Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The New Machiavelli Chapter 15 Part 2

Transcript

The New Machiavelli Chapter 15 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

0:01
Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen, Section two of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
0:07
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
0:11
Speaker 1: Antoniogus three. I had a curious revulsion of feeling that
0:18
Speaker 1: morning of our meeting, of all places for such a
0:21
Speaker 1: clandestine encounter, she had chosen the bridge opposite Buckingham Palace.
0:27
Speaker 1: Overnight I had been full of self pity and eager
0:30
Speaker 1: for the comfort of Isabel's presence. But the ill written
0:34
Speaker 1: scrawl in which she had replied had been full of
0:37
Speaker 1: the suggestion of her own weakness and misery. And when
0:41
Speaker 1: I saw her, my own selfish sorrows were altogether swept
0:45
Speaker 1: away by a wave of pitiful tenderness. Something had happened
0:50
Speaker 1: to her that I did not understand. She was manifestly ill.
0:56
Speaker 1: She came towards me wearily, she who had always borne
0:59
Speaker 1: herself so bravely. Her shoulders seemed bent, and her eyes
1:04
Speaker 1: were tired, and her face white and drawn. All my
1:08
Speaker 1: life has been a narrow, self centered life. No brothers,
1:12
Speaker 1: no sisters, or children, or weak things had ever yet
1:16
Speaker 1: made any intimate appeal to me. And suddenly I verily believed,
1:20
Speaker 1: for the first time in my life. I felt a
1:23
Speaker 1: great passion of protective ownership. I felt that here was
1:28
Speaker 1: something that I could die to shelter, something that meant
1:31
Speaker 1: more than joy or pride or splendid ambitions or splendid
1:36
Speaker 1: creation to me. A new kind of hold upon me,
1:40
Speaker 1: a new power in the world. Some sealed fountain was
1:44
Speaker 1: opened in my breast. I knew that I could love
1:48
Speaker 1: Isabel broken, Isabel, beaten, Isabel ugly and in pain, more
1:53
Speaker 1: than I could love any sweet or delightful or glorious
1:56
Speaker 1: thing in life. I didn't care any more for anything
2:00
Speaker 1: in the world but Isabel, and that I should protect her.
2:04
Speaker 1: I trembled as I came near her, and could scarcely
2:08
Speaker 1: speak to her for the emotion that filled me. I
2:12
Speaker 1: had your letter, I said, I had yours. Where can
2:17
Speaker 1: we talk? I remember my lame sentences. We'll have a
2:22
Speaker 1: boat that's best here. I took her to the little
2:26
Speaker 1: boat house, and there we hired a boat, and I
2:29
Speaker 1: rode in silence under the bridge and into the shade
2:32
Speaker 1: of a tree. The square, gray stone masses of the
2:36
Speaker 1: Foreign Office loomed through the twigs, I remember, and a
2:40
Speaker 1: little space of grass separated us from the pathway and
2:44
Speaker 1: the scrutiny of passers by, And there we talked. I
2:49
Speaker 1: had to write to you, I said, I had to
2:52
Speaker 1: come when you to be married Thursday week? Well, I said,
2:59
Speaker 1: but can we? She leant forward and scrutinized my face
3:04
Speaker 1: with eyes wide open. What do you mean? She said,
3:09
Speaker 1: at last, in a whisper. Can we stand it? After all?
3:15
Speaker 1: I looked at her white face? Can you? I said?
3:21
Speaker 1: She whispered, your career. Then suddenly her face was contorted.
3:28
Speaker 1: She wept silently, exactly as a child tormented beyond endurance
3:33
Speaker 1: might suddenly weep. Oh I don't care, I cried. Now
3:39
Speaker 1: I don't care. Damn the whole system of things, Damn
3:43
Speaker 1: all this patching of the irrevocable. I want to take
3:47
Speaker 1: care of you, Isabel, and have you with me. I
3:50
Speaker 1: can't stand it, she blubbered. You needn't stand it. I
3:55
Speaker 1: thought it was best for you. I thought, indeed it
3:58
Speaker 1: was best for you. I thought even you wanted it
4:00
Speaker 1: like that. Couldn't I live alone as I meant to do? No,
4:05
Speaker 1: I said, you couldn't. You're not strong enough. I thought
4:08
Speaker 1: of that. I've got to shelter you, and I want you.
4:13
Speaker 1: I went on. I'm not strong enough. I can't stand
4:17
Speaker 1: life without you. She stopped weeping. She made a great
4:22
Speaker 1: effort to control herself and looked at me steadfastly for
4:26
Speaker 1: a moment. I was going to kill myself, she whispered.
4:32
Speaker 1: I was going to kill myself quietly somehow. I meant
4:36
Speaker 1: to wait a bit and have an accident. I thought
4:40
Speaker 1: you didn't understand you're a man and couldn't understand people
4:46
Speaker 1: can't do as we thought we could do. I said,
4:50
Speaker 1: we've gone too far together. Yes, she said, and I
4:55
Speaker 1: stared into her eyes. The horror of it, she whishedhispered,
5:01
Speaker 1: the horror of being handed over. It's just only begun
5:04
Speaker 1: to dawn upon me seeing him now as I do.
5:08
Speaker 1: He tries to be kind to me. I didn't know.
5:12
Speaker 1: I felt adventurous before. It makes me feel like all
5:16
Speaker 1: the women in the world who have ever been owned
5:18
Speaker 1: and subdued. It's not that he isn't the best of men.
5:23
Speaker 1: It's because I'm a part of you. I can't go
5:26
Speaker 1: through with it. If I go through with it, I
5:29
Speaker 1: shall be left robbed of pride, outraged, a woman beaten.
