Mr. Britling Sees It Through

by Wells, H. G. ;

  Hitherto she had had an angry sense of being deprived of Teddy—almost as though he were keeping away from her. Now, there was no more Teddy to be deprived of. …

  She went through the straggling village and across the fields to the hillside that looks away towards Mertonsome and its steeple. And where the hill begins to fall away she threw herself down under the hedge by the path, near by the stile into the lane, and lay still. She did not so much think as remain blank, waiting for the beginning of impressions. …

  It was as it were a blank stare at the world. …

  She did not know if it was five minutes or half an hour later that she became aware that some one was looking at her. She turned with a start, and discovered the Reverend Dimple with one foot on the stile, and an expression of perplexity and consternation upon his chubby visage.

  Instantly she understood. Already on four different occasions since Teddy’s disappearance she had seen the good man coming towards her, always with a manifest decision, always with the same faltering doubt as now. Often in their happy days had she and Teddy discussed him and derided him and rejoiced over him. They had agreed he was as good as Jane Austen’s Mr. Collins. He really was very like Mr. Collins, except that he was plumper. And now, it was as if he was transparent to her hard defensive scrutiny. She knew he was impelled by his tradition, by his sense of fitness, by his respect for his calling, to offer her his ministrations and consolations, to say his large flat amiabilities over her and pat her kindly with his hands. And she knew too that he dreaded her. She knew that the dear old humbug knew at the bottom of his heart quite certainly that he was a poor old humbug, and that she was in his secret. And at the bottom of his heart he found himself too honest to force his poor platitudes upon any who would not be glad of them. If she could have been glad of them he would have had no compunction. He was a man divided against himself; failing to carry through his rich pretences, dismayed.

  He had been taking his afternoon “constitutional.” He had discovered her beyond the stile just in time to pull up. Then had came a fatal, a preposterous hesitation. She stared at him now, with hard, expressionless eyes.

  He stared back at her, until his plump pink face was all consternation. He was extraordinarily distressed. It was as if a thousand unspoken things had been said between them.

  “No wish,” he said, “intrude.”

  If he had had the certain balm, how gladly would he have given it!

  He broke the spell by stepping back into the lane. He made a gesture with his hands, as if he would have wrung them. And then he had fled down the lane—almost at a run.

  “Po’ girl,” he cried. “Po’ girl,” and left her staring.

  Staring—and then she laughed.

  This was good. This was the sort of thing one could tell Teddy, when at last he came back and she could tell him anything. And then she realised again; there was no more Teddy, there would be no telling. And suddenly she fell weeping.

  “Oh, Teddy, Teddy,” she cried through her streaming tears. “How could you leave me? How can I bear it?”

  Never a tear had she shed since the news first came, and now she could weep, she could weep her grief out. She abandoned herself unreservedly to this blessed relief. …

  § 6

  There comes an end to weeping at last, and Letty lay still, in the red light of the sinking sun.

  She lay so still that presently a little foraging robin came flirting down to the grass not ten yards away and stopped and looked at her. And then it came a hop or so nearer.

  She had been lying in a state of passive abandonment, her swollen wet eyes open, regardless of everything. But those quick movements caught her back to attention. She began to watch the robin, and to note how it glanced sidelong at her and appeared to meditate further approaches. She made an almost imperceptible movement, and straightway the little creature was in a projecting spray of berried hawthorn overhead.

  Her tear-washed mind became vaguely friendly. With an unconscious comfort it focused down to the robin. She rolled over, sat up, and imitated his friendly “cheep.”

  § 7

  Presently she became aware of footsteps rustling through the grass towards her.

  She looked over her shoulder and discovered Mr. Britling approaching by the field path. He looked white and tired and listless, even his bristling hair and clipped moustache conveyed his depression; he was dressed in an old tweed knickerbocker suit and carrying a big atlas and some papers. He had an effect of hesitation in his approach. It was as if he wanted to talk to her and doubted her reception for him.

  He spoke without any preface. “Direck has told you?” he said, standing over her.

  She answered with a sob.

  “I was afraid it was so, and yet I did not believe it,” said Mr. Britling. “Until now.”

  He hesitated as if he would go on, and then he knelt down on the grass a little way from her and seated himself. There was an interval of silence.

  “At first it hurts like the devil,” he said at last, looking away at Mertonsome spire and speaking as if he spoke to no one in particular. “And then it hurts. It goes on hurting. … And one can’t say much to any one. …”

  He said no more for a time. But the two of them comforted one another, and knew that they comforted each other. They had a common feeling of fellowship and ease. They had been stricken by the same thing; they understood how it was with each other. It was not like the attempted comfort they got from those who had not loved and dreaded. …

  She took up a little broken twig and dug small holes in the ground with it.

  “It’s strange,” she said, “but I’m glad I know for sure.”

  “I can understand that,” said Mr. Britling.

