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Book 4: IsabelThe Impossible Position3
Isabel came after dinner one evening and talked in the office. She made a white-robed, dusky figure against the deep blues of my big window. I sat at my desk and tore a quill pen to pieces as I talked.
"The Baileys don`t intend to let this drop," I said. "They mean that every one in London is to know about it."
"I know."
"Well!" I said.
"Dear heart," said Isabel, facing it, "it`s no good waiting for things to overtake us; we`re at the parting of the ways."
"What are we to do?"
"They won`t let us go on."
"Damn them!"
"They are ORGANISING scandal."
"It`s no good waiting for things to overtake us," I echoed; "they have overtaken us." I turned on her. "What do you want to do?"
"Everything," she said. "Keep you and have our work. Aren`t we Mates?"
"We can`t."
"And we can`t!"
"I`ve got to tell Margaret," I said.
"Margaret!"
"I can`t bear the idea of any one else getting in front with it. I`ve been wincing about Margaret secretly--"
"I know. You`ll have to tell her--and make your peace with her."
She leant back against the bookcases under the window.
"We`ve had some good times, Master;" she said, with a sigh in her voice.
And then for a long time we stared at one another in silence.
"We haven`t much time left," she said.
"Shall we bolt?" I said.
"And leave all this?" she asked, with her eyes going round the room. "And that?" And her head indicated Westminster. "No!"
I said no more of bolting.
"We`ve got to screw ourselves up to surrender," she said.
"Something."
"A lot."
"Master," she said, "it isn`t all sex and stuff between us?"
"No!"
"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 I understand 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."
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