5:35
Speaker 1: I know, I said, I know. I want to live alone.
5:40
Speaker 1: I don't care for anything now, but just escape. If
5:43
Speaker 1: you can help me, I must take you away. There's
5:47
Speaker 1: nothing for us but to go away together. But your work,
5:52
Speaker 1: she said, your career, Margaret, our promises. We've made a
5:58
Speaker 1: mess of things, Isabelle, have made a mess of us.
6:01
Speaker 1: I don't know which our flags are in the mud. Anyhow,
6:06
Speaker 1: it's too late to save those other things. They have
6:09
Speaker 1: to go. You can't make terms with defeat. I thought
6:14
Speaker 1: it was Margaret needed me most, but it's you and
6:18
Speaker 1: I need you. I didn't think of that either. I
6:22
Speaker 1: haven't a doubt left in the world. Now we've got
6:25
Speaker 1: to leave everything rather than leave each other. I'm sure
6:29
Speaker 1: of it. Now we have gone so far, we've got
6:33
Speaker 1: to go right down to earth and begin again. Dear,
6:37
Speaker 1: I want disgrace with you, so I whispered to her,
6:42
Speaker 1: as she sat crumpled together on the faded cushions of
6:45
Speaker 1: the boat, this white and weary young woman who had
6:49
Speaker 1: been so valiant and careless. A girl. I don't care,
6:53
Speaker 1: I said, I don't care for anything if I can
6:56
Speaker 1: save you out of the wreckage we have made together.
7:02
Speaker 1: Four The next day, I went to the office of
7:05
Speaker 1: the Blue Weekly in order to get as much as
7:08
Speaker 1: possible of its affairs in working order. Before I left
7:11
Speaker 1: London with Isabel, I just missed Shusmith. In the lower
7:15
Speaker 1: office upstairs, I found Britain amidst a pile of outside articles,
7:21
Speaker 1: methodically reading the title of each and sometimes the first
7:25
Speaker 1: half dozen lines, and either dropping them in a growing
7:28
Speaker 1: heap on the floor for a clerk to return, or
7:31
Speaker 1: putting them aside for consideration. I interrupted him, squatted on
7:37
Speaker 1: the window sill of the open window and sketched out
7:40
Speaker 1: my ideas for the session. You're four sighted, he remarked,
7:45
Speaker 1: at something of mine which reached out ahead. I like
7:48
Speaker 1: to see things prepared, I answered, yes, he said, and
7:53
Speaker 1: ripped open the envelope of a fresh aspirant. I was
7:57
Speaker 1: silent while he read. You're going away with Isabel Rivers.
8:02
Speaker 1: He said abruptly. Well, I said, amazed, I know, he said,
8:07
Speaker 1: and lost his breath. O my business only. It was
8:12
Speaker 1: queer to find Britain afraid to say a thing. It's
8:16
Speaker 1: not playing the game, he said, what do you know?
8:21
Speaker 1: Everything that matters? Some games I said, are too hard
8:25
Speaker 1: to play. There came a pause between us. I didn't
8:31
Speaker 1: know you're watching all this, I said, yes. He answered,
8:36
Speaker 1: after a pause, I've watched. Sorry, sorry, you don't approve.
8:43
Speaker 1: It means smashing such an infernal lot of things, Remington.
8:48
Speaker 1: I did not answer. You're going away? Then, yes, soon,
8:56
Speaker 1: right away. There's your wife, I know, shoesmith, whom you've
9:02
Speaker 1: pledged in a manner. You've just picked him out and
9:05
Speaker 1: made him conspicuous. Everyone will know. Oh, of course it's
9:10
Speaker 1: nothing to you, honor, I know, go on, decency. I
9:16
Speaker 1: nodded all this movement of ours. That's what I care
9:21
Speaker 1: for most. It's come to a big thing, Remington, that
9:25
Speaker 1: will go on. We have a use for you. No
9:28
Speaker 1: one else quite fills it, no one. I'm not sure
9:31
Speaker 1: it will go on. Do you think I haven't thought
9:34
Speaker 1: of all these things? He shrugged his shoulders and rejected
9:39
Speaker 1: two papers unread. I knew, he remarked, when you came
9:44
Speaker 1: back from America, you're a light with it. Then he
9:48
Speaker 1: let his bitterness gleam for a moment. But I thought
9:52
Speaker 1: you would stick to your bargain. It's not so much
9:56
Speaker 1: choice as you think, I said. There's always a choice, No,
10:02
Speaker 1: I said, he scrutinized my face. I can't live without her,
10:08
Speaker 1: I can't work. She's all mixed up with this and everything.
10:12
Speaker 1: And besides, there's things you can't understand. There's feelings you've
10:17
Speaker 1: never felt. You don't understand how much we've been to
10:20
Speaker 1: one another. Britain frowned and thought. Some things one's got
10:26
Speaker 1: to do. He threw out some things one can't do,
10:32
Speaker 1: these infernal institutions. Someone must begin, I said. He shook
10:39
Speaker 1: his head. Not you, he said no. He stretched out
10:44
Speaker 1: his hands on the desk before him and spoke again. Remington.
10:49
Speaker 1: He said, I've thought of this business day and night too.
10:54
Speaker 1: It matters to me. It matters immensely to me in
10:58
Speaker 1: a way. It's a thing one doesn't off and say
11:00
Speaker 1: to a man. I've loved you. I'm the sort of
11:03
Speaker 1: man who leads a narrow life, but you've been something
11:07
Speaker 1: fine and good for me since that time. You remember
11:10
Speaker 1: when we talked about Mecca together. I nodded, yes, And
11:16
Speaker 1: you'll always be something fine and good for me. Anyhow,
11:20
Speaker 1: I know things about you, qualities No mere at can
11:24
Speaker 1: destroy them. Well, I can tell you you're doing wrong.
