Читать книгу Babes in the Darkling Woods - H.G. Wells - Страница 17

Table of Contents

"What a day!" said Gemini, first in bed.

"We've done some thinking anyhow," said Stella, and came and sat on the counterpane. She was in her pyjamas and was still combing her shock of hair unnecessarily after it had long since been fully and properly combed. At last she stopped and shook the comb at him.

"Look here, Gemini," she said, "this stuff of yours about everybody having ultimately—ultimately? or fundamentally is it?—ultimately the same imagination if they think hard enough! It sticks in my mind. I've been thinking about it all day. It doesn't wash. Things aren't as simple as that. See?"

"Nothing is perfectly simple," said Gemini.

"Yes, but—. I must talk for a bit, my dear. I've got such a lot to say to you. Heaven knows when we two will talk again. If I knew how Joshua did it I'd hold this day for an eternity or so. It slips away so fast. But I want this clear. Ever since we talked in the lane and went through that Balch deluge I have been turning over that notion of yours of people being fundamentally alike. You say that if everyone had full knowledge and thought everything out and all that, everyone would come out at last to the same idea of the kind of civilised world there ought to be. That came into your head suddenly, as things do come into that queer head of yours; and then you heard what Balch made of it. That shook you up a little. But still you stuck to it. One common universal imagination! That makes things out to be pretty easy. All one needs to do is to tell the world. Just a war of ideas for a generation or so and the thing is done. Just a little teaching and persuasion. Then they'll know for certain what they always thought. Dearest, it isn't nearly so simple as that. That's all wrong. That common human imagination of yours-why! it's the lie behind all these religions that have failed us. Human brains are just as various as human legs or skins and—anything. More so perhaps. That idea of yours doesn't begin to be true."

Gemini regarded her thoughtfully, and with that faint sulkiness he sometimes betrayed when she contradicted him too flatly. "Anyhow human imaginations have to be got upon a common basis. There has to be a sort of propaganda education of all the world to this one world idea. Even if they aren't all honestly for it; they can be got to know about it clearly. They have to be got to behave like brothers. Or anyhow feel the obligation of brotherhood. And then at last they may begin to feel like brothers."

"Yes. But first, a great lot of people won't want this world civilisation in any form, at any price. They just won't. Educate them as much as you like; they won't. It doesn't matter how rotten the world is; they'll be against a better one. They've impulses to triumph, revenge, hate and cruel self-assertion that they know a better world would never allow. And a still greater multitude will bar every effort you make to spread this great idea of yours, out of fear. It seems so clear, sweet and reasonable to us, but the very first movement towards it will seem to them weird, horrible, wicked. You may begin presently to see the shape in the alabaster, but will they? Will they even try to see it? Will they ever believe there is a shape in the alabaster? It's no use our thinking the whole world is just waiting to go our way—just a little vehement Balchification and off we go on the new road. Don't you believe anything of the sort, Gemini. Our millennium idea will always be unpopular, damned unpopular.

"There's Uncle Hubert-there're more Uncle Huberts than us in the world—and you'l1 no more get him to stop being patriotic, virile about women and all that, than you'll teach a dog to stop yapping. You can't teach him different. He won't learn. He isn't made that way. Establish our world state if you like. He'll contrive somehow to make it a kennel. Whips and dog-fights. You try him to-morrow. I'l1 be watching you, Gemini.

"And consider that parson again. Very sympathetic and all that, but do you think he'll let our sort get hold of the schools, or alter the code of orthodox morality? Wherever the world goes and whatever is done, he will insist on having restraints and pretences. He will want to sit tight wherever he is. He is an honest man really, though you think him an old humbug. No, Gemini, why make a face at him? He's as honest as you are. The other way round. He's so honest, you see, that he dare not risk letting his impulses escape from his principles, and you, you are so honest that you dare not let any principles suppress your impulses. Two honest men together. But he's a more ordinary man than you are, Gemini. He's more the stuff that makes stable nations, creeds and businesses. He's what they call trustworthy. He'll think as agreed —even if he doesn't really think so. He's the perfect man of character.... And you, I realise, aren't."

She had come to the end of her matter, but she felt she had not arrived at any conclusion. "Like that," she said, and combed a stroke. Gemini had been considering her speech and doing his honest best to ignore the fact that when Stella was most lucid and in earnest she was apt to be most lovely and desirable.

