第129章 THE FIRST(8)

"That and the paper.I took a complete set from the beginning down to Durham with me.I have read it over, thought it over.I didn't understand--what you were teaching."There was a little pause.

"It all seems so plain to me now," she said, "and so true."I was profoundly disconcerted.I put down my teacup, stood up in the middle of the hearthrug, and began talking."I'm tremendously glad, Margaret, that you've come to see I'm not altogether perverse," I began.I launched out into a rather trite and windy exposition of my views, and she sat close to me on the sofa, looking up into my face, hanging on my words, a deliberate and invincible convert.

"Yes," she said, "yes."...

I had never doubted my new conceptions before; now I doubted them profoundly.But I went on talking.It's the grim irony in the lives of all politicians, writers, public teachers, that once the audience is at their feet, a new loyalty has gripped them.It isn't their business to admit doubt and imperfections.They have to go on talking.And I was now so accustomed to Isabel's vivid interruptions, qualifications, restatements, and confirmations....

Margaret and I dined together at home.She made me open out my political projects to her."I have been foolish," she said."Iwant to help."

And by some excuse I have forgotten she made me come to her room.Ithink it was some book I had to take her, some American book I had brought back with me, and mentioned in our talk.I walked in with it, and put it down on the table and turned to go.

"Husband!" she cried, and held out her slender arms to me.I was compelled to go to her and kiss her, and she twined them softly about my neck and drew me to her and kissed me.I disentangled them very gently, and took each wrist and kissed it, and the backs of her hands.

"Good-night," I said.There came a little pause."Good-night, Margaret," I repeated, and walked very deliberately and with a kind of sham preoccupation to the door.

I did not look at her, but I could feel her standing, watching me.

If I had looked up, she would, I knew, have held out her arms to me....

At the very outset that secret, which was to touch no one but Isabel and myself, had reached out to stab another human being.

7

The whole world had changed for Isabel and me; and we tried to pretend that nothing had changed except a small matter between us.

We believed quite honestly at that time that it was possible to keep this thing that had happened from any reaction at all, save perhaps through some magically enhanced vigour in our work, upon the world about us! Seen in retrospect, one can realise the absurdity of this belief; within a week I realised it; but that does not alter the fact that we did believe as much, and that people who are deeply in love and unable to marry will continue to believe so to the very end of time.They will continue to believe out of existence every consideration that separates them until they have come together.

Then they will count the cost, as we two had to do.

I am telling a story, and not propounding theories in this book; and chiefly I am telling of the ideas and influences and emotions that have happened to me--me as a sort of sounding board for my world.

The moralist is at liberty to go over my conduct with his measure and say, "At this point or at that you went wrong, and you ought to have done"--so-and-so.The point of interest to the statesman is that it didn't for a moment occur to us to do so-and-so when the time for doing it came.It amazes me now to think how little either of us troubled about the established rights or wrongs of the situation.We hadn't an atom of respect for them, innate or acquired.The guardians of public morals will say we were very bad people; I submit in defence that they are very bad guardians--provocative guardians....And when at last there came a claim against us that had an effective validity for us, we were in the full tide of passionate intimacy.

I had a night of nearly sleepless perplexity after Margaret's return.She had suddenly presented herself to me like something dramatically recalled, fine, generous, infinitely capable of feeling.I was amazed how much I had forgotten her.In my contempt for vulgarised and conventionalised honour I had forgotten that for me there was such a reality as honour.And here it was, warm and near to me, living, breathing, unsuspecting.Margaret's pride was my honour, that I had had no right even to imperil.

I do not now remember if I thought at that time of going to Isabel and putting this new aspect of the case before her.Perhaps I did.

Perhaps I may have considered even then the possibility of ending what had so freshly and passionately begun.If I did, it vanished next day at the sight of her.Whatever regrets came in the darkness, the daylight brought an obstinate confidence in our resolution again.We would, we declared, "pull the thing off."Margaret must not know.Margaret should not know.If Margaret did not know, then no harm whatever would be done.We tried to sustain that....

For a brief time we had been like two people in a magic cell, magically cut off from the world and full of a light of its own, and then we began to realise that we were not in the least cut off, that the world was all about us and pressing in upon us, limiting us, threatening us, resuming possession of us.I tried to ignore the injury to Margaret of her unreciprocated advances.I tried to maintain to myself that this hidden love made no difference to the now irreparable breach between husband and wife.But I never spoke of it to Isabel or let her see that aspect of our case.How could I? The time for that had gone....

Then in new shapes and relations came trouble.Distressful elements crept in by reason of our unavoidable furtiveness; we ignored them, hid them from each other, and attempted to hide them from ourselves.

Successful love is a thing of abounding pride, and we had to be secret.It was delightful at first to be secret, a whispering, warm conspiracy; then presently it became irksome and a little shameful.