Howards End by E. M. Forster Page A

statement, which could never be superseded. The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have no other meaning, and life could have no other meaning. She pushed right out of the building, and walked slowly down the outside staircase, breathing the autumnal air, and then she strolled home.
    “Margaret,” called Mrs. Munt, “is Helen all right?”
    “Oh yes.”
    “She is always going away in the middle of a programme,” said Tibby.
    “The music has evidently moved her deeply,” said Fräulein Mosebach.
    “Excuse me,” said Margaret’s young man, who had for some time been preparing a sentence, “but that lady has, quite inadvertently, taken my umbrella.”
    “Oh, good gracious me!—I am so sorry. Tibby, run after Helen.”
    “I shall miss the Four Serious Songs if I do.”
    “Tibby love, you must go.”
    “It isn’t of any consequence,” said the young man, in truth a little uneasy about his umbrella.
    “But of course it is. Tibby! Tibby!”
    Tibby rose to his feet, and wilfully caught his person on the backs of the chairs. By the time he had tipped up the seat and had found his hat, and had deposited his full score in safety, it was “too late” to go after Helen. The Four Serious Songs had begun, and one could not move during their performance.
    “My sister is so careless,” whispered Margaret.
    “Not at all,” replied the young man; but his voice was dead and cold.
    “If you would give me your address—”
    “Oh, not at all, not at all”; and he wrapped his great-coat over his knees.
    Then the Four Serious Songs rang shallow in Margaret’s ears. Brahms, for all his grumbling and grizzling, had never guessed what it felt like to be suspected of stealing an umbrella. For this fool of a young man thought that she and Helen and Tibby had been playing the confidence trick on him, and that if he gave his address they would break into his rooms some midnight or other and steal his walking-stick too. Most ladies would have laughed, but Margaret really minded, for it gave her a glimpse into squalor. To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. As soon as Brahms had grunted himself out, she gave him her card and said: “That is where we live; if you preferred, you could call for the umbrella after the concert, but I didn’t like to trouble you when it has all been our fault.”
    His face brightened a little when he saw that Wickham Place was W. It was sad to see him corroded with suspicion, and yet not daring to be impolite, in case these well-dressed people were honest after all. She took it as a good sign that he said to her: “It’s a fine programme this afternoon, is it not?” for this was the remark with which he had originally opened, before the umbrella intervened.
    “The Beethoven’s fine,” said Margaret, who was not a female of the encouraging type. “I don’t like the Brahms, though, nor the Mendelssohn that came first—and ugh! I don’t like this Elgar that’s coming.”
    “What, what?” called Herr Liesecke, overhearing. “The
Pomp and Circumstance
will not be fine?”
    “Oh, Margaret, you tiresome girl!” cried her aunt. “Here have I been persuading Herr Liesecke to stop for
Pomp and Circumstance,
and you are undoing all my work. I am so anxious for him to hear what
we
are doing in music. Oh, you mustn’t run down our English composers, Margaret.”
    “For my part, I have heard the composition at Stettin,” said Fräulein Mosebach. “On two occasions. It is dramatic, a little.”
    “Frieda, you despise English music. You know you do. And English art. And English literature, except Shakespeare and he’s a German. Very well, Frieda, you may go.”
    The lovers laughed and glanced at each other. Moved by a common impulse, they rose to their feet and fled from
Pomp and Circumstance.
    “We have this call to pay in Finsbury Circus, it is true,” said Herr Liesecke, as he edged past her and reached the gangway just