Part 52

“I wish,” she said, with something like a sob in her voice, “it were possible that you shouldn't do this.” She stopped abruptly, and I did not look at her, because I could feel the effort she was making to control herself.

“I thought,” she began again, “when you came into Parliament--”

There came another silence. “It's all gone so differently,” she said. “Everything has gone so differently.”

I had a sudden memory of her, shining triumphant after the Kinghampstead election, and for the first time I realised just how perplexing and disappointing my subsequent career must have been to her.

“I'm not doing this without consideration,” I said.

“I know,” she said, in a voice of despair, “I've seen it coming. But--I still don't understand it. I don't understand how you can go over.”

“My ideas have changed and developed,” I said.

I walked across to her bearskin hearthrug, and stood by the mantel.

“To think that you,” she said; “you who might have been leader--” She could not finish it. “All the forces of reaction,” she threw out.

“I don't think they are the forces of reaction,” I said. “I think I can find work to do--better work on that side.”

“Against us!” she said. “As if progress wasn't hard enough! As if it didn't call upon every able man!”

“I don't think Liberalism has a monopoly of progress.”

She did not answer that. She sat quite still looking in front of her. “WHY have you gone over?” she asked abruptly as though I had said nothing.

There came a silence that I was impelled to end. I began a stiff dissertation from the hearthrug. “I am going over, because I think I may join in an intellectual renascence on the Conservative side. I think that in the coming struggle there will be a partial and altogether confused and demoralising victory for democracy, that will stir the classes which now dominate the Conservative party into an energetic revival. They will set out to win back, and win back. Even if my estimate of contemporary forces is wrong and they win, they will still be forced to reconstruct their outlook. A war abroad will supply the chastening if home politics fail. The effort at renascence is bound to come by either alternative. I believe I can do more in relation to that effort than in any other connexion in the world of politics at the present time. That's my case, Margaret.”

She certainly did not grasp what I said. “And so you will throw aside all the beginnings, all the beliefs and pledges--” Again her sentence remained incomplete. “I doubt if even, once you have gone over, they will welcome you.”

“That hardly matters.”

I made an effort to resume my speech.

“I came into Parliament, Margaret,” I said, “a little prematurely. Still--I suppose it was only by coming into Parliament that I could see things as I do now in terms of personality and imaginative range....” I stopped. Her stiff, unhappy, unlistening silence broke up my disquisition.

“After all,” I remarked, “most of this has been implicit in my writings.”

She made no sign of admission.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Keep my seat for a time and make the reasons of my breach clear. Then either I must resign or--probably this new Budget will lead to a General Election. It's evidently meant to strain the Lords and provoke a quarrel.”

“You might, I think, have stayed to fight for the Budget.”

“I'm not,” I said, “so keen against the Lords.”

On that we halted.

“But what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I shall make my quarrel over some points in the Budget. I can't quite tell you yet where my chance will come. Then I shall either resign my seat--or if things drift to dissolution I shall stand again.”

“It's political suicide.”