“All the same, London’s creeping.”
She pointed over the meadow—over eight or nine meadows, but at the end of them was a red rust.
“You see that in Surrey and even Hampshire now,” she continued. “I can see it from the Purbeck Downs. And London is only part of something else, I’m afraid. Life’s going to be melted down, all over the world.”
Margaret knew that her sister spoke truly. Howards End, Oniton, the Purbeck Downs, the Oderberge, were all survivals, and the melting-pot was being prepared for them. Logically, they had no right to be alive. One’s hope was in the weakness of logic. Were they possibly the earth beating time?
“Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong for ever,” she said. “This craze for motion has only set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by a civilization that won’t be a movement, because it will rest on the earth. All the signs are against it now, but I can’t help hoping, and very early in the morning in the garden I feel that our house is the future as well as the past.”
They turned and looked at it. Their own memories coloured it now, for Helen’s child had been born in the central room of the nine. Then Margaret said, “Oh, take care—!” for something moved behind the window of the hall, and the door opened.
“The conclave’s breaking at last. I’ll go.”
It was Paul.
Helen retreated with the children far into the field. Friendly voices greeted her. Margaret rose, to encounter a man with a heavy black moustache.
“My father has asked for you,” he said with hostility. She took her work and followed him.