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The New Machiavelli Chapter 13 Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book four of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Antoniogus,
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  Speaker 1: Book four isabel Chapter thirteen, Love and Success One. I
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  Speaker 1: come to the most evasive and difficult part of my story,
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  Speaker 1: which is to tell how Isabelle and I have made
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  Speaker 1: a common wreck of our joint lives. It is not
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  Speaker 1: the telling of one simple, disastrous accident. There was a
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  Speaker 1: vein in our natures that led to this collapse gradually
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  Speaker 1: and at this point, and that it crept to the surface.
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  Speaker 1: While may indeed see our destruction. For indeed, politically we
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  Speaker 1: could not be more extinct if we had been shocked
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  Speaker 1: dead in the form of a catastrophe as disconnected and
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  Speaker 1: conclusive as a meteoric stone falling out of heaven upon
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  Speaker 1: two friends and crushing them both. But I do not
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  Speaker 1: think that is true to our situation or ourselves. We
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  Speaker 1: were not taken by surprise. The thing was in us
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  Speaker 1: and not from without. It was akin to our way
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  Speaker 1: of thinking and our habitual attitudes. It had, for all
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  Speaker 1: its impulsive effect, a certain necessity. We might have escaped,
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  Speaker 1: no doubt as two men at a hundred yards may
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  Speaker 1: shoot at each other with pistols for a considerable time
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  Speaker 1: and escape, but it isn't particularly reasonable to talk of
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  Speaker 1: the contrariety of fate if they both get hit. Isabel
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  Speaker 1: and I were dangerous to each other for several years
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  Speaker 1: of friendship, and not quite unwittingly so. In writing this moreover,
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  Speaker 1: there is a very great difficulty in steering my way
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  Speaker 1: between two equally undesirable tones in the telling. In the
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  Speaker 1: first place, I do not want to seem to confess
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  Speaker 1: my sins with a penitence. I am very doubtful if
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  Speaker 1: I feel now that I have got Isabel, we can
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  Speaker 1: no doubt count the cost of it and feel unquenchable regrets.
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  Speaker 1: But I am not sure whether if we could be
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  Speaker 1: put back now into such circumstances as we were in
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  Speaker 1: a year ago or two years ago, whether with my
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  Speaker 1: eyes fully open, I should not do over again very
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  Speaker 1: much as I did. And on the other hand, I
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  Speaker 1: do not want to justify the things we have done.
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  Speaker 1: We are two bad people, if there is to be
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  Speaker 1: any classification of good and bad at all, we have
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  Speaker 1: acted badly, and quite apart from any other considerations, we've
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  Speaker 1: largely wasted our own very great possibilities. But it is
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  Speaker 1: part of a queer humor that underlies all this, that
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  Speaker 1: I find myself slipping again and again into a sentimental
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  Speaker 1: treatment of our case that is as unpremeditated as it
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  Speaker 1: is insincere. When I am a little tired after a
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  Speaker 1: morning's writing, I find the faint suggestion getting into a
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  Speaker 1: every other sentence that our blunders and misdeeds embodied after
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  Speaker 1: the fashion of the prophet Hoseiah profound moral truths. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: I feel so little confidence in my ability to keep
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  Speaker 1: this altogether out of my book that I warn the
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  Speaker 1: reader here that in spite of anything he may read
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  Speaker 1: elsewhere in the story, intimating, however, shyly an esoteric and
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  Speaker 1: exalted virtue in our proceedings. The plain truth of this
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  Speaker 1: business is that Isabel and I wanted each other with
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  Speaker 1: a want entirely formless, inconsiderate, and overwhelming. And though I
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  Speaker 1: could tell you countless delightful and beautiful things about Isabel
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  Speaker 1: were this a book in her praise, I cannot either
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  Speaker 1: analyze that want or account for its extreme intensity. I
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  Speaker 1: will confess that deep in my mind there is a
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  Speaker 1: belief in a sort of wild rightness about any love
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  Speaker 1: that is fraught with beauty, but that eludes me and
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  Speaker 1: vanishes again, and is not I feel to be put
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  Speaker 1: with the real veracities and righteousnesses and virtues in the
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  Speaker 1: paddocks and menageries of human reason. We have already a child,
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  Speaker 1: and Margaret was childless, and I find myself prone to
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  Speaker 1: insist upon that as if it was a justification. But indeed,
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  Speaker 1: when we became lovers there were small thought of eugenics
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  Speaker 1: between us. Ours was a mutual and not a philoprogenitive passion.
