experiences, on the whole, "strangled dinginess" expresses them, but

I do not believe they were narrower or shallower than those of many

other men of my class. I thought of women as pretty things and

beautiful things, pretty rather than beautiful, attractive and at

times disconcertingly attractive, often bright and witty, but,

because of the vast reservations that hid them from me, wanting,

subtly and inevitably wanting, in understanding. My idealisation of

Margaret had evaporated insensibly after our marriage. The shrine I

had made for her in my private thoughts stood at last undisguisedly

empty. But Isabel did not for a moment admit of either idealisation

or interested contempt. She opened a new sphere of womanhood to me.

With her steady amber-brown eyes, her unaffected interest in

impersonal things, her upstanding waistless blue body, her energy,

decision and courage, she seemed rather some new and infinitely

finer form of boyhood than a feminine creature, as I had come to

measure femininity. She was my perfect friend. Could I have

foreseen, had my world been more wisely planned, to this day we

might have been such friends.

She seemed at that time unconscious of sex, though she has told me

since how full she was of protesting curiosities and restrained

emotions. She spoke, as indeed she has always spoken, simply,

clearly, and vividly; schoolgirl slang mingled with words that

marked ample voracious reading, and she moved quickly with the free

directness of some graceful young animal. She took many of the easy

freedoms a man or a sister might have done with me. She would touch

my arm, lay a hand on my shoulder as I sat, adjust the lapel of a

breast-pocket as she talked to me. She says now she loved me always

from the beginning. I doubt if there was a suspicion of that in her

mind those days. I used to find her regarding me with the clearest,

steadiest gaze in the world, exactly like the gaze of some nice

healthy innocent animal in a forest, interested, inquiring,

speculative, but singularly untroubled…

5

Polling day came after a last hoarse and dingy crescendo. The

excitement was not of the sort that makes one forget one is tired

out. The waiting for the end of the count has left a long blank

mark on my memory, and then everyone was shaking my hand and

repeating: "Nine hundred and seventy-six."

My success had been a foregone conclusion since the afternoon, but

we all behaved as though we had not been anticipating this result

for hours, as though any other figures but nine hundred and seventy-

six would have meant something entirely different. "Nine hundred

and seventy-six!" said Margaret. "They didn't expect three

hundred."

"Nine hundred and seventy-six," said a little short man with a

paper. "It means a big turnover. Two dozen short of a thousand,

you know."

A tremendous hullaboo began outside, and a lot of fresh people came

into the room.

Isabel, flushed but not out of breath, Heaven knows where she had

sprung from at that time of night! was running her hand down my

sleeve almost caressingly, with the innocent bold affection of a

girl. "Got you in!" she said. "It's been no end of a lark."

"And now," said I, "I must go and be constructive."

"Now you must go and be constructive," she said.

"You've got to live here," she added.

"By Jove! yes," I said. "We'll have to house hunt."

"I shall read all your speeches."

She hesitated.

"I wish I was you," she said, and said it as though it was not

exactly the thing she was meaning to say.

"They want you to speak," said Margaret, with something unsaid in

her face.

"You must come out with me," I answered, putting my arm through

hers, and felt someone urging me to the French windows that gave on

the balcony.

"If you think-" she said, yielding gladly

"Oh, RATHER!" said I.

The Mayor of Kinghamstead, a managing little man with no great

belief in my oratorical powers, was sticking his face up to mine.

"It's all over," he said, " and you've won. Say all the nice things

you can and say them plainly."

I turned and handed Margaret out through the window and stood

looking over the Market-place, which was more than half filled with

swaying people. The crowd set up a roar of approval at the sight of

us, tempered by a little booing. Down in one corner of the square a

fight was going on for a flag, a fight that even the prospect of a

speech could not instantly check. "Speech!" cried voices, "Speech!"

and then a brief "boo-oo-oo" that was drowned in a cascade of shouts

and cheers. The conflict round the flag culminated in the smashing

of a pane of glass in the chemist's window and instantly sank to

peace.

"Gentlemen voters of the Kinghamstead Division," I began.

"Votes for Women!" yelled a voice, amidst laughter-the first time I

rememberhearing that memorable war-cry.

"Three cheers for Mrs. Remington!"

"Mrs. Remington asks me to thank you," I said, amidst further uproar

and reiterated cries of "Speech!"

Then silence came with a startling swiftness.

Isabel was still in my mind, I suppose. "I shall go to

Westminster," I began. I sought for some compelling phrase and

could not find one. "To do my share," I went on, "in building up a

great and splendid civilisation."

I paused, and there was a weak gust of cheering, and then a renewal

of booing.

"This election," I said, " has been the end and the beginning of

much. New ideas are abroad-"

"Chinese labour," yelled a voice, and across the square swept a

wildfire of booting and bawling.

It is one of the few occasions when I quite lost my hold on a

speech. I glanced sideways and saw the Mayor of Kinghamstead