Part 69

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.”