11:28
Speaker 1: You're going on now like a man who is hypnotized
11:32
Speaker 1: and can't turn round. You're piling wrong on wrong. It
11:36
Speaker 1: was wrong for you two people ever to be lovers.
11:39
Speaker 1: He paused, it gripped us hard. I said, yes, but
11:45
Speaker 1: in your position and hers, it was vile. You've not
11:50
Speaker 1: been tempted. How do you know anyhow? Having done that,
11:55
Speaker 1: you ought to have stood the consequences and thought of
11:58
Speaker 1: other people. You could have ended it at the first
12:02
Speaker 1: pause for reflection. You didn't. You blundered again. You kept on.
12:07
Speaker 1: You owed a certain secrecy to all of us. You
12:11
Speaker 1: didn't keep it. You were careless. You made things worse,
12:16
Speaker 1: this engagement and this publicity. Damn it, Remington, I know,
12:21
Speaker 1: I said, with smarting eyes. Damn it with all my heart.
12:26
Speaker 1: It came of trying to patch. You can't patch. And
12:31
Speaker 1: now as I care for anything under heaven, Remington, you
12:34
Speaker 1: two ought to stand these last consequences and part. You
12:38
Speaker 1: ought to part. Other people have to stand things. Other
12:42
Speaker 1: people have to part. You ought to You say, what
12:47
Speaker 1: do you say? It's a loss of so much life
12:50
Speaker 1: to lose each other. So is losing a hand or
12:53
Speaker 1: a leg. But it's what you've incurred. Amputate, take your punishment.
12:59
Speaker 1: I've for all you chose it. Oh damn, I said,
13:03
Speaker 1: standing up and going to the window. Damn by all
13:07
Speaker 1: means I never knew topic so full of justifiable dams,
13:12
Speaker 1: But you too did choose it. You ought to stick
13:15
Speaker 1: to your undertaking. I turned upon him with a snarl
13:19
Speaker 1: in my voice. My dear Britain, I cried, don't I
13:23
Speaker 1: know I'm doing wrong? Aren't I? In? Annette? Suppose I
13:27
Speaker 1: don't go? Is there any right in that? Do you
13:30
Speaker 1: think we're going to be much to ourselves or any
13:33
Speaker 1: one after this parting? I've been thinking all last night
13:36
Speaker 1: of this business, trying it over and over again from
13:39
Speaker 1: the beginning. How was it we went wrong? Since I
13:43
Speaker 1: came back from America, I grant you that, But since
13:46
Speaker 1: there's never been a step that wasn't forced, that hadn't
13:49
Speaker 1: as much right in it, or more as wrong. You
13:52
Speaker 1: talk as though I was a thing of steel that
13:55
Speaker 1: could bend this way or that and never change. You
13:58
Speaker 1: talk as oh Isabel was a cat one could give
14:00
Speaker 1: to any kind of owner. We two are things that
14:03
Speaker 1: change and grow and altar all the time. We are
14:07
Speaker 1: so interwoven that being parted now will leave us just
14:11
Speaker 1: misshapen cripples. You don't know the motives, You don't know
14:16
Speaker 1: the rush and feel of things. You don't know how
14:19
Speaker 1: it was with us, and how it is with us.
14:22
Speaker 1: You don't know the hunger for the mere sight of
14:24
Speaker 1: one another. You don't know anything. Britain looked at his
14:28
Speaker 1: finger nails closely. His red face puckered to arry frown,
14:35
Speaker 1: and we all at times wanted the world put back.
14:38
Speaker 1: He grunted and looked hard and close at one particular nail.
14:43
Speaker 1: There was a long pause. I want her, I said,
14:49
Speaker 1: and I'm going to have her. I'm too tired for
14:52
Speaker 1: balancing the right or wrong of it anymore. You can't
14:55
Speaker 1: separate them. I saw her yesterday. She's ill. I'd taken now.
15:02
Speaker 1: If death were just outside the door, waiting for us torture,
15:07
Speaker 1: I thought, yes, for her. There isn't, I said, If
15:13
Speaker 1: there was, I made no answer. It's blind want and
15:18
Speaker 1: there's nothing ever been put into you to stand against it.
15:22
Speaker 1: What are you going to do with the rest of
15:23
Speaker 1: your lives? No end of things. Nothing. I don't believe
15:29
Speaker 1: you are right, I said, I believe we can save something.
15:34
Speaker 1: Britain shook his head. Some scraps of salvage won't excuse you,
15:40
Speaker 1: he said. His indignation rose in the middle of life.
15:45
Speaker 1: He said, no man has a right to take his
15:48
Speaker 1: hand from the plow. He leant forward on his desk
15:52
Speaker 1: and opened an argumentative palm. You know, Remington, he said,
15:58
Speaker 1: And I know that if this could be fended off
16:00
Speaker 1: for six months, if you could be clapped in prison
16:03
Speaker 1: or got out of the way somehow until this marriage
16:06
Speaker 1: was all over and settled down for a year, Say
16:09
Speaker 1: you know, then you two could meet curious, happy as friends,
16:13
Speaker 1: saved you know it. I turned and stared at him.
16:18
Speaker 1: You're wrong, Briton, I said, And does it matter if
16:21
Speaker 1: we could. I found that in talking to him, I
16:25
Speaker 1: could frame the apologetics I had not been able to
16:28
Speaker 1: find for myself alone. I'm certain of one thing, Britain.
16:33
Speaker 1: It is our duty not to hush up this scandal.