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  Speaker 1: Old nature behind us may have had such purposes with us,
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  Speaker 1: but it is not for us to annex her intentions
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  Speaker 1: by a moralizing after thought. There isn't, in fact, any
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  Speaker 1: decent justification for us whatever that that the story must stand.
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  Speaker 1: But if there is no justification, there is at least
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  Speaker 1: a very effective excuse in the mental confusedness of our time,
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  Speaker 1: the evasion of that passionately thorough exposition of belief and
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  Speaker 1: of the grounds of morality, which is the outcome of
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  Speaker 1: the mercenary religious compromises of the late Vatican period, the
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  Speaker 1: stupid suppression of anything but the most timid discussion of
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  Speaker 1: sexual morality in our literature and drama. The pervading, cultivated
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  Speaker 1: and protected muddle headedness leaves mentally vigorous people with relatively
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  Speaker 1: enormous possibilities of destruction and little effective help. They find
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  Speaker 1: themselves confronted by the habits and prejudices of manifestly commonplace people,
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  Speaker 1: and by that extraordinary, patched up Christianity, the cult of
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  Speaker 1: a bromstadized deity, diffused, scattered and aimless, which hides from
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  Speaker 1: examination and any possibility of faith behind the plea of
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  Speaker 1: good taste. A God about whom there is delicacy is
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  Speaker 1: far worse than no God at all. We are forced
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  Speaker 1: to be laws unto ourselves, and to live experimentally. It
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  Speaker 1: is inevitable that a considerable fraction of just that bolder,
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  Speaker 1: more initiatory section of the intellectual community, the section that
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  Speaker 1: can least be spared from the collective life in a
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  Speaker 1: period of trial and change, will drift into such emotional
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  Speaker 1: crises and such disaster as overtook us. Most perhaps will escape,
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  Speaker 1: but many will go down, many more than the world
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  Speaker 1: can spare. It is the unwritten law of all our
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  Speaker 1: public life, and the same holds true of America, that
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  Speaker 1: an honest, open scandal ends a career England in the
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  Speaker 1: last quarter of a century has wasted half a dozen
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  Speaker 1: statesmen on this score. She would, I believe, reject Neilson
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  Speaker 1: now if he sought to serve her. Is it wonderful
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  Speaker 1: that to us fretting here in exile, this should seem
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  Speaker 1: the cruelest as well as the most foolish. Elimination of
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  Speaker 1: a necessary social element. Destroys no vice, for vice hides
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  Speaker 1: by nature. It not only rewards dullness as if it
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  Speaker 1: were positive virtue, but sets an enormous premium upon hypocrisy.
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  Speaker 1: That is my case, and that is why I am
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  Speaker 1: telling this side of my story with so much explicitness. Two.
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  Speaker 1: Ever since the Kingdomstead election, I had maintained what seemed
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  Speaker 1: a desultory friendship with Isabel. At first it was rather
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  Speaker 1: Isabel kept it up than I. Whenever Margaret and I
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  Speaker 1: went down to that villa with it three or four
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  Speaker 1: acres of garden and shrubbery about it, which fulfilled our
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  Speaker 1: election promise to live at Kinghamstead, Isabel would turn up
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  Speaker 1: in a state of frank cheerfulness, rejoicing at us, and
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  Speaker 1: talk all she was reading and thinking to me, and
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  Speaker 1: stay for all the rest of the day. In her
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  Speaker 1: shameless liking for me. She was as natural as a savage.