"I think I see what you are driving at," he said, holding his mind resolutely to the question under discussion. "You are right and I am right. You are wrong and I am wrong. Let me try and de-Balch this business. First I admit that the majority of the sort of human beings we deal with to-day are either so primitive—like your Uncle Hubert—that they will always behave like dogs or bulls or wolves—'seeing red,' wanting to see red—or so practical-minded and timid and unbelieving that they will always be obstructively conservative of the thing that is. Man, generally, is going to remain at those levels for quite a time yet. The real job in human affairs will have to be done by a minority of people who, like you, will only consent to think of existence as its heirs and its owners—"

"And you, Gemini?"

"We. Yes—don't draw me away from my argument.... Heirs and owners. But—it does not follow that dogs cannot be turned into sheep dogs. All dogs don't hunt in packs and fly at strangers. Or that the born conformist will not steady a reconstructed progressive society and hold it together. You can make him face forward, or mark for the company to wheel, even though he himself doesn't budge."

She considered that. "So far as that isn't to be twisted so as to exonerate every intelligent human being from complete, separate responsibility.... And though that's all very well when we have got this propaganda education of the new world, over; until we, our sort, get that done, for a generation or a hundred generations, none of these others are coming half-way to meet us or anything of that sort.... You see what I want to say. That's what I want to be clear about. The whole thing is still up to us. It's up to you and me. just as though we were alone in the presence of God."

"In the absence of God," said Gemini.

"Which leaves things even more completely to us."

Pause.

"Well," said Gemini, "and since we are trying to have everything out while there is still time for it, I want a few words—funny to say them now here as we are—about sex. I've had them on my mind and I've been keeping them under. I am head over heels in love with you, I have been making love to you for a week, I am going to make love to you again just as soon as you stop pretending to comb your hair, and all the time I have been thinking things behind your back, so to speak, and you—you have been doing the same to me. You'd hardly guess when it came into my head to-day. Something puzzling us both. Me anyhow. Something very puzzling. This time we've had here; it's the crowning thing in life for us, so bright, so intense and—. What's it got to do with anything, Stella? What's it got to do with the rest of life?"

She stopped combing, grave and attentive.

"You say things, Gemini.... You say things that one seems to have been on the verge of thinking all one's life. It's your way of saying them. But this time again; aren't you wrong? I think you are wrong. Of course sex has everything to do with the rest of life. Yet I've had that thought that it hasn't, creeping into my mind. But I've sent it packing.... But why did I send it packing? I ought to have an answer. What, after all, has this love-making got to do with the rest of life? What's in your head, Gemini?"

"The excuse we lovers make is that it animates everything. Is that true? We two would make love anyhow, whether it animated things or not. Even if it took the life out of us. You daren't deny it. That's the point. Listen, Stella; while you squat there pretending to comb, I shall lie here and improve your mind. Your mind or my own.

"Before I came down here I was reading a book, more or less, off and on, for review. It's at home. That's what put this idea into my head. What is it called? The Expansion of Sex. The idea of it is this; that man is an animal with a tremendously developed cerebrum, memory, mental flexibility and all that. It has made him in his savage and destructive way lord of the earth. So far good. The big brain wins, but side by side with that, or even perhaps connected with it inseparably, there has been a monstrous, useless, troublesome exaggeration and elaboration of man's sexual interest and urgency. So he says. The sex in human mentality, he says, is a superfluous overgrowth—like those vast horns a deer has to produce every year. No other creature is so sexual as man, unless it is some of the monkeys. The brain expanded in response to practical needs, produced energy, imagination, fantasy, and then sex stole it. To a large extent. So far as the continuation of the race goes, all that is necessary is at most a month or so of sex consciousness in the year. For the rest of the time complete indifference to any sex differences, sexual indulgence, beauty, would be a clear advantage for survival. No!—hold on for a moment, I am quoting this man. That is the way with most animals. They have a rutting season and then it's all over. For the rest of the time we should do our work, make our machines, subdue the earth to our needs, in sexless tranquillity."

"Only it isn't like that."

"Only it isn't like that. And this man—I'll remember his name in a moment—he's an American naturalist-quite well known—he goes on to argue that you could write a sort of human history entirely as the story of the Sex Problem through the ages. It has always been getting in the way, that was how he put it, getting in the way, and three quarters of religion and custom are methods of getting it out of the way. And so far the problem has never been solved. Sometimes the trend is all to hold it in, hold it back, suppress. 'Oh no, we never think of it!' That was the way of the Victorian age. And it failed. It developed repressions and morbid states. It festered in the sub-conscious. The generations before the war cleared up all that. The war finished the release. They abandoned all restriction on speech, they took off their clothes, they took off their morals, they let sex rip. But—I'm quoting my authority—when you let sex go, it proliferates. It asks for more. Indulgence is no remedy. It becomes sensuality. That's his case. Sex grows by what it feeds on. Sex—not love. It ousts love. It begins mixed up with love—and then ousts it. And then sensuality ousts sex and you get exaggerations and perversions. It takes possession of more and more of your life. It becomes an overpowering obsession. You are urged to do more and more sexual things. You talk about it. Boast about it. It ekes itself out with drugs and drink. It ekes itself out with melodrama. It insists on extravaganza. Mysticism. Somewhere in between these two extremes there's got to be adjustment, that is to say morals, a code of permissible and forbidden things. And the rest of this chap's book is a survey of morals, a sort of Variety of Moral Experiences?

