And then we broke down. We broke our faith with both Margaret and Shoesmith, flung career and duty out of our lives, and went away together.
It is only now, almost a year after these events, that I can begin to see what happened to me. At the time it seemed to me I was a rational, responsible creature, but indeed I had not parted from her two days before I became a monomaniac to whom nothing could matter but Isabel. Every truth had to be squared to that obsession1, every duty. It astounds2 me to think how I forgot Margaret, forgot my work, forgot everything but that we two were parted. I still believe that with better chances we might have escaped the consequences of the emotional storm that presently seized us both. But we had no foresight3 of that, and no preparation for it, and our circumstances betrayed us. It was partly Shoesmith's unwisdom in delaying his marriage until after the end of the session--partly my own amazing folly4 in returning within four days to Westminster. But we were all of us intent upon the defeat of scandal and the complete restoration of appearances. It seemed necessary that Shoesmith's marriage should not seem to be hurried, still more necessary that I should not vanish inexplicably5. I had to be visible with Margaret in London just as much as possible; we went to restaurants, we visited the theatre; we could even contemplate6 the possibility of my presence at the wedding. For that, however, we had schemed a weekend visit to Wales, and a fictitious7 sprained8 ankle at the last moment which would justify9 my absence....
I cannot convey to you the intolerable wretchedness and rebellion of my separation from Isabel. It seemed that in the past two years all my thoughts had spun10 commisures to Isabel's brain and I could think of nothing that did not lead me surely to the need of the one intimate I had found in the world. I came back to the House and the office and my home, I filled all my days with appointments and duty, and it did not save me in the least from a lonely emptiness such as I had never felt before in all my life. I had little sleep. In the daytime I did a hundred things, I even spoke11 in the House on two occasions, and by my own low standards spoke well, and it seemed to me that I was going about in my own brain like a hushed survivor13 in a house whose owner lies dead upstairs.
I came to a crisis after that wild dinner of Tarvrille's. Something in that stripped my soul bare.
It was an occasion made absurd and strange by the odd accident that the house caught fire upstairs while we were dining below. It was a men's dinner--"A dinner of all sorts," said Tarvrille, when he invited me; "everything from Evesham and Gane to Wilkins the author, and Heaven knows what will happen!" I remember that afterwards Tarvrille was accused of having planned the fire to make his dinner a marvel14 and a memory. It was indeed a wonderful occasion, and I suppose if I had not been altogether drenched15 in misery16, I should have found the same wild amusement in it that glowed in all the others. There were one or two university dons, Lord George Fester, the racing17 man, Panmure, the artist, two or three big City men, Weston Massinghay and another prominent Liberal whose name I can't remember, the three men Tarvrille had promised and Esmeer, Lord Wrassleton, Waulsort, the member for Monckton, Neal and several others. We began a little coldly, with duologues, but the conversation was already becoming general--so far as such a long table permitted--when the fire asserted itself.
It asserted itself first as a penetrating19 and emphatic20 smell of burning rubber,--it was caused by the fusing of an electric wire. The reek21 forced its way into the discussion of the Pekin massacres23 that had sprung up between Evesham, Waulsort, and the others at the end of the table. "Something burning," said the man next to me.
"Something must be burning," said Panmure.
Tarvrille hated undignified interruptions. He had a particularly imperturbable24 butler with a cadaverous sad face and an eye of rigid25 disapproval26. He spoke to this individual over his shoulder. "Just see, will you," he said, and caught up the pause in the talk to his left.
Wilkins was asking questions, and I, too, was curious. The story of the siege of the Legations in China in the year 1900 and all that followed upon that, is just one of those disturbing interludes in history that refuse to join on to that general scheme of protestation by which civilisation27 is maintained. It is a break in the general flow of experience as disconcerting to statecraft as the robbery of my knife and the scuffle that followed it had been to me when I was a boy at Penge. It is like a tear in a curtain revealing quite unexpected backgrounds. I had never given the business a thought for years; now this talk brought back a string of pictures to my mind; how the reliefs arrived and the plundering28 began, how section after section of the International Army was drawn29 into murder and pillage30, how the infection spread upward until the wives of Ministers were busy looting, and the very sentinels stripped and crawled like snakes into the Palace they were set to guard. It did not stop at robbery, men were murdered, women, being plundered31, were outraged32, children were butchered, strong men had found themselves with arms in a lawless, defenceless city, and this had followed. Now it was all recalled.
"Respectable ladies addicted33 to district visiting at home were as bad as any one," said Panmure. "Glazebrook told me of one--flushed like a woman at a bargain sale, he said--and when he pointed34 out to her that the silk she'd got was bloodstained, she just said, 'Oh, bother!' and threw it aside and went back...."
We became aware that Tarvrille's butler had returned. We tried not to seem to listen.
"Beg pardon, m'lord," he said. "The house IS on fire, m'lord."
"Upstairs, m'lord."
"Just overhead, m'lord."
"The maids are throwing water, m'lord, and I've telephoned FIRE."
"No, m'lord, no immediate35 danger."
"It's all right," said Tarvrille to the table generally. "Go on! It's not a general conflagration36, and the fire brigade won't be five minutes. Don't see that it's our affair. The stuff's insured. They say old Lady Paskershortly was dreadful. Like a harpy. The Dowager Empress had shown her some little things of hers. Pet things--hidden away. Susan went straight for them--used to take an umbrella for the silks. Born shoplifter."
It was evident he didn't want his dinner spoilt, and we played up loyally.
"This is recorded history," said Wilkins,--"practically. It makes one wonder about unrecorded history. In India, for example."
But nobody touched that.
"Thompson," said Tarvrille to the imperturbable butler, and indicating the table generally, "champagne37. Champagne. Keep it going."
"M'lord," and Thompson marshalled his assistants.
Some man I didn't know began to remember things about Mandalay. "It's queer," he said, "how people break out at times;" and told his story of an army doctor, brave, public-spirited, and, as it happened, deeply religious, who was caught one evening by the excitement of plundering--and stole and hid, twisted the wrist of a boy until it broke, and was afterwards overcome by wild remorse38.
I watched Evesham listening intently. "Strange," he said, "very strange. We are such stuff as thieves are made of. And in China, too, they murdered people--for the sake of murdering. Apart, so to speak, from mercenary considerations. I'm afraid there's no doubt of it in certain cases. No doubt at all. Young soldiers fresh from German high schools and English homes!"
"Did OUR people?" asked some patriot39.
"Not so much. But I'm afraid there were cases.... Some of the Indian troops were pretty bad."
Gane picked up the tale with confirmations40.
