Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells

Author:H.G. Wells
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307432827
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

IX

The perplexing thing about life is the irresoluble complexity of reality, of things and relations alike. Nothing is simple. Every wrong done has a certain justice in it, and every good deed has dregs of evil. As for us, young still, and still without self-knowledge, we sounded a hundred discordant notes in the harsh jangle of that shock. We were furiously angry with each other, tender with each other, callously selfish, generously self-sacrificing.

I remember Marion saying innumerable detached things that didn’t hang together one with another, that contradicted one another, that were, nevertheless, all in their places profoundly true and sincere. I see them now as so many vain experiments in her effort to apprehend the crumpled confusions of our complex moral landslip. Some I found irritating beyond measure. I answered her— sometimes quite abominably.

“Of course,” she would say again and again, “my life has been a failure.”

“I’ve besieged you for three years,” I would retort, “asking it not to be. You’ve done as you pleased. If I’ve turned away at last——”

Or again she would revive all the stresses before our marriage.

“How you must hate me! I made you wait. Well, now—I suppose you have your revenge.”

“Revenge!” I echoed.

Then she would try over the aspects of our new separated lives.

“I ought to earn my own living,” she would insist. “I want to be quite independent. I’ve always hated London. Perhaps I shall try a poultry farm and bees. You won’t mind at first my being a burden. Afterwards——”

“We’ve settled all that,” I said.

“I suppose you will hate me anyhow . . .”

There were times when she seemed to regard our separation with absolute complacency, when she would plan all sorts of freedoms and characteristic interests.

“I shall go out a lot with Smithie,” she said.

And once she said an ugly thing that I did indeed hate her for, that I cannot even now quite forgive her.

“Your aunt will rejoice at all this. She never cared for me . . .”

Into my memory of these pains and stresses comes the figure of Smithie, full-charged with emotion, so breathless in the presence of the horrid villain of the piece that she could make no articulate sounds. She had long tearful confidences with Marion, I know, sympathetic close clingings. There were moments when only absolute speechlessness prevented her giving me a stupendous “talking-to”—I could see it in her eye. The wrong things she would have said! And I recall, too, Mrs. Ramboat’s slow awakening to something in the air, the growing expression of solicitude in her eye, only her well-trained fear of Marion keeping her from speech. . . .

And at last through all this welter, like a thing fated and altogether beyond our control, parting came to Marion and me.

I hardened my heart, or I could not have gone. For at the last it came to Marion that she was parting from me for ever. That over-bore all other things, and turned our last hour to anguish. She forgot for a time the prospect of moving into a new house, she forgot the outrage on her proprietorship and pride.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.