16:37
Speaker 1: He raised his eyebrows. I perceived now the element of
16:41
Speaker 1: absurdity in me, But at the time I was as
16:44
Speaker 1: serious as a man who is burning. It's our duty,
16:49
Speaker 1: I went on to smash, now openly in the sight
16:52
Speaker 1: of everyone. Yes, I've got that, as clean and plain
16:56
Speaker 1: as prison whitewash. I am convinced that we have got
17:00
Speaker 1: to be public to the uttermost now. I mean it,
17:04
Speaker 1: until every corner of our world knows this story knows
17:07
Speaker 1: it fully adds it to the Parnell's story, and the
17:11
Speaker 1: Ashton Dean story, and the Carmel's story, and the Whittersley story,
17:16
Speaker 1: and all the other stories that have picked man after
17:18
Speaker 1: man out of English public life. The men with active imaginations,
17:24
Speaker 1: the men of strong initiative to think this tottering old
17:27
Speaker 1: woman written empire should dare to waste a man on
17:31
Speaker 1: such a score. You say I ought to be penitent.
17:35
Speaker 1: Britain shook his head and smiled very faintly. I'm boiling
17:40
Speaker 1: with indignation, I said. I lay in bed last night
17:44
Speaker 1: and went through it all what in God's name was
17:47
Speaker 1: to be expected of us? But what has happened? I
17:51
Speaker 1: went through my life bit by bit last night. I
17:54
Speaker 1: recalled all I've had to do with virtue and women,
17:57
Speaker 1: and all I was told, and how I was prop
18:01
Speaker 1: I was born into cowardice and debasement. We all are
18:05
Speaker 1: our generations grimy with hypocrisy. I came to the most
18:09
Speaker 1: beautiful things in life, like peeping Tom of Coventry. I
18:14
Speaker 1: was never given a light, never given a touch of
18:17
Speaker 1: natural manhood, by all this dingy, furtive, canting, humbugging English world.
18:23
Speaker 1: Thank God, I'll soon be out of it. The shame
18:26
Speaker 1: of it. The very savages in Australia initiate their children
18:31
Speaker 1: better than the English do today. Neither of us was
18:34
Speaker 1: ever given a view of what they call morality that
18:37
Speaker 1: didn't make it show as shabby subservience, as the meanest discretion,
18:42
Speaker 1: an abject submission to unreasonable prohibitions, meek surrender of mind
18:47
Speaker 1: and body to the dictation of pedants and old women
18:51
Speaker 1: and fools. We weren't taught, we were mumbled at. And
18:56
Speaker 1: when we found that the thing they called unclean, unclean
19:00
Speaker 1: was pagan beauty, God, it was a glory to sin Briton,
19:04
Speaker 1: it was a pride and splendor, like bathing in the
19:07
Speaker 1: sunlight after dust and grime. Yes, said Briton, that's all
19:13
Speaker 1: very well, I interrupted him. I know there's a case,
19:18
Speaker 1: I'm beginning to think, in a valid case against us,
19:22
Speaker 1: but we never met it. There's a steely pride in
19:25
Speaker 1: self restraint, the nobility of chastity, but only for those
19:30
Speaker 1: who see and think and act untrammeled and unafraid. The
19:35
Speaker 1: other thing, the current thing, Why, it's worth as much
19:38
Speaker 1: as the chastity of a monkey kept in a cage
19:40
Speaker 1: by itself. I put my foot in a chair and
19:44
Speaker 1: urged my case upon him. This is a dirty world, Briton,
19:48
Speaker 1: simply because it is a muddled world, and the thing
19:51
Speaker 1: you call morality is dirtier now than the thing you
19:55
Speaker 1: call immorality. Why don't the moralists pick their stuff out
19:59
Speaker 1: of the slime if they care for it and wipe it.
20:02
Speaker 1: Damn them. I'm burning now to say yes, we did this,
20:06
Speaker 1: and this to all the world, all the world, I
20:10
Speaker 1: will Britain rubbed the palm of his hand on the
20:14
Speaker 1: corner of his desk. That's all very well, Remington, he said,
20:19
Speaker 1: you mean to go. He stopped and began again. If
20:23
Speaker 1: you didn't know you were in the wrong, you wouldn't
20:26
Speaker 1: be so damned rhetorical. You're in the wrong is as
20:30
Speaker 1: plain to you as it is to me. You're leaving
20:33
Speaker 1: a big work. You're leaving a wife who trusted you
20:36
Speaker 1: to go and live with your jolly mistress. You won't see.
20:39
Speaker 1: You're a statesman that matters that no single man may
20:43
Speaker 1: be might come to such influence as you in the
20:46
Speaker 1: next ten years. You're throwing yourself away and accusing your
20:50
Speaker 1: country of rejecting you. He swung round upon his swivel
20:55
Speaker 1: at me, Remington, he said, have you forgotten the immense
20:59
Speaker 1: things I'm movement means? I thought, Perhaps I am rhetorical,
21:05
Speaker 1: I said, but the things we might achieve if you'd
21:09
Speaker 1: only stay now even now. Oh, you'd suffer a little socially,
21:13
Speaker 1: but what of that? You'll be able to go on,
21:16
Speaker 1: perhaps all the better for hostility of the kind you'd get.
21:19
Speaker 1: You know, Remington, you know, I thought, and went back
21:25
Speaker 1: to his earlier point. If I am rhetorical at any rate,
21:30
Speaker 1: it's a living feeling behind it. Yes, I remember all
21:34
Speaker 1: the implications of our aims, very splendid, very remote. But
21:39
Speaker 1: just now it's rather like offering to give a freezing
21:42
Speaker 1: man the sunlit him alayas from end to end in
21:45
Speaker 1: return for his camp fire. When you talk of me
21:49
Speaker 1: and my jolly mistress, it isn't fair that misrepresents everything.