It is all printed in the vividest way as a picture upon my memory, so that were I a painter I think I could give the deep rich browns and warm greys beyond the brightly lit table, the various distinguished41 faces, strongly illuminated42, interested and keen, above the black and white of evening dress, the alert menservants with their heavier, clean-shaved faces indistinctly seen in the dimness behind. Then this was coloured emotionally for me by my aching sense of loss and sacrifice, and by the chance trend of our talk to the breaches43 and unrealities of the civilised scheme. We seemed a little transitory circle of light in a universe of darkness and violence; an effect to which the diminishing smell of burning rubber, the trampling44 of feet overhead, the swish of water, added enormously. Everybody--unless, perhaps, it was Evesham--drank rather carelessly because of the suppressed excitement of our situation, and talked the louder and more freely.
"But what a flimsy thing our civilisation is!" said Evesham; "a mere45 thin net of habits and associations!"
"I suppose those men came back," said Wilkins.
"Lady Paskershortly did!" chuckled46 Evesham.
"How do they fit it in with the rest of their lives?" Wilkins speculated. "I suppose there's Pekin-stained police officers, Pekin-stained J. P.'s--trying petty pilferers in the severest manner."...
Then for a time things became preposterous47. There was a sudden cascade48 of water by the fireplace, and then absurdly the ceiling began to rain upon us, first at this point and then that. "My new suit!" cried some one. "Perrrrrr-up pe-rr"--a new vertical49 line of blackened water would establish itself and form a spreading pool upon the gleaming cloth. The men nearest would arrange catchment areas of plates and flower bowls. "Draw up!" said Tarvrille, "draw up. That's the bad end of the table!" He turned to the imperturbable butler. "Take round bath towels," he said; and presently the men behind us were offering--with inflexible50 dignity--"Port wine, Sir. Bath towel, Sir!" Waulsort, with streaks51 of blackened water on his forehead, was suddenly reminded of a wet year when he had followed the French army manoeuvres. An animated52 dispute sprang up between him and Neal about the relative efficiency of the new French and German field guns. Wrassleton joined in and a little drunken shrivelled Oxford53 don of some sort with a black-splashed shirt front who presently silenced them all by the immensity and particularity of his knowledge of field artillery54. Then the talk drifted to Sedan and the effect of dead horses upon drinking-water, which brought Wrassleton and Weston Massinghay into a dispute of great vigour55 and emphasis. "The trouble in South Africa," said Weston Massinghay, "wasn't that we didn't boil our water. It was that we didn't boil our men. The Boers drank the same stuff we did. THEY didn't get dysentery."
That argument went on for some time. I was attacked across the table by a man named Burshort about my Endowment of Motherhood schemes, but in the gaps of that debate I could still hear Weston Massinghay at intervals56 repeat in a rather thickened voice: "THEY didn't get dysentery."
I think Evesham went early. The rest of us clustered more and more closely towards the drier end of the room, the table was pushed along, and the area beneath the extinguished conflagration abandoned to a tinkling57, splashing company of pots and pans and bowls and baths. Everybody was now disposed to be hilarious58 and noisy, to say startling and aggressive things; we must have sounded a queer clamour to a listener in the next room. The devil inspired them to begin baiting me. "Ours isn't the Tory party any more," said Burshort. "Remington has made it the Obstetric Party."
"That's good!" said Weston Massinghay, with all his teeth gleaming; "I shall use that against you in the House!"
"I shall denounce you for abusing private confidences if you do," said Tarvrille.
"Remington wants us to give up launching Dreadnoughts and launch babies instead," Burshort urged. "For the price of one Dreadnought--"
The little shrivelled don who had been omniscient60 about guns joined in the baiting, and displayed himself a venomous creature. Something in his eyes told me he knew Isabel and hated me for it. "Love and fine thinking," he began, a little thickly, and knocking over a wine-glass with a too easy gesture. "Love and fine thinking. Two things don't go together. No philosophy worth a damn ever came out of excesses of love. Salt Lake City--Piggott--Ag--Agapemone again--no works to matter."
Everybody laughed.
"Got to rec'nise these facts," said my assailant. "Love and fine think'n pretty phrase--attractive. Suitable for p'litical dec'rations. Postcard, Christmas, gilt61 lets, in a wreath of white flow's. Not oth'wise valu'ble."
I made some remark, I forget what, but he overbore me.
Real things we want are Hate--Hate and COARSE think'n. I b'long to the school of Mrs. F's Aunt--"
"What?" said some one, intent.
"In 'Little Dorrit,'" explained Tarvrille; "go on!"
"Hate a fool," said my assailant.
Tarvrille glanced at me. I smiled to conceal62 the loss of my temper.
"Hate," said the little man, emphasising his point with a clumsy fist. "Hate's the driving force. What's m'rality?--hate of rotten goings on. What's patriotism63?--hate of int'loping foreigners. What's Radicalism64?--hate of lords. What's Toryism?--hate of disturbance65. It's all hate--hate from top to bottom. Hate of a mess. Remington owned it the other day, said he hated a mu'll. There you are! If you couldn't get hate into an election, damn it (hic) people wou'n't poll. Poll for love!--no' me!"
He paused, but before any one could speak he had resumed.
"Then this about fine thinking. Like going into a bear pit armed with a tagle--talgent--talgent galv'nometer. Like going to fight a mad dog with Shasepear and the Bible. Fine thinking--what we want is the thickes' thinking we can get. Thinking that stands up alone. Taf Reform means work for all, thassort of thing."
The gentleman from Cambridge paused. "YOU a flag!" he said. "I'd as soon go to ba'ell und' wet tissue paper!"
My best answer on the spur of the moment was:
"The Japanese did." Which was absurd.
I went on to some other reply, I forget exactly what, and the talk of the whole table drew round me. It was an extraordinary revelation to me. Every one was unusually careless and outspoken66, and it was amazing how manifestly they echoed the feeling of this old Tory spokesman. They were quite friendly to me, they regarded me and the BLUE WEEKLY as valuable party assets for Toryism, but it was clear they attached no more importance to what were my realities than they did to the remarkable67 therapeutic68 claims of Mrs. Eddy69. They were flushed and amused, perhaps they went a little too far in their resolves to draw me, but they left the impression on my mind of men irrevocably set upon narrow and cynical70 views of political life. For them the political struggle was a game, whose counters were human hate and human credulity; their real aim was just every one's aim, the preservation71 of the class and way of living to which their lives were attuned72. They did not know how tired I was, how exhausted73 mentally and morally, nor how cruel their convergent74 attack on me chanced to be. But my temper gave way, I became tart59 and fierce, perhaps my replies were a trifle absurd, and Tarvrille, with that quick eye and sympathy of his, came to the rescue. Then for a time I sat silent and drank port wine while the others talked. The disorder75 of the room, the still dripping ceiling, the noise, the displaced ties and crumpled76 shirts of my companions, jarred on my tormented77 nerves....
