Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (the little red hen read aloud .TXT) 📖

At the time of Lilia’s death Philip Herriton was just twenty-four years of age—indeed the news reached Sawston on his birthday. He was a tall, weakly-built young man, whose clothes had to be judiciously padded on the shoulders in order to make him pass muster. His face was plain rather than not, and there was a curious mixture in it of good and bad. He had a fine forehead and a good large nose, and both observation and sympathy were in his eyes. But below the nose and eyes all was confusion, and those people who believe that destiny resides in the mouth and chin shook their heads when they looked at him.

Philip himself, as a boy, had been keenly conscious of these defects. Sometimes when he had been bullied or hustled about at school he would retire to his cubicle and examine his features in a looking-glass, and he would sigh and say, “It is a weak face. I shall never carve a place for myself in the world.” But as years went on he became either less self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The world, he found, made a niche for him as it did for every one. Decision of character might come later—or he might have it without knowing. At all events he had got a sense of beauty and a sense of humour, two most desirable gifts. The sense of beauty developed first. It caused him at the age of twenty to wear parti-coloured ties and a squashy hat, to be late for dinner on account of the sunset, and to catch art from Burne-Jones to Praxiteles. At twenty-two he went to Italy with some cousins, and there he absorbed into one aesthetic whole olive-trees, blue sky, frescoes, country inns, saints, peasants, mosaics, statues, beggars. He came back with the air of a prophet who would either remodel Sawston or reject it. All the energies and enthusiasms of a rather friendless life had passed into the championship of beauty.

In a short time it was over. Nothing had happened either in Sawston or within himself. He had shocked half-a-dozen people, squabbled with his sister, and bickered with his mother. He concluded that nothing could happen, not knowing that human love and love of truth sometimes conquer where love of beauty fails.

A little disenchanted, a little tired, but aesthetically intact, he resumed his placid life, relying more and more on his second gift, the gift of humour. If he could not reform the world, he could at all events laugh at it, thus attaining at least an intellectual superiority. Laughter, he read and believed, was a sign of good moral health, and he laughed on contentedly, till Lilia’s marriage toppled contentment down for ever. Italy, the land of beauty, was ruined for him. She had no power to change men and things who dwelt in her. She, too, could produce avarice, brutality, stupidity—and, what was worse, vulgarity. It was on her soil and through her influence that a silly woman had married a cad. He hated Gino, the betrayer of his life’s ideal, and now that the sordid tragedy had come, it filled him with pangs, not of sympathy, but of final disillusion.

The disillusion was convenient for Mrs. Herriton, who saw a trying little period ahead of her, and was glad to have her family united.

“Are we to go into mourning, do you think?” She always asked her children’s advice where possible.

Harriet thought that they should. She had been detestable to Lilia while she lived, but she always felt that the dead deserve attention and sympathy. “After all she has suffered. That letter kept me awake for nights. The whole thing is like one of those horrible modern plays where no one is in ‘the right.’ But if we have mourning, it will mean telling Irma.”

“Of course we must tell Irma!” said Philip.

“Of course,” said his mother. “But I think we can still not tell her about Lilia’s marriage.”

“I don’t think that. And she must have suspected something by now.”

“So one would have supposed. But she never cared for her mother, and little girls of nine don’t reason clearly. She looks on it as a long visit. And it is important, most important, that she should not receive a shock. All a child’s life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes—morals, behaviour, everything. Absolute trust in some one else is the essence of education. That is why I have been so careful about talking of poor Lilia before her.”

“But you forget this wretched baby. Waters and Adamson write that there is a baby.”

“Mrs. Theobald must be told. But she doesn’t count. She is breaking up very quickly. She doesn’t even see Mr. Kingcroft now. He, thank goodness, I hear, has at last consoled himself with someone else.”

“The child must know some time,” persisted Philip, who felt a little displeased, though he could not tell with what.

“The later the better. Every moment she is developing.”

“I must say it seems rather hard luck, doesn’t it?”

“On Irma? Why?”

“On us, perhaps. We have morals and behaviour also, and I don’t think this continual secrecy improves them.”

“There’s no need to twist the thing round to that,” said Harriet, rather disturbed.

“Of course there isn’t,” said her mother. “Let’s keep to the main issue. This baby’s quite beside the point. Mrs. Theobald will do nothing, and it’s no concern of ours.”

“It will make a difference in the money, surely,” said he.

“No, dear; very little. Poor Charles provided for every kind of contingency in his will. The money will come to you and Harriet, as Irma’s guardians.”

