Howards End - E. M. Forster [130]
"Helen, what a memory you have for some things! You're perfectly right. It's a room that men have spoilt through trying to make it nice for women. Men don't know what we want – "
"And never will."
"I don't agree. In two thousand years they'll know."
"But the chairs show up wonderfully. Look where Tibby spilt the soup."
"Coffee. It was coffee surely."
Helen shook her head. "Impossible. Tibby was far too young to be given coffee at that time."
"Was Father alive?"
"Yes."
"Then you're right and it must have been soup. I was thinking of much later – that unsuccessful visit of Aunt Juley's, when she didn't realize that Tibby had grown up. It was coffee then, for he threw it down on purpose. There was some rhyme, 'Tea, coffee – coffee, tea,' that she said to him every morning at breakfast. Wait a minute – how did it go?"
"I know – no, I don't. What a detestable boy Tibby was!"
"But the rhyme was simply awful. No decent person could have put up with it."
"Ah, that greengage tree," cried Helen, as if the garden was also part of their childhood. "Why do I connect it with dumbbells? And there come the chickens. The grass wants cutting. I love yellow-hammers – "
Margaret interrupted her. "I have got it," she announced.
'Tea, tea, coffee, tea,
Or chocolaritee.'
"That every morning for three weeks. No wonder Tibby was wild."
"Tibby is moderately a dear now," said Helen.
"There! I knew you'd say that in the end. Of course he's a dear."
A bell rang.
"Listen! what's that?"
Helen said, "Perhaps the Wilcoxes are beginning the siege."
"What nonsense – listen!"
And the triviality faded from their faces, though it left something behind – the knowledge that they never could be parted because their love was rooted in common things. Explanations and appeals had failed; they had tried for a common meeting-ground, and had only made each other unhappy. And all the time their salvation was lying round them – the past sanctifying the present; the present, with wild heart-throb, declaring that there would after all be a future, with laughter and the voices of children. Helen, still smiling, came up to her sister. She said, "It is always Meg." They looked into each other's eyes. The inner life had paid.
Solemnly the clapper tolled. No one was in the front. Margaret went to the kitchen, and struggled between packing-cases to the window. Their visitor was only a little boy with a tin can. And triviality returned.
"Little boy, what do you want?"
"Please, I am the milk."
"Did Miss Avery send you?" said Margaret, rather sharply.
"Yes, please."
"Then take it back and say we require no milk." While she called to Helen, "No, it's not the siege, but possibly an attempt to provision us against one."
"But I like milk," cried Helen. "Why send it away?"
"Do you? Oh, very well. But we've nothing to put it in, and he wants the can."
"Please, I'm to call in the morning for the can," said the boy.
"The house will be locked up then."
"In the morning would I bring eggs, too?"
"Are you the boy whom I saw playing in the stacks last week?"
The child hung his head.
"Well, run away and do it again."
"Nice little boy," whispered Helen. "I say, what's your name? Mine's Helen."
"Tom."
That was Helen all over. The Wilcoxes, too, would ask a child its name, but they never told their names in return.
"Tom, this one here is Margaret. And at home we've another called Tibby."
"Mine are lop-eared," replied Tom, supposing Tibby to be a rabbit.
"You're a very good and rather a clever little boy. Mind you come again. – Isn't he charming?"
"Undoubtedly," said Margaret. "He is probably the son of Madge, and Madge is dreadful. But this place has wonderful powers."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know."
"Because I probably agree with you."
"It kills what is dreadful and makes what is beautiful live."
"I do agree," said Helen, as she sipped the milk. "But you said that the house was dead not half an hour ago."
"Meaning that I was dead. I felt it."
"Yes, the house has a surer life than we, even if it was