H G Wells Omnibus, page 204
“My dear!” whispered Marjorie unheeded. She wanted to tell him it mattered now, mattered supremely, but she knew he had no ears for her.
His voice flattened. “It’s perplexing,” he said. “The two different things.”
Then suddenly he cried out harshly: “I ought never to have married her—never, never! I had my task. I gave myself to her. Oh! the high immensities, the great and terrible things open to the mind of man! And we breed children and live in littered houses and play with our food and chatter, chatter, chatter. Oh, the chatter of my life! The folly! The women with their clothes. I can hear them rustle now, whiff the scent of it! The scandals—as though the things they did with themselves and each other mattered a rap; the little sham impromptu clever things, the trying to keep young—and underneath it all that continual cheating, cheating, cheating, damning struggle for money!…
“Marjorie, Marjorie, Marjorie! Why is she so good and no better! Why wasn’t she worth it altogether?…
“No! I don’t want to go on with it any more—ever. I want to go back.
“I want my life over again, and to go back.
“I want research, and the spirit of research that has died in me, and that still, silent room of mine again, that room, as quiet as a cell, and the toil that led to light. Oh! the coming of that light, the uprush of discovery, the solemn joy as the generalization rises like a sun upon the facts—floods them with a common meaning. That is what I want. That is what I have always wanted….
“Give me my time oh God! again; I am sick of this life I have chosen. I am sick of it! This—busy death! Give me my time again…. Why did you make me, and then waste me like this? Why are we made for folly upon folly? Folly! and brains made to scale high heaven, smeared into the dust! Into the dust, into the dust. Dust!…”
He passed into weak, wandering repetitions of disconnected sentences, that died into whispers and silence, and Marjorie watched him and listened to him, and waited with a noiseless dexterity upon his every need.
§ 11
One day, she did not know what day, for she had lost count of the days, Marjorie set the kettle to boil and opened the door of the hut to look out, and the snow was ablaze with diamonds, and the air was sweet and still. It occurred to her that it would be well to take Trafford out into that brief brightness. She looked at him and found his eyes upon the sunlight quiet and rather wondering eyes.
“Would you like to get out into that?” she asked abruptly.
“Yes,” he said, and seemed disposed to get up.
“You’ve got a broken leg,” she cried, to arrest his movement, and he looked at her and answered: “Of course—I forgot.”
She was all atremble that he should recognize her and speak to her. She pulled her rude old sledge alongside his bunk, and kissed him, and showed him how to shift and drop himself upon the plank. She took him in her arms and lowered him. He helped weakly but understandingly, and she wrapped him up warmly on the planks and lugged him out and built up a big fire at his feet, wondering, but as yet too fearful to rejoice, at the change that had come to him.
He said no more, but his eyes watched her move about with a kind of tired curiosity. He smiled for a time at the sun, and shut his eyes, and still faintly smiling, lay still. She had a curious fear that if she tried to talk to him this new lucidity would vanish again. She went about the business of the morning, glancing at him ever and again, until suddenly the calm of his upturned face smote her, and she ran to him and crouched down to him between hope and a terrible fear, and found that he was sleeping, and breathing very lightly, sleeping with the deep unconsciousness of a child….
When he awakened the sun was red in the west. His eyes met hers, and he seemed a little puzzled.
“I’ve been sleeping, Madge?” he said.
She nodded.
“And dreaming? I’ve a vague sort of memory of preaching and preaching in a kind of black, empty place, where there wasn’t anything…. A fury of exposition… a kind of argument…. I say!—Is there such a thing in the world as a new-laid egg—and some bread-and-butter?”
He seemed to reflect. “Of course,” he said, “I broke my leg. Gollys! I thought that beast was going to claw my eyes out. Lucky, Madge, it didn’t get my eyes. It was just a chance it didn’t.”
He stared at her.
“I say,” he said, “you’ve had a pretty rough time! How long has this been going on?”
