Free Howards End by E. M. Forster

dinner would have been artistic? Heavens, no! The very chairs on which they sat would have seen to that. So with our house—it must be feminine, and all we can do is to see that it isn’t effeminate. Just as another house that I can mention, but I won‘t, sounded irrevocably masculine, and all its inmates can do is to see that it isn’t brutal . ”
    â€œThat house being the W.’s house, I presume,” said Tibby.
    â€œYou’re not going to be told about the W.‘s, my child,” Helen cried, “so don’t you think it. And on the other hand, I don’t the least mind if you find out, so don’t you think you’ve done anything clever, in either case. Give me a cigarette.”
    â€œYou do what you can for the house,” said Margaret. “The drawing-room reeks of smoke.”
    â€œIf you smoked too, the house might suddenly turn masculine. Atmosphere is probably a question of touch and go. Even at Queen Victoria’s dinner-party—if something had been just a little different—perhaps if she’d worn a clinging Liberty tea-gown instead of a magenta satin—”
    â€œWith an Indian shawl over her shoulders—”
    â€œFastened at the bosom with a Caimgorm-pin—”
    Bursts of disloyal laughter—you must remember that they are half German—greeted these suggestions, and Margaret said pensively: “How inconceivable it would be if the Royal Family cared about art.” And the conversation drifted away and away, and Helen’s cigarette turned to a spot in the darkness, and the great flats opposite were sown with lighted windows, which vanished and were relit again, and vanished incessantly. Beyond them the thoroughfare roared gently—a tide that could never be quiet, while in the east, invisible behind the smokes of Wapping, the moon was rising.
    â€œThat reminds me, Margaret. We might have taken that young man into the dining-room, at all events. Only the majolica plate—and that is so firmly set in the wall. I am really distressed that he had no tea.”
    For that little incident had impressed the three women more than might be supposed. It remained as a goblin footfall, as a hint that all is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and that beneath these superstructures of wealth and art there wanders an ill-fed boy, who has recovered his umbrella indeed, but who has left no address behind him, and no name.

Chapter VI
    We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.
    The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of gentility. He was not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people whom he knew had dropped in, and counted no more. He knew that he was poor, and would admit it: he would have died sooner than confess any inferiority to the rich. This may be splendid of him. But he was inferior to most rich people, there is not the least doubt of it. He was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as lovable. His mind and his body had been alike underfed, because he was poor, and because he was modem they were always craving better food. Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming: “All men are equal—alt men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas,” and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slipped into the abyss where nothing counts and the statements of Democracy are inaudible.
    As he walked away from Wickham Place, his first care was to prove that he was as good as the Miss Schlegels. Obscurely wounded in his pride,