In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells (read aloud books .TXT) đ
- Author: H. G. Wells
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âYou triumphed over me? ⊠If I could I would have triumphed over you,â I said. âBut go on!â
âEverything conspired to make it the finest thing in life. It had an air of generous recklessness. It meant mischief, it might mean failure in that life of politics and affairs, for which I was trained, which it was my honor to follow. That made it all the finer. It meant ruin or misery for Nettie. That made it all the finer. No sane or decent man would have approved of what we did. That made it more splendid than ever. I had all the advantages of position and used them basely. That mattered not at all.â
âYes,â I said; âit is true. And the same dark wave that lifted you, swept me on to follow. With that revolverâand blubbering with hate. And the word to you, Nettie, what was it? âGive?â Hurl yourself down the steep?â
Nettieâs hands fell upon the table. âI canât tell what it was,â she said, speaking bare-hearted straight to me. âGirls arenât trained as men are trained to look into their minds. I canât see it yet. All sorts of mean little motives were thereâover and above the âmust.â Mean motives. I kept thinking of his clothes.â She smiledâa flash of brightness at Verrall. âI kept thinking of being like a lady and sitting in an hotelâwith men like butlers waiting. Itâs the dreadful truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meaner than that!â
I can see her now pleading with me, speaking with a frankness as bright and amazing as the dawn of the first great morning.
âIt wasnât all mean,â I said slowly, after a pause.
âNo!â They spoke together.
âBut a woman chooses more than a man does,â Nettie added. âI saw it all in little bright pictures. Do you knowâthat jacketâthereâs somethingââ You wonât mind my telling you? But you wonât now!â
I nodded, âNo.â
She spoke as if she spoke to my soul, very quietly and very earnestly, seeking to give the truth. âSomething cottony in that cloth of yours,â she said. âI know thereâs something horrible in being swung round by things like that, but they did swing me round. In the old timeâto have confessed that! And I hated Claytonâand the grime of it. That kitchen! Your motherâs dreadful kitchen! And besides, Willie, I was afraid of you. I didnât understand you and I did him. Itâs different nowâbut then I knew what he meant. And there was his voice.â
âYes,â I said to Verrall, making these discoveries quietly, âyes, Verrall, you have a good voice. Queer I never thought of that before!â
We sat silently for a time before our vivisected passions.
âGods!â I cried, âand there was our poor little top-hamper of intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, these foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like âlike a coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas.â
Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out. âA week ago,â he said, trying it further, âwe were clinging to our chicken coops and going with the heave and pour. That was true enough a week ago. But to-dayââ?â
âTo-day,â I said, âthe wind has fallen. The world storm is over. And each chicken coop has changed by a miracle to a vessel that makes head against the sea.â
Section 4
âWhat are we to do?â asked Verrall.
Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, and began very neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of its calyx and remove, one by one, its petals. I remember that went on through all our talk. She put those ragged crimson shreds in a long row and adjusted them and readjusted them. When at last I was alone with these vestiges the pattern was still incomplete.
âWell,â said I, âthe matter seems fairly simple. You twoââI swallowed itââlove one another.â
I paused. They answered me by silence, by a thoughtful silence.
âYou belong to each other. I have thought it over and looked at it from many points of view. I happened to wantâimpossible things⊠. I behaved badly. I had no right to pursue you.â I turned to Verrall. âYou hold yourself bound to her?â
He nodded assent.
âNo social influence, no fading out of all this generous clearness in the airâfor that might happenâwill change you back ⊠?â
He answered me with honest eyes meeting mine, âNo, Leadford, no!â
âI did not know you,â I said. âI thought of you as something very different from this.â
âI was,â he interpolated.
âNow,â I said, âit is all changed.â
Then I haltedâfor my thread had slipped away from me.
âAs for me,â I went on, and glanced at Nettieâs downcast face, and then sat forward with my eyes upon the flowers between us, âsince I am swayed and shall be swayed by an affection for Nettie, since that affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see her yours and wholly yours is not to be endured by meâI must turn about and go from you; you must avoid me and I you⊠. We must divide the world like Jacob and Esau. ⊠I must direct myself with all the will I have to other things. After allâthis passion is not life! It is perhaps for brutes and savages, but for men. No! We must part and I must forget. What else is there but that?â
I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printing an indelible memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrallâs pose. There were some moments of silence. Then Nettie spoke. âButâââ she said, and ceased.
I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair. âIt is perfectly simple,â I smiled, ânow that we have cool heads.â
âBut IS it simple?â asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of being.