  “It stops the nightmares. … It isn’t hopes I’ve had so much as fears. … I wouldn’t admit he was dead or hurt. Because——I couldn’t think it without thinking it—horrible. Now——”

  “It’s final,” said Mr. Britling.

  “It’s definite,” she said after a pause. “It’s like thinking he’s asleep—for good.”

  But that did not satisfy her. There was more than this in her mind. “It does away with the half and half,” she said. “He’s dead or he is alive. …”

  She looked up at Mr. Britling as if she measured his understanding.

  “You don’t still doubt?” he said.

  “I’m content now in my mind—in a way. He wasn’t anyhow there—unless he was dead. But if I saw Teddy coming over the hedge there to me——It would be just natural. … No, don’t stare at me. I know really he is dead. And it is a comfort. It is peace. … All the thoughts of him being crushed dreadfully or being mutilated or lying and screaming—or things like that— they’ve gone. He’s out of his spoiled body. He’s my unbroken Teddy again. … Out of sight somewhere. … Unbroken . … Sleeping.”

  She resumed her excavation with the little stick, with the tears running down her face.

  Mr. Britling presently went on with the talk. “For me it came all at once, without a doubt or a hope. I hoped until the last that nothing would touch Hugh. And then it was like a black shutter falling—in an instant. …”

  He considered. “Hugh, too, seems just round the corner at times. But at times, it’s a blank place. …

  “At times,” said Mr. Britling, “I feel nothing but astonishment. The whole thing becomes incredible. Just as for weeks after the war began I couldn’t believe that a big modern nation could really go to war—seriously—with its whole heart. … And they have killed Teddy and Hugh. …

  “They have killed millions. Millions—who had fathers and mothers and wives and sweethearts. …”

  § 8

  “Somehow I can’t talk about this to Edith. It is ridiculous, I know. But in some way, I can’t. … It isn’t fair to her. If I could, I would. … Quite soon after we were married I ceased to talk to her. I mean talking really and simply—as I do to you. And it’s never come back. I don’t know why. … And particul
arly I can’t talk to her of Hugh. … Little things, little shadows of criticism, but enough to make it impossible. … And I go about thinking about Hugh, and what has happened to him, sometimes … as though I was stifling.”

  Letty compared her case.

  “I don’t want to talk about Teddy—not a word.”

  “That’s queer. … But perhaps—a son is different. Now I come to think of it—I’ve never talked of Mary. … Not to any one ever. I’ve never thought of that before. But I haven’t. I couldn’t. No. Losing a lover, that’s a thing for oneself. I’ve been through that, you see. But a son’s more outside you. Altogether. And more your own making. It’s not losing a thing in you; it’s losing a hope and a pride. … Once when I was a little boy I did a drawing very carefully. It took me a long time. … And a big boy tore it up. For no particular reason. Just out of cruelty. … That—that was exactly like losing Hugh. …”

  Letty reflected.

  “No,” she confessed, “I’m more selfish than that.”

  “It isn’t selfish,” said Mr. Britling. “But it’s a different thing. It’s less intimate, and more personally important.”

  “I have just thought, ‘He’s gone. He’s gone.’ Sometimes, do you know, I have felt quite angry with him. Why need he have gone—so soon?”

  Mr. Britling nodded understandingly.

  “I’m not angry. I’m not depressed. I’m just bitterly hurt by the ending of something I had hoped to watch—always— all my life,” he said. “I don’t know how it is between most fathers and sons, but I admired Hugh. I found exquisite things in him. I doubt if other people saw them. He was quiet. He seemed clumsy. But he had an extraordinary fineness. He was a creature of the most delicate and rapid responses. … These aren’t my fond delusions. It was so. … You know, when he was only a few days old, he would start suddenly at any strange sound. He was alive like an æolian harp from the very beginning. … And his hair when he was born—he had a lot of hair—was like the down on the breast of a bird. I remember that now very vividly—and how I used to like to pass my hand over it. It was silk, spun silk. Before he was two he could talk—whole sentences. He had the subtlest ear. He loved long words. … And then,” he said with tears in his voice, “all this beautiful fine structure, this brain, this fresh life as nimble as water—as elastic as a steel spring, it is destroyed. …”

  “I don’t make out he wasn’t human. Often and often I have been angry with him, and disappointed in him. There were all sorts of weaknesses in him. We all knew them. And we didn’t mind them. We loved him the better. And his odd queer cleverness. … And his profound wisdom. And then all this beautiful and delicate fabric, all those clear memories in his dear brain, all his whims, his sudden inventions. …

  “You know, I have had a letter from his chum Park. He was shot through a loophole. The bullet went through his eye and brow. … Think of it!

