THE NEW MACHIAVELLI
Page 51
flat, she was with the Balfes-she was to have been married from the
Balfes-and I sent my letter there. And I went out into the silent
square and posted the note forthwith, because I knew quite clearly
that if I left it until morning I should never post it at all.
3
I had a curious revulsion of feeling that morning of our meeting.
(Of all places for such a clandestine encounter she had chosen the
bridge opposite Buckingham Palace.) Overnight I had been full of
self pity, and eager for the comfort of Isabel's presence. But the
ill-written scrawl in which she had replied had been full of the
suggestion of her own weakness and misery. And when I saw her, my
own selfishsorrows were altogether swept away by a wave of pitiful
tenderness. Something had happened to her that I did not
understand. She was manifestly ill. She came towards me wearily,
she who had always borne herself so bravely; her shoulders seemed
bent, and her eyes were tired, and her face white and drawn. All my
life has been a narrow self-centred life; no brothers, no sisters or
children or weak things had ever yet made any intimate appeal to me,
and suddenly-I verily believe for the first time in my life!-I
felt a great passion of protective ownership; I felt that here was
something that I could die to shelter, something that meant more
than joy or pride or splendid ambitions or splendid creation to me,
a new kind of hold upon me, a new power in the world. Some sealed
fountain was opened in my breast. I knew that I could love Isabel
broken, Isabel beaten, Isabel ugly and in pain, more than I could
love any sweet or delightful or glorious thing in life. I didn't
care any more for anything in the world but Isabel, and that I
should protect her. I trembled as I came near her, and could
scarcely speak to her for the emotion that filled me…
"I had your letter," I said.
"I had yours."
"Where can we talk?"
I remember my lame sentences. "We'll have a boat. That's best
here."
I took her to the little boat-house, and there we hired a boat, and
I rowed in silence under the bridge and into the shade of a tree.
The square grey stone masses of the Foreign Office loomed through
the twigs, I remember, and a little space of grass separated us from
the pathway and the scrutiny of passers-by. And there we talked.
"I had to write to you," I said.
"I had to come."
"When are you to be married?"
"Thursday week."
"Well?" I said. "But-can we?"
She leant forward and scrutinised my face with eyes wide open.
"What do you mean?" she said at last in a whisper.
"Can we stand it? After all?"
I looked at her white face. "Can you?" I said.
She whispered. "Your career?"
Then suddenly her face was contorted,-she wept silently, exactly as
a child tormented beyond endurance might suddenly weep…
"Oh! I don't care," I cried, "now. I don't care. Damn the whole
system of things! Damn all this patching of the irrevocable! I
want to take care of you, Isabel! and have you with me."
"I can't stand it," she blubbered.
"You needn't stand it. I thought it was best for you… I
thought indeed it was best for you. I thought even you wanted it
like that."
"Couldn't I live alone-as I meant to do?"
"No," I said, "you couldn't. You're not strong enough. I've
thought of that; I've got to shelter you."
"And I want you," I went on. "I'm not strong enough-I can't stand
life without you."
She stopped weeping, she made a great effort to control herself, and
looked at me steadfastly for a moment. "I was going to kill
myself," she whispered. "I was going to kill myself quietly-
somehow. I meant to wait a bit and have an accident. I thought-
you didn't understand. You were a man, and couldn't understand…"
"People can't do as we thought we could do," I said. "We've gone
too far together."
"Yes," she said, and I stared into her eyes.
"The horror of it," she whispered. "The horror of being handed
over. It's just only begun to dawn upon me, seeing him now as I do.
He tries to be kind to me… I didn't know. I felt adventurous
before… It makes me feel like all the women in the world who
have ever been owned and subdued… It's not that he isn't the
best of men, it's because I'm a part of you… I can't go
through with it. If I go through with it, I shall be left-robbed
of pride-outraged-a woman beaten…"
"I know," I said, "I know."
"I want to live alone… I don't care for anything now but just
escape. If you can help me…"
"I must take you away. There's nothing for us but to go away
together."
"But your work," she said; "your career! Margaret! Our promises!"
"We've made a mess of things, Isabel-or things have made a mess of
us. I don't know which. Our flags are in the mud, anyhow. It's
too late to save those other things! They have to go. You can't
make terms with defeat. I thought it was Margaret needed me most.
But it's you. And I need you. I didn't think of that either. I
haven't a doubt left in the world now. We've got to leave
everything rather than leave each other. I'm sure of it. Now we
have gone so far. We've got to go right down to earth and begin
again… Dear, I WANT disgrace with you…"
So I whispered to her as she sat crumpled together on the faded
cushions of the boat, this white and weary young woman who had been
so valiant and careless a girl. "I don't care," I said. "I don't
care for anything, if I can save you out of the wreckage we have
made together."