He amazed her by rising himself on his elbow and sitting up.
“Your leg!” she cried.
He put his hand down and felt it. “Pretty stiff,” he said. “You get me some food—there were some eggs, Madge, frozen new-laid, anyhow—and then we’ll take these splints off and feel about a bit. Eh! why not? How did you get me out of that scrape, Madge? I thought I’d got to be froze as safe as eggs. (Those eggs ought to be all right, you know. If you put them on in a saucepan and wait until they boil.) I’ve a sort of muddled impression…. By Jove, Madge, you’ve had a time! I say you have had a time!”
His eyes, full of a warmth of kindliness she had not seen for long weeks, scrutinized her face. “I say!” he repeated, very softly.
All her strength went from her at his tenderness. “Oh, my dear,” she wailed, kneeling at his side, “my dear, dear!” and still regardful of his leg, she yet contrived to get herself weeping into his coveted arms.
He regarded her, he held her, he patted her back! The infinite luxury to her! He’d come back. He’d come back to her.
“How long has it been?” he asked. “Poor dear! Poor dear! How long can it have been?”
§ 12
From that hour Trafford mended. He remained clear-minded, helpful, sustaining. His face healed daily. Marjorie had had to cut away great fragments of gangrenous frozen flesh, and he was clearly destined to have a huge scar over forehead and cheek, but in that pure, clear air, once the healing had begun it progressed swiftly. His leg had set, a little shorter than its fellow and with a lump in the middle of the shin, but it promised to be a good serviceable leg none the less. They examined it by the light of the stove with their heads together, and discussed when it would be wise to try it. How do doctors tell when a man may stand on his broken leg? She had a vague impression you must wait six weeks, but she could not remember why she fixed upon that time.
“It seems a decent interval,” said Trafford. “We’ll try it.”
She had contrived a crutch for him against that momentous experiment, and he sat up in his bunk, pillowed up by a sack and her rugs, and whittled it smooth, and padded the fork with the skin of that slaughtered wolverine, poor victim of hunger!—while she knelt by the stove feeding it with logs, and gave him an account of their position.
“We’re somewhere in the middle of December,” she said, “somewhere between the twelfth and the fourteenth,—yes! I’m as out as that!—and I’ve handled the stores pretty freely. So did that little beast until I got him.” She nodded at the skin in his hand. “I don’t see myself shooting much now, and so far I’ve not been able to break the ice to fish. It’s too much for me. Even if it isn’t too late to fish. This book we’ve got describes barks and mosses, and that will help, but if we stick here until the birds and things come, we’re going to be precious short. We may have to last right into July. I’ve plans—but it may come to that. We ought to ration all the regular stuff, and trust to luck for a feast. The rations!—I don’t know what they’ll come to.”
“Right O,” said Trafford admiring her capable gravity. “Let’s ration.”
“Marjorie,” he asked abruptly, “are you sorry we came?”
Her answer came unhesitatingly. “No!”
“Nor I.”
He paused. “I’ve found you out,” he said. “Dear dirty living thing!… You are dirty, you know.”
“I’ve found myself,” she answered, thinking. “I feel as if I’ve never loved you until this hut. I suppose I have in my way——”
“Lugano,” he suggested. “Don’t let’s forget good things, Marjorie. Oh! And endless times!”
“Oh, of course! As for that——! But now—now you’re in my bones. We were just two shallow, pretty, young things—loving. It was sweet, dear—sweet as youth—but not this. Unkempt and weary—then one understands love. I suppose I am dirty. Think of it! I’ve lugged you through the snow till my shoulders chafed and bled. I cried with pain, and kept on lugging——Oh, my dear! my dear!” He kissed her hair. “I’ve held you in my arms to keep you from freezing. (I’d have frozen myself first.) We’ve got to starve together perhaps before the end…. Dear, if I could make you, you should eat me…. I’m—I’m beginning to understand. I’ve had a light. I’ve begun to understand. I’ve begun to see what life has been for you, and how I’ve wasted—wasted.”