21:54
Speaker 1: I'm not going out of this for delights. That's the
21:58
Speaker 1: sort of thing men like snuffles and Keyhole imagine that
22:01
Speaker 1: excites them. When I think of the things these creatures think. Ugh,
22:07
Speaker 1: but you know better. You know that physical passion that
22:10
Speaker 1: burns like a fire ends clean. I'm going for love, Britain.
22:14
Speaker 1: If I sin for passion, I'm going Britain because when
22:18
Speaker 1: I saw her the other day she hurt me. She
22:22
Speaker 1: hurt me damnably Britain. I've been a cold man. I've
22:26
Speaker 1: led a rhetorical life. You hit me with that word.
22:30
Speaker 1: I put things in a windy way, I know. But
22:32
Speaker 1: what has got hold of me at last is her pain.
22:35
Speaker 1: She's ill. Don't you understand. She's a sick thing, a
22:39
Speaker 1: weak thing. She's no more a goddess than I'm a god.
22:43
Speaker 1: I'm not in love with her now, I'm raw with
22:46
Speaker 1: love for her. I feel like a man that's been flayed.
22:50
Speaker 1: I have been flayed. You don't begin to imagine the
22:53
Speaker 1: sort of helpless solicitude. She's not going to do things easily.
22:58
Speaker 1: She's ill her courage. It's hard to put things when
23:02
Speaker 1: one isn't rhetorical. But it's this Briton. There are distresses
23:06
Speaker 1: that matter more than all the delights or achievements in
23:10
Speaker 1: the world. I made her what she is, as I
23:13
Speaker 1: never made Margaret. I've made her, I've broken her. I'm
23:17
Speaker 1: going with my own woman. The rest of my life
23:20
Speaker 1: in England and so forth must square itself to that.
23:25
Speaker 1: For a long time, as it seemed, we remained silent
23:29
Speaker 1: and motionless, which said all we had to say. My
23:33
Speaker 1: eyes caught a printed slip upon the desk before him,
23:37
Speaker 1: and I came back abruptly to the paper. I picked
23:41
Speaker 1: up this galley proof. It was one of Winter's essays.
23:45
Speaker 1: This man goes on doing first rate stuff. I said,
23:49
Speaker 1: I hope you will keep him going. He did not
23:52
Speaker 1: answer for a moment or so. I'll keep him going,
23:56
Speaker 1: he said at last, with a sigh. Five. I have
24:04
Speaker 1: a letter, Margaret wrote me within a week of our flight.
24:08
Speaker 1: I cannot resist transcribing some of it here because it
24:12
Speaker 1: lights things as no word of mine can do. It
24:15
Speaker 1: is a string of nearly inconsecutive thoughts written in pencil
24:20
Speaker 1: in a fine, tall, sprawling hand. Its very inconsecutiveness is essential.
24:27
Speaker 1: Many words were underlined. It was in answer to one
24:30
Speaker 1: from me, But what I wrote has passed utterly from
24:34
Speaker 1: my mind. Certainly, she says, I want to hear from you,
24:39
Speaker 1: but I do not want to see you. There's a
24:42
Speaker 1: sort of abstract you that I want to go on
24:45
Speaker 1: with something I've made out of you. I want to
24:48
Speaker 1: know things about you, but I don't want to see
24:52
Speaker 1: or feel, or imagine when some day I have got
24:56
Speaker 1: rid of my intolerable sense of proprietorship, it may be
24:59
Speaker 1: dif then perhaps we may meet again. I think it
25:04
Speaker 1: is even more the loss of our political works and
25:07
Speaker 1: dreams that I am feeling than the loss of your presence,
25:11
Speaker 1: aching loss. I thought so much of the things we
25:15
Speaker 1: were doing for the world, had given myself so unreservedly,
25:20
Speaker 1: you've left me with nothing to do. I am suddenly
25:24
Speaker 1: at loose ends. We women are trained to be so
25:28
Speaker 1: dependent on a man. I've got no life of my
25:32
Speaker 1: own at all. It seems now to me that I
25:35
Speaker 1: wore my clothes even for you and your schemes. After
25:40
Speaker 1: I have told myself a hundred times why this has happened,
25:44
Speaker 1: I ask again, why did he give things up? Why
25:48
Speaker 1: did he give things up? It is just as though
25:51
Speaker 1: you were wilfully dead. Then I ask again and again
25:56
Speaker 1: whether this thing need have happened at all, Whether if
25:59
Speaker 1: I I had had a warning, if I had understood better,
26:03
Speaker 1: I might not have adapted myself to your restless mind
26:07
Speaker 1: and made this catastrophe impossible. Oh my dear, why hadn't
26:12
Speaker 1: you the pluck to hurt me at the beginning and
26:15
Speaker 1: tell me what you thought of me in life. You
26:18
Speaker 1: didn't give me a chance, not a chance. I suppose
26:22
Speaker 1: you couldn't all these things you and I stood away
26:26
Speaker 1: from you, let my first repugnances repel you. It is
26:32
Speaker 1: strange to think, after all these years, that I should
26:35
Speaker 1: be asking myself do I love you? Have I loved you?
26:40
Speaker 1: In a sense? I think I hate you. I feel
26:43
Speaker 1: you have taken my life, dragged it in your wake
26:46
Speaker 1: for a time, thrown it aside. I am resentful, unfairly resentful.
