THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

6

I remember very freshly the mood of our departure from London, the

platform of Charing Cross with the big illuminated clock overhead,

the bustle of porters and passengers with luggage, the shouting of

newsboys and boys with flowers and sweets, and the groups of friends

seeing travellers off by the boat train. Isabel sat very quiet and

still in the compartment, and I stood upon the platform with the

door open, with a curious reluctance to take the last step that

should sever me from London 's ground. I showed our tickets, and

bought a handful of red roses for her. At last came the guards

crying: "Take your seats," and I got in and closed the door on me.

We had, thank Heaven! a compartment to ourselves. I let down the

window and stared out.

There was a bustle of final adieux on the platform, a cry of "Stand

away, please, stand away!" and the train was gliding slowly and

smoothly out of the station.

I looked out upon the river as the train rumbled with slowly

gathering pace across the bridge, and the bobbing black heads of the

pedestrians in the footway, and the curve of the river and the

glowing great hotels, and the lights and reflections and blacknesses

of that old, familiar spectacle. Then with a common thought, we

turned our eyes westward to where the pinnacles of Westminster and

the shining clock tower rose hard and clear against the still,

luminous sky.

"They'll be in Committee on the Reformatory Bill to-night," I said,

a little stupidly.

"And so," I added, "good-bye to London!"

We said no more, but watched the south-side streets below-bright

gleams of lights and movement, and the dark, dim, monstrous shapes

of houses and factories. We ran through Waterloo Station, London

Bridge, New Cross, St. John's. We said never a word. It seemed to

me that for a time we had exhausted our emotions. We had escaped,

we had cut our knot, we had accepted the last penalty of that

headlong return of mine from Chicago a year and a half ago. That

was all settled. That harvest of feelings we had reaped. I thought

now only of London, of London as the symbol of all we were leaving

and all we had lost in the world. I felt nothing now but an

enormous and overwhelming regret…

The train swayed and rattled on its way. We ran through old

Bromstead, where once I had played with cities and armies on the

nursery floor. The sprawling suburbs with their scattered lights

gave way to dim tree-set country under a cloud-veiled,

intermittently shining moon. We passed Cardcaster Place. Perhaps

old Wardingham, that pillar of the old Conservatives, was there,

fretting over his unsuccessful struggle with our young Toryism.

Little he recked of this new turn of the wheel and how it would

confirm his contempt of all our novelties. Perhaps some faint

intimation drew him to the window to see behind the stems of the

young fir trees that bordered his domain, the little string of

lighted carriage windows gliding southward…

Suddenly I began to realise just what it was we were doing.

And now, indeed, I knew what London had been to me, London where I

had been born and educated, the slovenly mother of my mind and all

my ambitions, London and the empire! It seemed to me we must be

going out to a world that was utterly empty. All our significance

fell from us-and before us was no meaning any more. We were

leaving London; my hand, which had gripped so hungrily upon its

complex life, had been forced from it, my fingers left their hold.

That was over. I should never have a voice in public affairs again.

The inexorable unwritten law which forbids overt scandal sentenced

me. We were going out to a new life, a life that appeared in that

moment to be a mere shrivelled remnant of me, a mere residuum of

sheltering and feeding and seeing amidst alien scenery and the sound

of unfamiliar tongues. We were going to live cheaply in a foreign

place, so cut off that I meet now the merest stray tourist, the

commonest tweed-clad stranger with a mixture of shyness and hunger…

And suddenly all the schemes I was leaving appeared fine and

adventurous and hopeful as they had never done before. How great

was this purpose I had relinquished, this bold and subtle remaking

of the English will! I had doubted so many things, and now suddenly

I doubted my unimportance, doubted my right to this suicidal

abandonment. Was I not a trusted messenger, greatly trusted and

favoured, who had turned aside by the way? Had I not, after all,

stood for far more than I had thought; was I not filching from that

dear great city of my birth and life, some vitally necessary thing,

a key, a link, a reconciling clue in her political development, that

now she might seek vaguely for in vain? What is one life against

the State? Ought I not to have sacrificed Isabel and all my passion

and sorrow for Isabel, and held to my thing-stuck to my thing?

I heard as though he had spoken it in the carriage Britten's "It WAS

a good game. No end of a game. And for the first time I imagined

the faces and voices of Crupp and Esmeer and Gane when they learnt

of this secret flight, this flight of which they were quite

unwarned. And Shoesmith might he there in the house,-Shoesmith who

was to have been married in four days-the thing might hit him full

in front of any kind of people. Cruel eyes might watch him. Why

the devil hadn't I written letters to warn them all? I could have

posted them five minutes before the train started. I had never

thought to that moment of the immense mess they would be in; how the

whole edifice would clatter about their ears. I had a sudden desire

to stop the train and go back for a day, for two days, to set that

negligence right. My brain for a moment brightened, became animated

and prolific of ideas. I thought of a brilliant line we might have

taken on that confounded Reformatory Bill…

That sort of thing was over…

What indeed wasn't over? I passed to a vaguer, more multitudinous

perception of disaster, the friends I had lost already since Altiora

began her campaign, the ampler remnant whom now I must lose. I

thought of people I had been merry with, people I had worked with

and played with, the companions of talkative walks, the hostesses of

houses that had once glowed with welcome for us both. I perceived

we must lose them all. I saw life like a tree in late autumn that

had once been rich and splendid with friends-and now the last brave

dears would be hanging on doubtfully against the frosty chill of

facts, twisting and tortured in the universal gale of indignation,

trying to evade the cold blast of the truth. I had betrayed my

party, my intimate friend, my wife, the wife whose devotion had made

me what I was. For awhile the figure of Margaret, remote, wounded,

shamed, dominated my mind, and the thought of my immense

ingratitude. Damn them! they'd take it out of her too. I had a

feeling that I wanted to go straight back and grip some one by the

throat, some one talking ill of Margaret. They'd blame her for not

keeping me, for letting things go so far… I wanted the whole

world to know how fine she was. I saw in imagination the busy,

excited dinner tables at work upon us all, rather pleasantly

excited, brightly indignant, merciless.

Well, it's the stuff we are!…

Then suddenly, stabbing me to the heart, came a vision of Margaret's

tears and the sound of her voice saying, "Husband mine! Oh! husband

mine! To see you cry!"…

I came out of a cloud of thoughts to discover the narrow

compartment, with its feeble lamp overhead, and our rugs and hand-

baggage swaying on the rack, and Isabel, very still in front of me,

gripping my wilting red roses tightly in her bare and ringless hand.

For a moment I could not understand her attitude, and then I

perceived she was sitting bent together with her head averted from

the light to hide the tears that were streaming down her face. She

had not got her handkerchief out for fear that I should see this,

but I saw her tears, dark drops of tears, upon her sleeve…

I suppose she had been watching my expression, divining my thoughts.

For a time I stared at her and was motionless, in a sort of still

and weary amazement. Why had we done this injury to one another?

WHY? Then something stirred within me.

"ISABEL!" I whispered.

She made no sign.

"Isabel!" I repeated, and then crossed over to her and crept closely

to her, put my arm about her, and drew her wet cheek to mine.

The End