Herbert Wells - Marriage

He was silent for a long time, and then he began to answer himself. "Of course," he said, "I said it—or somebody said it—about this collective mind being mixed with other things. It's something arising out of life—not the common stuff of life. An exhalation.... It's like the little tongues of fire that came at Pentecost.... Queer how one comes drifting back to these images. Perhaps I shall die a Christian yet.... The other Christians won't like me if I do. What was I saying?... It's what I reach up to, what I desire shall pervade me, not what I am. Just as far as I give myself purely to knowledge, to making feeling and thought clear in my mind and words, to the understanding and expression of the realities and relations of life, just so far do I achieve Salvation.... Salvation!...

"I wonder, is Salvation the same for every one? Perhaps for one man Salvation is research and thought, and for another expression in art, and for another nursing lepers. Provided he does it in the spirit. He has to do it in the spirit...."

There came a silence as though some difficulty baffled him, and he was feeling back to get his argument again.

"This flame that arises out of life, that redeems life from purposeless triviality, isn't life. Let me get hold of that. That's a point. That's a very important point."

Something had come to him.

"I've never talked of this to Marjorie. I've lived with her nine years and more, and never talked of religion. Not once. That's so queer of us. Any other couple in any other time would have talked religion no end.... People ought to."

Then he stuck out an argumentative hand. "You see, Marjorie is life," he said.

"She took me."

He spoke slowly, as though he traced things carefully. "Before I met her I suppose I wasn't half alive. No! Yet I don't remember I felt particularly incomplete. Women were interesting, of course; they excited me at times, that girl at Yonkers!—H'm. I stuck to my work. It was fine work, I forget half of it now, the half-concealed intimations I mean—queer how one forgets!—but I know I felt my way to wide, deep things. It was like exploring caves—monstrous, limitless caves. Such caves!... Very still—underground. Wonderful and beautiful.... They're lying there now for other men to seek. Other men will find them.... Then she came, as though she was taking possession. The beauty of her, oh! the life and bright eagerness, and the incompatibility! That's the riddle! I've loved her always. When she came to my arms it seemed to me the crown of life. Caves indeed! Old caves! Nothing else seemed to matter. But something did. All sorts of things did. I found that out soon enough. And when that first child was born. That for a time was supreme.... Yes—she's the quintessence of life, the dear greed of her, the appetite, the clever appetite for things. She grabs. She's so damned clever! The light in her eyes! Her quick sure hands!... Only my work was crowded out of my life and ended, and she didn't seem to feel it, she didn't seem to mind it. There was a sort of disregard. Disregard. As though all that didn't really matter...."

" 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.

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!"