26:53
Speaker 1: For why should I exact that you should watch and
26:55
Speaker 1: understand my life when clearly I have understood so little
26:59
Speaker 1: of yours. But I am savage, savage at the wrecking
27:03
Speaker 1: of all you were to do? Oh, why why did
27:08
Speaker 1: you give things up? No human being is his own
27:11
Speaker 1: to do what he likes with you were not only
27:14
Speaker 1: pledged to my tiresome, ineffectual companionship, but to great purposes.
27:20
Speaker 1: They are great purposes. If only I could take up
27:25
Speaker 1: your work as you leave it, with the strength you had,
27:28
Speaker 1: then indeed I feel I could let you go. You
27:31
Speaker 1: and your young mistress. All that matters so little to me,
27:36
Speaker 1: Yet I think I must, Indeed, love you yourself in
27:39
Speaker 1: my slower way. At times I am mad with jealousy
27:43
Speaker 1: of the thought of all I hadn't the wit to
27:45
Speaker 1: give you. I've always hidden my tears from you and
27:49
Speaker 1: what was in my heart. It's my nature to hide,
27:54
Speaker 1: and you you want things brought to you to see.
27:58
Speaker 1: You are so curious as to be all my cruel.
28:01
Speaker 1: You don't understand reserves. You have no mercy with restraints
28:06
Speaker 1: and reservations. You are not really a civilized man at all.
28:11
Speaker 1: You hate pretenses, and not only pretenses, but decent coverings.
28:17
Speaker 1: It's only after one has lost love and the chance
28:20
Speaker 1: of loving that slow people like myself find what they
28:24
Speaker 1: might have done. Why wasn't I bold and reckless and abandoned?
28:30
Speaker 1: It's as reasonable to ask that I suppose as to
28:33
Speaker 1: ask why my hair is fair. I go on with
28:37
Speaker 1: these perhapses over and over again here when I find
28:41
Speaker 1: myself alone, My dear, my dear, you can't think of
28:47
Speaker 1: the desolation of things. I shall never go back to
28:51
Speaker 1: that house we furnished together, that was to have been
28:54
Speaker 1: the laboratory. Do you remember calling it a laboratory in
28:58
Speaker 1: which you were to ford so much much of the
29:00
Speaker 1: new order? But dear, if I can help you, even now,
29:06
Speaker 1: in any way, help both of you. I mean, it
29:09
Speaker 1: tears me when I think of you poor and discredited.
29:13
Speaker 1: You will let me help you if I can. It
29:16
Speaker 1: will be the last wrong not to let me do that.
29:20
Speaker 1: You had better not get ivill. If you do, and
29:23
Speaker 1: I hear of it, I shall come after you with
29:26
Speaker 1: a troop of doctors and nurses. If I am a
29:29
Speaker 1: failure as a wife. No one has ever said I
29:32
Speaker 1: is anything but a success as a district visitor. There
29:37
Speaker 1: are other sheets, but I cannot tell whether they were
29:40
Speaker 1: written before or after the ones from which I have quoted,
29:44
Speaker 1: And most of them have little things too intimate to
29:47
Speaker 1: set down. But this oddly penetrating analysis of our differences must,
29:52
Speaker 1: I think, be given. There are all sorts of things
29:56
Speaker 1: I can't express about this and want to this difference
30:00
Speaker 1: that has always been between us. That you like nakedness
30:04
Speaker 1: and wildness, and eye clothing and restraint. It goes through everything.
30:11
Speaker 1: You're always talking of order and system and the splendid
30:14
Speaker 1: dream of the order that might replace the muddled system
30:17
Speaker 1: you hate. But by sort of instinct you seem to
30:21
Speaker 1: want to break the law. I've watched you so closely now.
30:27
Speaker 1: I want to obey laws, to make sacrifices, to follow
30:31
Speaker 1: rules I don't want to make, but I do want
30:34
Speaker 1: to keep. You're at once makers and rebels, you and
30:38
Speaker 1: Isabel too. You're bad people, criminal people, I feel, and
30:43
Speaker 1: yet full of something the world must have. You're so
30:47
Speaker 1: much better than me, and so much viler. It may
30:51
Speaker 1: be there is no making without destruction, but it seems
30:55
Speaker 1: to me sometimes that it is nothing but an instinct
30:58
Speaker 1: for lawlessness that drives you. You remind me. Do you
31:02
Speaker 1: remember of that time we went from Naples to Vesuvius
31:06
Speaker 1: and walked over the hot new lava there? Do you
31:09
Speaker 1: remember how tired I was? I know it disappointed you
31:13
Speaker 1: that I was tired. One walked there in spite of
31:16
Speaker 1: the heat. Because there was a crust like custom, like law,
31:22
Speaker 1: but directly a crust forms on things you are restless
31:26
Speaker 1: to break down to the fire Again. You talk of beauty.
31:30
Speaker 1: Both of you are something terrible, mysterious, imperative. Your beauty
31:36
Speaker 1: is something altogether different from anything I know or feel.
31:40
Speaker 1: It has pain in it, yet you always speak as
31:43
Speaker 1: though it was something I ought to feel, and am
31:46
Speaker 1: dishonest not to feel my beauty is a quiet thing.
31:51
Speaker 1: You have always laughed at my feeling for old fashioned
31:54
Speaker 1: chintz and blue china and sheraton. But I like all
31:58
Speaker 1: these familiar, used things. My beauty is still beauty, and
32:03
Speaker 1: yours is excitement. I know nothing of the fascination of
32:08
Speaker 1: the fire, or why one should go deliberately out of
32:11
Speaker 1: all the decent, fine things of life to run dangers
32:15
Speaker 1: and be singed and tormented and destroyed. I don't understand six.