4
The next day I went to the office of the BLUE WEEKLY in order to get
as much as possible of its affairs in working order before I left
London with Isabel. I just missed Shoesmith in the lower office.
Upstairs I found Britten amidst a pile of outside articles,
methodically reading the title of each and sometimes the first half-
dozen lines, and either dropping them in a growing heap on the floor
for a clerk to return, or putting them aside for consideration. I
interrupted him, squatted on the window-sill of the open window, and
sketched out my ideas for the session.
"You're far-sighted," he remarked at something of mine which reached
out ahead.
"I like to see things prepared," I answered.
"Yes," he said, and ripped open the envelope of a fresh aspirant.
I was silent while he read.
"You're going away with Isabel Rivers," he said abruptly.
"Well!" I said, amazed.
"I know," he said, and lost his breath. "Not my business. Only-"
It was queer to find Britten afraid to say a thing.
"It's not playing the game," he said.
"What do you know?"
"Everything that matters."
"Some games," I said, "are too hard to play."
There came a pause between us.
"I didn't know you were watching all this," I said.
"Yes," he answered, after a pause, "I've
watched."
"Sorry-sorry you don't approve."
"It means smashing such an infernal lot of things, Remington."
I did not answer.
"You're going away then?"
"Yes."
"Soon?"
"Right away."
"There's vour wife."
"I know."
"Shoesmith-whom you're pledged to in a manner. You've just picked
him out and made him conspicuous. Every one will know. Oh! of
course-it's nothing to you. Honour-"
"I know."
"Common decency."
I nodded.
"All this movement of ours. That's what I care for most…
It's come to be a big thing, Remington."
"That will go on."
"We have a use for you-no one else quite fills it. No one…
I'm not sure it will go on."
"Do you think I haven't thought of all these things?"
He shrugged his shoulders, and rejected two papers unread.
"I knew," he remarked, "when you came back from America. You were
alight with it." Then he let his bitterness gleam for a moment.
"But I thought you would stick to your bargain."
"It's not so much choice as you think," I said.
"There's always a choice."
"No," I said.
He scrutinised my face.
"I can't live without her-I can't work. She's all mixed up with
this-and everything. And besides, there's things you can't
understand. There's feelings you've never felt… You don't
understand how much we've been to one another."
Britten frowned and thought.
"Some things one's GOT to do," he threw out.
"Some things one can't do."
"These infernal institutions-"
"Some one must begin," I said.
He shook his head. "Not YOU," he said. "No!"
He stretched out his hands on the desk before him, and spoke again.
"Remington," he said, "I've thought of this business day and night
too. It matters to me. It matters immensely to me. In a way-it's
a thing one doesn't often say to a man-I've loved you. I'm the
sort of man who leads a narrow life… But you've been
something fine and good for me, since that time, do you remember?
when we talked about Mecca together."
I nodded.
"Yes. And you'll always be something fine and good for me anyhow.
I know things about you,-qualities-no mere act can destroy them..
.. Well, I can tell you, you're doing wrong. You're going on now
like a man who is hypnotised and can't turn round. You're piling
wrong on wrong. It was wrong for you two people ever to be lovers."
He paused.
"It gripped us hard," I said.
"Yes!-but in your position! And hers! It was vile!"
"You've not been tempted."
"How do you know? Anyhow-having done that, you ought to have stood
the consequences and thought of other people. You could have ended
it at the first pause for reflection. You didn't. You blundered
again. You kept on. You owed a certain secrecy to all of us! You
didn't keep it. You were careless. You made things worse. This
engagement and this publicity!-Damn it, Remington!"
"I know," I said, with smarting eyes. "Damn it! with all my heart!
It came of trying to patch… You CAN'T patch."
"And now, as I care for anything under heaven, Remington, you two
ought to stand these last consequences-and part. You ought to
part. Other people have to stand things! Other people have to
part. You ought to. You say-what do you say? It's loss of so
much life to lose each other. So is losing a hand or a leg. But
it's what you've incurred. Amputate. Take your punishment-After
all, you chose it."
"Oh, damn!" I said, standing up and going to the window.
"Damn by all means. I never knew a topic so full of justifiable
damns. But you two did choose it. You ought to stick to your
undertaking."
