its
way--partly because they avoided the personal note in life. All Wilcoxes
did. It did not seem to them of supreme importance. Or it may be as
Helen supposed: they realised its importance, but were afraid of it.
Panic and emptiness, could one glance behind. They were not callous, and
they left the breakfast-table with aching hearts. Their mother never had
come in to breakfast. It was in the other rooms, and especially in the
garden, that they felt her loss most. As Charles went out to the garage,
he was reminded at every step of the woman who had loved him and whom
he could never replace. What battles he had fought against her gentle
conservatism! How she had disliked improvements, yet how loyally she had
accepted them when made! He and his father--what trouble they had had
to get this very garage! With what difficulty had they persuaded her to
yield them the paddock for it--the paddock that she loved more dearly
than the garden itself! The vine--she had got her way about the vine. It
still encumbered the south wall with its unproductive branches. And so
with Evie, as she stood talking to the cook. Though she could take up
her mother's work inside the house, just as the man could take it up
without, she felt that something unique had fallen out of her life.
Their grief, though less poignant than their father's, grew from deeper
roots, for a wife may be replaced; a mother never. Charles would go
back to the office. There was little at Howards End. The contents of his
mother's will had long been known to them. There were no legacies, no
annuities, none of the posthumous bustle with which some of the dead
prolong their activities. Trusting her husband, she had left him
everything without reserve. She was quite a poor woman--the house had
been all her dowry, and the house would come to Charles in time. Her
watercolours Mr. Wilcox intended to reserve for Paul, while Evie would
take the jewellery and lace. How easily she slipped out of life!
Charles thought the habit laudable, though he did not intend to adopt
it himself, whereas Margaret would have seen in it an almost culpable
indifference to earthly fame. Cynicism--not the superficial cynicism
that snarls and sneers, but the cynicism that can go with courtesy and
tenderness--that was the note of Mrs. Wilcox's will. She wanted not to
vex people. That accomplished, the earth might freeze over her for ever.

No, there was nothing for Charles to wait for. He could not go on