"And what are his conclusions?"

"He comes to no definite conclusions. It is a scientific treatise."

"I thought so."

"Of course he points out the social and biological consequences of various codes. His line is, take them or leave them."

"I don't believe very much in your great American naturalist," said Stella. "No. His attitude, Gemini, is a common male attitude. The attitude of a middle-aged bachelor who goes round the corner to a brothel and then regrets the risk and expense and waste of time, and wishes it didn't have to happen. The man pretending he's a mighty inventor, genius, administrator and all that, and that sex is a terrible interruption. If only the women would leave him alone!"

"Not quite like that."

"That's the spirit of it. If only sex would leave him alone!"

"You're not being just to him. He says sex is as big a nuisance to women as to men. More so."

"I don't like him," she said. "He's—Gemini, he's a sex- shirker."

At the moment her judgment seemed decisive.

"Wel1, how do you see it, Stella?"

"Tuning it over in my mind.... How do I see it? What has this love-making to do with anything else, you ask. Well —everything. Sex is not irrelevant to the other side of life. It's like the other side of a coin. Love, love-making, is as important as hunting, shooting, ploughing, making things, and it's nearer to vital reality. See? Nearer. More than the other side of a coin. Of course it is nearer and closer! Society is built upon sex—more than it is built on any economic or practical necessity. If that is the left hand, sex is the right. The first societies were families and then tribes, the Children of Israel and so on. They were not plantation gangs or trade unions. Sex uppermost; sex first. How does that sound to you?"

"If," said Gemini, "you use the word sex for every sort of personal relationship that has an element of physical feeling in it, what you say is largely true."

"Largely true?"

"True."

"Well, you know best, Gemini. Can you draw a line between all these linking feelings, between friendship, preference, affection, love, intimacies, caresses? Can you? Is there really even a homosexual limit? You might expect that if it was all just a question of reproduction. But is there?"

"No. You can have all that."

"Then the real evil about sex is not that it pervades human life, because it wouldn't be human life without it. Its attractions and preferences are the web to hold together the whole species. The trouble is that it can be isolated from the rest of life, made a special thing of, be inflamed and exaggerated, so that instead of linking people it cuts them off either by an obsession through suppression or an obsession through excess. As your professor has it, love becomes love-making, love-making becomes sex, sex becomes sensuality. That's no condemnation of any of them so long as they keep in a bundle together. It is stupid to run down sex because of that. The more I think over that sex-shirking professor of yours the less I like him. Irrelevance! I hug your mind when I hug your body. It all belongs together."

"I think it does. I give you The Expansion of Sex. When I write that review I will slate it. You shall see. The man's a dismal misogynist. Cottenham Bower! That's his name. Cottenham C. Bower. Radnor Smith University. In the south. But now may I ask what the code, our code, ought to be?"

"Freedom," she said.

"Free love, is that?"

"In love one gives. How can one give under a bond?"

"Shelley and your uncle, my dear. But still we must have a code. If my professor was right about anything, it is that sex without rule or restriction eats up the rest of life. He makes a good case for that. There must be some behaviour pattern."

"It's religion and politics over again."

"I don't understand you."

"I mean we told that parson how we young people were lost in such a medley of religions and politics and suggestions, that we didn't know how to choose and what values to take —-and life pressed upon us...."

"Good, Stella."

"It's the same sort of confusion about sex. We don't know what to do about it, day by day. Look at the novels, the romances, the plays and poems, the pictures and the statuary all telling a thousand varieties of values, saying this is splendid, this is noble, this is decay, this is vile, making this romantic and that atrocious. No sort of agreement at all. Every sort of interpretation and no guide. Scores of patterns of behaviour and which is it to be? Life won't wait. What are we to do about it? What are we to do? Here's your lover. Well? Here's your lover and you may be dead to-morrow. Maybe there are vast differences between people, and what is fine for one, is ugly for another. Some may hesitate and regret it. Some may snatch and be sorry. Perhaps these things are more personal and secret than religious and political things, but the need for decisions is none the less urgent. All over it's the same question; 'What about it now?'"