It was long past midnight when we dispersed78. I remember Tarvrille coming with me into the hall, and then suggesting we should go upstairs to see the damage. A manservant carried up two flickering79 candles for us. One end of the room was gutted80, curtains, hangings, several chairs and tables were completely burnt, the panelling was scorched81 and warped82, three smashed windows made the candles flare83 and gutter84, and some scraps85 of broken china still lay on the puddled floor.
As we surveyed this, Lady Tarvrille appeared, back from some party, a slender, white-cloaked, satin-footed figure with amazed blue eyes beneath her golden hair. I remember how stupidly we laughed at her surprise.
2
I parted from Panmure at the corner of Aldington Street, and went my way alone. But I did not go home, I turned westward86 and walked for a long way, and then struck northward87 aimlessly. I was too miserable88 to go to my house.
I wandered about that night like a man who has discovered his Gods are dead. I can look back now detached yet sympathetic upon that wild confusion of moods and impulses, and by it I think I can understand, oh! half the wrongdoing and blundering in the world.
I do not feel now the logical force of the process that must have convinced me then that I had made my sacrifice and spent my strength in vain. At no time had I been under any illusion that the Tory party had higher ideals than any other party, yet it came to me like a thing newly discovered that the men I had to work with had for the most part no such dreams, no sense of any collective purpose, no atom of the faith I held. They were just as immediately intent upon personal ends, just as limited by habits of thought, as the men in any other group or party. Perhaps I had slipped unawares for a time into the delusions89 of a party man--but I do not think so.
No, it was the mood of profound despondency that had followed upon the abrupt90 cessation of my familiar intercourse91 with Isabel, that gave this fact that had always been present in my mind its quality of devastating92 revelation. It seemed as though I had never seen before nor suspected the stupendous gap between the chaotic93 aims, the routine, the conventional acquiescences, the vulgarisations of the personal life, and that clearly conscious development and service of a collective thought and purpose at which my efforts aimed. I had thought them but a little way apart, and now I saw they were separated by all the distance between earth and heaven. I saw now in myself and every one around me, a concentration upon interests close at hand, an inability to detach oneself from the provocations94, tendernesses, instinctive95 hates, dumb lusts96 and shy timidities that touched one at every point; and, save for rare exalted97 moments, a regardlessness of broader aims and remoter possibilities that made the white passion of statecraft seem as unearthly and irrelevant98 to human life as the story an astronomer99 will tell, half proven but altogether incredible, of habitable planets and answering intelligences, suns' distances uncounted across the deep. It seemed to me I had aspired100 too high and thought too far, had mocked my own littleness by presumption101, had given the uttermost dear reality of life for a theoriser's dream.
All through that wandering agony of mine that night a dozen threads of thought interwove; now I was a soul speaking in protest to God against a task too cold and high for it, and now I was an angry man, scorned and pointed upon, who had let life cheat him of the ultimate pride of his soul. Now I was the fool of ambition, who opened his box of gold to find blank emptiness, and now I was a spinner of flimsy thoughts, whose web tore to rags at a touch. I realised for the first time how much I had come to depend upon the mind and faith of Isabel, how she had confirmed me and sustained me, how little strength I had to go on with our purposes now that she had vanished from my life. She had been the incarnation of those great abstractions, the saving reality, the voice that answered back. There was no support that night in the things that had been. We were alone together on the cliff for ever more!--that was very pretty in its way, but it had no truth whatever that could help me now, no ounce of sustaining value. I wanted Isabel that night, no sentiment or memory of her, but Isabel alive,--to talk to me, to touch me, to hold me together. I wanted unendurably the dusky gentleness of her presence, the consolation102 of her voice.
We were alone together on the cliff! I startled a passing cabman into interest by laughing aloud at that magnificent and characteristic sentimentality. What a lie it was, and how satisfying it had been! That was just where we shouldn't remain. We of all people had no distinction from that humanity whose lot is to forget. We should go out to other interests, new experiences, new demands. That tall and intricate fabric103 of ambitious understandings we had built up together in our intimacy105 would be the first to go; and last perhaps to endure with us would be a few gross memories of sights and sounds, and trivial incidental excitements....
I had a curious feeling that night that I had lost touch with life for a long time, and had now been reminded of its quality. That infernal little don's parody106 of my ruling phrase, "Hate and coarse thinking," stuck in my thoughts like a poisoned dart107, a centre of inflammation. Just as a man who is debilitated108 has no longer the vitality109 to resist an infection, so my mind, slackened by the crisis of my separation from Isabel, could find no resistance to his emphatic suggestion. It seemed to me that what he had said was overpoweringly true, not only of contemporary life, but of all possible human life. Love is the rare thing, the treasured thing; you lock it away jealously and watch, and well you may; hate and aggression110 and force keep the streets and rule the world. And fine thinking is, in the rough issues of life, weak thinking, is a balancing indecisive process, discovers with disloyal impartiality111 a justice and a defect on each disputing side. "Good honest men," as Dayton calls them, rule the world, with a way of thinking out decisions like shooting cartloads of bricks, and with a steadfast112 pleasure in hostility113. Dayton liked to call his antagonists114 "blaggards and scoundrels"--it justified115 his opposition--the Lords were "scoundrels," all people richer than he were "scoundrels," all Socialists116, all troublesome poor people; he liked to think of jails and justice being done. His public spirit was saturated117 with the sombre joys of conflict and the pleasant thought of condign118 punishment for all recalcitrant119 souls. That was the way of it, I perceived. That had survival value, as the biologists say. He was fool enough in politics to be a consistent and happy politician....
Hate and coarse thinking; how the infernal truth of the phrase beat me down that night! I couldn't remember that I had known this all along, and that it did not really matter in the slightest degree. I had worked it all out long ago in other terms, when I had seen how all parties stood for interests inevitably120, and how the purpose in life achieves itself, if it achieves itself at all, as a bye product of the war of individuals and classes. Hadn't I always known that science and philosophy elaborate themselves in spite of all the passion and narrowness of men, in spite of the vanities and weakness of their servants, in spite of all the heated disorder of contemporary things? Wasn't it my own phrase to speak of "that greater mind in men, in which we are but moments and transitorily lit cells?" Hadn't I known that the spirit of man still speaks like a thing that struggles out of mud and slime, and that the mere effort to speak means choking and disaster? Hadn't I known that we who think without fear and speak without discretion121 will not come to our own for the next two thousand years?