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  Speaker 1: She would exercise me vigorously at tennis while Margaret lay
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  Speaker 1: and rested her back in the afternoon, or guide me
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  Speaker 1: for some long ramble that dodged the suburban and congested
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  Speaker 1: patches of the constituency with amazing skill. She took possession
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  Speaker 1: of me in that unabashed, straight minded way a girl
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  Speaker 1: will sometimes adopt with a man, chose my path or
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  Speaker 1: criticize my game, with a motherly solicitude for my welfare.
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  Speaker 1: That was absurd and delightful. And we talked. We discussed
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  Speaker 1: and criticized the stories of novels, scraps of history, pictures,
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  Speaker 1: social questions, socialism, the policy of the government. She was
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  Speaker 1: young and most unevenly informed, but she was amazingly sharp
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  Speaker 1: and quick and good. Never before in my life had
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  Speaker 1: I known a girl of her age or a woman
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  Speaker 1: of her quality. I had never dreamt there was such
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  Speaker 1: talk in the world. Kingdom Stead came a lightless place
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  Speaker 1: when she went to Oxford. Heaven knows how much that
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  Speaker 1: may not have precipitated my abandonment of the seat. She
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  Speaker 1: went to rid Out College, Oxford and that certainly weighed
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  Speaker 1: with me when presently, after my breach with the Liberals,
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  Speaker 1: various little undergraduate societies began to ask for lectures and discussions.
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  Speaker 1: I favored Oxford, I declared openly. I did so because
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  Speaker 1: of her. At that time, I think we neither of
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  Speaker 1: us suspected the possibility of passion that lay like a
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  Speaker 1: coiled snake in the path before us. It seemed to
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  Speaker 1: us that we had the quaintest, most delightful friendship in
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  Speaker 1: the world. She was my pupil, and I was her guide,
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  Speaker 1: philosopher and friend. People smiled indulgently, Even Margaret smiled indulgently
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  Speaker 1: at our attraction for one another. Such friendships are not
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  Speaker 1: uncommon nowadays among easygoing, liberal minded people. For the most part,
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  Speaker 1: there's no sort of harm, as people say, in them,
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  Speaker 1: the two persons concerned and never supposed to think of
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  Speaker 1: the passionate love that hovers so close to the friendship,
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  Speaker 1: or if they do, then they banish the thought. I
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  Speaker 1: think we kept the thought as permanently in exile as
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  Speaker 1: anyone could do. If it did, in odd moments come
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  Speaker 1: into our heads. We pretended elaborately it wasn't there. Only
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  Speaker 1: we were both very easily jealous of each other's attention
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  Speaker 1: and tremendously insistent upon each other's preference. I remember once
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  Speaker 1: during the Oxford days, an intimation that should have set
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  Speaker 1: me thinking, and I suppose discreetly disentangling myself. It was
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  Speaker 1: one Sunday afternoon, and it must have been about May,
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  Speaker 1: for the trees and shrubs of Ridout College were gay
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  Speaker 1: with blossom and fresh with the new sharp greens of spring.
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  Speaker 1: I had walked, talking with Isabel and a couple of
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  Speaker 1: other girls through the wide gardens of the place, seen
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  Speaker 1: and criticized the new brick pond, nodded to the daughter
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  Speaker 1: of this friend and that in the hammocks under the trees,
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  Speaker 1: and picked away among the scattered tea parties on the
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  Speaker 1: lawn to our own circle on the grass under a
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  Speaker 1: Siberian crab near the great bay window. There I sat
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  Speaker 1: and ate great quantities of cake, and discussed the tactics
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  Speaker 1: of the Suffragettes. I had made some comments upon the
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  Speaker 1: spirit of the movement in an address to the men
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  Speaker 1: in Pembroke, and it had got abroad, and a group
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  Speaker 1: of girls and women dons were now having it out
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  Speaker 1: with me. I forget the drift of the conversation or
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  Speaker 1: what it was, made Isabel interrupt me. She did interrupt me.
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  Speaker 1: She had been lying prone on the ground at my
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  Speaker 1: right hand, chin on fists, listening thoughtfully, and I was
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  Speaker 1: sitting beside old lady evershed on a garden seat. I
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  Speaker 1: turned to Isabel's voice and saw her face uplifted, and
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  Speaker 1: her dear cheeks and nose and forehead all splashed and
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  Speaker 1: barred with sunlight, and the shadows of the twigs of
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  Speaker 1: the trees behind me, and something an infinite tenderness, stabbed me.
