by H. G. Wells
exculpatory gestures-Houndsditch gestures-of his enormous ugly
hands.
"I can assure you, my dear fellow," he said; "I can assure you we've
done everything to shield you-everything."…
3
Isabel came after dinner one evening and talked in the office. She
made a white-robed, dusky figure against the deep blues of my big
window. I sat at my desk and tore a quill pen to pieces as I
talked.
"The Baileys don't intend to let this drop," I said. "They mean
that every one in London is to know about it."
"I know."
"Well!" I said.
"Dear heart," said Isabel, facing it, "it's no good waiting for
things to overtake us; we're at the parting of the ways."
"What are we to do?"
"They won't let us go on."
"Damn them!"
"They are ORGANISING scandal."
"It's no good waiting for things to overtake us," I echoed; "they
have overtaken us." I turned on her. "What do you want to do?"
"Everything," she said. "Keep you and have our work. Aren't we
Mates?"
"We can't."
"And we can't!"
"I've got to tell Margaret," I said.
"Margaret!"
"I can't bear the idea of any one else getting in front with it.
I've been wincing about Margaret secretly-"
"I know. You'll have to tell her-and make your peace with her."
She leant back against the bookcases under the window.
"We've had some good times, Master;" she said, with a sigh in her
voice.
And then for a long time we stared at one another in silence.
"We haven't much time left," she said.
"Shall we bolt?" I said.
"And leave all this?" she asked, with her eyes going round the room.
"And that?" And her head indicated Westminster. "No!"
I said no more of bolting.
"We've got to screw ourselves up to surrender," she said.
"Something."
"A lot."
"Master," she said, "it isn't all sex and stuff between us?"
"No!"
"I can't give up the work. Our work's my life."
We came upon another long pause.
"No one will believe we've ceased to be lovers-if we simply do,"
she said.
"We shouldn't."
"We've got to do something more parting than that."
I nodded, and again we paused. She was coming to something.
"I could marry Shoesmith," she said abruptly.
"But-" I objected.
"He knows. It wasn't fair. I told him."
"Oh, that explains," I said. "There's been a kind of sulkiness-
But-you told him?"
She nodded. "He's rather badly hurt," she said. "He's been a good
friend to me. He's curiously loyal. But something, something he
said one day-forced me to let him know… That's been the
beastliness of all this secrecy. That's the beastliness of all
secrecy. You have to spring surprises on people. But he keeps on.
He's steadfast. He'd already suspected. He wants me very badly to
marry him…"
"But you don't want to marry him?"
"I'm forced to think of it."
"But does he want to marry you at that? Take you as a present from
the world at large?-against your will and desire?… I don't
understand him."
"He cares for me."
"How?"
"He thinks this is a fearful mess for me. He wants to pull it
straight."
We sat for a time in silence, with imaginations that obstinately
refused to take up the realities of this proposition.
"I don't want you to marry Shoesmith," I said at last.
"Don't you like him?"
"Not as your husband."
"He's a very clever and sturdy person-and very generous and devoted
to me."
"And me?"
"You can't expect that. He thinks you are wonderful-and,
naturally, that you ought not to have started this."
"I've a curious dislike to any one thinking that but myself. I'm
quite ready to think it myself."
"He'd let us be friends-and meet."
"Let us be friends!" I cried, after a long pause. "You and me!"
"He wants me to be engaged soon. Then, he says, he can go round
fighting these rumours, defending us both-and force a quarrel on
the Baileys."
"I don't understand him," I said, and added, "I don't understand
you."
I was staring at her face. It seemed white and set in the dimness.
"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!"
I nodded.
"What do they say?" she asked.
It was difficult, I found, to speak.
"They say she's my mistress."
"Oh! How abominable!"
She spoke with the most natural indignation. Our eyes met.
"We've been great friends," I said.
"Yes. And to make THAT of it. My poor dear! But how can they?"
She paused and looked at me. It's so incredible. How can any one
believe it? I couldn't."
She stopped, with her distressed eyes regarding me. Her expression
changed to dread. There was a tense stillness for a second,
perhaps.
I turned my face towards the desk, and took up and dropped a handful
of paper fasteners.
"Margaret," I said, " I'm afraid you'll have to believe it."
5
Margaret sat very still. When I looked at her again, her face was
very white, and her distressed eyes scrutinised me. Her lips
quivered as she spoke. "You really mean-THAT?" she said.
I nodded.
"I never dreamt."
"I never meant you to dream."
"And that is why-we've been apart?"
I thought. "I suppose it is."
"Why have you told me now?"
"Those rumours. I didn't want any one else to tell you."