It was the last was most forgotten of all that faith mislaid. Before mankind, in my vision that night, stretched new centuries of confusion, vast stupid wars, hastily conceived laws, foolish temporary triumphs of order, lapses122, set-backs, despairs, catastrophes124, new beginnings, a multitudinous wilderness125 of time, a nigh plotless drama of wrong-headed energies. In order to assuage126 my parting from Isabel we had set ourselves to imagine great rewards for our separation, great personal rewards; we had promised ourselves success visible and shining in our lives. To console ourselves in our separation we had made out of the BLUE WEEKLY and our young Tory movement preposterously127 enormous things-as though those poor fertilising touches at the soil were indeed the germinating128 seeds of the millennium129, as though a million lives such as ours had not to contribute before the beginning of the beginning. That poor pretence130 had failed. That magnificent proposition shrivelled to nothing in the black loneliness of that night.
I saw that there were to be no such compensations. So far as my real services to mankind were concerned I had to live an unrecognised and unrewarded life. If I made successes it would be by the way. Our separation would alter nothing of that. My scandal would cling to me now for all my life, a thing affecting relationships, embarrassing and hampering131 my spirit. I should follow the common lot of those who live by the imagination, and follow it now in infinite loneliness of soul; the one good comforter, the one effectual familiar, was lost to me for ever; I should do good and evil together, no one caring to understand; I should produce much weary work, much bad-spirited work, much absolute evil; the good in me would be too often ill-expressed and missed or misinterpreted. In the end I might leave one gleaming flake132 or so amidst the slag133 heaps for a moment of postmortem sympathy. I was afraid beyond measure of my derelict self. Because I believed with all my soul in love and fine thinking that did not mean that I should necessarily either love steadfastly134 or think finely. I remember how I fell talking to God--I think I talked out loud. "Why do I care for these things?" I cried, "when I can do so little! Why am I apart from the jolly thoughtless fighting life of men? These dreams fade to nothingness, and leave me bare!"
I scolded. "Why don't you speak to a man, show yourself? I thought I had a gleam of you in Isabel,--and then you take her away. Do you really think I can carry on this game alone, doing your work in darkness and silence, living in muddled135 conflict, half living, half dying?"
Grotesque136 analogies arose in my mind. I discovered a strange parallelism between my now tattered137 phrase of "Love and fine thinking" and the "Love and the Word" of Christian138 thought. Was it possible the Christian propaganda had at the outset meant just that system of attitudes I had been feeling my way towards from the very beginning of my life? Had I spent a lifetime making my way back to Christ? It mocks humanity to think how Christ has been overlaid. I went along now, recalling long-neglected phrases and sentences; I had a new vision of that great central figure preaching love with hate and coarse thinking even in the disciples139 about Him, rising to a tidal wave at last in that clamour for Barabbas, and the public satisfaction in His fate....
It's curious to think that hopeless love and a noisy disordered dinner should lead a man to these speculations140, but they did. "He DID mean that!" I said, and suddenly thought of what a bludgeon they'd made of His Christianity. Athwart that perplexing, patient enigma141 sitting inaudibly among publicans and sinners, danced and gibbered a long procession of the champions of orthodoxy. "He wasn't human," I said, and remembered that last despairing cry, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken142 Me?"
"Oh, HE forsakes143 every one," I said, flying out as a tired mind will, with an obvious repartee144....
I passed at a bound from such monstrous145 theology to a towering rage against the Baileys. In an instant and with no sense of absurdity146 I wanted--in the intervals of love and fine thinking--to fling about that strenuously147 virtuous148 couple; I wanted to kick Keyhole of the PEEPSHOW into the gutter and make a common massacre22 of all the prosperous rascaldom that makes a trade and rule of virtue149. I can still feel that transition. In a moment I had reached that phase of weakly decisive anger which is for people of my temperament150 the concomitant of exhaustion151.
"I will have her," I cried. "By Heaven! I WILL have her! Life mocks me and cheats me. Nothing can be made good to me again.... Why shouldn't I save what I can? I can't save myself without her...."
I remember myself--as a sort of anti-climax to that--rather tediously asking my way home. I was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Holland Park....
It was then between one and two. I felt that I could go home now without any risk of meeting Margaret. It had been the thought of returning to Margaret that had sent me wandering that night. It is one of the ugliest facts I recall about that time of crisis, the intense aversion I felt for Margaret. No sense of her goodness, her injury and nobility, and the enormous generosity152 of her forgiveness, sufficed to mitigate153 that. I hope now that in this book I am able to give something of her silvery splendour, but all through this crisis I felt nothing of that. There was a triumphant154 kindliness155 about her that I found intolerable. She meant to be so kind to me, to offer unstinted consolation, to meet my needs, to supply just all she imagined Isabel had given me.
When I left Tarvrille's, I felt I could anticipate exactly how she would meet my homecoming. She would be perplexed156 by my crumpled shirt front, on which I had spilt some drops of wine; she would overlook that by an effort, explain it sentimentally157, resolve it should make no difference to her. She would want to know who had been present, what we had talked about, show the alertest interest in whatever it was--it didn't matter what.... No, I couldn't face her.
So I did not reach my study until two o'clock.
There, I remember, stood the new and very beautiful old silver candlesticks that she had set there two days since to please me--the foolish kindliness of it! But in her search for expression, Margaret heaped presents upon me. She had fitted these candlesticks with electric lights, and I must, I suppose, have lit them to write my note to Isabel. "Give me a word--the world aches without you," was all I scrawled158, though I fully160 meant that she should come to me. I knew, though I ought not to have known, that now she had left her 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 clandestine162 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 scrawl159 in which she had replied had been full of the suggestion of her own weakness and misery. And when I saw her, my own selfish sorrows 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 bent163, 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 delightful164 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 lame165 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 loomed166 through the twigs167, I remember, and a little space of grass separated us from the pathway and the scrutiny168 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 adventurous169 before.... It makes me feel like all the women in the world who have ever been owned and subdued170.... 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 valiant171 and careless a girl. "I don't care," I said. "I don't care for anything, if I can save you out of the wreckage172 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, squatted173 on the window-sill of the open window, and sketched174 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 aspirant175.
I was silent while he read.
"You're going away with Isabel Rivers," he said abruptly176.
"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 your wife."
"I know."
"Shoesmith--whom you're pledged to in a manner. You've just picked him out and made him conspicuous177. Every one will know. Oh! of course--it's nothing to you. Honour--"
"I know."
