"I can't give up the work.Our work's my life."We came upon another long pause.
"No one will believe we've ceased to be lovers--if we simply do,"she said.
"We shouldn't."
"We've got to do something more parting than that."I nodded, and again we paused.She was coming to something.
"I could marry Shoesmith," she said abruptly.
"But--" I objected.
"He knows.It wasn't fair.I told him.""Oh, that explains," I said."There's been a kind of sulkiness--But--you told him?"
She nodded."He's rather badly hurt," she said."He's been a good friend to me.He's curiously loyal.But something, something he said one day--forced me to let him know....That's been the beastliness of all this secrecy.That's the beastliness of all secrecy.You have to spring surprises on people.But he keeps on.
He's steadfast.He'd already suspected.He wants me very badly to marry him....""But you don't want to marry him?"
"I'm forced to think of it."
"But does he want to marry you at that? Take you as a present from the world at large?--against your will and desire?...I don't understand him.""He cares for me."
"How?"
"He thinks this is a fearful mess for me.He wants to pull it straight."We sat for a time in silence, with imaginations that obstinately refused to take up the realities of this proposition.
"I don't want you to marry Shoesmith," I said at last.
"Don't you like him?"
"Not as your husband."
"He's a very clever and sturdy person--and very generous and devoted to me.""And me?"
"You can't expect that.He thinks you are wonderful--and, naturally, that you ought not to have started this.""I've a curious dislike to any one thinking that but myself.I'm quite ready to think it myself.""He'd let us be friends--and meet."
"Let us be friends!" I cried, after a long pause."You and me!""He wants me to be engaged soon.Then, he says, he can go round fighting these rumours, defending us both--and force a quarrel on the Baileys.""I don't understand him," I said, and added, "I don't understand you."I was staring at her face.It seemed white and set in the dimness.
"Do you really mean this, Isabel?" I asked.
"What else is there to do, my dear?--what else is there to do at all? I've been thinking day and night.You can't go away with me.
You can't smash yourself suddenly in the sight of all men.I'd rather die than that should happen.Look what you are becoming in the country! Look at all you've built up!--me helping.I wouldn't let you do it if you could.I wouldn't let you--if it were only for Margaret's sake.THIS...closes the scandal, closes everything.""It closes all our life together," I cried.
She was silent.
"It never ought to have begun," I said.
She winced.Then abruptly she was on her knees before me, with her hands upon my shoulder and her eyes meeting mine.
"My dear," she said very earnestly, "don't misunderstand me! Don't think I'm retreating from the things we've done! Our love is the best thing I could ever have had from life.Nothing can ever equal it; nothing could ever equal the beauty and delight you and I have had together.Never! You have loved me; you do love me....
No one could ever know how to love you as I have loved you; no one could ever love me as you have loved me, my king.And it's just because it's been so splendid, dear; it's just because I'd die rather than have a tithe of all this wiped out of my life again--for it's made me, it's all I am--dear, it's years since I began loving you--it's just because of its goodness that I want not to end in wreckage now, not to end in the smashing up of all the big things Iunderstand in you and love in you....
"What is there for us if we keep on and go away?" she went on."All the big interests in our lives will vanish--everything.We shall become specialised people--people overshadowed by a situation.We shall be an elopement, a romance--all our breadth and meaning gone!
People will always think of it first when they think of us; all our work and aims will be warped by it and subordinated to it.Is it good enough, dear? Just to specialise....I think of you.
We've got a case, a passionate case, the best of cases, but do we want to spend all our lives defending it and justifying it? And there's that other life.I know now you care for Margaret--you care more than you think you do.You have said fine things of her.I've watched you about her.Little things have dropped from you.She's given her life for you; she's nothing without you.You feel that to your marrow all the time you are thinking about these things.Oh, I'm not jealous, dear.I love you for loving her.I love you in relation to her.But there it is, an added weight against us, another thing worth saving."Presently, I remember, she sat back on her heels and looked up into my face."We've done wrong--and parting's paying.It's time to pay.We needn't have paid, if we'd kept to the track....You and I, Master, we've got to be men.""Yes," I said; "we've got to be men."
4
I was driven to tell Margaret about our situation by my intolerable dread that otherwise the thing might come to her through some stupid and clumsy informant.She might even meet Altiora, and have it from her.
I can still recall the feeling of sitting at my desk that night in that large study of mine in Radnor Square, waiting for Margaret to come home.It was oddly like the feeling of a dentist's reception-room; only it was for me to do the dentistry with clumsy, cruel hands.I had left the door open so that she would come in to me.
I heard her silken rustle on the stairs at last, and then she was in the doorway."May I come in?" she said.
"Do," I said, and turned round to her.
"Working?" she said.
"Hard," I answered."Where have YOU been?""At the Vallerys'.Mr.Evesham was talking about you.They were all talking.I don't think everybody knew who I was.Just Mrs.
Mumble I'd been to them.Lord Wardenham doesn't like you.""He doesn't."
"But they all feel you're rather big, anyhow.Then I went on to Park Lane to hear a new pianist and some other music at Eva's.""Yes."