"Or else it wouldn't have mattered?"
"No."
She turned her eyes from me to the fire. Then for a moment she
looked about the room she had made for me, and then quite silently,
with a childish quivering of her lips, with a sort of dismayed
distress upon her face, she was weeping. She sat weeping in her
dress of cloth of gold, with her bare slender arms dropped limp over
the arms of her chair, and her eyes averted from me, making no
effort to stay or staunch her tears. "Iamsorry, Margaret," I
said. "I was in love… I did not understand…"
Presently she asked: "What are you going to do?"
"You see, Margaret, now it's come to be your affair-I want to know
what you-what you want."
"You want to leave me?"
"If you want me to, I must."
"Leave Parliament-leave all the things you are doing,-all this
fine movement of yours?"
"No." I spoke sullenly. "I don't want to leave anything. I want to
stay on. I've told you, because I think we-Isabel and I, I mean-
have got to drive through a storm of scandal anyhow. I don't know
how far things may go, how much people may feel, and I can't, I
can't have you unconscious, unarmed, open to any revelation-"
She made no answer.
"When the thing began-I knew it was stupid but I thought it was a
thing that wouldn't change, wouldn't be anything but itself,
wouldn't unfold-consequences… People have got hold of these
vague rumours… Directly it reached any one else but-but us
two-I saw it had to come to you."
I stopped. I had that distressful feeling I have always had with
Margaret, of not being altogether sure she heard, of beingdoubtful
if she understood. I perceived that once again I had struck at her
and shattered a thousand unsubstantial pinnacles. And I couldn't
get at her, to help her, or touch her mind! I stood up, and at my
movement she moved. She produced a dainty little handkerchief, and
made an effort to wipe her face with it, and held it to her eyes.
"Oh, my Husband!" she sobbed.
"What do you mean to do?" she said, with her voice muffled by her
handkerchief.
"We're going to end it," I said.
Something gripped me tormentingly as I said that. I drew a chair
beside her and sat down. "You and I, Margaret, have been partners,"
I began. "We've built up this life of ours together; I couldn't
have done it without you. We've made a position, created a work-"
She shook her head. "You," she said.
"You helping. I don't want to shatter it-if you don't want it
shattered. I can't leave my work. I can't leave you. I want you
to have-all that you have ever had. I've never meant to rob you.
I've made an immense and tragic blunder. You don't know how things
took us, how different they seemed! My character and accident have
conspired-We'll pay-in ourselves, not in our public service."
I halted again. Margaret remained very still.
"I want you to understand that the thing is at an end. It is
definitely at an end
. We-we talked-yesterday. We mean to end it
altogether." I clenched my hands. "She's-she's going to marry
Arnold Shoesmith."
I wasn't looking now at Margaret any more, but I heard the rustle of
her movement as she turned on me.
"It's all right," I said, clinging to my explanation. "We're doing
nothing shabby. He knows. He will. It's all as right-as things
can be now. We're not cheating any one, Margaret. We're doing
things straight-now. Of course, you know… We shall-we
shall have to make sacrifices. Give things up pretty completely.
Very completely… We shall have not to see each other for a
time, you know. Perhaps not a long time. Two or three years. Or
write-or just any of that sort of thing ever-"
Some subconscious barrier gave way in me. I found myself crying
uncontrollably-as I have never cried since I was a little child. I
was amazed and horrified at myself. And wonderfully, Margaret was
on her knees beside me, with her arms about me, mingling her weeping
with mine. "Oh, my Husband!" she cried, my poor Husband! Does it
hurt you so? I would do anything! Oh, the fool Iam! Dear, I love
you. I love you over and away and above all these jealous little
things!"
She drew down my head to her as a mother might draw down the head of
a son. She caressed me, weeping bitterly with me. "Oh! my dear,"
she sobbed, "my dear! I've never seen you cry! I've never seen you
cry. Ever! I didn't know you could. Oh! my dear! Can't you have
her, my dear, if you want her? I can't bear it! Let me help you,
dear. Oh! my Husband! My Man! I can't bear to have you cry!" For
a time she held me in silence.
"I've thought this might happen, I dreamt it might happen. You two,
I mean. It was dreaming put it into my head. When I've seen you
together, so glad with each other… Oh! Husband mine, believe
me! believe me! I'm stupid, I'm cold, I'm only beginning to realise
how stupid and cold, but all I want in all the world is to give my
life to you."…
6
"We can't part in a room," said Isabel.
"We'll have one last talk together," I said, and planned that we
should meet for a half a day between Dover and Walmer and talk
ourselves out. I still recall that day very well, recall even the
curious exaltation of grief that made our mental atmosphere