"Common decency178."
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 shrugged179 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 vile180!"
"You've not been tempted181."
"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 secrecy182 to all of us! You didn't keep it. You were careless. You made things worse. This engagement and this publicity183!--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 incurred184. Amputate. Take your punishment--After all, you chose it."
"Oh, damn!" I said, standing104 up and going to the window.
"Damn by all means. I never knew a topic so full of justifiable185 damns. But you two did choose it. You ought to stick to your undertaking186."
I turned upon him with a snarl187 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 motives188, 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 puckered189 to a wry190 frown. "Haven't we all at times wanted the world put back?" he grunted191, 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 salvage192 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 fended193 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 myself alone.
"I am certain of one thing, Britten. It is our duty not to hush12 up this scandal."
He raised his eyebrows194. 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 whitewash195. I am convinced that we have got to be public 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 tottering196 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 cowardice197 and debasement. We all are. Our generation's grimy with hypocrisy198. 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 dingy199, furtive200, canting, humbugging English world. Thank God! I'll soon be out of it! The shame of it! The very savages201 in Australia initiate202 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 subservience203, as the meanest discretion, an abject204 submission205 to unreasonable206 prohibitions207! meek208 surrender of mind and body to the dictation of pedants209 and old women and fools. We weren't taught--we were mumbled210 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 valid211 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 dirtier now than the thing you call immorality212. Why don't the moralists pick their stuff out of the slime if they care for it, and wipe it?--damn them! I am burning now to say: 'Yes, we did this and this,' to all the world. All the world!... I will!"
Britten rubbed the palm of his hand on the corner of his desk. "That's all very well, Remington," he said. "You mean to go."
He stopped and began again. "If you didn't know you were in the wrong you wouldn't be so damned rhetorical. You're in the wrong. It's as plain to you as it is to me. You're leaving a big work, you're leaving a wife who trusted you, to go and live with your jolly mistress.... You won't see you're a statesman that matters, that no single man, maybe, might come to such influence as you in the next ten years. You're throwing yourself away and accusing your country of rejecting you."
He swung round upon his swivel at me. "Remington," he said, "have you forgotten the immense things our movement means?"
I thought. "Perhaps I am rhetorical," I said.
"But the things we might achieve! If you'd only stay now--even now! Oh! you'd suffer a little socially, but what of that? You'd be able to go on--perhaps all the better for hostility of the kind you'd get. You know, Remington--you KNOW."
I thought and went back to his earlier point. "If I am rhetorical, at any rate it's a living feeling behind it. Yes, I remember all the implications of our aims--very splendid, very remote. But just now it's rather like offering to give a freezing man the sunlit Himalayas from end to end in return for his camp-fire. When you talk of me and my jolly mistress, it isn't fair. That misrepresents everything. I'm not going out of this--for delights. That's the sort of thing men like Snuffles and Keyhole imagine--that excites them! When I think of the things these creatures think! Ugh! But YOU know better? You know that physical passion that burns like a fire--ends clean. I'm going for love, Britten--if I sinned for passion. I'm going, Britten, because when I saw her the other day she HURT me. She hurt me damnably, Britten.... I've been a cold man--I've led a rhetorical life--you hit me with that word!--I put things in a windy way, I know, but what has got hold of me at last is her pain. She's ill. Don't you understand? She's a sick thing--a weak thing. She's no more a goddess than I'm a god.... I'm not in love with her now; I'm RAW with love for her. I feel like a man that's been flayed213. I have been flayed.... You don't begin to imagine the sort of helpless solicitude214.... She's not going to do things easily; she's ill. Her courage fails.... It's hard to put things when one isn't rhetorical, but it's this, Britten--there are distresses215 that matter more than all the delights or achievements in the world.... I made her what she is--as I never made Margaret. I've made her--I've broken her.... I'm going with my own woman. The rest of my life and England, and so forth161, must square itself to that...."
For a long time, as it seemed, we remained silent and motionless. We'd said all we had to say. My eyes caught a printed slip upon the desk before him, and I came back abruptly to the paper.
I picked up this galley216 proof. It was one of Winter's essays. "This man goes on doing first-rate stuff," I said. "I hope you will keep him going."
He did not answer for a moment or so. "I'll keep him going," he said at last with a sigh.
5
I have a letter Margaret wrote me within a week of our flight. I cannot resist transcribing217 some of it here, because it lights things as no word of mine can do. It is a string of nearly inconsecutive thoughts written in pencil in a fine, tall, sprawling218 hand. Its very inconsecutiveness is essential. Many words are underlined. It was in answer to one from me; but what I wrote has passed utterly219 from my mind....
"Certainly," she says, "I want to hear from you, but I do not want to see you. There's a sort of abstract YOU that I want to go on with. Something I've made out of you.... I want to know things about you--but I don't want to see or feel or imagine. When some day I have got rid of my intolerable sense of proprietorship220, it may be different. Then perhaps we may meet again. I think it is even more the loss of our political work and dreams that I am feeling than the loss of your presence. Aching loss. I thought so much of the things we were DOING for the world--had given myself so unreservedly. You've left me with nothing to DO. I am suddenly at loose ends....
"We women are trained to be so dependent on a man. I've got no life of my own at all. It seems now to me that I wore my clothes even for you and your schemes....
"After I have told myself a hundred times why this has happened, I ask again, 'Why did he give things up? Why did he give things up?'...
"It is just as though you were wilfully221 dead....
"Then I ask again and again whether this thing need have happened at all, whether if I had had a warning, if I had understood better, I might not have adapted myself to your restless mind and made this catastrophe123 impossible....
"Oh, my dear! why hadn't you the pluck to hurt me at the beginning, and tell me what you thought of me and life? You didn't give me a chance; not a chance. I suppose you couldn't. All these things you and I stood away from. You let my first repugnances repel222 you....
"It is strange to think after all these years that I should be asking myself, do I love you? have I loved you? In a sense I think I HATE you. I feel you have taken my life, dragged it in your wake for a time, thrown it aside. I am resentful. Unfairly resentful, for why should I exact that you should watch and understand my life, when clearly I have understood so little of yours. But I am savage--savage at the wrecking223 of all you were to do.
"Oh, why--why did you give things up?
"No human being is his own to do what he likes with. You were not only pledged to my tiresome224, ineffectual companionship, but to great purposes. They ARE great purposes....
"If only I could take up your work as you leave it, with the strength you had--then indeed I feel I could let you go--you and your young mistress.... All that matters so little to me....
