H. Wells: THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

finely. I rememberhow I fell talking to God-I thinkI talked out

loud. "Why do I care for these things?" I cried, "when I can do so

little! Why am I apart from the jolly thoughtlessfighting life of

men? These dreamsfade to nothingness, and leave me bare!"

I scolded. "Why don't you speak to a man, show yourself? I thought

I had a gleam of you in Isabel,-and then you take her away. Do you

really thinkI can carry on this game alone, doing your work in

darkness and silence, living in muddled conflict, half living, half

dying?"

Grotesque analogies arose in my mind. I discovered a strange

parallelism between my now tattered phrase of "Love and fine

thinking" and the "Love and the Word" of Christian thought. Was it

possible the Christian propaganda had at the outset meant just that

system of attitudesI had been feelingmy way towards from the very

beginning of my life? Had I spent a lifetime making my way back to

Christ? It mocks humanity to thinkhow Christ has been overlaid. I

went along now, recalling long-neglected phrases and sentences; I

had a new vision of that great central figure preaching love with

hateand coarse thinkingeven in the disciples about Him, rising to

a tidal wave at last in that clamour for Barabbas, and the public

satisfactionin His fate…

It's curious to thinkthat hopeless love and a noisy disordered

dinner should lead a man to these speculations, but they did. "He

DID mean that!" I said, and suddenly thoughtof what a bludgeon

they'd made of His Christianity. Athwart that perplexing, patient

enigma sitting inaudibly among publicans and sinners, danced and

gibbered a long procession of the champions of orthodoxy. "He

wasn't human," I said, and rememberedthat last despairingcry, "My

God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

"Oh, HE forsakes every one," I said, flying out as a tired mind

will, with an obvious repartee…

I passed at a bound from such monstrous theology to a towering rage

against the Baileys. In an instant and with no sense of absurdity I

wanted-in the intervals of love and fine thinking-to fling about

that strenuously virtuouscouple; I wanted to kick Keyhole of the

PEEPSHOW into the gutter and make a common massacre of all the

prosperous rascaldom that makes a trade and rule of virtue. I can

still feelthat transition. In a moment I had reached that phase of

weakly decisive angerwhich is for people of my temperament the

concomitant of exhaustion.

"I will have her," I cried. "By Heaven! I WILL have her! Life

mocks me and cheats me. Nothing can be made goodto me again…

Why shouldn't I save what I can? I can't save myselfwithout

her…"

I remembermyself-as a sort of anti-climax to that-rather

tediously asking my way home. I was somewhere in the neighbourhood

of Holland Park…

It was then between one and two. I feltthat I could go home now

without any risk of meeting Margaret. It had been the thoughtof

returning to Margaret that had sent me wandering that night. It is

one of the ugliest facts I recall about that time of crisis, the

intense aversion I feltfor Margaret. No sense of her goodness, her

injury and nobility, and the enormous generosityof her forgiveness,

sufficed to mitigate that. I hope now that in this book I amable

to give something of her silvery splendour, but all through this

crisis I feltnothing of that. There was a triumphant kindliness

about her that I found intolerable. She meant to be so kind to me,

to offer unstinted consolation, to meet my needs, to supply just all

she imagined Isabel had given me.

When I left Tarvrille's, I feltI could anticipate exactly how she

would meet my homecoming. She would be perplexed by my crumpled

shirt front, on which I had spilt some drops of wine; she would

overlook that by an effort, explain it sentimentally, resolve it

should make no difference to her. She would want to knowwho had

been present, what we had talked about, show the alertest interest

in whatever it was-it didn't matter what… No, I couldn't

face her.

So I did not reach my study until two o'clock.

There, I remember, stood the new and very beautiful old silver

candlesticks that she had set there two days since to please me-the

foolish kindliness of it! But in her search for expression,

Margaret heaped presents upon me. She had fitted these candlesticks

with electric lights, and I must, I suppose, have lit them to write

my note to Isabel. "Give me a word-the world aches without you,"

was all I scrawled, though I fully meant that she should come to me.

I knew, though I ought not to have known, that now she had left her

flat, she was with the Balfes-she was to have been married from the

Balfes-and I sent my letter there. And I went out into the silent

square and posted the note forthwith, because I knewquite clearly

that if I left it until morning I should never post it at all.

I had a curious revulsion of feelingthat morning of our meeting.

(Of all places for such a clandestine encounter she had chosen the

bridge opposite Buckingham Palace.) Overnight I had been full of

self pity, and eager for the comfortof Isabel's presence. But the

ill-written scrawl in which she had replied had been full of the

suggestion of her own weakness and misery. And when I sawher, my

own selfish sorrowswere altogether swept away by a wave of pitiful

tenderness. Something had happened to her that I did not

understand. She was manifestly ill. She came towards me wearily,

she who had always borne herselfso bravely; her shoulders seemed

bent, and her eyes were tired, and her face white and drawn. All my

life has been a narrow self-centred life; no brothers, no sisters or

children or weak things had ever yet made any intimate appeal to me,

and suddenly-I verily believe for the first time in my life!-I

felta great passion of protective ownership; I feltthat here was

something that I could die to shelter, something that meant more

than joyor pride or splendid ambitions or splendid creation to me,

a new kind of hold upon me, a new power in the world. Some sealed

fountain was opened in my breast. I knewthat I could love Isabel

broken, Isabel beaten, Isabel ugly and in pain, more than I could

love any sweet or delightful or glorious thing in life. I didn't

care any more for anything in the world but Isabel, and that I

should protect her. I trembled as I came near her, and could

scarcely speak to her for the emotionthat filled me…

"I had your letter," I said.

"I had yours."

"Where can we talk?"

I remembermy lame sentences. "We'll have a boat. That's best

here."

I took her to the little boat-house, and there we hired a boat, and

I rowed in silence under the bridge and into the shade of a tree.

The square grey stone masses of the Foreign Office loomed through

the twigs, I remember, and a little space of grass separated us from

the pathway and the scrutiny of passers-by. And there we talked.

"I had to write to you," I said.

"I had to come."

"When are you to be married?"

"Thursday week."

"Well?" I said. "But-can we?"

She leant forward and scrutinised my face with eyes wide open.

"What do you mean?" she said at last in a whisper.

"Can we stand it? After all?"

I looked at her white face. "Can you?" I said.

She whispered. "Your career?"

Then suddenly her face was contorted,-she wept silently, exactly as