H. Wells - THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

never finished by which everything was to be watered at once by

means of pieces of gutter from the roof and outhouses of Number 2,

and a large and particularly obstinate clump of elder-bushes in the

abolished hedge that he had failed to destroy entirely either by axe

or by fire, combined to give the gardens under intensive culture a

singularly desolate and disorderly appearance. He took steps

towards the diversion of our house drain under the influenceof the

Sewage Utilisation Society; but happilyhe stopped in time. He

hardly completed any of the operations he began; something else

became more urgent or simply he tired; a considerable area of the

Number 2 territory was never even dug up.

In the end the affair irritated him beyond endurance. Never was a

man less horticulturally-minded. The clamour of these vegetables he

had launched into the world for his service and assistance, wore out

his patience. He would walk into the garden the happiestof men

after a day or so of disregard, talking to me of history perhaps or

social organisation, or summarising some book he had read. He

talked to me of anything that interested him, regardless of my

limitations. Then he would begin to note the growthof the weeds.

"This won't do," he would say and pull up a handful.

More weeding would follow and the talk would become fragmentary.

His hands would become earthy, his nails black, weeds would snap off

in his careless grip, leaving the roots behind. The world would

darken. He would look at his fingers with disgusted astonishment.

"CURSE these weeds!" he would say from his heart. His discourse was

at an end.

I have memories, too, of his sudden unexpected charges into the

tranquillityof the house, his hands and clothes intensively

enriched. He would come in like a whirlwind. "This damned stuff

all over me and the Agricultural Chemistry Class at six! Bah!

AAAAAAH!"

My mother would never learn not to attempt to break him of swearing

on such occasions. She would remain standing a little stiffly in

the scullery refusing to assist him to the adjectival towel he

sought.

"If you say such things-"

He would dance with rage and hurl the soap about. "The towel!" he

would cry, flicking suds from big fingers in every direction; "the

towel! I'll let the blithering class slide if you don't give me the

towel! I'll give up everything, I tell you-everything!"…

At last with the failure of the lettuces came the breaking point. I

was in the little arbour learning Latin irregular verbs when it

happened. I can seehim still, his peculiar tenor voice still

echoes in my brain, shouting his opinion of intensive culture for

all the world to hear, and slashing away at that abominable mockery

of a crop with a hoe. We had tied them up with bast only a week or

so before, and now half were rotten and half had shot up into tall

slender growths. He had the hoe in both hands and slogged. Great

wipes he made, and at each stroke he said, "Take that!"

The air was thick with flying fragments of abortive salad. It was a

fantastic massacre. It was the French Revolution of that cold

tyranny, the vindictive overthrow of the pampered vegetable

aristocrats. After he had assuaged his passion upon them, he turned

for other prey; he kicked holes in two of our noblestmarrows,

flicked off the heads of half a row of artichokes, and shied the hoe

with a splendid smash into the cucumber frame. Something of the awe

of that moment returns to me as I write of it.

Well, my boy," he said, approaching with an expression of beneficent

happiness, "I've done with gardening. Let's go for a walk like

reasonable beings. I've had enough of this"-his face was convulsed

for an instant with bitterresentment-" Pandering to cabbages."

That afternoon's walk sticks in my memoryfor many reasons. One is

that we went further than I had ever been before; far beyond Keston

and nearly to Seven-oaks, coming back by train from Dunton Green,

and the other is that my father as he went along talked about

himself, not so much to me as to himself, and about life and what he

had done with it. He monologued so that at times he produced an

effectof weird world-forgetfulness. I listened puzzled, and at

that time not upderstanding many things that afterwards became plain

to me. It is only in recent years that I have discovered the pathos

of that monologue; how friendless my father was and uncompanioned in

his thoughtsand feelings, and what a hunger he may have feltfor

the sympathy of the undeveloped youngster who trotted by his side.

" I'mno gardener," he said, " I'mno anything. Why the devil did I

start gardening?

"I suppose man was created to minda garden… But the Fall let

us out of that! What was I created for? God! what was I created

for?…

"Slaves to matter! Mindinginanimate things! It doesn't suit me,

you know. I've got no hands and no patience. I've mucked about

with life. Mucked about with life." He suddenly addressed himself

to me, and for an instant I started like an eavesdropper discovered.

"Whatever you do, boy, whatever you do, make a Plan. Make a good

Plan and stick to it. Find out what life is about-I never have-

and set yourselfto do whatever you ought to do. I admit it's a

puzzle…

"Those damned houses have been the curse of my life. Stucco white

elephants! Beastly cracked stucco with stains of green-black and

green. Conferva and soot… Property, they are!… Beware

of Things, Dick, beware of Things! Before you knowwhere you are

you are waiting on them and mindingthem. They'll eat your life up.

Eat up your hours and your blood and energy! When those houses came

to me, I ought to have sold them-or fled the country. I ought to

have cleared out. Sarcophagi-eaters of men! Oh! the hours and

days of work, the nights of anxiety those vile houses have cost me!

The painting! It worked up my arms; it got all over me. I stank of

it. It made me ill. It isn't living-it's minding…

"Property's the curse of life. Property! Ugh! Look at this

country all cut up into silly little parallelograms, look at all

those villas we passed just now and those potato patches and that

tarred shanty and the hedge! Somebody's mindingevery bit of it

like a dog tied to a cart's tail. Patching it and bothering about

it. Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by. Look at that notice-

board! One rotten worried little beast wants to keep us other

rotten little beasts off HIS patch,-God knowswhy! Look at the

weeds in it. Look at the mended fence!… There's no property

worth having, Dick, but money. That's only goodto spend. All

these things. Human soulsburied under a cartload of blithering

rubbish…

" I'mnot a fool, Dick. I have qualities, imagination, a sort of go.

I ought to have made a better thing of life.

" I'msure I could have done things. Only the old people pulled my

leg. They started me wrong. They never started me at all. I only

began to find out what life was like when I was nearly forty.

"If I'd gone to a university; if I'd had any sort of sound training,

if I hadn't slipped into the haphazard places that came easiest…

"Nobody warned me. Nobody. It isn't a world we live in, Dick; it's

a cascade of accidents; it's a chaos exasperated by policemen! YOU

be warned in time, Dick. You stick to a plan. Don't wait for any

one to show you the way. Nobody will. There isn't a way till you