"Yet I think I must indeed love you yourself in my slower way. At times I am mad with jealousy225 at the thought of all I hadn't the wit to give you.... I've always hidden my tears from you--and what was in my heart. It's my nature to hide--and you, you want things brought to you to see. You are so curious as to be almost cruel. You don't understand reserves. You have no mercy with restraints and reservations. You are not really a CIVILISED man at all. You hate pretences226--and not only pretences but decent coverings....
"It's only after one has lost love and the chance of loving that slow people like myself find what they might have done. Why wasn't I bold and reckless and abandoned? It's as reasonable to ask that, I suppose, as to ask why my hair is fair....
"I go on with these perhapses over and over again here when I find myself alone....
"My dear, my dear, you can't think of the desolation of things--I shall never go back to that house we furnished together, that was to have been the laboratory (do you remember calling it a laboratory?) in which you were to forge so much of the new order....
"But, dear, if I can help you--even now--in any way--help both of you, I mean.... It tears me when I think of you poor and discredited227. You will let me help you if I can--it will be the last wrong not to let me do that....
"You had better not get ill. If you do, and I hear of it--I shall come after you with a troupe228 of doctor's and nurses. If I am a failure as a wife, no one has ever said I was anything but a success as a district visitor...."
There are other sheets, but I cannot tell whether they were written before or after the ones from which I have quoted. And most of them have little things too intimate to set down. But this oddly penetrating analysis of our differences must, I think, be given.
"There are all sorts of things I can't express about this and want to. There's this difference that has always been between us, that you like nakedness and wildness, and I, clothing and restraint. It goes through everything. You are always TALKING of order and system, and the splendid dream of the order that might replace the muddled system you hate, but by a sort of instinct you seem to want to break the law. I've watched you so closely. Now I want to obey laws, to make sacrifices, to follow rules. I don't want to make, but I do want to keep. You are at once makers229 and rebels, you and Isabel too. You're bad people--criminal people, I feel, and yet full of something the world must have. You're so much better than me, and so much viler230. It may be there is no making without destruction, but it seems to me sometimes that it is nothing but an instinct for lawlessness that drives you. You remind me--do you remember?--of that time we went from Naples to Vesuvius, and walked over the hot new lava231 there. Do you remember how tired I was? I know it disappointed you that I was tired. One walked there in spite of the heat because there was a crust; like custom, like law. But directly a crust forms on things, you are restless to break down to the fire again. You talk of beauty, both of you, as something terrible, mysterious, imperative232. YOUR beauty is something altogether different from anything I know or feel. It has pain in it. Yet you always speak as though it was something I ought to feel and am dishonest not to feel. MY beauty is a quiet thing. You have always laughed at my feeling for old-fashioned chintz and blue china and Sheraton. But I like all these familiar USED things. My beauty is STILL beauty, and yours, is excitement. I know nothing of the fascination233 of the fire, or why one should go deliberately234 out of all the decent fine things of life to run dangers and be singed235 and tormented and destroyed. I don't understand...."
6
I remember very freshly the mood of our departure from London, the platform of Charing236 Cross with the big illuminated clock overhead, the bustle237 of porters and passengers with luggage, the shouting of newsboys and boys with flowers and sweets, and the groups of friends seeing travellers off by the boat train. Isabel sat very quiet and still in the compartment238, and I stood upon the platform with the door open, with a curious reluctance239 to take the last step that should sever18 me from London's ground. I showed our tickets, and bought a handful of red roses for her. At last came the guards crying: "Take your seats," and I got in and closed the door on me. We had, thank Heaven! a compartment to ourselves. I let down the window and stared out.
There was a bustle of final adieux on the platform, a cry of "Stand away, please, stand away!" and the train was gliding240 slowly and smoothly241 out of the station.
I looked out upon the river as the train rumbled242 with slowly gathering243 pace across the bridge, and the bobbing black heads of the pedestrians244 in the footway, and the curve of the river and the glowing great hotels, and the lights and reflections and blacknesses of that old, familiar spectacle. Then with a common thought, we turned our eyes westward to where the pinnacles245 of Westminster and the shining clock tower rose hard and clear against the still, luminous246 sky.
"They'll be in Committee on the Reformatory Bill to-night," I said, a little stupidly.
"And so," I added, "good-bye to London!"
We said no more, but watched the south-side streets below--bright gleams of lights and movement, and the dark, dim, monstrous shapes of houses and factories. We ran through Waterloo Station, London Bridge, New Cross, St. John's. We said never a word. It seemed to me that for a time we had exhausted our emotions. We had escaped, we had cut our knot, we had accepted the last penalty of that headlong return of mine from Chicago a year and a half ago. That was all settled. That harvest of feelings we had reaped. I thought now only of London, of London as the symbol of all we were leaving and all we had lost in the world. I felt nothing now but an enormous and overwhelming regret....
The train swayed and rattled247 on its way. We ran through old Bromstead, where once I had played with cities and armies on the nursery floor. The sprawling suburbs with their scattered248 lights gave way to dim tree-set country under a cloud-veiled, intermittently249 shining moon. We passed Cardcaster Place. Perhaps old Wardingham, that pillar of the old Conservatives, was there, fretting250 over his unsuccessful struggle with our young Toryism. Little he recked of this new turn of the wheel and how it would confirm his contempt of all our novelties. Perhaps some faint intimation drew him to the window to see behind the stems of the young fir trees that bordered his domain251, the little string of lighted carriage windows gliding southward....
Suddenly I began to realise just what it was we were doing.
And now, indeed, I knew what London had been to me, London where I had been born and educated, the slovenly252 mother of my mind and all my ambitions, London and the empire! It seemed to me we must be going out to a world that was utterly empty. All our significance fell from us--and before us was no meaning any more. We were leaving London; my hand, which had gripped so hungrily upon its complex life, had been forced from it, my fingers left their hold. That was over. I should never have a voice in public affairs again. The inexorable unwritten law which forbids overt253 scandal sentenced me. We were going out to a new life, a life that appeared in that moment to be a mere shrivelled remnant of me, a mere residuum of sheltering and feeding and seeing amidst alien scenery and the sound of unfamiliar254 tongues. We were going to live cheaply in a foreign place, so cut off that I meet now the merest stray tourist, the commonest tweed-clad stranger with a mixture of shyness and hunger.... And suddenly all the schemes I was leaving appeared fine and adventurous and hopeful as they had never done before. How great was this purpose I had relinquished255, this bold and subtle remaking of the English will! I had doubted so many things, and now suddenly I doubted my unimportance, doubted my right to this suicidal abandonment. Was I not a trusted messenger, greatly trusted and favoured, who had turned aside by the way? Had I not, after all, stood for far more than I had thought; was I not filching256 from that dear great city of my birth and life, some vitally necessary thing, a key, a link, a reconciling clue in her political development, that now she might seek vaguely257 for in vain? What is one life against the State? Ought I not to have sacrificed Isabel and all my passion and sorrow for Isabel, and held to my thing--stuck to my thing?