“We’ve wasted!”
“No,” she said, “it was I.”
She sat back on the floor and regarded him. “You don’t remember things you said—when you were delirious?”
“No,” he answered. “What did I say?”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing clearly. What did I say?”
“It doesn’t matter. No, indeed. Only you made me understand. You’d never have told me. You’ve always been a little weak with me there. But it’s plain to me why we didn’t keep our happiness, why we were estranged. If we go back alive, we go back—all that settled for good and all.”
“What?”
“That discord. My dear, I’ve been a fool, selfish, ill-trained and greedy. We’ve both been floundering about, but I’ve been the mischief of it. Yes, I’ve been the trouble. Oh, it’s had to be so. What are we women—half savages, half pets, unemployed things of greed and desire—and suddenly we want all the rights and respect of souls! I’ve had your life in my hands from the moment we met together. If I had known…. It isn’t that we can make you or guide you—I’m not pretending to be an inspiration—but—but we can release you. We needn’t press upon you; we can save you from the instincts and passions that try to waste you altogether on us…. Yes, I’m beginning to understand. Oh, my child, my husband, my man! You talked of your wasted life!… I’ve been thinking—since first we left the Mersey. I’ve begun to see what it is to be a woman. For the first time in my life. We’re the responsible sex. And we’ve forgotten it. We think we’ve done a wonder if we’ve borne men into the world and smiled a little, but indeed we’ve got to bear them all our lives…. A woman has to be steadier than a man and more self-sacrificing than a man, because when she plunges she does more harm than a man…. And what does she achieve if she does plunge? Nothing—nothing worth counting. Dresses and carpets and hangings and pretty arrangements, excitements and satisfactions and competition and more excitements. We can’t do things. We don’t bring things off! And you, you Monster! you Dream! you want to stick your hand out of all that is and make something that isn’t, begin to be! That’s the man——”
“Dear old Madge!” he said, “there’s all sorts of women and all sorts of men.”
“Well, our sort of women, then, and our sort of men.”
“I doubt even that.”
“I don’t. I’ve found my place. I’ve been making my master my servant. We women—we’ve been looting all the good things in the world, and helping nothing. You’ve carried me on your back until you are loathing life. I’ve been making you fetch and carry for me, love me, dress me, keep me and my children, minister to my vanities and greeds…. No; let me go on. I’m so penitent, my dear, so penitent I want to kneel down here and marry you all over again, heal up your broken life and begin again.”…
She paused.
“One doesn’t begin again,” she said. “But I want to take a new turn. Dear, you’re still only a young man; we’ve thirty or forty years before us—forty years perhaps or more…. What shall we do with our years? We’ve loved, we’ve got children. What remains? Here we can plan it out, work it out, day after day. What shall we do with our lives and life? Tell me, make me your partner; it’s you who know, what are we doing with life?”
§ 13
What are we doing with life?
That question overtakes a reluctant and fugitive humanity. The Traffords were but two of a great scattered host of people, who, obeying all the urgencies of need and desire, struggling, loving, begetting, enjoying, do nevertheless find themselves at last unsatisfied. They have lived the round of experience, achieved all that living creatures have sought since the beginning of the world—security and gratification and offspring—and they find themselves still strong, unsatiated, with power in their hands and years before them, empty of purpose. What are they to do?
The world presents such a spectacle of evasion as it has never seen before. Never was there such a boiling over and waste of vital energy. The Sphinx of our opportunity calls for the uttermost powers of heart and brain to read its riddle—the new, astonishing riddle of excessive power. A few give themselves to those honourable adventures that extend the range of man, they explore untravelled countries, climb remote mountains, conduct researches, risk life and limb in the fantastic experiments of flight, and a monstrous outpouring of labour and material goes on in the strenuous preparation for needless and improbable wars. The rest divert themselves with the dwarfish satisfactions of recognized vice, the meagre routine of pleasure, or still more timidly with sport and games—those new unscheduled perversions of the soul.