32:26
Speaker 1: I remember very freshly the mood of our departure from London,
32:30
Speaker 1: the platform of Charing Cross, with the big illuminated clock overhead,
32:36
Speaker 1: the bustle of porters and passengers with luggage, the shouting
32:40
Speaker 1: of newsboys and boys with flowers and sweets, and the
32:44
Speaker 1: groups of friends seeing travelers off by the boat train.
32:48
Speaker 1: Isabel sat very quiet and still in the compartment, and
32:53
Speaker 1: I stood upon the platform with the door open, with
32:56
Speaker 1: a curious reluctance to take the last step that should
32:59
Speaker 1: sell me from London's ground. I showed our tickets and
33:04
Speaker 1: bought a handful of red roses for her. At last
33:08
Speaker 1: came the guards, crying, take your seats, and I got
33:12
Speaker 1: in and closed the door on me we had, thank Heaven,
33:16
Speaker 1: a compartment to ourselves. I let down the window and
33:21
Speaker 1: stared out. There was a bustle of final adure on
33:26
Speaker 1: the platform, a cry of stand away, please stand away,
33:31
Speaker 1: and the train was gliding slowly and smoothly out of
33:34
Speaker 1: the station. I looked out upon the river as the
33:39
Speaker 1: train rumbled with slowly gathering pace across the bridge, and
33:43
Speaker 1: the bobbing black heads of the pedestrians in the footway,
33:47
Speaker 1: and the curve of the river, and the glowing great hotels,
33:51
Speaker 1: and the lights and reflections and blacknesses of that old
33:55
Speaker 1: familiar spectacle. Then, with a common thought, we turned our
34:00
Speaker 1: eyes westward, to where the pinnacles of Westminster and the
34:04
Speaker 1: shining clock tower rose hard and clear against the still
34:09
Speaker 1: luminous sky. There being committee on the Reformatory built to night,
34:15
Speaker 1: I said a little stupidly, and so I added good
34:20
Speaker 1: bye to London. We said no more, but watched the
34:25
Speaker 1: south side streets below, bright gleams of lights and movement,
34:30
Speaker 1: and the dark, dim, monstrous shapes of houses and factories.
34:34
Speaker 1: We ran through Waterloo Station, London Bridge, New Cross, Saint John's.
34:40
Speaker 1: We said never a word. It seemed to me that
34:44
Speaker 1: for a time we had exhausted our emotions. We had escaped,
34:48
Speaker 1: We had cut our knot, We had accepted the last
34:51
Speaker 1: penalty of that headlong return of mind from Chicago a
34:55
Speaker 1: year and a half ago. That was all settled, that
35:00
Speaker 1: harvest of feelings we had reaped. I thought now only
35:04
Speaker 1: of London, of London as the symbol of all we
35:07
Speaker 1: were leaving and all we had lost in the world.
35:11
Speaker 1: I felt nothing now but an enormous and overwhelming regret.
35:17
Speaker 1: The train swayed and rattled on its way. We ran
35:21
Speaker 1: through Old Bromstead, where once I had played with cities
35:24
Speaker 1: and armies on the nursery floor. The sprawling suburbs with
35:29
Speaker 1: their scattered lights, gave way to dim tree set country
35:34
Speaker 1: under a cloud veiled intermittently shining moon. We passed Cardcast,
35:40
Speaker 1: a place, perhaps Old Wardingham. That pillar of the old
35:43
Speaker 1: Conservatives was there, fretting over his unsuccessful struggle with our
35:48
Speaker 1: young toryism. Little he wrecked of this new turn of
35:52
Speaker 1: the wheel, and how it would confirm his contempt of
35:55
Speaker 1: all our novelties. Perhaps some faint intimation drew him to
36:00
Speaker 1: the window to see behind the stems of the young
36:03
Speaker 1: fir trees that bordered his domain. The little string of
36:07
Speaker 1: lighted carriage windows gliding southward. Suddenly I began to realize
36:14
Speaker 1: just what it was we were doing, And now indeed
36:17
Speaker 1: I knew what London had been to me, London where
36:21
Speaker 1: I had been born and educated, the slovenly mother of
36:25
Speaker 1: my mind and all my ambitions, London and the Empire.
36:30
Speaker 1: It seemed to me we must be going out to
36:32
Speaker 1: a world that was utterly empty. All our significance fell
36:37
Speaker 1: from us, and before us was no meaning any more.
36:41
Speaker 1: We were leaving London. My hand, which should grip so
36:44
Speaker 1: hungrily upon its complex life, had been forced from it.
36:49
Speaker 1: My fingers left their hold. That was over. I should
36:54
Speaker 1: never have a voice in public affairs again, the inexorable
36:59
Speaker 1: unwritten law which forbids overt scandal sentenced me. We were
37:05
Speaker 1: going out to a new life, a life that appeared
37:08
Speaker 1: in that moment to be a mere shriveled remnant of me,
37:12
Speaker 1: a mere residuum of sheltering and feeding and seeing amidst
37:16
Speaker 1: alien's scenery and the sound of unfamiliar tongues. We were
37:22
Speaker 1: going to live cheaply in a foreign place, so cut
37:25
Speaker 1: off that I meet now the merest strayed tourist the
37:29
Speaker 1: commonest tweed clad stranger with a mixture of shyness and hunger.
37:36
Speaker 1: And suddenly all the schemes I was leaving appeared fine
37:39
Speaker 1: and adventurous and hopeful, as they had never done before.