I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. âYou see,â she said, âI like Willie. Itâs hard to say what one feelsâbut I donât want him to go away like that.â
âBut then,â objected Verrall, âhowââ?â
âNo,â said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals back into a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quickly into one long straight line.
âItâs so difficultââ Iâve never before in all my life tried to get to the bottom of my mind. For one thing, Iâve not treated Willie properly. Heâhe counted on me. I know he did. I was his hope. I was a promised delightâsomething, something to crown lifeâbetter than anything he had ever had. And a secret pride⊠. He lived upon me. I knewâwhen we two began to meet together, you and Iââ It was a sort of treachery to himâââ
âTreachery!â I said. âYou were only feeling your way through all these perplexities.â
âYou thought it treachery.â
âI donât now.â
âI did. In a sense I think so still. For you had need of me.â
I made a slight protest at this doctrine and fell thinking.
âAnd even when he was trying to kill us,â she said to her lover, âI felt for him down in the bottom of my mind. I can understand all the horrible things, the humiliationâthe humiliation! he went through.â
âYes,â I said, âbut I donât seeâââ
âI donât see. Iâm only trying to see. But you know, Willie, you are a part of my life. I have known you longer than I have known Edward. I know you better. Indeed I know you with all my heart. You think all your talk was thrown away upon me, that I never understood that side of you, or your ambitions or anything. I did. More than I thought at the time. Now ânow it is all clear to me. What I had to understand in you was something deeper than Edward brought me. I have it now⊠. You are a part of my life, and I donât want to cut all that off from me now I have comprehended it, and throw it away.â
âBut you love Verrall.â
âLove is such a queer thing! ⊠Is there one love? I mean, only one love?â She turned to Verrall. âI know I love you. I can speak out about that now. Before this morning I couldnât have done. Itâs just as though my mind had got out of a scented prison. But what is it, this love for you? Itâs a mass of fanciesâthings about youâways you look, ways you have. Itâs the sensesâand the senses of certain beauties. Flattery too, things you said, hopes and deceptions for myself. And all that had rolled up together and taken to itself the wild help of those deep emotions that slumbered in my body; it seemed everything. But it wasnât. How can I describe it? It was like having a very bright lamp with a thick shadeâeverything else in the room was hidden. But you take the shade off and there they areâit is the same lightâstill there! Only it lights every one!â
Her voice ceased. For awhile no one spoke, and Nettie, with a quick movement, swept the petals into the shape of a pyramid.
Figures of speech always distract me, and it ran through my mind like some puzzling refrain, âIt is still the same light⊠.â
âNo woman believes these things,â she asserted abruptly.
âWhat things?â
âNo woman ever has believed them.â
âYou have to choose a man,â said Verrall, apprehending her before I did.
âWeâre brought up to that. Weâre toldâitâs in books, in stories, in the way people look, in the way they behaveâone day there will come a man. He will be everything, no one else will be anything. Leave everything else; live in him.â
âAnd a man, too, is taught that of some woman,â said Verrall.
âOnly men donât believe it! They have more obstinate minds⊠. Men have never behaved as though they believed it. One need not be old to know that. By nature they donât believe it. But a woman believes nothing by nature. She goes into a mold hiding her secret thoughts almost from herself.â
âShe used to,â I said.
âYou havenât,â said Verrall, âanyhow.â
âIâve come out. Itâs this comet. And Willie. And because I never really believed in the mold at allâeven if I thought I did. Itâs stupid to send Willie offâshamed, cast out, never to see him againâwhen I like him as much as I do. It is cruel, it is wicked and ugly, to prance over him as if he was a defeated enemy, and pretend Iâm going to be happy just the same. Thereâs no sense in a rule of life that prescribes that. Itâs selfish. Itâs brutish. Itâs like something that has no sense. Iâââ there was a sob in her voice: âWillie! I WONâT.â
I sat lowering, I mused with my eyes upon her quick fingers.
âIt is brutish,â I said at last, with a careful unemotional deliberation. âNeverthelessâit is in the nature of things⊠. No! ⊠You see, after all, we are still half brutes, Nettie. And men, as you say, are more obstinate than women. The comet hasnât altered that; itâs only made it clearer. We have come into being through a tumult of blind forces⊠. I come back to what I said just now; we have found our poor reasonable minds, our wills to live well, ourselves, adrift on a wash of instincts, passions, instinctive prejudices, half animal stupidities⊠. Here we are like people clinging to somethingâlike people awakeningâupon a raft.â
âWe come back at last to my question,â said Verrall, softly; âwhat are we to do?â
âPart,â I said. âYou see, Nettie, these bodies of ours are not the bodies of angels. They are the same
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