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  Speaker 1: It was a keen, physical feeling like nothing I had
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  Speaker 1: ever felt before. It had a quality of tears in it.
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  Speaker 1: For the first time in my narrow and concentrated life,
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  Speaker 1: another human being had really thrust into my being and
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  Speaker 1: gripped my very heart. Our eyes met perplexed for an
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  Speaker 1: extraordinary moment. Then I turned back and addressed myself a
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  Speaker 1: little stiffly to the substance of her intervention. For some time,
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  Speaker 1: I couldn't look at her again. From that time forth,
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  Speaker 1: I knew I loved Isabel beyond measure. Yet it is
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  Speaker 1: curious that it never occurred to me for a year
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  Speaker 1: or so that this was like to be a matter
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  Speaker 1: of passion between us. I have told how definitely I
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  Speaker 1: put my imagination into harness in those matters at my marriage,
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  Speaker 1: and I was living now in a world of big interests,
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  Speaker 1: where there is neither much time nor inclination for deliberate
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  Speaker 1: love making. I suppose there is a large class of
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  Speaker 1: men who never meet a girl or a woman without
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  Speaker 1: thinking of sex, who meet a friend's daughter and decide
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  Speaker 1: mustn't get friendly with her, wouldn't do, and set invisible
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  Speaker 1: bars between themselves and all the wives in the world.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps that is the way to live. Perhaps there is
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  Speaker 1: no other method than this effectual annihilation of half and
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  Speaker 1: the most sympathetic and attractive half of the human beings
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  Speaker 1: in the world. So far as any frank intercourse is concerned,
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  Speaker 1: I am quite convinced anyhow, that such a qualified intimacy
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  Speaker 1: as ours such are drifting into the sense of possession,
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  Speaker 1: such untrammeled conversation with an invisible, implacable limit set just
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  Speaker 1: where the intimacy glows. It is no kind of tolerable compromise.
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  Speaker 1: If men and women are to go so far together,
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  Speaker 1: they must be free to go as far as they
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  Speaker 1: may want to go. Without the vindictive destruction that has
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  Speaker 1: come upon us on the basis of the accepted codes.
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  Speaker 1: The jealous people are right, and the liberal minded ones
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  Speaker 1: are playing with fire. If people are not to love,
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  Speaker 1: then they must be kept apart. If they are not
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  Speaker 1: to be kept apart, then we must prepare for an
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  Speaker 1: unprecedented toleration of lovers. Isabel was as unforeseeing as I
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  Speaker 1: to begin with. But sex marches into the life of
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  Speaker 1: an intelligent girl, with demands and challenges far more urgent
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  Speaker 1: than the mere call of curiosity and satiable desire that
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  Speaker 1: comes to a young man. No woman yet has dared
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  Speaker 1: to tell the story of that unfolding. She attracted men,
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  Speaker 1: and she encouraged them, and watched them, and tested them,
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  Speaker 1: and dismissed them, and concealed the substance of her thoughts
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  Speaker 1: about them in the way that seems instinctive in a
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  Speaker 1: natural minded girl. There was even an engagement amidst the
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  Speaker 1: protests and disapproval of the college authorities. I never saw
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  Speaker 1: the man, though she gave me a long history of
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  Speaker 1: the affair, to which I listened with a forced and
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  Speaker 1: insincere sympathy. She struck me oddly as taking the relationship
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  Speaker 1: for a thing in itself and regardless of its consequences.
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  Speaker 1: After a time she became silent about him and then
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  Speaker 1: threw him over. And by that time I think for
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  Speaker 1: all that she was so much my junior. She knew
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  Speaker 1: more about herself and me than I was to know.
