"For ever. And now, hey for the great round, wonderful world! Don't
you hear our keel cutting the shimmering waters?"
"No," she said savagely. "I hear only Woodham's mocking
laughter!... And it sounds like a goat bleating."
"Darling!" he cried in amaze.
"I told you not to 'darling' me. How dared you change our lives
without a word of consultation?"
"Amber!" His voice was pained now. "I prepared a surprise for the
anniversary of our wedding. One can't consult about surprises."
"Keep your quibbles for the House! But perhaps there is no House,
either."
"Naturally. I have done with it all. I have written for the Chiltern
Hundreds."
"You are mad, Walter. You must take it all back."
"I can't, Amber. I have quarrelled hopelessly with the Party. The
Prime Minister will never forgive what I said at the Council to-day.
The luxury of speaking one's mind is expensive. I ought never to have
joined any Party. I am only fit to be Independent."
"Independence leads nowhere." She rose angrily. "And this is to be the
end of your Career! The Career you married me for!"
"I did wrong, Amber. But before one finds the true God, one worships
idols."
"And what is the true God, pray?"
"The one whose angel and minister you have always been, Amber"--he
lowered his voice reverently--"Love."
"Love!" Her voice was bitter. "Any bench in the Park, any alley in
Highmead, swarms with Love." 'Twas as if Caesar had skipped from his
imperial chariot to a sociable.
All her childish passion for directing the life of the household,
all her girlish relish in keeping lovers in leading strings, all
that unconscious love of Power which--inversely--had attracted her
to Walter Bassett, and which had found so delightful a scope in her
political activities, leapt--now that her Salon was threatened with
extinction--into agonised consciousness of itself.
Through this brilliant husband of hers, she had touched the destinies
of England, pulled the strings of Empire. Oh, the intoxication of the
fight--the fight for which she had seconded and sponged him! Oh,
the rapture of intriguing against his enemies--himself included--the
feminine triumph of managing Goodman Waverer or Badman Badgerer!
And now--oh, she could no longer control her sobs!
He tried to soothe her, to caress her, but she repulsed him.
"Go to your yacht--to your miserable shimmering waters. I shall spend
my honeymoon here alone.... You discovered I was Irish."
* * * * *