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Book 4: IsabelThe Impossible Position1
To any one who did not know of that glowing secret between Isabel and myself, I might well have appeared at that time the most successful and enviable of men. I had recovered rapidly from an uncongenial start in political life; I had become a considerable force through the BLUE WEEKLY, and was shaping an increasingly influential body of opinion; I had re-entered Parliament with quite dramatic distinction, and in spite of a certain faltering on the part of the orthodox Conservatives towards the bolder elements in our propaganda, I had loyal and unenvious associates who were making me a power in the party. People were coming to our group, understandings were developing. It was clear we should play a prominent part in the next general election, and that, given a Conservative victory, I should be assured of office. The world opened out to me brightly and invitingly. Great schemes took shape in my mind, always more concrete, always more practicable; the years ahead seemed falling into order, shining with the credible promise of immense achievement.
And at the heart of it all, unseen and unsuspected, was the secret of my relations with Isabel--like a seed that germinates and thrusts, thrusts relentlessly.
From the onset of the Handitch contest onward, my meetings with her had been more and more pervaded by the discussion of our situation. It had innumerable aspects. It was very present to us that we wanted to be together as much as possible--we were beginning to long very much for actual living together in the same house, so that one could come as it were carelessly--unawares--upon the other, busy perhaps about some trivial thing. We wanted to feel each other in the daily atmosphere. Preceding our imperatively sterile passion, you must remember, outside it, altogether greater than it so far as our individual lives were concerned, there had grown and still grew an enormous affection and intellectual sympathy between us. We brought all our impressions and all our ideas to each other, to see them in each other`s light. It is hard to convey that quality of intellectual unison to any one who has not experienced it. I thought more and more in terms of conversation with Isabel; her possible comments upon things would flash into my mind, oh!--with the very sound of her voice.
I remember, too, the odd effect of seeing her in the distance going about Handitch, like any stranger canvasser; the queer emotion of her approach along the street, the greeting as she passed. The morning of the polling she vanished from the constituency. I saw her for an instant in the passage behind our Committee rooms.
"Going?" said I.
She nodded.
"Stay it out. I want you to see the fun. I remember--the other time."
She didn`t answer for a moment or so, and stood with face averted.
"It`s Margaret`s show," she said abruptly. "If I see her smiling there like a queen by your side--! She did--last time. I remember." She caught at a sob and dashed her hand across her face impatiently. "Jealous fool, mean and petty, jealous fool! . . . Good luck, old man, to you! You`re going to win. But I don`t want to see the end of it all the same. . . ."
"Good-bye!" said I, clasping her hand as some supporter appeared in the passage. . . .
I came back to London victorious, and a little flushed and coarse with victory; and so soon as I could break away I went to Isabel`s flat and found her white and worn, with the stain of secret weeping about her eyes. I came into the room to her and shut the door.
"You said I`d win," I said, and held out my arms.
She hugged me closely for a moment.
"My dear," I whispered, "it`s nothing--without you--nothing!"
We didn`t speak for some seconds. Then she slipped from my hold. "Look!" she said, smiling like winter sunshine. "I`ve had in all the morning papers--the pile of them, and you--resounding."
"It`s more than I dared hope."
"Or I."
She stood for a moment still smiling bravely, and then she was sobbing in my arms. "The bigger you are--the more you show," she said--"the more we are parted. I know, I know--"
I held her close to me, making no answer.
Presently she became still. "Oh, well," she said, and wiped her eyes and sat down on the little sofa by the fire; and I sat down beside her.
"I didn`t know all there was in love," she said, staring at the coals, "when we went love-making."
I put my arm behind her and took a handful of her dear soft hair in my hand and kissed it.
"You`ve done a great thing this time," she said. "Handitch will make you."
"It opens big chances," I said. "But why are you weeping, dear one?"
"Envy," she said, "and love."
"You`re not lonely?"
"I`ve plenty to do--and lots of people."
"Well?"
"I want you."
"You`ve got me."
She put her arm about me and kissed me. "I want you," she said, "just as if I had nothing of you. You don`t understand--how a woman wants a man. I thought once if I just gave myself to you it would be enough. It was nothing--it was just a step across the threshold. My dear, every moment you are away I ache for you--ache! I want to be about when it isn`t love-making or talk. I want to be doing things for you, and watching you when you`re not thinking of me. All those safe, careless, intimate things. And something else--" She stopped. "Dear, I don`t want to bother you. I just want you to know I love you. . . ."
She caught my head in her hands and kissed it, then stood up abruptly.
I looked up at her, a little perplexed.
"Dear heart," said I, "isn`t this enough? You`re my councillor, my colleague, my right hand, the secret soul of my life--"
"And I want to darn your socks," she said, smiling back at me.
"You`re insatiable."
She smiled "No," she said. "I`m not insatiable, Master. But I`m a woman in love. And I`m finding out what I want, and what is necessary to me--and what I can`t have. That`s all."
"We get a lot."
"We want a lot. You and I are greedy people for the things we like, Master. It`s very evident we`ve got nearly all we can ever have of one another--and I`m not satisfied."
"What more is there?
"For you--very little. I wonder. For me--every thing. Yes-- everything. You didn`t mean it, Master; you didn`t know any more than I did when I began, but love between a man and a woman is sometimes very one-sided. Fearfully one-sided! That`s all. . . ."
"Don`t YOU ever want children?" she said abruptly.
"I suppose I do."
"You don`t!"
"I haven`t thought of them."
"A man doesn`t, perhaps. But I have. . . . I want them--like hunger. YOUR children, and home with you. Really, continually you! That`s the trouble. . . . I can`t have `em, Master, and I can`t have you."
She was crying, and through her tears she laughed.
"I`m going to make a scene," she said, "and get this over. I`m so discontented and miserable; I`ve got to tell you. It would come between us if I didn`t. I`m in love with you, with everything--with all my brains. I`ll pull through all right. I`ll be good, Master, never you fear. But to-day I`m crying out with all my being. This election--You`re going up; you`re going on. In these papers--you`re a great big fact. It`s suddenly come home to me. At the back of my mind I`ve always had the idea I was going to have you somehow presently for myself--I mean to have you to go long tramps with, to keep house for, to get meals for, to watch for of an evening. It`s a sort of habitual background to my thought of you. And it`s nonsense--utter nonsense!" She stopped. She was crying and choking. "And the child, you know--the child!"
I was troubled beyond measure, but Handitch and its intimations were clear and strong.
"We can`t have that," I said.
"No," she said, "we can`t have that."
"We`ve got our own things to do."
"YOUR things," she said.
"Aren`t they yours too?"
"Because of you," she said.
"Aren`t they your very own things?"
"Women don`t have that sort of very own thing. Indeed, it`s true! And think! You`ve been down there preaching the goodness of children, telling them the only good thing in a state is happy, hopeful children, working to free mothers and children--"
"And we give our own children to do it?" I said.
"Yes," she said. "And sometimes I think it`s too much to give--too much altogether. . . . Children get into a woman`s brain--when she mustn`t have them, especially when she must never hope for them. Think of the child we might have now!--the little creature with soft, tender skin, and little hands and little feet! At times it haunts me. It comes and says, Why wasn`t I given life? I can hear it in the night. . . . The world is full of such little ghosts, dear lover--little things that asked for life and were refused. They clamour to me. It`s like a little fist beating at my heart. Love children, beautiful children. Little cold hands that tear at my heart! Oh, my heart and my lord!" She was holding my arm with both her hands and weeping against it, and now she drew herself to my shoulder and wept and sobbed in my embrace. "I shall never sit with your child on my knee and you beside me-never, and I am a woman and your lover! . . ."
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