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  Speaker 1: For several years to come, we didn't see each either
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  Speaker 1: for some months after my resignation, but we kept up
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  Speaker 1: a frequent correspondence. She said twice over that she wanted
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  Speaker 1: to talk to me, that letters didn't convey what one
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  Speaker 1: wanted to say. And I went up to Oxford pretty
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  Speaker 1: definitely to see her, though I combined it with one
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  Speaker 1: or two other engagements somewhere in February. Insensibly she had
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  Speaker 1: become important enough for me to make journeys for her,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: but we didn't see very much of one another. On
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  Speaker 1: that occasion. There was something in the air between us
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  Speaker 1: that made a faint embarrassment. The mere fact, perhaps that
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  Speaker 1: she had asked me to come up a year before.
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  Speaker 1: She would have dashed off with me quite unscrupulously to
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  Speaker 1: talk alone, carried me off to her room for an
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  Speaker 1: hour with a minute of chaperonage to satisfy the rules.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Now there was always some one or other near us
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  Speaker 1: that it seemed impossible to exorcise. We went for a
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  Speaker 1: walk on the Sunday afternoon with old Fortescue Casey, who
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  Speaker 1: had come up to see his two daughters, both great
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  Speaker 1: friends of Isabelle's, and some new in Gloria Ston whose
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  Speaker 1: name I forget, but who was in a state of
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  Speaker 1: marked admiration for the six of us played a game
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  Speaker 1: of conversational entanglements throughout, and mostly I was impressing the
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  Speaker 1: fourtescue girls with the want of mental concentration possible in
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  Speaker 1: a rising politician. We went down Carfax, I remember, to
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  Speaker 1: Folly Bridge and inspected the barges, and then back by
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  Speaker 1: way of Merton to the Botanic Gardens and Maudlin Bridge.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And in the Botanic Garden she got almost her only
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  Speaker 1: chance with me last month's at Oxford, she said, And
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: then I asked, I'm coming to London, she said, to write.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: She was silent for a moment, then she said, abruptly,
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  Speaker 1: with that quick flush of hers and a sudden boldness
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  Speaker 1: in her eyes, I'm going to work with you. Why
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  Speaker 1: shouldn't I three here again? I suppose I had fair
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  Speaker 1: warning of the drift of things. I seem to remember
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  Speaker 1: myself in the train to Paddington, sitting with a handful
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  Speaker 1: of papers galley proofs for the Blue Weekly, I suppose,
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  Speaker 1: on my lap and thinking about her, and that last
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  Speaker 1: sentence of hers, and all that it might mean to me.
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  Speaker 1: It is very hard to recall even the main outline
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  Speaker 1: of anything so elusive as a meditation. I know that
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  Speaker 1: the idea of working with her gripped me, fascinated me,
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  Speaker 1: that my value in her life seemed growing, filled me
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  Speaker 1: with pride and a kind of gratitude. I was already
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: in no doubt that her value in my life was tremendous.
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  Speaker 1: It made it none the less that in those days
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I was obsessed by the idea that she was transitory
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  Speaker 1: and bound to go out of my life again. It
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: is no good trying to set too fine a face
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  Speaker 1: upon this complex business. There is gold and clay and
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: sunlight and savagery in every love store, and a multitude
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  Speaker 1: of elvish elements peeped out beneath the fine, rich curtain
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  Speaker 1: of affection that masked our future. I've never properly weighed
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  Speaker 1: how immensely my vanity was gratified by her clear preference
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  Speaker 1: for me. Nor can I, for a moment determine how
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  Speaker 1: much deliberate intention I hide from myself in this affair.
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  Speaker 1: Certainly I think some part of me must have been
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: saying in the train, leave go of her, get away
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  Speaker 1: from her. End this. Now. I can't have been so
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  Speaker 1: stupid as not to have had that in my mind.
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  Speaker 1: If she had been only a beautiful girl in love
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  Speaker 1: with me, I think I could have managed the situation
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  Speaker 1: once or twice. Since my marriage, and before Isabel became
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  Speaker 1: of any significance in my life, there had been incidents
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  Speaker 1: with other people, flashes of temptation. No telling is possible
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  Speaker 1: of the thing resisted. I think that mere beauty and
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  Speaker 1: passion would not have taken me. But between myself and
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  Speaker 1: Isabel things were incurably complicated by the intellectual sympathy. We had,
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  Speaker 1: the jolly march of our minds together that has always
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: mattered enormously. I should have wanted her company nearly as badly.
