H. Wells - THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

along the Embankment to Westminster just like a realman, for all

that he's smaller than a grain of dust. What is running round

inside that speck of a head of his? Look at him going past the

Policemen, specks too-selected large ones from the country. I

thinkhe's going to dinner with the Speaker-some old thing like

that. Is his face harder or commoner or stronger?-I can't quite

see… And now he's up and speaking in the House. Hope he'll

hold on to the thread. He'll have to plan his speeches to the very

end of his days-and learn the headings."

"Isn't she up in the women's gallery to hearhim?"

"No. Unless it's by accident."

"She's there," she said.

"Well, by accident it happens. Not too many accidents, Isabel.

Never any more adventures for us, dear, now. No!… They play

the game, you know. They've begun late, but now they've got to.

You seeit's not so very hard for them since you and I, my dear, are

here always, always faithfullyhere on this warm cliff of love

accomplished, watching and helpingthem under high heaven. It isn't

so VERY hard. Rather goodin some ways. Some people HAVE to be

broken a little. Can you seeAltiora down there, by any chance?"

"She's too little to be seen," she said.

"Can you seethe sins they once committed?"

"I can only seeyou here beside me, dear-for ever. For all my

life, dear, till I die. Was that-the sin?"…

I took her to the station, and after she had gone I was to drive to

Dover, and cross to Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt,

return to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little

station of Martin Mill side by side, talking at first in broken

fragments, for the most part of unimportant things.

"None of this," she said abruptly, "seems in the slightest degree

realto me. I've got no sense of things ending."

"We're parting," I said.

"We're parting-as people part in a play. It's distressing. But I

don't feelas though you and I were reallynever to seeeach other

again for years. Do you?"

I thought. "No," I said.

"After we've parted I shall look to talk it over with you."

"So shall I."

"That's absurd."

"Absurd."

"I feelas if you'd always he there, just about where you are now.

Invisible perhaps, but there. We've spent so much of our lives

joggling elbows."…

"Yes. Yes. I don't in the least realise it. I suppose I shall

begin to when the train goes out of the station. Are we wanting in

imagination, Isabel?"

"I don't know. We've always assumed it was the other way about."

"Even when the train goes out of the station-! I've seenyou into

so many trains."

"I shall go on thinkingof things to say to you-things to put in

your letters. For years to come. How can I ever stop thinkingin

that way now? We've got into each other's brains."

"It isn't real," I said; "nothing is real. The world's no more than

a fantastic dream. Why are we parting, Isabel?"

"I don't know. It seems now supremely silly. I suppose we have to.

Can't we meet?-don't you thinkwe shall meet even in dreams?"

"We'll meet a thousand times in dreams," I said.

"I wish we could dreamat the same time," said Isabel… " Dream

walks. I can't believe, dear, I shall never have a walk with you

again."

"If I'd stayed six months in America," I said, "we might have walked

long walks and talked long talks for all our lives."

"Not in a world of Baileys," said Isabel. "And anyhow-"

She stopped short. I looked interrogation.

"We've loved," she said.

I took her ticket, sawto her luggage, and stood by the door of the

compartment. "Good-bye," I said a little stiffly, consciousof the

people upon the platform. She bent above me, white and dusky,

looking at me very steadfastly.

"Come here," she whispered. "Never mindthe porters. What can they

know? Just one time more-I must."

She restedher hand against the door of the carriage and bent down

upon me, and put her cold, moist lips to mine.

And then we broke down. We broke our faithwith 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 seewhat happened to me. At the time it seemed to me I was a

rational, responsiblecreature, but indeed I had not parted from her

two days before I became a monomaniac to whom nothing could matter

but Isabel. Every truthhad to be squared to that obsession, every

duty. It astounds me to thinkhow 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 emotionalstorm that presently seized us both.

But we had no foresightof 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 folly 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 inexplicably. 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 contemplate the possibility of my

presence at the wedding. For that, however, we had schemed a

weekend visit to Wales, and a fictitious sprained ankle at the last

moment which would justify 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 thoughtshad spun 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 lonelyemptiness such as

I had never feltbefore in all my life. I had little sleep. In the

daytime I did a hundred things, I even spoke 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 survivor 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 soulbare.

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 knowswhat will happen!" I rememberthat afterwards

Tarvrille was accused of having planned the fire to make his dinner

a marvel and a memory. It was indeed a wonderful occasion, and I

suppose if I had not been altogether drenched in misery, 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 racing 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