contributor = Michael Arlen

“ You must go away and make your own life; I have nothing to give you but an old friendship. You can’t live on that, can you? Dear, you must go away and make your own life. You must have children too. This will always be my life, as you see me now—David and James and me. I am so proud in these children; that is how it is; and I was obviously born to be a matron. I am so happy, you see, so complete, somehow. To be so happy is a sin, I am sure; but I can’t help it.”
“Isolda,” I said, “you are only twenty-three. You will love again.” ”

“ You who did not know Isolda in her youth, cannot imagine what an enormous concession that was for her to make about any man.
It was Isolda herself who told me of Sebastian Prest the other day, else how would I know so much about it? Of course, I had long since guessed something of it, for one used to see Isolda and Prest about together; and then one night twelve years ago he was found dead in the snow within five miles of Moreton Taylor, Isolda’s place in Surrey. It looked as though he had just gone quite comfortably off to sleep in the snow, and one thought: “How tired he must have been!” ”

“ Isolda’s motherhood, you see, had become so important—no, not important, but inevitable—that it had quite obscured her womanhood in her own mind, and now she was surprised and delighted to find that she was a woman after all, and she felt rather naughty about it, as though she had found something unusually flippant in herself. Or maybe it is that a woman naturally becomes more liable to passion at thirty or so, but—it is absurd to generalize about these things. ”

“ Isolda was a proud mother, a complete mother. She could not and would not surrender one tittle of her absorption in David and James for any man. Isolda, like many really good women, was born with a faint antagonism toward men. She did not know it, of course, and that is what made her so dangerous to men. That faint antagonism toward men in good women—for we are not speaking of silly, bitter women—is called by many names: sometimes it is called “fidelity to one man,” who is as a rule dead and forgotten; sometimes it is called “motherhood.” ”

“ DAVID was ten, James eight and Isolda thirty when she met Sebastian Prest. You must remember that she had never been in love. She has said to me: “My passion for the children was the only great passion I had ever felt. Before Rupert died, I had decided that I was not a passionate woman. Of course, I would say to myself that I was emotionally very deep, and therefore could only be aroused by the ultimate man; but every more or less cold woman will humbug herself with that thought.” ”

“ The legend of Isolda began from that night at the Haymarket Theater, and it grew with the years, and it became a part of England. Whether or not she was a great actress I do not know—I am not sure, and I will not argue about it; for again we come to the ungenerous thought in people, the almost unconsciously ungenerous thought which makes it more difficult for them to accept a lovely woman than a plainish woman, as a great actress. ”

“ I love you so, Isolda. But you were right about yourself, and I was wrong.” She was silent, and he said: “I mean, you do not need a man in your life. Your generosity and service and passion are for your children. There is nothing left for a man. But I shall come back, because I love you so.” ”

“ Sebastian Prest, that quiet, dark young man, was so obviously a dangerous lover; I mean it would so obviously be dangerous for him to be loved too little, and dangerous for a woman to love him too much. A difficult young man, but there are men like that, and a woman can manage them pretty well by being clever. But Isolda wasn’t a bit clever with young Prest. ”

“ She was lost to Sebastian Prest from that day. There is no man so lost to a woman as the love of one day. He was a very sensitive man, and he knew when he saw her the next day that she had brought herself to see him merely because in her fine way she had thought it would be vulgar and cruel not to see him. They were civilized people, were Sebastian and Isolda. ”

“ And all the time, she did not like the stage; she detested the stage, the life in public, for she was always a quiet, private woman. When she was a child, she preferred her old dolls, and as she grew up, she preferred her old friends; she did not at all enjoy the din of new acquaintances. But she was poor, and when she was nineteen, she married a poor man, and she had two sons, David and James, and the care of her two sons became Isolda’s life. It is David and James who are the masters of this tale, for they were the masters of their mother’s life. ”

“ Don’t you realize that I should have a good homely face that reflects my character, one which is rather stern when no one is looking,—for there is always so much to do,—but one which is always quite pleasantly gay in daily speech, for what is there to moon about when there is so much to do? ”

“ I am quite bewildered at the way people go on about the few really lovely women we have, and I dare swear that by the way they talk, anyone would think that a woman must be on the plain side before she can be called attractive, just as there is a superstition in intellectual circles that a well-dressed man cannot really be worth anything mentally. ”

“ Of course, I am glad to be beautiful, for I have a kind heart and like to give people pleasure, but I sha’n’t be glad of my beauty if David and James, as they grow up, don’t fall helplessly in love with me. ”

“ I want you to come. You must not be alone this Christmas, Sebastian. Do you know that you are somehow cowing me with your loneliness? I will expect you, then, at Moreton Taylor on Christmas Eve.”
She should not have written to him that he was cowing her with his loneliness. He came down to the country hoping, whereas she had put him out of her mind as lover or husband. She had put her foot down on all that nonsense. Prest arrived at Moreton Taylor on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. ”

“ There is nowadays a great deal too much fuss made about plain women and grubby men—that is what it is; and oh, how plainness bores me, let it cover never so large a heart of gold! There must be a great many people who think with me in that sinful thought, but it is true that cowardice covers a multitude of sins. ”

“ It was so great and real, Isolda’s success, and with it went the thrill of the way people fell in love with her and stayed in love with her.
People were never mean about Isolda, as people often are mean about very beautiful women. For instance, there will always be some one who says about a lovely woman: “But she is so cold!” ”