“I will never repent,” she said. “Never!” as though she clung to her
life in saying it.
I remember we talked for a long time of divorce. It seemed to us then,
and it seems to us still, that it ought to have been possible for
Margaret to divorce me, and for me to marry without the scandalous and
ugly publicity, the taint and ostracism that follow such a readjustment.
We went on to the whole perplexing riddle of marriage. We criticised
the current code, how muddled and conventionalised it had become, how
modified by subterfuges and concealments and new necessities, and the
increasing freedom of women. “It's all like Bromstead when the building
came,” I said; for I had often talked to her of that early impression of
purpose dissolving again into chaotic forces. “There is no clear right
in the world any more. The world is Byzantine. The justest man to-day
must practise a tainted goodness.”
These questions need discussion--a magnificent frankness of
discussion--if any standards are again to establish an effective hold
upon educated people. Discretions, as I have said already, will never
hold any one worth holding--longer than they held us. Against every
“shalt not” there must be a “why not” plainly put,--the “why not”
largest and plainest, the law deduced from its purpose. “You and I,
Isabel,” I said, “have always been a little disregardful of duty, partly
at least because the idea of duty comes to us so ill-clad. Oh! I know
there's an extravagant insubordinate strain in us, but that wasn't all.
I wish humbugs would leave duty alone. I wish all duty wasn't covered
with slime. That's where the real mischief comes in. Passion can always
contrive to clothe itself in beauty, strips itself splendid. That
carried us. But for all its mean associations there is this duty....
“Don't we come rather late to it?”
“Not so late that it won't be atrociously hard to do.”
“It's queer to think of now,” said Isabel. “Who could believe we did all
we have done honestly? Well, in a manner honestly. Who could believe we
thought this might be hidden? Who could trace it all step by step from
the time when we found that a certain boldness in our talk was pleasing?
We talked of love.... Master, there's not much for us to do in the way
of Apologia that any one will credit. And yet if it were possible to
tell the very heart of our story....
“Does Margaret really want to go on with you?” she asked--“shield
you--knowing of... THIS?”
“I'm certain. I don't understand--just as I don't understand Shoesmith,
but she does. These people walk on solid ground which is just thin air
to us. They've got something we haven't got. Assurances? I wonder.”...
Then it was, or later, we talked of Shoesmith, and what her life might
be with him.
“He's good,” she said; “he's kindly. He's everything but magic. He's the
very image of the decent, sober, honourable life. You can't say a thing
against him or I--except that something--something in his imagination,
something in the tone of his voice--fails for me. Why don't I love
him?--he's a better man than you! Why don't you? IS he a better man than
you? He's usage, he's honour, he's the right thing, he's the breed and
the tradition,--a gentleman. You're your erring, incalculable self. I
suppose we women will trust this sort and love your sort to the very end
of time....”
We lay side by side and nibbled at grass stalks as we talked. It seemed
enormously unreasonable to us that two people who had come to the pitch
of easy and confident affection and happiness that held between us
should be obliged to part and shun one another, or murder half the
substance of their lives. We felt ourselves crushed and beaten by an
indiscriminating machine which destroys happiness in the service of
jealousy. “The mass of people don't feel these things in quite the same
manner as we feel them,” she said. “Is it because they're different in
grain, or educated out of some primitive instinct?”
“It's because we've explored love a little, and they know no more
than the gateway,” I said. “Lust and then jealousy; their simple
conception--and we have gone past all that and wandered hand in
hand....”
I remember that for a time we watched two of that larger sort of gull,
whose wings are brownish-white, circle and hover against the blue. And
then we lay and looked at a band of water mirror clear far out to sea,
and wondered why the breeze that rippled all the rest should leave it so
serene.
“And in this State of ours,” I resumed.
“Eh!” said Isabel, rolling over into a sitting posture and looking out
at the horizon. “Let's talk no more of things we can never see. Talk to
me of the work you are doing and all we shall do--after we have parted.
We've said too little of that. We've had our red life, and it's over.