"That's good, Stella. Yes. That's sound. But since it's so various a thing, we can't have a common pattern for everyone —except a framework of tolerance. Suppose there are a lot of possible patterns. We don't know much about life yet. Suppose there are a lot of patterns, and suppose that so long a they don't destroy social life they are all equally permissible. Some people may be really and properly promiscuous, radiating contacts. Others may have an innate bias for particular reactions. And we may vary in different phases of our lives. Have you thought of that?... We may find things lovely when we are in the mood for them and disgusting when we are not. Manifestly we must have decency.... But also freedom, privacy and charity. Everybody is not to be linked in the same way. So I reason it out. There will still have to be things that are never done anyhow. Things that are cruel for example. Things that destroy. But, Stella, let us drop all this high theorising for a moment. How do things stand with us two? That's what I want to have clear."

"Well, I'm in love. I'm very much in love. That doesn't conduce to a broad view of things. I'm in love with you, Gemini, and I want you for keeps. I want to be woman to my own, my very own, man. That's my pattern now. Perhaps I had other ideas before we came down here but that's how I want it now. I'm going to quote you something from that old prayer book I was reading downstairs. How does it go? 'To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.' There's something fine there. That's a damned good pattern for love, Gemini, and it's stood some wear in its time. Don't you feel it's real human stuff? Promiscuity-infidelity—I don't care what you call it, seems to me to be something soiling after that. I speak for myself and how I feel now. It would be—. I don't think I could look at myself in the mirror again. I think I should feel dispersed —dirty. But who am I to judge? I've only just come into existence. Anyhow, everyone ought to be free. Even if there is a natural pairing, a natural marriage, to have and to hold, there should be no marriage bond. No bond. This feeling for monogamy—to love and to cherish—this is a matter of personal quality. But one must always be giving. To love is to give. No bond. That's how I feel now. Don't you?"

"Question of children?"

She reflected.

"That justifies a ten-year responsibility perhaps. George Meredith suggested that. Or longer. The psychologists say that every child ought to own two parents, and won't be completely happy and normal without them.... Is there any religious bias in that belief? I suspect there is.... So far we have been thinking chiefly of love, before the children come in. Maybe people can love and forget and begin again. You have, Gemini, lots of times."

"How do you know, Stella? Not lots of times. Still—. I have. How do you know?"

"I just know. I don't want to dig up your memories. Maybe love is something different for a man. Maybe the world is made up not of males and females but of rakes and—serious people who play for keeps. Maybe—all sorts of things. What do we know about it? We've hardly begun. Four years ago I was a flapper in love with Clark Gable. And you—what were you at fifteen? You've forgotten. Eh? You've seen fit to forget. We know only how we feel now. How can we guess at the physical and moral needs of men and women of thirty or fifty? I suppose they still have them. We can only decide for ourselves. I feel now that I've got a life sentence and I love it. Suppose I am wrong? How can I tell I am wrong?"

"Now listen, Stella. I want to marry you."

"But we can't."

"I want to many you here and now, so to speak, and to live in the hope of really and lawfully marrying you as soon as ever we can."

"But I have told you—"

"About freedom and all that?"

"Yes."

"Stella, we've planned a very considerable fight with this old world. I submit that our sexual status is not the proper battleground to begin upon. That means a narrow close struggle. It means trouble with servants. Telling white lies to Mrs Greedle. Quarrels with neighbours. Waste of force on what is after all a personal and minor issue. It isn't there that I want to give battle."

"Now that's a point of view. And you really want me, Gemini, for good and keeps? Really and truly? As I do you?"

"Yes."

"Say it, Gemini. Say it again. On our last night together. Make me your offer of marriage."

"I will.... I want you—all of you. I want you, Stella, from the top squeak of your voice down to that thin and leathery sole of your foot I tickled yesterday, and every bit of your body in between, and if there wasn't a sound or a sight of you. I'd still want you to talk these thoughts of mine into you until they come alive. So much for parting and promiscuity. I'm yours. You're mine. Can't you put that comb away now and come to bed? We've been talking for half an hour or more."

"Are you so sure of that, Gemini? Are you really so sure of that? Of loving me for ever and ever?"

"Absolutely sure."

"I wonder. Will you say it over again, Gemini?"

"Put that comb away," said Gemini. She made no sign of doing so.

"There are moments when I doubt your intellectual integrity profoundly," she considered.

"If you don't put that comb away I'll make you."

A freak of desire took possession of her. "Very well," she said, gripping the comb firmly and locking her hands round her knees, "make me!"