THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

2

And that insufficient colloquy was the beginning of a prolonged

estrangement between us. It was characteristic of our relations

that we never reopened the discussion. The thing had been in the

air for some time; we had recognised it now; the widening breach

between us was confessed. My own feelings were curiously divided.

It is remarkable that my very real affection for Margaret only

became evident to me with this quarrel. The changes of the heart

are very subtle changes. Iam quite unaware how or when my early

romantic love for her purity and beauty and high-principled devotion

evaporated from my life; but I do know that quite early in my

parliamentary days there had come a vague, unconfessed resentment at

the tie that seemed to hold me in servitude to her standards of

private living and public act. I felt I was caught, and none the

less so because it had been my own act to rivet on my shackles. So

long as I still held myself bound to her that resentment grew. Now,

since I had broken my bonds and taken my line it withered again, and

I could think of Margaret with a returning kindliness.

But I still felt embarrassment with her. I feltmyself dependent

upon her for house room and food and social support, as it were

under false pretences. I would have liked to have separated our

financial affairs altogether. But I knew that to raise the issue

would have seemed a last brutal indelicacy. So I tried almost

furtively to keep my personal expenditure within the scope of the

private income I made by writing, and we went out together in her

motor brougham, dined and made appearances, met politely at

breakfast-parted at night with a kiss upon her cheek. The locking

of her door upon me, which at that time I quite understood, which I

understand now, became for a time in my mind, through some obscure

process of the soul, an offence. I never crossed the landing to her

room again.

In all this matter, and, indeed, in all my relations with Margaret,

I perceive now I behaved badly and foolishly. My manifest blunder

is that I, who was several years older than she, much subtler and in

many ways wiser, never in any measure sought to guide and control

her. After our marriage I treated her always as an equal, and let

her go her way; held her responsible for all the weak and

ineffective and unfortunate things she said and did to me. She

wasn't clever enough to justify that. It wasn't fair to expect her

to sympathise, anticipate, and understand. I ought to have taken

care of her, roped her to me when it came to crossing the difficult

places. If I had loved her more, and wiselier and more tenderly, if

there had not been the consciousness of my financial dependence on

her always stiffening my pride, I think she would have moved with me

from the outset, and left the Liberals with me. But she did not get

any inkling of the ends I sought in my change of sides. It must

have seemed to her inexplicable perversity. She had, I knew-for

surely I knew it then-an immense capacity for loyalty and devotion.

There she was with these treasures untouched, neglected and

perplexed. A woman who loves wants to give. It is the duty and

business of the man she has married for love to help her to help and

give. But I was stupid. My eyes had never been opened. I was

stiff with her and difficult to her, because even on my wedding

morning there had been, deep down in my soul, voiceless though

present, something weakly protesting, a faint perception of wrong-

doing, the infinitesimally small, slow-multiplying germs of shame.