H. Wells - THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

sort of thing men like Snuffles and Keyhole imagine-that excites

them! When I thinkof the things these creatures think! Ugh! But

YOU knowbetter? You knowthat physical passion that burns like a

fire-ends clean. I'mgoing for love, Britten-if I sinned for

passion. I'mgoing, Britten, because when I sawher the other day

she HURT me. She hurt me damnably, Britten… I've been a cold

man-I've led a rhetorical life-you hit me with that word!-I put

things in a windy way, I know, but what has got hold of me at last

is her pain. She's ill. Don't you understand? She's a sick thing-

a weak thing. She's no more a goddess than I'ma god… I'm

not in love with her now; I'mRAW with love for her. I feellike a

man that's been flayed. I have been flayed… You don't begin

to imagine the sort of helpless solicitude… She's not going

to do things easily; she's ill. Her courage fails… It's hard

to put things when one isn't rhetorical, but it's this, Britten-

there are distresses that matter more than all the delights or

achievements in the world… I made her what she is-as I never

made Margaret. I've made her-I've broken her… I'mgoing

with my own woman. The restof my life and England, and so forth,

must square itself to that…"

For a long time, as it seemed, we remained silent and motionless.

We'd said all we had to say. My eyes caught a printed slip upon the

desk before him, and I came back abruptly to the paper.

I picked up this galley proof. It was one of Winter's essays.

"This man goes on doing first-rate stuff," I said. "I hope you will

keep him going."

He did not answer for a moment or so. "I'll keep him going," he

said at last with a sigh.

I have a letter Margaret wrote me within a week of our flight. I

cannot resist transcribing some of it here, because it lights things

as no word of mine can do. It is a string of nearly inconsecutive

thoughtswritten in pencil in a fine, tall, sprawling hand. Its

very inconsecutiveness is essential. Many words are underlined. It

was in answer to one from me; but what I wrote has passed utterly

from my mind…

"Certainly," she says, "I want to hearfrom you, but I do not want

to seeyou. There's a sort of abstract YOU that I want to go on

with. Something I've made out of you… I want to knowthings

about you-but I don't want to seeor feelor imagine. When some

day I have got rid of my intolerable sense of proprietorship, it may

be different. Then perhaps we may meet again. I thinkit is even

more the loss of our political work and dreamsthat I am feeling

than the loss of your presence. Aching loss. I thoughtso much of

the things we were DOING for the world-had given myselfso

unreservedly. You've left me with nothing to DO. I amsuddenly at

loose ends…

"We women are trained to be so dependent on a man. I've got no life

of my own at all. It seems now to me that I wore my clothes even

for you and your schemes…

"After I have told myselfa hundred times why this has happened, I

ask again, 'Why did he give things up? Why did he give things

up?'…

"It is just as though you were wilfully dead…

"Then I ask again and again whether this thing need have happened at

all, whether if I had had a warning, if I had understoodbetter, I

might not have adapted myselfto your restless mindand made this

catastrophe impossible…

"Oh, my dear! why hadn't you the pluck to hurt me at the beginning,

and tell me what you thoughtof me and life? You didn't give me a

chance; not a chance. I suppose you couldn't. All these things you

and I stood away from. You let my first repugnances repel you…

"It is strange to thinkafter all these years that I should be

asking myself, do I love you? have I loved you? In a sense I think

I HATE you. I feelyou have taken my life, dragged it in your wake

for a time, thrown it aside. I amresentful. Unfairly resentful,

for why should I exact that you should watch and understandmy life,

when clearly I have understoodso little of yours. But I amsavage-

savage at the wrecking of all you were to do.

"Oh, why-why did you give things up?

"No human beingis his own to do what he likes with. You were not

only pledged to my tiresome, ineffectual companionship, but to great

purposes. They ARE great purposes…

"If only I could take up your work as you leave it, with the

strength you had-then indeed I feelI could let you go-you and

your young mistress… All that matters so little to me…

"Yet I thinkI must indeed love you yourselfin my slower way. At

times I ammad with jealousyat the thoughtof all I hadn't the wit

to give you… I've always hidden my tears from you-and what

was in my heart. It's my nature to hide-and you, you want things

brought to you to see. You are so curious as to be almost cruel.

You don't understandreserves. You have no mercywith restraints

and reservations. You arc not reallya CIVILISED man at all. You

hatepretences-and not only pretences but decent coverings…

"It's only after one has lost love and the chance of loving that

slow people like myselffind what they might have done. Why wasn't

I bold and reckless and abandoned? It's as reasonable to ask that,

I suppose, as to ask why my hair is fair…

"I go on with these perhapses over and over again here when I find

myself alone…

"My dear, my dear, you can't thinkof the desolation of things-I

shall never go back to that house we furnished together, that was to

have been the laboratory (do you remembercalling it a laboratory?)

in which you were to forge so much of the new order…

"But, dear, if I can helpyou-even now-in any way-help both of

you, I mean… It tears me when I thinkof you poor and

discredited. You will let me helpyou if I can-it will be the last

wrong not to let me do that…

"You had better not get ill. If you do, and I hearof it-I shall

come after you with a troupe of doctor's and nurses. If I ama

failure as a wife, no one has ever said I was anything but a success

as a district visitor…"

There are other sheets, but I cannot tell whether they were written

before or after the ones from which I have quoted. And most of them

have little things too intimate to set down. But this oddly

penetrating analysis of our differences must, I think, be given.

"There are all sorts of things I can't express about this and want

to. There's this difference that has always been between us, that

you like nakedness and wildness, and I, clothing and restraint. It

goes through everything. You are always TALKING of order and

system, and the splendid dreamof the order that might replace the

muddled system you hate, but by a sort of instinct you seem to want

to break the law. I've watched you so closely. Now I want to obey

laws, to make sacrifices, to follow rules. I don't want to make,

but I do want to keep. You are at once makers and rebels, you and

Isabel too. You're bad people-criminal people, I feel, and yet

full of something the world must have. You're so much better than

me, and so much viler. It may be there is no making without

destruction, but it seems to me sometimes that it is nothing but an

instinct for lawlessness that drives you. You remind me-do you

remember?-of that time we went from Naples to Vesuvius, and walked

over the hot new lava there. Do you rememberhow tired I was? I

knowit disappointed you that I was tired. One walked there in