“Good. Does the Italian get anything?”

“He will get all hers. But you know what that is.”

“Good. So those are our tactics—to tell no one about the baby, not even Miss Abbott.”

“Most certainly this is the proper course,” said Mrs. Herriton, preferring “course” to “tactics” for Harriet’s sake. “And why ever should we tell Caroline?”

“She was so mixed up in the affair.”

“Poor silly creature. The less she hears about it the better she will be pleased. I have come to be very sorry for Caroline. She, if any one, has suffered and been penitent. She burst into tears when I told her a little, only a little, of that terrible letter. I never saw such genuine remorse. We must forgive her and forget. Let the dead bury their dead. We will not trouble her with them.”

Philip saw that his mother was scarcely logical. But there was no advantage in saying so. “Here beginneth the New Life, then. Do you remember, mother, that was what we said when we saw Lilia off.?”

“Yes, dear; but now it is really a New Life, because we are all at accord. Then you were still infatuated with Italy. It may be full of beautiful pictures and churches, but we cannot judge a country by anything but its men.”

“That is quite true,” he said sadly. And as the tactics were now settled, he went out and took an aimless and solitary walk.

By the time he came back two important things had happened. Irma had been told of her mother’s death, and Miss Abbott, who had called for a subscription, had been told also.

Irma had wept loudly, had asked a few sensible questions and a good many silly ones, and had been content with evasive answers. Fortunately the school prize-giving was at hand, and that, together with the prospect of new black clothes, kept her from meditating on the fact that Lilia, who had been absent so long, would now be absent for ever.

“As for Caroline,” said Mrs. Herriton, “I was almost frightened. She broke down utterly. She cried even when she left the house. I comforted her as best I could, and I kissed her. It is something that the breach between her and ourselves is now entirely healed.”

“Did she ask no questions—as to the nature of Lilia’s death, I mean?”

“She did. But she has a mind of extraordinary delicacy. She saw that I was reticent, and she did not press me. You see, Philip, I can say to you what I could not say before Harriet. Her ideas are so crude. Really we do not want it known in Sawston that there is a baby. All peace and comfort would be lost if people came inquiring after it.”

His mother knew how to manage him. He agreed enthusiastically. And a few days later, when he chanced to travel up to London with Miss Abbott, he had all the time the pleasant thrill of one who is better informed. Their last journey together had been from Monteriano back across Europe. It had been a ghastly journey, and Philip, from the force of association, rather expected something ghastly now.

He was surprised. Miss Abbott, between Sawston and Charing Cross, revealed qualities which he had never guessed her to possess. Without being exactly original, she did show a commendable intelligence, and though at times she was gauche and even uncourtly, he felt that here was a person whom it might be well to cultivate.

At first she annoyed him. They were talking, of course, about Lilia, when she broke the thread of vague commiseration and said abruptly, “It is all so strange as well as so tragic. And what I did was as strange as anything.”

It was the first reference she had ever made to her contemptible behaviour. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s all over now. Let the dead bury their dead. It’s fallen out of our lives.”

“But that’s why I can talk about it and tell you everything I have always wanted to. You thought me stupid and sentimental and wicked and mad, but you never really knew how much I was to blame.”

“Indeed I never think about it now,” said Philip gently. He knew that her nature was in the main generous and upright: it was unnecessary for her to reveal her thoughts.

“The first evening we got to Monteriano,” she persisted, “Lilia went out for a walk alone, saw that Italian in a picturesque position on a wall, and fell in love. He was shabbily dressed, and she did not even know he was the son of a dentist. I must tell you I was used to this sort of thing. Once or twice before I had had to send people about their business.

“Yes; we counted on you,” said Philip, with sudden sharpness. After all, if she would reveal her thoughts, she must take the consequences.

“I know you did,” she retorted with equal sharpness. “Lilia saw him several times again, and I knew I ought to interfere. I called her to my bedroom one night. She was very frightened, for she knew what it was about and how severe I could be. ‘Do you love this man?’ I asked. ‘Yes or no?’ She said ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t you marry him if you think you’ll be happy?’ “

“Really—really,” exploded Philip, as exasperated as if the thing had happened yesterday. “You knew Lilia all your life. Apart from everything else—as if she could choose what could make her happy!”

“Had you ever let her choose?” she flashed out. “I’m afraid that’s rude,” she added, trying to calm herself.

“Let us rather say unhappily expressed,” said Philip, who always adopted a dry satirical manner when he was puzzled.

“I want to finish. Next morning I found Signor