Thank Heaven!--though we stole it! Talk about your work, dear, and the
things we'll go on doing--just as though we were still together. We'll
still be together in a sense--through all these things we have in
common.”
And so we talked of politics and our outlook. We were interested to the
pitch of self-forgetfulness. We weighed persons and forces, discussed
the probabilities of the next general election, the steady drift of
public opinion in the north and west away from Liberalism towards us.
It was very manifest that in spite of Wardenham and the EXPURGATOR, we
should come into the new Government strongly. The party had no one else,
all the young men were formally or informally with us; Esmeer would have
office, Lord Tarvrille, I... and very probably there would be something
for Shoesmith. “And for my own part,” I said, “I count on backing on the
Liberal side. For the last two years we've been forcing competition in
constructive legislation between the parties. The Liberals have not been
long in following up our Endowment of Motherhood lead. They'll have to
give votes and lip service anyhow. Half the readers of the BLUE WEEKLY,
they say, are Liberals....
“I remember talking about things of this sort with old Willersley,” I
said, “ever so many years ago. It was some place near Locarno, and we
looked down the lake that shone weltering--just as now we look over the
sea. And then we dreamt in an indistinct featureless way of all that you
and I are doing now.”
“I!” said Isabel, and laughed.
“Well, of some such thing,” I said, and remained for awhile silent,
thinking of Locarno.
I recalled once more the largeness, the release from small personal
things that I had felt in my youth; statecraft became real and wonderful
again with the memory, the gigantic handling of gigantic problems. I
began to talk out my thoughts, sitting up beside her, as I could never
talk of them to any one but Isabel; began to recover again the
purpose that lay under all my political ambitions and adjustments and
anticipations. I saw the State, splendid and wide as I had seen it in
that first travel of mine, but now it was no mere distant prospect of
spires and pinnacles, but populous with fine-trained, bold-thinking,
bold-doing people. It was as if I had forgotten for a long time and now
remembered with amazement.
At first, I told her, I had been altogether at a loss how I could do
anything to battle against the aimless muddle of our world; I had
wanted a clue--until she had come into my life questioning, suggesting,
unconsciously illuminating. “But I have done nothing,” she protested. I
declared she had done everything in growing to education under my eyes,
in reflecting again upon all the processes that had made myself, so
that instead of abstractions and blue-books and bills and devices, I had
realised the world of mankind as a crowd needing before all things fine
women and men. We'd spoilt ourselves in learning that, but anyhow we had
our lesson. Before her I was in a nineteenth-century darkness, dealing
with the nation as if it were a crowd of selfish men, forgetful of women
and children and that shy wild thing in the hearts of men, love, which
must be drawn upon as it has never been drawn upon before, if the State
is to live. I saw now how it is possible to bring the loose factors of a
great realm together, to create a mind of literature and thought in it,
and the expression of a purpose to make it self-conscious and fine.
I had it all clear before me, so that at a score of points I could
presently begin. The BLUE WEEKLY was a centre of force. Already we had
given Imperialism a criticism, and leavened half the press from our
columns. Our movement consolidated and spread. We should presently come
into power. Everything moved towards our hands. We should be able to get
at the schools, the services, the universities, the church; enormously
increase the endowment of research, and organise what was sorely wanted,
a criticism of research; contrive a closer contact between the press and
creative intellectual life; foster literature, clarify, strengthen the
public consciousness, develop social organisation and a sense of the
State. Men were coming to us every day, brilliant young peers like Lord
Dentonhill, writers like Carnot and Cresswell. It filled me with pride
to win such men. “We stand for so much more than we seem to stand for,”
I said. I opened my heart to her, so freely that I hesitate to open my
heart even to the reader, telling of projects and ambitions I cherished,
of my consciousness of great powers and widening opportunities....
Isabel watched me as I talked.
She too, I think, had forgotten these things for a while. For it is
curious and I think a very significant thing that since we had become
lovers, we had talked very little of the broader things that had once so
strongly gripped our imaginations.