I heard as though he had spoken it in the carriage Britten's "It WAS a good game." No end of a game. And for the first time I imagined the faces and voices of Crupp and Esmeer and Gane when they learnt of this secret flight, this flight of which they were quite unwarned. And Shoesmith might be there in the house,--Shoesmith who was to have been married in four days--the thing might hit him full in front of any kind of people. Cruel eyes might watch him. Why the devil hadn't I written letters to warn them all? I could have posted them five minutes before the train started. I had never thought to that moment of the immense mess they would be in; how the whole edifice258 would clatter259 about their ears. I had a sudden desire to stop the train and go back for a day, for two days, to set that negligence260 right. My brain for a moment brightened, became animated and prolific261 of ideas. I thought of a brilliant line we might have taken on that confounded Reformatory Bill....
That sort of thing was over....
What indeed wasn't over? I passed to a vaguer, more multitudinous perception of disaster, the friends I had lost already since Altiora began her campaign, the ampler remnant whom now I must lose. I thought of people I had been merry with, people I had worked with and played with, the companions of talkative walks, the hostesses of houses that had once glowed with welcome for us both. I perceived we must lose them all. I saw life like a tree in late autumn that had once been rich and splendid with friends--and now the last brave dears would be hanging on doubtfully against the frosty chill of facts, twisting and tortured in the universal gale262 of indignation, trying to evade263 the cold blast of the truth. I had betrayed my party, my intimate friend, my wife, the wife whose devotion had made me what I was. For awhile the figure of Margaret, remote, wounded, shamed, dominated my mind, and the thought of my immense ingratitude264. Damn them! they'd take it out of her too. I had a feeling that I wanted to go straight back and grip some one by the throat, some one talking ill of Margaret. They'd blame her for not keeping me, for letting things go so far.... I wanted the whole world to know how fine she was. I saw in imagination the busy, excited dinner tables at work upon us all, rather pleasantly excited, brightly indignant, merciless.
Well, it's the stuff we are!...
Then suddenly, stabbing me to the heart, came a vision of Margaret's tears and the sound of her voice saying, "Husband mine! Oh! husband mine! To see you cry!"...
I came out of a cloud of thoughts to discover the narrow compartment, with its feeble lamp overhead, and our rugs and hand-baggage swaying on the rack, and Isabel, very still in front of me, gripping my wilting265 red roses tightly in her bare and ringless hand.
For a moment I could not understand her attitude, and then I perceived she was sitting bent together with her head averted266 from the light to hide the tears that were streaming down her face. She had not got her handkerchief out for fear that I should see this, but I saw her tears, dark drops of tears, upon her sleeve....
I suppose she had been watching my expression, divining my thoughts.
For a time I stared at her and was motionless, in a sort of still and weary amazement267. Why had we done this injury to one another? WHY? Then something stirred within me.
"ISABEL!" I whispered.
She made no sign.
"Isabel!" I repeated, and then crossed over to her and crept closely to her, put my arm about her, and drew her wet cheek to mine.
The End
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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astounds
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| v.使震惊，使大吃一惊( astound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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foresight
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folly
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inexplicably
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contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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7
fictitious
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| adj.虚构的，假设的；空头的 | |
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8
sprained
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| v.&n. 扭伤 | |
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9
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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10
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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11
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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12
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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13
survivor
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| n.生存者，残存者，幸存者 | |
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14
marvel
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| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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15
drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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16
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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17
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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18
sever
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| v.切开，割开；断绝，中断 | |
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19
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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20
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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21
reek
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| v.发出臭气；n.恶臭 | |
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22
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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23
massacres
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| 大屠杀( massacre的名词复数 )； 惨败 | |
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24
imperturbable
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| adj.镇静的 | |
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25
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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26
disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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27
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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28
plundering
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的现在分词 ) | |
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29
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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30
pillage
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| v.抢劫；掠夺；n.抢劫，掠夺；掠夺物 | |
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31
plundered
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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32
outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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33
addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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34
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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35
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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36
conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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37
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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38
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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39
patriot
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| n.爱国者，爱国主义者 | |
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40
confirmations
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| 证实( confirmation的名词复数 )； 证据； 确认； （基督教中的）坚信礼 | |
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41
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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42
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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43
breaches
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| 破坏( breach的名词复数 )； 破裂； 缺口； 违背 | |
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44
trampling
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| 踩( trample的现在分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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45
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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46
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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48
cascade
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| n.小瀑布，喷流；层叠；vi.成瀑布落下 | |
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49
vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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50
inflexible
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| adj.不可改变的，不受影响的，不屈服的 | |
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51
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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52
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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53
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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54
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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55
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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56
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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57
tinkling
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| n.丁当作响声 | |
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58
hilarious
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| adj.充满笑声的，欢闹的；[反]depressed | |
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59
tart
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| adj.酸的；尖酸的，刻薄的；n.果馅饼；淫妇 | |
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60
omniscient
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| adj.无所不知的；博识的 | |
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61
gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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62
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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63
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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64
radicalism
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| n. 急进主义, 根本的改革主义 | |
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65
disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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66
outspoken
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| adj.直言无讳的，坦率的，坦白无隐的 | |
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67
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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68
therapeutic
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| adj.治疗的，起治疗作用的；对身心健康有益的 | |
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69
eddy
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| n.漩涡，涡流 | |
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70
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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71
preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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72
attuned
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| v.使协调( attune的过去式和过去分词 )；调音 | |
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73
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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74
convergent
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| adj.会聚的 | |
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75
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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76
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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77
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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78
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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79
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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80
gutted
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| adj.容易消化的v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的过去式和过去分词 )；取出…的内脏 | |
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81
scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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82
warped
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| adj.反常的；乖戾的；（变）弯曲的；变形的v.弄弯，变歪( warp的过去式和过去分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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83
flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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84
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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85
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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86
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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87
northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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88
miserable
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|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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89
delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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90
abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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91
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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92
devastating
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| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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93
chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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94
provocations
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| n.挑衅( provocation的名词复数 )；激怒；刺激；愤怒的原因 | |
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95
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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96
lusts
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| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
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97
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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98
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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99
astronomer
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| n.天文学家 | |
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100
aspired
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| v.渴望，追求( aspire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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101
presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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102
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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103
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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104
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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105
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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106
parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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107
dart
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| v.猛冲，投掷；n.飞镖，猛冲 | |
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108
debilitated
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| adj.疲惫不堪的，操劳过度的v.使（人或人的身体）非常虚弱( debilitate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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109
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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110
aggression
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| n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害 | |
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111
impartiality
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| n. 公平, 无私, 不偏 | |
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112
steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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113
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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114
antagonists
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| 对立[对抗] 者，对手，敌手( antagonist的名词复数 )； 对抗肌； 对抗药 | |
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115
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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116
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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117
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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118
condign
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| adj.应得的，相当的 | |
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119
recalcitrant
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| adj.倔强的 | |
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120
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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121
discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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122
lapses
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| n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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123