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  Speaker 1: If she had been some crippled old lady. We would
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  Speaker 1: have hunted shoulders and shoulder as two men. Only two
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  Speaker 1: men would never have had the patience and readiness for
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  Speaker 1: one another we two had. I had never for years
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  Speaker 1: met anyone with whom I could be so carelessly sure
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  Speaker 1: of understanding, or to whom I could listen so easily
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  Speaker 1: and fully. She gave me with an extraordinary completeness, that rare,
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  Speaker 1: precious effect of always saying something fresh, and yet saying
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  Speaker 1: it so that it filled into and folded about all
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  Speaker 1: the little recesses and corners of my mind with an infinite,
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  Speaker 1: soft familiarity. It is impossible to explain that. It is
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: like trying to explain why her voice, her voice heard
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  Speaker 1: speaking to anyone heard speaking in another room, pleased my ears.
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  Speaker 1: She was the only Oxford woman who took her first
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  Speaker 1: That year. She spent the summer in Scotland and Yorkshire,
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  Speaker 1: writing to me continually of all she now meant to do,
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  Speaker 1: and stirring my imagination. She came to London for the
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: autumn session. For a time she stayed with old Lady Kolbeck,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: but she fell out with her hostess when it became
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: clear she wanted to write not novels but journalism. And
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: then she said everyone talking, by taking a flat near
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Victoria and installing as her sole protector an elderly German
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: governess she had engaged through a scholastic agency. She began writing,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: not in that copious flood the undisciplined young woman of
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: gifts is apt to produce, but in exactly the manner
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: of an able young man, experimenting with forms, developing the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: phrasing of opinions, taking a definite line. She was, of
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: course tremendously discussed. She was disapproved of, but she was
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: invited out to dinner. She got rather a reputation for
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: the management of elderly distinguished men. It was an odd
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: experience to follow Margaret's soft rustle of silk into some
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: big drawing room and discover my snub nosed girl in
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: the blue sack transformed into a shining creature in the
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: soft splendor of pearls and ivory, white and lace, and
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: with a silver band about her dusky hair. For a
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: time we did not meet very frequently, though always she
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: professed an unblushing preference for my company, and talked my
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: views and sought me out. Then her usefulness upon the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Blue Weekly began to link us closelier. She would come
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: up to the office and sit by the window and
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: talk over the proofs of the next week's articles, going
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: through my intentions with a keen, investigatory scalpel. Her talk
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: always puts me in mind of a steel blade. Her
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: writing became rapidly very good. She had a wit and
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: a turn of the phrase that was all her own.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: We seemed to have forgotten the little shadow of embarrassment
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: that had fallen over our last meeting at Oxford. Everything
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: seemed natural and easy between us in those days, a
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: little unconventional, but that made it all the brighter. We
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: developed something like a custom of walks about once a
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: week or so, and letters and notes became frequent. I
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: won't pretend things were not keenly personal between us, but
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: they had an air of being innocently mental. She used
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: to call me master in our talks, a monstrous and
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: engaging flattery, and I was in ordinately proud to have
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: her as my pupil, who wouldn't have been. And we
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: went on at that distance for a long time until
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: within a year of the hand Itch election, after Lady
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Colbeck threw her up as altogether to intellectual for comfortable control,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Isabel was taken up by the Belfs in a less
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: formal and compromising manner, and we kended with them and
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: their cousin Leonora sparling, and spent large portions of her
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: summer with them in Herefordshire. There was a lover also
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in that time, men who came a little timidly at
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: this brilliant young person with the frank manner and the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Amazonian mind, and she declared, received her kindly refusals with
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: manifest relief. And Arnold Shuesmith struck up a sort of
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: friendship that oddly imitated mine. She took a liking to
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: him because he was clumsy and shy and inexpressive. She
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: embarked upon the dangerous interest of helping him to fire
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: and his soul. I had some twinges of jealousy about that.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: I didn't see the necessity of him. He invaded her time,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and I thought that might interfere with her work if
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: their friendship stole some hours from Isabelle's writing. It did not,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: for a long while interfere with our walks, or our talks,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: or the close intimacy we had together. Four Then suddenly
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Isabelle and I found ourselves passionately in love. The change