We are afraid of our new selves. The dawn of human opportunity appals us. Few of us dare look upon this strange light of freedom and limitless resources that breaks upon our world.
“Think,” said Trafford, “while we sit here in this dark hut—think of the surplus life that wastes itself in the world for sheer lack of direction. Away there in England—I suppose that is westward”—he pointed—“there are thousands of men going out to-day to shoot. Think of the beautifully made guns, the perfected ammunition, the excellent clothes, the army of beaters, the carefully preserved woodland, the admirable science of it—all for that idiot massacre of half-tame birds! Just because man once had need to be a hunter! Think of the others again—golfing. Think of the big, elaborate houses from which they come, the furnishings, the service. And the women—dressing! Perpetually dressing. You, Marjorie—you’ve done nothing but dress since we married. No, let me abuse you, dear! It’s insane, you know! You dress your minds a little to talk amusingly, you spread your minds out to backgrounds, to households, picturesque and delightful gardens, nurseries. Those nurseries! Think of our tremendously cherished and educated children! And when they grow up, what have we got for them? A feast of futility….”
§ 14
On the evening of the day when Trafford first tried to stand upon his leg, they talked far into the night. It had been a great and eventful day for them, full of laughter and exultation. He had been at first ridiculously afraid; he had clung to her almost childishly, and she had held him about the body with his weight on her strong right arm and his right arm in her left hand, concealing her own dread of a collapse under a mask of taunting courage. The crutch had proved admirable. “It’s my silly knees!” Trafford kept on saying. “The leg’s all right, but I get put out by my silly knees.”
They made the day a feast, a dinner of two whole day’s rations and a special soup instead of supper. “The birds will come,” they explained to each other, “ducks and geese, long before May. May, you know, is the latest.”
Marjorie confessed the habit of sharing his pipe was growing on her. “What shall we do in Tyburnia!” she said, and left it to the imagination.
“If ever we get back there,” he said.
“I don’t much fancy kicking a skirt before my shins again—and I’ll be a black, coarse woman down to my neck at dinner for years to come!…”
Then, as he lay back in his bunk and she crammed the stove with fresh boughs and twigs of balsam that filled the little space about them with warmth and with a faint, sweet smell of burning and with flitting red reflections, he took up a talk about religion they had begun some days before.
“You see,” he said, “I’ve always believed in Salvation. I suppose a man’s shy of saying so—even to his wife. But I’ve always believed more or less distinctly that there was something up to which a life worked—always. It’s been rather vague, I’ll admit. I don’t think I’ve ever believed in individual salvation. You see, I feel these are deep things, and the deeper one gets the less individual one becomes. That’s why one thinks of those things in darkness and loneliness—and finds them hard to tell. One has an individual voice, or an individual birthmark, or an individualized old hat, but the soul—the soul’s different…. It isn’t me talking to you when it comes to that…. This question of what we are doing with life isn’t a question to begin with for you and me as ourselves, but for you and me as mankind. Am I spinning it too fine, Madge?”
“No,” she said, intent; “go on.”
“You see, when we talk rations here, Marjorie, it’s ourselves, but when we talk religion—it’s mankind. You’ve either got to be Everyman in religion or leave it alone. That’s my idea. It’s no more presumptuous to think for the race than it is for a beggar to pray—though that means going right up to God and talking to Him. Salvation’s a collective thing and a mystical thing—or there isn’t any. Fancy the Almighty and me sitting up and keeping Eternity together! God and R. A. G. Trafford, F.R.S.—that’s silly. Fancy a man in number seven boots, and a tailor-made suit in the nineteen-fourteen fashion, sitting before God! That’s caricature. But God and Man! That’s sense, Marjorie.”…