“It's good,” I said, “to talk like this to you, to get back to youth and
great ambitions with you. There have been times lately when politics has
seemed the pettiest game played with mean tools for mean ends--and none
the less so that the happiness of three hundred million people might be
touched by our follies. I talk to no one else like this.... And now I
think of parting, I think but of how much more I might have talked to
you.”...
Things drew to an end at last, but after we had spoken of a thousand
things.
“We've talked away our last half day,” I said, staring over my shoulder
at the blazing sunset sky behind us. “Dear, it's been the last day of
our lives for us.... It doesn't seem like the last day of our lives. Or
any day.”
“I wonder how it will feel?” said Isabel.
“It will be very strange at first--not to be able to tell you things.”
“I've a superstition that after--after we've parted--if ever I go into
my room and talk, you'll hear. You'll be--somewhere.”
“I shall be in the world--yes.”
“I don't feel as though these days ahead were real. Here we are, here we
remain.”
“Yes, I feel that. As though you and I were two immortals, who didn't
live in time and space at all, who never met, who couldn't part, and
here we lie on Olympus. And those two poor creatures who did meet, poor
little Richard Remington and Isabel Rivers, who met and loved too much
and had to part, they part and go their ways, and we lie here and watch
them, you and I. She'll cry, poor dear.”
“She'll cry. She's crying now!”
“Poor little beasts! I think he'll cry too. He winces. He could--for
tuppence. I didn't know he had lachrymal glands at all until a little
while ago. I suppose all love is hysterical--and a little foolish. Poor
mites! Silly little pitiful creatures! How we have blundered! Think how
we must look to God! Well, we'll pity them, and then we'll inspire him
to stiffen up again--and do as we've determined he shall do. We'll see
it through,--we who lie here on the cliff. They'll be mean at times, and
horrid at times; we know them! Do you see her, a poor little fine lady
in a great house,--she sometimes goes to her room and writes.”
“She writes for his BLUE WEEKLY still.”
“Yes. Sometimes--I hope. And he's there in the office with a bit of her
copy in his hand.”
“Is it as good as if she still talked it over with him before she wrote
it? Is it?”
“Better, I think. Let's play it's better--anyhow. It may be that talking
over was rather mixed with love-making. After all, love-making is joy
rather than magic. Don't let's pretend about that even.... Let's go on
watching him. (I don't see why her writing shouldn't be better. Indeed I
don't.) See! There he goes down along the Embankment to Westminster just
like a real man, for all that he's smaller than a grain of dust. What is
running round inside that speck of a head of his? Look at him going past
the Policemen, specks too--selected large ones from the country. I think
he's going to dinner with the Speaker--some old thing like that. Is his
face harder or commoner or stronger?--I can't quite see.... And now he's
up and speaking in the House. Hope he'll hold on to the thread. He'll
have to plan his speeches to the very end of his days--and learn the
headings.”
“Isn't she up in the women's gallery to hear him?”
“No. Unless it's by accident.”
“She's there,” she said.
“Well, by accident it happens. Not too many accidents, Isabel. Never any
more adventures for us, dear, now. No!... They play the game, you know.
They've begun late, but now they've got to. You see it's not so
very hard for them since you and I, my dear, are here always, always
faithfully here on this warm cliff of love accomplished, watching and
helping them under high heaven. It isn't so VERY hard. Rather good in
some ways. Some people HAVE to be broken a little. Can you see Altiora
down there, by any chance?”
“She's too little to be seen,” she said.
“Can you see the sins they once committed?”
“I can only see you here beside me, dear--for ever. For all my life,
dear, till I die. Was that--the sin?”...
I took her to the station, and after she had gone I was to drive to
Dover, and cross to Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt, return
to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little station of
Martin Mill side by side, talking at first in broken fragments, for the
most part of unimportant things.
“None of this,” she said abruptly, “seems in the slightest degree real
to me. I've got no sense of things ending.”
“We're parting,” I said.
“We're parting--as people part in a play. It's distressing. But I don't
feel as though you and I were really never to see each other again for
years. Do you?”