37:44
Speaker 1: How great was this purpose? I had relinquished, this bold
37:48
Speaker 1: and subtle remaking of the English will. I had doubted
37:53
Speaker 1: so many things, And now suddenly I doubted my unimportance,
37:58
Speaker 1: doubted my right to this suicide abandonment. Was I not
38:02
Speaker 1: a trusted messenger, greatly trusted and favored, who had turned
38:06
Speaker 1: aside by the way? Had I not, after all, stood
38:11
Speaker 1: for far more than I had thought? Was I not
38:14
Speaker 1: filching from that dear great city of my birth and life,
38:18
Speaker 1: some vitally necessary thing, a key, a link, a reconciling
38:24
Speaker 1: clue in her political development, that now she might seek
38:28
Speaker 1: vaguely for in vain? What is one life against the state?
38:33
Speaker 1: Ought I not to have sacrificed Isabel and all my
38:36
Speaker 1: passion and sorrow for Isabel and held to my thing,
38:40
Speaker 1: stuck to my thing? I heard, as though he had
38:44
Speaker 1: spoken it in the carriage Brittons. It was a good game,
38:49
Speaker 1: no end of a game. And for the first time
38:52
Speaker 1: I imagined the faces and voices of Krupp and Esmere
38:56
Speaker 1: and Gain when they learnt of this secret flight, this
39:00
Speaker 1: flight of which they were quite unwarned. And Shoesmith might
39:04
Speaker 1: be there in the house, Shoesmith who was to have
39:07
Speaker 1: been married in four days. The thing might hit him
39:11
Speaker 1: full in front of any kind of people. Cruel eyes
39:15
Speaker 1: might watch him. Why the devil hadn't I written letters
39:18
Speaker 1: to warn them all? I could have posted them five
39:22
Speaker 1: minutes before the train started. I had never thought to
39:25
Speaker 1: that moment of the immense mess they would be in,
39:29
Speaker 1: how the whole edifice would clatter about their ears. I
39:33
Speaker 1: had a sudden desire to stop the train and go
39:36
Speaker 1: back for a day, for two days, to set that
39:39
Speaker 1: negligence right. My brain, for a moment brightened, became animated
39:45
Speaker 1: and prolific of ideas. I thought of a brilliant line
39:48
Speaker 1: we might have taken on that confounded reformatory bill. That
39:54
Speaker 1: sort of thing was over, what indeed wasn't over? I
40:00
Speaker 1: passed to a vaguer, more multitudinous perception of disaster. The
40:05
Speaker 1: friends I had lost already since Alteora began her campaign,
40:09
Speaker 1: the ampler remnant, whom now I must lose, I thought,
40:14
Speaker 1: of people I had been merry with, people I had
40:16
Speaker 1: worked with and played with, the companions of talkative walks,
40:21
Speaker 1: the hostesses of houses that had once glowed with welcome
40:25
Speaker 1: for us both, I perceived we must lose them all.
40:30
Speaker 1: I saw life like a tree in late autumn that
40:33
Speaker 1: had once been rich and splendid with friends, and now
40:37
Speaker 1: the last brave deers would be hanging on doubtfully against
40:41
Speaker 1: the frosty chill of facts, twisting and tortured in the
40:45
Speaker 1: universal gale of indignation, trying to evade the cold blast
40:50
Speaker 1: of the truth I had betrayed my party, my intimate friend,
40:55
Speaker 1: my wife, the wife whose devotion had made me what
40:58
Speaker 1: I was. For a while, the figure of Margaret, remote, wounded, shamed,
41:04
Speaker 1: dominated my mind, and the thought of my immense ingratitude
41:10
Speaker 1: down them. They'd take it out of her too. I
41:13
Speaker 1: had a feeling that I wanted to go straight back
41:16
Speaker 1: and grip someone by the throat, someone talking ill of Margaret.
41:21
Speaker 1: They'd blame her for not keeping me, for letting things
41:24
Speaker 1: go so far. I wanted the whole world to know
41:27
Speaker 1: how fine she was. I saw in imagination the busy,
41:32
Speaker 1: excited dinner tables at work upon us, all rather pleasantly excited,
41:37
Speaker 1: brightly indignant, merciless, Well, it's the stuff we are. Then suddenly,
41:46
Speaker 1: stabbing me to the heart, came a vision of Margaret's tears,
41:50
Speaker 1: and the sound of her voice saying, husband, mine, oh, husband, mine,
41:55
Speaker 1: to see you cry. I came out of a cloud
42:00
Speaker 1: of thoughts to discover the narrow compartment with its feeble
42:04
Speaker 1: lamp overhead, and our rugs and hand baggage swaying on
42:09
Speaker 1: the rack, and Isabel very still in front of me,
42:13
Speaker 1: gripping my wilting red roses tightly in her bare and
42:17
Speaker 1: ringless hand. For a moment I could not understand her attitude,
42:22
Speaker 1: And then I perceived she was sitting bent together, with
42:26
Speaker 1: her head averted from the light to hide the tears
42:29
Speaker 1: that were streaming down her face. She had not got
42:33
Speaker 1: her handkerchief out for fear that I should see this.
42:37
Speaker 1: But I saw her tears, dark drops of tears upon
42:41
Speaker 1: her sleeve. I supposed she had been watching my expression,
42:46
Speaker 1: divining my thoughts. For a time I stared at her
42:51
Speaker 1: and was motionless, in a sort of still and weary amazement.
42:56
Speaker 1: Why had we done this injury to one another? Then
43:01
Speaker 1: something stirred within me, isabel I whispered. She made no sign.
43:09
Speaker 1: Isabel I repeated, and then crossed over to her, and
43:14
Speaker 1: crept closely to her, put my arm about her, and
43:18
Speaker 1: drew her wet cheek to mine. End of Chapter fifteen,
43:26
Speaker 1: end of the New Macchiavelli by H. G. Wells