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: came so entirely without warning or intention, that I find
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: it impossible now to tell the order of its phases.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: What disturb pebble started the avalanche I cannot trace. Perhaps
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: it was simply that the barriers between us and this
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: masked aspect of life had been wearing down unperceived, and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: there came a change in Isabelle. It was like some
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: change in the cycle of nature, like the onset of
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: a sharp brightness, an uneasiness. She became restless with her work.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Little encounters with men began to happen, encounters not quite
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: in the quality of the earlier proposals. And then came
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: an odd incident of which she told me, but somehow
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: I felt didn't tell me completely. She told me all
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: she was able to tell me. She had been at
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: a dance at the Roper's and a man rather well
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: known in London had kissed her. The thing amazed her
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: beyond measure. It was the sort of thing immediately possible
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: between any man and any woman, that one never expects
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: to happen until it happens. It had the surprising effect
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of a judge generally known to be baled suddenly whipping
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: off his wig in court. No absolutely unexpected revelation could
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: have quite the same quality of shock. She went through
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the whole thing to me, with the remarkable detachment, told
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: me how she had felt and the odd thing as
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: it seemed to open to her. I want to be
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: kissed and all that sort of thing, she avowed. I
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: suppose every woman does, she added, after a pause, and
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: I don't want anyone to do it. This struck me
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: as queerly expressive of the woman's attitude to these things.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Someone presently will solve that, I said, someone will, perhaps
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I was silent. Someone will, she said, almost viciously. And
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: then we'll have to stop these walks and talks of ours,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: dear master, I'll be sorry to give them up. It's
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: part of the requirements of the situation. I said that
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: he should be, oh, very interesting. He'll start, no doubt,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: all sorts of new topics, and open no end of
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: attractive vistas. You can't, you know, always go about in
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: a state of pupilage. I don't think I can, said Isabel.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: But it's only just recently I've begun to doubt about it.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I remember these things being said, but just how much
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: we saw and understood, and just how far we were
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: really keeping opaque to each other then I cannot remember.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: But it must have been quite soon after this that
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: we spent nearly a whole day together at Kew Gardens,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: with the curtains up and the barriers down, and the
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: thing that had happened plain before our eyes. I don't
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: remember we ever made any declaration. We just assumed the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: new footing. It was a day early in that year,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: I think in January, because there was thin, crisp snow
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: on the grass, and we noted that only two other
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: people had been to the pagoda that day. Now, the
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: curious impression of greenish color, hot moist air, and huge
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: palm fronds about very much of our talk, as though
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: we were nearly all the time in the tropical house.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: But I also remember very vividly looking at certain orange
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: and red spray like flowers from Patagonia which could not
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: have been there. It is a curious thing that I
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: do not remember we made any profession of passionate love
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: for one another. We talked as though the fact of
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: our intense love for each other had always been patent
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: between us. There were so long and frank an intimacy
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: between us that we talked far more like brother and
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: sister or husband and wife than two people engaged in
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the War of the sexes. We wanted to know what
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: we were going to do, and whatever we did, we
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: meant to do. In the most perfect concert. We both
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: felt an extraordinary accession of friendship and tenderness then and
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: what again is curious, very little passion. But there was also,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: in spite of the perplexities, we faced, an immense satisfaction
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: about that day. It was as if we had taken
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: off something that had hindered our view of each other,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: like people who unvisored to talk more easily at a
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: mass ball. I've had since to view our relations from
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: the standpoint of the ordinary observer. I find that vision
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: in the most preposterous contrast with all that really went
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: on between us. I suppose there I should figure as
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: a wicked seducer while an unprotected girl succumbed to my fascinations.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, it didn't occur to us
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: that there was any personal inequality between us. I knew
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: her for my equal mentally in so many things. She
