H. Wells - THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

next day at the sightof her. Whatever regrets came in the

darkness, the daylight brought an obstinate confidence in our

resolution again. We would, we declared, "pull the thing off."

Margaret must not know. Margaret should not know. If Margaret did

not know, then no harm whatever would be done. We tried to sustain

that…

For a brief time we had been like two people in a magic cell,

magically cut off from the world and full of a light of its own, and

then we began to realise that we were not in the least cut off, that

the world was all about us and pressing in upon us, limitingus,

threatening us, resuming possession of us. I tried to ignore the

injury to Margaret of her unreciprocated advances. I tried to

maintain to myselfthat this hidden love made no difference to the

now irreparable breach between husband and wife. But I never spoke

of it to Isabel or let her seethat aspect of our case. How could

I? The time for that had gone…

Then in new shapes and relationscame trouble. Distressful elements

crept in by reason of our unavoidable furtiveness; we ignored them,

hid them from each other, and attempted to hide them from ourselves.

Successful love is a thing of abounding pride, and we had to be

secret. It was delightful at first to be secret, a whispering, warm

conspiracy; then presently it became irksome and a little shameful.

Her essential frankness of soulwas all against the masks and

falsehoods that many women would have enjoyed. Together in our

secrecy we relaxed, then in the presence of other people again it

was tiresome to have to watch for the careless, too easy phrase, to

snatch back one's hand from the limitless betrayal of a light,

familiar touch.

Love becomes a poor thing, at best a poor beautiful thing, if it

develops no continuingand habitual intimacy. We were always

meeting, and most gloriously loving and beginning-and then we had

to snatch at remorseless ticking watches, hurry to catch trains, and

go back to this or that. That is all very well for the intrigues of

idle people perhaps, but not for an intense personal relationship.

It is like lighting a candle for the sake of lighting it, over and

over again, and each time blowing it out. That, no doubt, must be

very amusing to children playing with the matches, but not to people

who love warm light, and want it in order to do fine and honourable

things together. We had achieved-I give the ugly phrase that

expresses the increasing discolouration in my mind-"illicit

intercourse." To end at that, we now perceived, wasn't in our

style. But where were we to end?…

Perhaps we might at this stage have given it up. I thinkif we

could have seenahead and around us we might have done so. But the

glow of our cell blinded us… I wonder what might have

happened if at that time we had given it up… We propounded

it, we met again in secret to discuss it, and our overpowering

passion for one another reduced that meeting to absurdity…

Presently the idea of children crept between us. It came in from

all our conceptions of life and public service; it was, we found, in

the quality of our mindsthat physical love without children is a

little weak, timorous, more than a little shameful. With

imaginative people there very speedily comes a time when that

realisation is inevitable. We hadn't thoughtof that before-it

isn't natural to thinkof that before. We hadn't known. There is

no literature in English dealing with such things.

There is a necessary sequence of phases in love. These came in

their order, and with them, unanticipated tarnishings on the first

bright perfection of our relations. For a time these developing

phases were no more than a secret and private trouble between us,

little shadows spreading by imperceptible degrees across that vivid

and luminous cell.

The Handitch election flung me suddenly into prominence.

It is still only two years since that struggle, and I will not

trouble the reader with a detailed history of events that must be

quite sufficiently present in his mindfor my purpose already. Huge

stacks of journalism have dealt with Handitch and its significance.

For the reader very probably, as for most people outside a

comparatively small circle, it meant my emergence from obscurity.

We obtruded no editor's name in the BLUE WEEKLY; I had never as yet

been on the London hoardings. Before Handitch I was a journalist

and writer of no great public standing; after Handitch, I was

definitely a person, in the little group of persons who stood for

the Young Imperialist movement. Handitch was, to a very large

extent, my affair. I realised then, as a man comes to do, how much

one can still growafter seven and twenty. In the second election I

was a man taking hold of things; at Kinghamstead I had been simply a

young candidate, a party unit, led about the constituency, told to

do this and that, and finally washed in by the great Anti-

Imperialist flood, like a starfish rolling up a beach.

My feminist views had earnt the mistrust of the party, and I do not

thinkI should have got the chance of Handitch or indeed any chance

at all of Parliament for a long time, if it had not been that the

seat with its long record of Liberal victories and its Liberal

majority of 3642 at the last election, offered a hopeless contest.

The Liberal dissensions and the belated but by no means contemptible

Socialist candidate were providential interpositions. I think,

however, the conduct of Gane, Crupp, and Tarvrille in coming down to

fight for me, did count tremendously in my favour. "We aren't going

to win, perhaps," said Crupp, "but we are going to talk." And until

the very eve of victory, we treated Handitch not so much as a

battlefield as a hoarding. And so it was the Endowment of

Motherhood as a practical formof Eugenics got into English

politics.

Plutus, our agent, was scared out of his witswhen the thing began.

"They're ascribing all sorts of queer ideas to you about the

Family," he said.

"I thinkthe Family existsfor the goodof the children," I said;

"is that queer?"

"Not when you explain it-but they won't let you explain it. And

about marriage-?"

" I'mall right about marriage-trust me."

"Of course, if YOU had children," said Plutus, rather

inconsiderately…

They opened fire upon me in a little electioneering rag call the

HANDITCH SENTINEL, with a string of garbled quotations and

misrepresentations that gave me an admirable text for a speech. I

spoke for an hour and ten minutes with a more and more crumpled copy

of the SENTINEL in my hand, and I made the fullest and completest

exposition of the idea of endowing motherhood that I thinkhad ever

been made up to that time in England. Its effecton the press was

extraordinary. The Liberal papers gave me quite unprecedented space

under the impression that I had only to be given rope to hang

myself; the Conservatives cut me down or tried to justify me; the

whole country was talking. I had had a pamphlet in type upon the

subject, and I revised this carefully and put it on the book-stalls

within three days. It sold enormously and brought me bushels of

letters. We issued over three thousand in Handitch alone. At

meeting after meeting I was heckled upon nothing else. Long before

polling day Plutus was converted.

"It's catching on like old age pensions," he said. "We've dished