I stopped. I had that distressful feeling I have always had with
Margaret, of not being altogether sure she heard, of beingdoubtful
if she understood. I perceived that once again I had struck at her
and shattered a thousand unsubstantial pinnacles. And I couldn't
get at her, to help her, or touch her mind! I stood up, and at my
movement she moved. She produced a dainty little handkerchief, and
made an effort to wipe her face with it, and held it to her eyes.
"Oh, my Husband!" she sobbed.
"What do you mean to do?" she said, with her voice muffled by her
handkerchief.
"We're going to end it," I said.
Something gripped me tormentingly as I said that. I drew a chair
beside her and sat down. "You and I, Margaret, have been partners,"
I began. "We've built up this life of ours together; I couldn't
have done it without you. We've made a position, created a work-"
She shook her head. "You," she said.
"You helping. I don't want to shatter it-if you don't want it
shattered. I can't leave my work. I can't leave you. I want you
to have-all that you have ever had. I've never meant to rob you.
I've made an immense and tragic blunder. You don't know how things
took us, how different they seemed! My character and accident have
conspired-We'll pay-in ourselves, not in our public service."
I halted again. Margaret remained very still.
"I want you to understand that the thing is at an end. It is
definitely at an end. We-we talked-yesterday. We mean to end it
altogether." I clenched my hands. "She's-she's going to marry
Arnold Shoesmith."
I wasn't looking now at Margaret any more, but I heard the rustle of
her movement as she turned on me.
"It's all right," I said, clinging to my explanation. "We're doing
nothing shabby. He knows. He will. It's all as right-as things
can be now. We're not cheating any one, Margaret. We're doing
things straight-now. Of course, you know… We shall-we
shall have to make sacrifices. Give things up pretty completely.
Very completely… We shall have not to see each other for a
time, you know. Perhaps not a long time. Two or three years. Or
write-or just any of that sort of thing ever-"
Some subconscious barrier gave way in me. I found myself crying
uncontrollably-as I have never cried since I was a little child. I
was amazed and horrified at myself. And wonderfully, Margaret was
on her knees beside me, with her arms about me, mingling her weeping
with mine. "Oh, my Husband!" she cried, my poor Husband! Does it
hurt you so? I would do anything! Oh, the fool Iam! Dear, I love
you. I love you over and away and above all these jealous little
things!"
She drew down my head to her as a mother might draw down the head of
a son. She caressed me, weeping bitterly with me. "Oh! my dear,"
she sobbed, "my dear! I've never seen you cry! I've never seen you
cry. Ever! I didn't know you could. Oh! my dear! Can't you have
her, my dear, if you want her? I can't bear it! Let me help you,
dear. Oh! my Husband! My Man! I can't bear to have you cry!" For
a time she held me in silence.
"I've thought this might happen, I dreamt it might happen. You two,
I mean. It was dreaming put it into my head. When I've seen you
together, so glad with each other… Oh! Husband mine, believe
me! believe me! I'm stupid, I'm cold, I'm only beginning to realise
how stupid and cold, but all I want in all the world is to give my
life to you."…
6
"We can't part in a room," said Isabel.
"We'll have one last talk together," I said, and planned that we
should meet for a half a day between Dover and Walmer and talk
ourselves out. I still recall that day very well, recall even the
curious exaltation of grief that made our mental atmosphere
distinctive and memorable. We had seen so much of one another, had
become so intimate, that we talked of parting even as we parted with
a sense of incredible remoteness. We went together up over the
cliffs, and to a place where they fall towards the sea, past the
white, quaint-lanterned lighthouses of the South Foreland. There,
in a kind of niche below the crest, we sat talking. It was a
spacious day, serenely blue and warm, and on the wrinkled water
remotely below a black tender and six hooded submarines came
presently, and engaged in mysterious manoeuvers. Shrieking gulls
and chattering jackdaws circled over us and below us, and dived and
swooped; and a skerry of weedy, fallen chalk appeared, and gradually
disappeared again, as the tide fell and rose.
We talked and thought that afternoon on every aspect of our
relations. It seems to me now we talked so wide and far that