distinctive and memorable. We had seen so much of one another, had
become so intimate, that we talked of parting even as we parted with
a sense of incredible remoteness. We went together up over the
cliffs, and to a place where they fall towards the sea, past the
white, quaint-lanterned lighthouses of the South Foreland. There,
in a kind of niche below the crest, we sat talking. It was a
spacious day, serenely blue and warm, and on the wrinkled water
remotely below a black tender and six hooded submarines came
presently, and engaged in mysterious manoeuvers. Shrieking gulls
and chattering jackdaws circled over us and below us, and dived and
swooped; and a skerry of weedy, fallen chalk appeared, and gradually
disappeared again, as the tide fell and rose.
We talked and thought that afternoon on every aspect of our
relations. It seems to me now we talked so wide and far that
scarcely an issue in the life between man and woman can arise that
we did not at least touch upon. Lying there at Isabel's feet, I
have become for myself a symbol of all this world-wide problem
between duty and conscious, passionate love the world has still to
solve. Because it isn't solved; there's a wrong in it either way..
.. The sky, the wide horizon, seemed to lift us out of ourselves
until we were something representative and general. She was
womanhood become articulate, talking to her lover.
"I ought," I said, "never to have loved you."
"It wasn't a thing planned," she said.
"I ought never to have let our talk slip to that, never to have
turned back from America."
"I'm glad we did it," she said. "Don't think I repent."
I looked at her.
"I will never repent," she said. "Never!" as though she clung to
her life in saying it.
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
"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 feltourselves 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."
"I shall be in the world-yes."
"I don't feel as though these days ahead were real. Here we are,
here we remain."
"Yes, I feel that. As though you and I were two immortals, who
didn't live in time and space at all, who never met, who couldn't
part, and here we lie on Olympus. And those two poor creatures who
did meet, poor little Richard Remington and Isabel Rivers, who met
and loved too much and had to part, they part and go their ways, and
we lie here and watch them, you and I. She'll cry, poor dear."
"She'll cry. She's crying now!"
"Poor little beasts! I think he'll cry too. He winces. He could-
for tuppence. I didn't know he had lachrymal glands at all until a
little while ago. I suppose all love is hysterical-and a little
foolish. Poor mites! Silly little pitiful creatures! How we have
blundered! Think how we must look to God! Well, we'll pity them,
and then we'll inspire him to stiffen up again-and do as we've
determined he shall do. We'll see it through,-we who lie here on
the cliff. They'll be mean at times, and horrid at times; we know
them! Do you see her, a poor little fine lady in a great house,-
she sometimes goes to her room and writes."
"She writes for his BLUE WEEKLY still."
"Yes. Sometimes-I hope. And he's there in the office with a bit
of her copy in his hand."
"Is it as good as if she still talked it over with him before she
wrote it? Is it?"
"Better, I think. Let's play it's be
tter-anyhow. It may be that
talking over was rather mixed with love-making. After all, love-
making is joy rather than magic. Don't let's pretend about that
even… Let's go on watching him. (I don't see why her writing
shouldn't be better. Indeed I don't.) See! There he goes down
along the Embankment to Westminster just like a real man, for all
that he's smaller than a grain of dust. What is running round
inside that speck of a head of his? Look at him going past the
Policemen, specks too-selected large ones from the country. I
think he's going to dinner with the Speaker-some old thing like
that. Is his face harder or commoner or stronger?-I can't quite
see… And now he's up and speaking in the House. Hope he'll
hold on to the thread. He'll have to plan his speeches to the very
end of his days-and learn the headings."
"Isn't she up in the women's gallery to hear him?"
"No. Unless it's by accident."
"She's there," she said.
"Well, by accident it happens. Not too many accidents, Isabel.
Never any more adventures for us, dear, now. No!… They play
the game, you know. They've begun late, but now they've got to.
You see it's not so very hard for them since you and I, my dear, are
here always, always faithfully here on this warm cliff of love
accomplished, watching and helping them under high heaven. It isn't
so VERY hard. Rather good in some ways. Some people HAVE to be
broken a little. Can you see Altiora down there, by any chance?"
"She's too little to be seen," she said.
"Can you see the sins they once committed?"
"I can only see you here beside me, dear-for ever. For all my
life, dear, till I die. Was that-the sin?"…
I took her to the station, and after she had gone I was to drive to
Dover, and cross to Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt,
return to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little
station of Martin Mill side by side, talking at first in broken
fragments, for the most part of unimportant things.
"None of this," she said abruptly, "seems in the slightest degree
real to me. I've got no sense of things ending."
"We're parting," I said.
"We're parting-as people part in a play. It's distressing. But I
don't feel as though you and I were really never to see each other
again for years. Do you?"
I thought. "No," I said.