THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

The inexorable unwritten law which forbids overt 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 unfamiliar 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 relinquished, 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 filching 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 vaguely 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 he 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 edifice would clatter about their ears. I had a sudden desire

to stop the train and go back for a day, for two days, to set that

negligence right. My brain for a moment brightened, became animated

and prolific 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 gale of indignation,

trying to evade 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

ingratitude. 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 di

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 wilting 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 averted 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 amazement. 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