THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

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 makers 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 viler. 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 lava 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, imperative. 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

fascination of the fire, or why one should go deliberately out of

all the decent fine things of life to run dangers and be singed and

tormented and destroyed. I don't understand…"

6

I remember very freshly the mood of our departure from London, the

platform of Charing Cross with the big illuminated clock overhead,

the bustle 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 compartment, and I stood upon the platform with the

door open, with a curious reluctance to take the last step that

should sever 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 gliding slowly and

smoothly out of the station.

I looked out upon the river as the train rumbled with slowly

gathering pace across the bridge, and the bobbing black heads of the

pedestrians 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 pi

the shining clock tower rose hard and clear against the still,

luminous 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 rattled 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 scattered lights

gave way to dim tree-set country under a cloud-veiled,

intermittently shining moon. We passed Cardcaster Place. Perhaps

old Wardingham, that pillar of the old Conservatives, was there,

fretting 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 domain, 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 slovenly 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.