I turned upon him with a snarl in my voice. "My dear Britten!" I
cried. "Don't I KNOW I'm doing wrong? Aren't I in a net? Suppose
I don't go! Is there any right in that? Do you think we're going
to be much to ourselves or any one after this parting? I've been
thinking all last night of this business, trying it over and over
again from the beginning. How was it we went wrong? Since I came
back from America-I grant you THAT-but SINCE, there's never been a
step that wasn't forced, that hadn't as much right in it or more, as
wrong. You talk as though I was a thing of steel that could bend
this way or that and never change. You talk as though Isabel was a
cat one could give to any kind of owner… We two are things
that change and grow and alter all the time. We're-so interwoven
that being parted now will leave us just misshapen cripples…
You don't know the motives, you don't know the rush and feel of
things, you don't know how it was with us, and how it is with us.
You don't know the hunger for the mere sight of one another; you
don't know anything."
Britten looked at his finger-nails closely. His red face puckered
to a wry frown. "Haven't we all at times wanted the world put
back?" he grunted, and looked hard and close at one particular nail.
There was a long pause.
"I want her," I said, "and I'm going to have her. I'm too tired for
balancing the right or wrong of it any more. You can't separate
them. I saw her yesterday… She's-ill… I'd take her
now, if death were just outside the door waiting for us."
"Torture?"
I thought. "Yes."
"For her?"
"There isn't," I said.
"If there was?"
I made no answer.
"It's blind Want. And there's nothing ever been put into you to
stand against it. What are you going to do with the rest of your
lives?"
"No end of things."
"Nothing."
"I don't believe you are right," I said. "I believe we can save
something-"
Britten shook his head. "Some scraps of salvage won't excuse you,"
he said.
His indignation rose. "In the middle of life!" he said. "No man
has a right to take his hand from the plough!"
He leant forward on his desk and opened an argumentative palm. "You
know, Remington," he said, "and I know, that if this could be fended
off for six months-if you could be clapped in prison, or got out of
the way somehow,-until this marriage was all over and settled down
for a year, say-you know then you two could meet, curious, happy,
as friends. Saved! You KNOW it."
I turned and stared at him. "You're wrong, Britten," I said. "And
does it matter if we could?"
I found that in talking to him I could frame the apologetics I had
not been able to find for myselfalone.
"Iam certain of one thing, Britten. It is our duty not to hush up
this scandal."
He raised his eyebrows. I perceived now the element of absurdity in
me, but at the time I was as serious as a man who is burning.
"It's our duty," I went on, "to smash now openly in the sight of
every one. Yes! I've got that as clean and plain-as prison
whitewash. Iam convinced that we have got to be pub
lic to the
uttermost now-I mean it-until every corner of our world knows this
story, knows it fully, adds it to the Parnell story and the Ashton
Dean story and the Carmel story and the Witterslea story, and all
the other stories that have picked man after man out of English
public life, the men with active imaginations, the men of strong
initiative. To think this tottering old-woman ridden Empire should
dare to waste a man on such a score! You say I ought to be
penitent-"
Britten shook his head and smiled very faintly.
"I'm boiling with indignation," I said. " I lay in bed last night
and went through it all. What in God's name was to be expected of
us but what has happened? I went through my life bit by bit last
night, I recalled all I've had to do with virtue and women, and all
I was told and how I was prepared. I was born into cowardice and
debasement. We all are. Our generation's grimy with hypocrisy. I
came to the most beautiful things in life-like peeping Tom of
Coventry. I was never given a light, never given a touch of natural
manhood by all this dingy, furtive, canting, humbugging English
world. Thank God! I'll soon be out of it! The shame of it! The
very savages in Australia initiate their children better than the
English do to-day. Neither of us was ever given a view of what they
call morality that didn't make it show as shabby subservience, as
the meanest discretion, an abject submission to unreasonable
prohibitions! meek surrender of mind and body to the dictation of
pedants and old women and fools. We weren't taught-we were mumbled
at! And when we found that the thing they called unclean, unclean,
was Pagan beauty-God! it was a glory to sin, Britten, it was a
pride and splendour like bathing in the sunlight after dust and
grime!"
"Yes," said Britten. "That's all very well-"
I interrupted him. "I know there's a case-I'm beginning to think
it a valid case against us; but we never met it! There's a steely
pride in self restraint, a nobility of chastity, but only for those
who see and think and act-untrammeled and unafraid. The other
thing, the current thing, why! it's worth as much as the chastity of
a monkey kept in a cage by itself!" I put my foot in a chair, and
urged my case upon him. "This is a dirty world, Britten, simply
because it is a muddled world, and the thing you call morality is