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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124
catastrophes
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| n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难 | |
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125
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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126
assuage
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| v.缓和，减轻，镇定 | |
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127
preposterously
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| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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128
germinating
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| n.& adj.发芽（的）v.（使）发芽( germinate的现在分词 ) | |
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129
millennium
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| n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世 | |
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130
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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131
hampering
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的现在分词 ) | |
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132
flake
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| v.使成薄片；雪片般落下；n.薄片 | |
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133
slag
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| n.熔渣，铁屑，矿渣；v.使变成熔渣，变熔渣 | |
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134
steadfastly
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| adv.踏实地，不变地；岿然；坚定不渝 | |
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135
muddled
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| adj.混乱的；糊涂的；头脑昏昏然的v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的过去式)；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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136
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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137
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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138
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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139
disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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140
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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141
enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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142
Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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143
forsakes
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| 放弃( forsake的第三人称单数 )； 弃绝； 抛弃； 摒弃 | |
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144
repartee
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| n.机敏的应答 | |
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145
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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146
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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147
strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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148
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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149
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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150
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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151
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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152
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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153
mitigate
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| vt.（使）减轻，（使）缓和 | |
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154
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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155
kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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156
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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157
sentimentally
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| adv.富情感地 | |
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158
scrawled
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| 乱涂，潦草地写( scrawl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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159
scrawl
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| vt.潦草地书写；n.潦草的笔记，涂写 | |
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160
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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161
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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162
clandestine
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| adj.秘密的，暗中从事的 | |
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163
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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164
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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165
lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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166
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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167
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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168
scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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169
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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170
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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171
valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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172
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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173
squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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174
sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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175
aspirant
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| n.热望者；adj.渴望的 | |
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176
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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177
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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178
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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179
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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180
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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181
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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182
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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183
publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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184
incurred
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| [医]招致的，遭受的； incur的过去式 | |
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185
justifiable
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|
| adj.有理由的，无可非议的 | |
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186
undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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187
snarl
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| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
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188
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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189
puckered
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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190
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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191
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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192
salvage
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| v.救助，营救，援救；n.救助，营救 | |
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193
fended
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| v.独立生活，照料自己( fend的过去式和过去分词 )；挡开，避开 | |
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194
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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195
whitewash
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| v.粉刷，掩饰；n.石灰水，粉刷，掩饰 | |
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196
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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197
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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198
hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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199
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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200
furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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201
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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202
initiate
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| vt.开始，创始，发动；启蒙，使入门；引入 | |
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203
subservience
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| n.有利，有益；从属（地位），附属性；屈从，恭顺；媚态 | |
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204
abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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205
submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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206
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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207
prohibitions
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| 禁令，禁律( prohibition的名词复数 )； 禁酒； 禁例 | |
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208
meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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209
pedants
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| n.卖弄学问的人，学究，书呆子( pedant的名词复数 ) | |
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210
mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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211
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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212
immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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213
flayed
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| v.痛打( flay的过去式和过去分词 )；把…打得皮开肉绽；剥（通常指动物）的皮；严厉批评 | |
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214
solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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215
distresses
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| n.悲痛( distress的名词复数 )；痛苦；贫困；危险 | |
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216
galley
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| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
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217
transcribing
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| （用不同的录音手段）转录( transcribe的现在分词 )； 改编（乐曲）（以适应他种乐器或声部）； 抄写； 用音标标出（声音） | |
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218
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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219
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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220
proprietorship
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| n.所有（权）；所有权 | |
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221
wilfully
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| adv.任性固执地；蓄意地 | |
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222
repel
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| v.击退，抵制，拒绝，排斥 | |
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223
wrecking
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| 破坏 | |
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224
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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225
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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226
pretences
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| n.假装( pretence的名词复数 )；作假；自命；自称 | |
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227
discredited
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| 不足信的，不名誉的 | |
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228
troupe
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| n.剧团，戏班；杂技团；马戏团 | |
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229
makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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230
viler
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| adj.卑鄙的( vile的比较级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的 | |
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231
lava
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| n.熔岩，火山岩 | |
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232
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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233
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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234
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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235
singed
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| v.浅表烧焦( singe的过去式和过去分词 )；（毛发）燎，烧焦尖端[边儿] | |
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236
charing
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| n.炭化v.把…烧成炭，把…烧焦( char的现在分词 )；烧成炭，烧焦；做杂役女佣 | |
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237
bustle
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| v.喧扰地忙乱，匆忙，奔忙；n.忙碌；喧闹 | |
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238
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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239
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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240
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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241
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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242
rumbled
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| 发出隆隆声，发出辘辘声( rumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 轰鸣着缓慢行进； 发现…的真相； 看穿（阴谋） | |
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243
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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244
pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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245
pinnacles
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| 顶峰( pinnacle的名词复数 )； 顶点； 尖顶； 小尖塔 | |
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246
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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247
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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248
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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249
intermittently
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| adv.间歇地；断断续续 | |
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250
fretting
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| n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的 | |
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251
domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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252
slovenly
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| adj.懒散的，不整齐的，邋遢的 | |
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253
overt
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| adj.公开的，明显的，公然的 | |
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254
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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255
relinquished
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| 交出，让给( relinquish的过去式和过去分词 )； 放弃 | |
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256
filching
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| v.偷（尤指小的或不贵重的物品）( filch的现在分词 ) | |
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257
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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258
edifice
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| n.宏伟的建筑物(如宫殿，教室) | |
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259
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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260
negligence
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| n.疏忽，玩忽，粗心大意 | |
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261
prolific
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| adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的 | |
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262
gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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263
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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264
ingratitude
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| n.忘恩负义 | |
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265
wilting
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| 萎蔫 | |
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266
averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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267
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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