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He has all those public qualities which you so despise and enable all this " She waved her hand at the landscape, which confirmed anything. "If Wilcoxes hadn't worked and died in England for thousands of years, you and I couldn't sit here without having our throats cut. There would be no trains, no ships to carry us literary people about in, no fields even. Just savagery. No perhaps not even that.
Bowing, even calling and leaving cards, even a dinner-party we can do all those things to the Wilcoxes, if they find it agreeable; but the other thing, the one important thing never again. Don't you see?" Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a most questionable statement that any emotion, any interest once vividly aroused, can wholly die.
New ideas had burst upon her like a thunder clap, and by them and by her reverberations she had been stunned. The truth was that she had fallen in love, not with an individual, but with a family. Before Paul arrived she had, as it were, been tuned up into his key. The energy of the Wilcoxes had fascinated her, had created new images of beauty in her responsive mind.
"Helen was looking up at the Wilcoxes' flat." "Why shouldn't she?" "I beg your pardon, I interrupted you. What was it you were saying about reality?" "I had worked round to myself, as usual," answered Margaret in tones that were suddenly preoccupied. "Do tell me this, at all events. Are you for the rich or for the poor?" "Too difficult. Ask me another. Am I for poverty or for riches? For riches.
I wish you would let me help you in more important things." "Well, would you be very kind? Would you come round with me to the registry office? There's a housemaid who won't say yes but doesn't say no." On their way thither they too looked up at the Wilcoxes' flat. Evie was in the balcony, "staring most rudely," according to Mrs. Munt. Oh yes, it was a nuisance, there was no doubt of it.
And pushing one step farther in these mists may they not have decided even better than they supposed? Is it credible that the possessions of the spirit can be bequeathed at all? Has the soul offspring? A wych-elm tree, a vine, a wisp of hay with dew on it can passion for such things be transmitted where there is no bond of blood? No; the Wilcoxes are not to be blamed.
The stock of social life in Springdale, in fact, was running low. The Lennoxes and the Wilcoxes had gone to their Boston homes, and Rose Ferguson was visiting in New York, and Letitia found so much to do to supply her place to her father and mother, that she had less time than usual to share with Grace.
It has taken place in Charles's garden at Hilton. He and Dolly are sitting in deck-chairs, and their motor is regarding them placidly from its garage across the lawn. A short-frocked edition of Charles also regards them placidly; a perambulator edition is squeaking; a third edition is expected shortly. Nature is turning out Wilcoxes in this peaceful abode, so that they may inherit the earth.
Such a muddle of a man, and yet so worth pulling through. I like him extraordinarily." "Well done," said Margaret, kissing her, "but come into the drawing-room now, and don't talk about him to the Wilcoxes. Make light of the whole thing." Helen came and behaved with a cheerfulness that reassured their visitor this hen at all events was fancy-free.
"I do understand," retorted Mrs. Munt, with immense confidence. "I go down in no spirit of interference, but to make inquiries. Inquiries are necessary. Now, I am going to be rude. You would say the wrong thing; to a certainty you would. In your anxiety for Helen's happiness you would offend the whole of these Wilcoxes by asking one of your impetuous questions not that one minds offending them."
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