The New Machiavelli

“Yes.”

“Soon?”

“Right away.”

“There’s your wife.”

“I know.”

“Shoesmith – whom you’re pledged to in a manner. You’ve just picked him out and made him conspicuous. Every one will know. Oh! of course – it’s nothing to you. Honour – ”

“I know.”

“Common decency.”

I nodded.

“All this movement of ours. That’s what I care for most… It’s come to be a big thing, Remington.”

“That will go on.”

“We have a use for you – no one else quite fills it. No one… I’m not sure it will go on.”

“Do you think I haven’t thought of all these things?”

He shrugged his shoulders, and rejected two papers unread.

“I knew,” he remarked, “when you came back from America. You were alight with it.” Then he let his bitterness gleam for a moment. “But I thought you would stick to your bargain.”

“It’s not so much choice as you think,” I said.

“There’s always a choice.”

“No,” I said.

He scrutinised my face.

“I can’t live without her – I can’t work. She’s all mixed up with this – and everything. And besides, there’s things you can’t understand. There’s feelings you’ve never felt… You don’t understand how much we’ve been to one another.”

Britten frowned and thought.

“Some things one’s GOT to do,” he threw out.

“Some things one can’t do.”

“These infernal institutions – ”

“Some one must begin,” I said.

He shook his head. “Not YOU,” he said. “No!”

He stretched out his hands on the desk before him, and spoke again.

“Remington,” he said, “I’ve thought of this business day and night too. It matters to me. It matters immensely to me. In a way – it’s a thing one doesn’t often say to a man – I’ve loved you. I’m the sort of man who leads a narrow life… But you’ve been something fine and good for me, since that time, do you remember? when we talked about Mecca together.”

I nodded.

“Yes. And you’ll always be something fine and good for me anyhow. I know things about you, – qualities – no mere act can destroy them… Well, I can tell you, you’re doing wrong. You’re going on now like a man who is hypnotised and can’t turn round. You’re piling wrong on wrong. It was wrong for you two people ever to be lovers.”

He paused.

“It gripped us hard,” I said.

“Yes! – but in your position! And hers! It was vile!”

“You’ve not been tempted.”

“How do you know? Anyhow – having done that, you ought to have stood the consequences and thought of other people. You could have ended it at the first pause for reflection. You didn’t. You blundered again. You kept on. You owed a certain secrecy to all of us! You didn’t keep it. You were careless. You made things worse. This engagement and this publicity! – Damn it, Remington!”

“I know,” I said, with smarting eyes. “Damn it! with all my heart! It came of trying to patch… You CAN’T patch.”

“And now, as I care for anything under heaven, Remington, you two ought to stand these last consequences – and part. You ought to part. Other people have to stand things! Other people have to part. You ought to. You say – what do you say? It’s loss of so much life to lose each other. So is losing a hand or a leg. But it’s what you’ve incurred. Amputate. Take your punishment – After all, you chose it.”

“Oh, damn!” I said, standing up and going to the window.

“Damn by all means. I never knew a topic so full of justifiable damns. But you two did choose it. You ought to stick to your undertaking.”

I turned upon him with a snarl in my voice. “My dear Britten!” I cried. “Don’t I KNOW I’m doing wrong? Aren’t I in a net? Suppose I don’t go! Is there any right in that? Do you think we’re going to be much to ourselves or any one after this parting? I’ve been thinking all last night of this business, trying it over and over again from the beginning. How was it we went wrong? Since I came back from America – I grant you THAT – but SINCE, there’s never been a step that wasn’t forced, that hadn’t as much right in it or more, as wrong. You talk as though I was a thing of steel that could bend this way or that and never change. You talk as though Isabel was a cat one could give to any kind of owner… We two are things that change and grow and alter all the time. We’re – so interwoven that being parted now will leave us just misshapen cripples… You don’t know the motives, you don’t know the rush and feel of things, you don’t know how it was with us, and how it is with us. You don’t know the hunger for the mere sight of one another; you don’t know anything.”

Britten looked at his finger-nails closely. His red face puckered to a wry frown. “Haven’t we all at times wanted the world put back?” he grunted, and looked hard and close at one particular nail.

There was a long pause.

“I want her,” I said, “and I’m going to have her. I’m too tired for balancing the right or wrong of it any more. You can’t separate them. I saw her yesterday… She’s – ill… I’d take her now, if death were just outside the door waiting for us.”

“Torture?”

I thought. “Yes.”

“For her?”

“There isn’t,” I said.

“If there was?”

I made no answer.

“It’s blind Want. And there’s nothing ever been put into you to stand against it. What are you going to do with the rest of your lives?”