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: was beyond comparison, cleverer than I. Her courage outwent mine.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: The quick leap of her mind evoked a flash of
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: joy in mine, like the response of an induction wire.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Her way of thinking was like watching sunlight reflected from
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: little waves upon the side of a boat. It was
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: so bright, so mobile, so variously and easily true to
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: its law. In the back of our minds, we both
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: had a very definite belief that making love is full
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: of joyous, splendid, tender, and exciting possibilities. And we had
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: to discuss why we shouldn't be to the last degree lovers. Now,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: what I should like to print here if it were possible,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: in all the screaming emphasis of read ink, is this
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: that the circumstances of my upbringing and the circumstances of
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Isabelle's upbringing had left not a shadow of belief or
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: feeling that the utmost passionate love between us was in
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: itself intrinsically wrong. I've told, with the fullest particularity, just
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: all that I was taught or found out for myself
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: in these matters, and Isabelle's reading and thinking, and the
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: fierce silences of her governesses, and the breathless warnings of teachers,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: and all the social and religious influences that had been
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: brought to bear upon her had worked out to the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: same void of conviction. The code had failed with us altogether,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: we didn't for a moment consider anything but the obediency
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: of what we both, for all our quiet faces and
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: steady eyes, wanted most passionately to do well. Here you
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: have the state of mind of whole brigades of people,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and particularly of young people. Nowadays. The current morality hasn't
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: gripped them. They don't really believe in it at all.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: They may render it lip service, but that is quite
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: another thing. There are scarcely any tolerable novels to justify
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: its prohibitions. Its prohibitions do, in fact remain unjustified. Amongst
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: these ugly suppressions. You may if you choose silence the
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: admission of this in literature and current discussion, you will
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: not prevent it working out in lives. People come up
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: to the great moments of passion crudely, unaware, astoundingly unprepared,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: As no really civilized and intelligently planned community would let
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: anyone be unprepared. We find themselves hedged about with customs
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: that have no organic hold upon them and mere discretions.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: All generous spirits are disposed to despise consider the infinite
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: absurdities of it. Multitudes of us are trying to run
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: this complex modern community on a basis of hush, without
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: explaining to our children or discussing with them anything about
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: love and marriage at all, doubt and knowledge creep about
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: in enforced darknesses and silences. We are living upon an
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: ancient tradition which everybody doubts and nobody has ever analyzed.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: We affect a tremendous and cultivated shyness and delicacy about
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: imperatives of the most arbitrary appearance. What ensues What did
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: ensue with us, for example, on the one hand, was
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: a great desire, robbed of any appearance of shame and
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: grossness by the power of love. On the other hand,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: the possible jealousy of so and so, the disapproval of
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: so and so material risks and dangers. It is only
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: in the retrospect that we have been able to grasp
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: something of the effectual case against us. The social prohibition,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: lit by the intense glow of our passion, presented itself
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: as preposterous, irrational, arbitrary, and ugly, a monster fit only
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: for mockery. We might be ruined well. There is a
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: phase in every love affair, a sort of heroic hysteria,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: when death and ruin are agreeable additions to the prospect.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: It gives the business a gravity, a solemnity. Timid people
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: may hesitate and draw back with a vague instinctive terror
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: of the immensity of the oppositions they challenge, But neither
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Isabel nor I a timid people. We weighed what was
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: against us. We decided, just exactly as scores of thousands
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: of people have decided in this very matter, that if
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: it were possible to keep this thing to ourselves, there
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: was nothing against it. And so we took our first step.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: With the hunger of love in us, it was easy
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: to conclude we might be lovers and still keep everything
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: to ourselves. That cleared our minds of the one persistent
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: obstacle that mattered to us, the haunting presence of Margaret.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: And then we found that all those scores of thousands
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of people scattered about us have found that we could
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: not keep it to ourselves. Love will out. All. The
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: rest of this story is the chronicle of that love
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: with sustained secrecy cannot be love. It is just exactly
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the point people do not understand. End of Chapter thirteen,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Section one