THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

5

But before things came to that pass, some months and many phases and

a sudden journey to America intervened.

"This thing spells disaster," I said. "You are too big and Iam too

big to attempt this secrecy. Think of the intolerable possibility

of being found out! At any cost we have to stop-even at the cost

of parting."

"Just because we may be found out!"

"Just because we may be found out."

"Master, I shouldn't in the least mindbeing found out with you.

I'm afraid-I'd be proud."

"Wait till it happens."

There followed a struggle of immense insincerity between us. It is

hard to tell who urged and who resisted.

She came to me one night to the editorial room of the BLUE WEEKLY,

and argued and kissed me with wet salt lips, and wept in my arms;

she told me that now passionate longing for me and my intimate life

possessed her, so that she could not work, could not think, could

not endure other people for the love of me…

I fled absurdly. That is the secret of the futile journey to

America that puzzled all my friends.

I ran away from Isabel. I took hold of the situation with all my

strength, put in Britten with sketchy, hasty instructions to edit

the paper, and started headlong and with luggage, from which, among

other things, my shaving things were omitted, upon a tour round the

world.

Preposterous flight that was! I remember as a thing almost farcical

my explanations to Margaret, and how frantically anxious I was to

prevent the remote possibility of her coming with me, and how I

crossed in the TUSCAN, a bad, wet boat, and mixed seasickness with

ungovernable sorrow. I wept-tears. It was inexpressibly queer and

ridiculous-and, good God! how I hated my fellow-passengers!

New York inflamed and excited me for a time, and when things

slackened, I whirled westward to Chicago-eating and drinking, I

remember, in the train from shoals of little dishes, with a sort of

desperate voracity. I did the queerest things to distract myself-

no novelist would dare to invent my mental and emotional muddle.

Chicago also held me at first, amazing lapse from civilisation that

the place is! and then abruptly, with hosts expecting me, and

everything settled for some days in Denver, I found myself at the

end of my renunciations, and turned and came back headlong to

London.

Let me confess it wasn't any sense of perfect and incurable trust

and confidence that brought me back, or any idea that now I had

strength to refrain. It was a sudden realisation that after all the

separation might succeed; some careless phrasing in one of her

jealously read letters set that idea going in my mind-the haunting

perception that I might return to London and find it empty of the

Isabel who had pervaded it. Honour, discretion, the careers of both

of us, became nothing at the thought. I couldn't conceive my life

resuming there without Isabel. I couldn't, in short, stand it.

I don't even excuse my return. It is inexcusable. I ought to have

kept upon my way westward-and held out. I couldn't. I wanted

Isabel, and I wanted her so badly now that everything else in the

world was phantom-like until that want was satisfied. Perhaps you

have never wanted anything like that. I went straight to her.

But here I come to untellable things. There is no describing the

reality of love. The shapes of things are nothing, the actual

happenings are nothing, except that somehow there falls a light upon

them and a wonder. Of how we met, and the thrill of the adventure,

the curious bright sense of defiance, the joy of having dared, I

can't tell-I can but hint of just one aspect, of what an amazing

LARK-it's the only word-it seemed to us. The beauty which was the

essence of it, which justifies it so far as it will bear

justification, eludes statement.

What can a record of contrived meetings, of sundering difficulties

evaded and overcome, signify here? Or what can it convey to say

that one looked deep into two dear, steadfast eyes, or felt a heart

throb and beat, or gripped soft hair softly in a trembling hand?

Robbed of encompassing love, these things are of no more value than

the taste of good wine or the sight of good pictures, or the hearing

of music,-just sensuality and no more. No one can tell love-we

can only tell the gross facts of love and its consequences. Given

love-given mutuality, and one has effected a supreme synthesis and

come to a new level of life-but only those who know can know. This

business has brought me more bitterness and sorrow than I had ever

expected to bear, but even now I will not say that I regret that

wilful home-coming altogether. We loved-to the uttermost. Neither

of us could have loved any one else as we did and do love one

another. It was ours, that beauty; it existed only between us when

we were close together, for no one in the world ever to know save

ourselves.

My return to the office sticks out in my memory with an extreme

vividness, because of the wild eagle of pride that screamed within

me. It was Tuesday morning, and though not a soul in London knew of

it yet except Isabel, I had been back in England a week. I came in

upon Britten and stood in the doorway.

"GOD!" he said at the sight of me.

"I'm back," I said.

He looked at my excited face with those red-brown eyes of his.

Silently I defied him to speak his mind.

"Where did you turn back?" he said at last.