Her first step was
to arouse him to a sense of the position. To discuss verbally matters
of this kind with him, she had learnt by experience, was not easy; so
she wrote to him to the following effect, and put the note between the
leaves of a book he was reading:
"You tell me you have no wish to re-enter official life. Putting my own
interests quite out of the question, when there are so few able men, and
still fewer gentlemen, left in England, and one cannot help foreseeing
very bad times coming, it makes one anxious and nervous to think that
the one man whom I and others regard as a born leader of men should
retire into private life just when he is most wanted. Now you are
not going to be angry with me; you must be scolded. You have fairly
earned the right to five or six months of domestic happiness and
retirement, but not the right to be selfish. When the struggle comes
on, instead of remaining, as you think, you will come to the fore and
nobly take your right place. Remember I have prophesied three times
for you, and this is the fourth. You are smarting under a sense of
injustice now, and you talk accordingly. If I know anything of men
in general, and you in particular, you will grow dissatisfied with
yourself, if your present state of inaction lasts long."
What the immediate result of this remonstrance was it is not possible to
say; but Isabel's next move was to go down to the Foreign Office, where
she was already well known as one with whom the usual official evasions
were of no avail.
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