then, and it seems to us still, that it ought to have been possible
for Margaret to divorce me, and for me to marry without the
scandalous and ugly publicity, the taint and ostracism that follow
such a readjustment. We went on to the whole perplexing riddle of
marriage. We criticised the current code, how muddled and
conventionalised it had become, how modified by subterfuges and
concealments and new necessities, and the increasing freedom of
women. "It's all like Bromstead when the building came," I said;
for I had often talked to her of that early impression of purpose
dissolving again into chaotic forces. "There is no clear right in
the world any more. The world is Byzantine. The justest man to-day
must practise a tainted goodness."
These questions need discussion-a magnificent frankness of
discussion-if any standards are again to establish an effective
hold upon educated people. Discretions, as I have said already,
will never hold any one worth holding-longer than they held us.
Against every "shalt not" there must be a "why not" plainly put,-
the "why not" largest and plainest, the law deduced from its
purpose. "You and I, Isabel," I said, "have always been a little
disregardful of duty, partly at least because the idea of duty comes
to us so ill-clad. Oh! I know there's an extravagant insubordinate
strain in us, but that wasn't all. I wish humbugs would leave duty
alone. I wish all duty wasn't covered with slime. That's where the
real mischief comes in. Passion can always contrive to clothe
itself in beauty, strips itself splendid. That carried us. But for
all its mean associations there is this duty…
"Don't we come rather late to it?"
"Not so late that it won't be atrociously hard to do."
"It's queer to think of now," said Isabel. "Who could believe we
did all we have done honestly? Well, in a manner honestly. Who
could believe we thought this might be hidden? Who could trace it
all step by step from the time when we found that a certain boldness
in our talk was pleasing? We talked of love… Master, there's
not much for us to do in the way of Apologia that any one will
credit. And yet if it were possible to tell the very heart of our
story…
"Does Margaret really want to go on with you?" she asked-"shield
you-knowing of… THIS?"
"I'm certain. I don't understand-just as I don't understand
Shoesmith, but she does. These people walk on solid ground which is
just thin air to us. They've got something we haven't got.
Assurances? I wonder."…
Then it was, or later, we talked of Shoesmith, and what her life
might be with him.
"He's good," she said; "he's kindly. He's everything but magic.
He's the very image of the decent, sober, honourable life. You
can't say a thing against him or I-except that something-something
in his imagination, something in the tone of his voice-fails for
me. Why don't I love him?-he's a better man than you! Why don't
you? IS he a better man than you? He's usage, he's honour, he's
the right thing, he's the breed and the tradition,-a gentleman.
You're your erring, incalculable self. I suppose we women will
trust this sort and love your sort to the very end of time…"
We lay side by side and nibbled at grass stalks as we talked. It
seemed enormously unreasonable to us that two people who had come to
the pitch of easy and confident affection and happiness that held
between us should be obliged to part and shun one another, or murder
half the substance of their lives. We feltourselves crushed and
beaten by an indiscriminating machine which destroys happiness in
the service of jealousy. "The mass of people don't feel these
things in quite the same manner as we feel them," she said. "Is it
because they're different in grain, or educated out of some
primitive instinct?"
"It's because we've explored love a little, and they know no more
than the gateway," I said. "Lust and then jealousy; their simple
conception-and we have gone past all that and wandered hand in
hand…"
I remember that for a time we watched two of that larger sort of
gull, whose wings are brownish-white, circle and hover against the
blue. And then we lay and looked at a band of water mirror clear
far out to sea, and wondered why the breeze that rippled all the
rest should leave it so serene.
"And in this State of ours," I resumed.
"Eh!" said Isabel, rolling over into a sitting posture and looking
out at the horizon. "Let's talk no more of things we can never see.
Talk to me of the work you are doing and all we shall do-after we
have parted. We've said too little of that. We've had our red
life, and it's over. Thank Heaven!-though we stole it! Talk about
your work, dear, and the things we'll go on doing-just as though we
were still together. We'll still be together in a sense-through
all these things we have in common."
And so we talked of politics and our outlook. We were interested to
the pitch of self-forgetfulness. We weighed persons and forces,
discussed the probabilities of the next general election, the steady
drift of public opinion in the north and west away from Liberalism
towards us. It was very manifest that in spite of Wardenham and the
EXPURGATOR, we should come into the new Government strongly. The
party had no one else, all the young men were formally or informally
with us; Esmeer would have office, Lord Tarvrille, I… and very
probably there would be something for Shoesmith. "And for my own
part," I said, "I count on backing on the Liberal side. For the
last two years we've been forcing competition in constructive
legislation between the parties. The Liberals have not been long in
following up our Endowment of Motherhood lead. They'll have to give
votes and lip service anyhow. Half the readers of the BLUE WEEKLY,
they say, are Liberals…
"I remember talking about things of this sort with old Willersley,"
I said, "ever so many years ago. It was some place near Locarno,
and we looked down the lake that shone weltering-just as now we
look over the sea. And then we dreamt in an indistinct featureless
way of all that you and I are doing now."
"I!" said Isabel, and laughed.
"Well, of some such thing," I said, and remained for awhile silent,
thinking of Locarno.
I recalled once more the largeness, the release from small personal
things that I had felt in my youth; statecraft became real and
wonderful again with the memory, the gigantic handling of gigantic