“Do you really mean this, Isabel?” I asked.
“What else is there to do, my dear?--what else is there to do at all?
I've been thinking day and night. You can't go away with me. You can't
smash yourself suddenly in the sight of all men. I'd rather die than
that should happen. Look what you are becoming in the country! Look at
all you've built up!--me helping. I wouldn't let you do it if you could.
I wouldn't let you--if it were only for Margaret's sake. THIS... closes
the scandal, closes everything.”
“It closes all our life together,” I cried.
She was silent.
“It never ought to have begun,” I said.
She winced. Then abruptly she was on her knees before me, with her hands
upon my shoulder and her eyes meeting mine.
“My dear,” she said very earnestly, “don't misunderstand me! Don't think
I'm retreating from the things we've done! Our love is the best thing I
could ever have had from life. Nothing can ever equal it; nothing could
ever equal the beauty and delight you and I have had together. Never!
You have loved me; you do love me....”
No one could ever know how to love you as I have loved you; no one could
ever love me as you have loved me, my king. And it's just because it's
been so splendid, dear; it's just because I'd die rather than have a
tithe of all this wiped out of my life again--for it's made me, it's all
I am--dear, it's years since I began loving you--it's just because of
its goodness that I want not to end in wreckage now, not to end in
the smashing up of all the big things I understand in you and love in
you....
“What is there for us if we keep on and go away?” she went on. “All
the big interests in our lives will vanish--everything. We shall become
specialised people--people overshadowed by a situation. We shall be
an elopement, a romance--all our breadth and meaning gone! People will
always think of it first when they think of us; all our work and aims
will be warped by it and subordinated to it. Is it good enough, dear?
Just to specialise.... I think of you. We've got a case, a passionate
case, the best of cases, but do we want to spend all our lives defending
it and justifying it? And there's that other life. I know now you care
for Margaret--you care more than you think you do. You have said fine
things of her. I've watched you about her. Little things have dropped
from you. She's given her life for you; she's nothing without you.
You feel that to your marrow all the time you are thinking about these
things. Oh, I'm not jealous, dear. I love you for loving her. I love you
in relation to her. But there it is, an added weight against us, another
thing worth saving.”
Presently, I remember, she sat back on her heels and looked up into
my face. “We've done wrong--and parting's paying. It's time to pay.
We needn't have paid, if we'd kept to the track.... You and I, Master,
we've got to be men.”
“Yes,” I said; “we've got to be men.”
4
I was driven to tell Margaret about our situation by my intolerable
dread that otherwise the thing might come to her through some stupid and
clumsy informant. She might even meet Altiora, and have it from her.
I can still recall the feeling of sitting at my desk that night in that
large study of mine in Radnor Square, waiting for Margaret to come home.
It was oddly like the feeling of a dentist's reception-room; only it was
for me to do the dentistry with clumsy, cruel hands. I had left the door
open so that she would come in to me.
I heard her silken rustle on the stairs at last, and then she was in the
doorway. “May I come in?” she said.
“Do,” I said, and turned round to her.
“Working?” she said.
“Hard,” I answered. “Where have YOU been?”
“At the Vallerys'. Mr. Evesham was talking about you. They were all
talking. I don't think everybody knew who I was. Just Mrs. Mumble I'd
been to them. Lord Wardenham doesn't like you.”
“He doesn't.”
“But they all feel you're rather big, anyhow. Then I went on to Park
Lane to hear a new pianist and some other music at Eva's.”
“Yes.”
“Then I looked in at the Brabants' for some midnight tea before I came
on here. They'd got some writers--and Grant was there.”
“You HAVE been flying round....”
There was a little pause between us.
I looked at her pretty, unsuspecting face, and at the slender grace of
her golden-robed body. What gulfs there were between us! “You've been
amused,” I said.
“It's been amusing. You've been at the House?”
“The Medical Education Bill kept me.”...
After all, why should I tell her? She'd got to a way of living that
fulfilled her requirements. Perhaps she'd never hear. But all that day
and the day before I'd been making up my mind to do the thing.
“I want to tell you something,” I said. “I wish you'd sit down for a
moment or so.”...
Once I had begun, it seemed to me I had to go through with it.
Something in the quality of my voice gave her an intimation of unusual
gravity. She looked at me steadily for a moment and sat down slowly in
my armchair.
“What is it?” she said.
I went on awkwardly. “I've got to tell you--something extraordinarily
distressing,” I said.
She was manifestly altogether unaware.
“There seems to be a good deal of scandal abroad--I've only recently
heard of it--about myself--and Isabel.”
“Isabel!”