the key at the farm,no one replied.He also wanted to know who had left the front gate open,since a cow had strayed in from the road,and was spoiling the croquet lawn.Then he said rather crossly:"Margaret,you wait in the dry.I'll go down for the key.It isn't a hundred yards.

"Mayn't I come too?"

"No;I shall be back before I'm gone."

Then the car turned away,and it was as if a curtain had risen.For the second time that day she saw the appearance of the earth.

There were the greengage-trees that Helen had once described,there the tennis lawn,there the hedge that would be glorious with dog-roses in June,but the vision now was of black and palest green.

Down by the dell-hole more vivid colours were awakening,and Lent Lilies stood sentinel on its margin,or advanced in battalions over the grass.

Tulips were a tray of jewels.She could not see the wych-elm tree,but a branch of the celebrated vine,studded with velvet knobs,had covered the porch.She was struck by the fertility of the soil;she had seldom been in a garden where the flowers looked so well,and even the weeds she was idly plucking out of the porch were intensely green.Why had poor Mr.Bryce fled from all this beauty?For she had already decided that the place was beautiful.

"Naughty cow!Go away!"cried Margaret to the cow,but without indignation.

Harder came the rain,pouring out of a windless sky,and spattering up from the notice-boards of the house-agents,which lay in a row on the lawn where Charles had hurled them.She must have interviewed Charles in another world--where one did have interviews.

How Helen would revel in such a notion!Charles dead,all people dead,nothing alive but houses and gardens.The obvious dead,the intangible alive,and--no connection at all between them!Margaret smiled.Would that her own fancies were as clear-cut!Would that she could deal as high-handedly with the world!Smiling and sighing,she laid her hand upon the door.It opened.The house was not locked up at all.

She hesitated.Ought she to wait for Henry?

He felt strongly about property,and might prefer to show her over himself.

On the other hand,he had told her to keep in the dry,and the porch was beginning to drip.So she went in,and the drought from inside slammed the door behind.

Desolation greeted her.Dirty finger-prints were on the hall-windows,flue and rubbish on its unwashed boards.

The civilization of luggage had been here for a month,and then decamped.

Dining-room and drawing room--right and left--were guessed only by their wall-papers.They were just rooms where one could shelter from the rain.Across the ceiling of each ran a great beam.The dining-room and hall revealed theirs openly,but the drawing-room's was match-boarded--because the facts of life must be concealed from ladies?Drawing-room,dining-room,and hall--how petty the names sounded!Here were simply three rooms where children could play and friends shelter from the rain.Yes,and they were beautiful.

Then she opened one of the doors opposite--there were two--and exchanged wall-papers for whitewash.It was the servants'

part,though she scarcely realized that:just rooms again,where friends might shelter.The garden at the back was full of flowering cherries and plums.Farther on were hints of the meadow and a black cliff of pines.Yes,the meadow was beautiful.

Penned in by the desolate weather,she recaptured the sense of space which the motor had tried to rob from her.She remembered again that ten square miles are not ten times as wonderful as one square mile,that a thousand square miles are not practically the same as heaven.The phantom of bigness,which London encourages,was laid for ever when she paced from the hall at Howards End to its kitchen and heard the rains run this way and that where the watershed of the roof divided them.

Now Helen came to her mind,scrutinizing half Wessex from the ridge of the Purbeck Downs,and saying:"You will have to lose something."She was not so sure.For instance,she would double her kingdom by opening the door that concealed the stairs.

Now she thought of the map of Africa;of empires;of her father;of the two supreme nations,streams of whose life warmed her blood,but,mingling,had cooled her brain.She paced back into the hall,and as she did so the house reverberated.

"Is that you,Henry?"she called.

There was no answer,but the house reverberated again.

"Henry,have you got in?"

But it was the heart of the house beating,faintly at first,then loudly,martially.It dominated the rain.

It is the starved imagination,not the well-nourished,that is afraid.Margaret flung open the door to the stairs.

A noise as of drums seemed to deafen her.A woman,an old woman,was descending,with figure erect,with face impassive,with lips that parted and said dryly:

"Oh!Well,I took you for Ruth Wilcox."

Margaret stammered:"I--Mrs.Wilcox--I?"

"In fancy,of course--in fancy.You had her way of walking.Good-day."And the old woman passed out into the rain.