  “An amazement … a blow … a splattering of blood. Rags of tormented skin and brain stuff. … In a moment. What had taken eighteen years—love and care. …”

  He sat thinking for an interval, and then went on, “The reading and writing alone! I taught him to read myself— because his first governess, you see, wasn’t very clever. She was a very good methodical sort, but she had no inspiration. So I got up all sorts of methods for teaching him to read. But it wasn’t necessary. He seemed to leap all sorts of difficulties. He leaped to what one was trying to teach him. It was as quick as the movement of some wild animal. …

  “He came into life as bright and quick as this robin looking for food. …

  “And he’s broken up and thrown away. … Like a cartridge-case by the side of a covert. …”

  He choked and stopped speaking. His elbows were on his knees, and he put his face between his hands and shuddered and became still. His hair was troubled. The end of his stumpy moustache and a little roll of flesh stood out at the side of his hand, and made him somehow twice as pitiful. His big atlas, from which papers projected, seemed forgotten by his side. So he sat for a long time, and neither he nor Letty moved or spoke. But they were in the same shadow. They found great comfort in one another. They had not been so comforted before since their losses came upon them.

  § 9

  It was Mr. Britling who broke silence. And when he drew his hands down from his face and spoke, he said one of the most amazing and unexpected things she had ever heard in her life.

  “The only possible government in Albania,” he said, looking steadfastly before him down the hillside, “is a group of republican cantons after the Swiss pattern. I can see no other solution that is not offensive to God. It does not matter in the least what we owe to Serbia or what we owe to Italy. We have got to set this world on a different footing. We have got to set up the world at last—on justice and reason.”

  Then, after a pause, “The Treaty of Bucharest was an evil treaty. It must be undone. Whatever this German King of Bulgaria does, that treaty must be undone and the Bulgarians united again into one people. They must have themselves, whatever punishment they deserve, they must have nothing more, whatever reward they win.”

  She could not believe her ears.

  “After this precious blood, after this precious blood, if we leave one plot of wickedness or cruelty in the world——”

  And therewith he began to lecture Letty on the importance of international politics—to every one. How he and she and every one must understand, however hard it was to understand.

  “No life is safe, no happiness is safe, there is no chance of bettering life until we have made an end to all that causes war. …

  “We have to put an end to the folly and vanity of kings, and to any people ruling any people but themselves. There is no convenience, there is no justice in any people ruling any people but themselves; the ruling of men by others, who have not their creeds and their languages and their ignorances and prejudices, that is the fundamental folly that has killed Teddy and Hugh— and these millions. To end that folly is as much our duty and business as telling the truth or earning a living. …”

  “But how can you alter it?”

  He held out a finger at her. “Men may alter anything if they have motive enough and faith enough.”

  He indicated the atlas beside him.

  “Here I am planning the real map of the world,” he said. “Every sort of district that has a character of its own must have its own rule; and the great republic of the United States of the World must keep the federal peace between them all. That’s the plain sense of life; the federal world-republic. Why do we bother ourselves with loyalties to any other government but that? It needs only that sufficient men should say it, and that republic would be here now. Why have we loitered so long— until these tragic punishments come? We have to map the world out into its states, and plan its government and the way of its tolerations.”

  “And you think it will come?”

  “It will come.”

  And you believe that men will listen to such schemes?” said Letty.

  Mr. Britling, with his eyes far away over the hills, seemed to think. “Yes,” he said. “Not perhaps today—not steadily. But kings and empires die; great ideas, once they are born, can never die again. In the end this world-republic, this sane government of the world, is as certain as the sunset. Only …”

  He sighed, and turned over a page of his atlas blindly.

  “Only we want it soon. The world is weary of this bloodshed, weary of all this weeping, of this wasting of substance, and this killing of sons and lovers. We want it soon, and to have it soon we must work to bring it about. We must give our lives. What is left of our lives. …

  “That is what you and I must do, Letty. What else is there left for us to do? … I will write of nothing else, I will think of nothing else now but of safety and order. So that all these dear dead—not one of them but will have brought the great days of peace and man’s real beginning nearer, and these cruel things that make men whimper like children, that break down
bright lives into despair and kill youth at the very moment when it puts out its clean hands to take hold of life—these cruelties, these abominations of confusion, shall cease from the earth for ever.”

  § 10

  Letty regarded him frowning, and with her chin between her fists. …

  “But do you really believe,” said Letty, “that things can be better than they are?”

  “But—Yes!” said Mr. Britling.

  “I don’t,” said Letty. “The world is cruel. It is just cruel. So it will always be.”

  “It need not be cruel,” said Mr. Britling.

  “It is just a place of cruel things. It is all set with knives. It is full of diseases and accidents. As for God—either there is no God or he is an idiot. He is a slobbering idiot. He is like some idiot who pulls off the wings of flies.”

  “No,” said Mr. Britling.

  “There is no progress. Nothing gets better. How can you believe in God after Hugh? Do you believe in God?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Britling after a long pause; “I do believe in God.”

  “Who lets these things happen!” She raised herself on her arm and thrust her argument at him with her hand. “Who kills my Teddy and your Hugh—and millions.”

  “No,” said Mr. Britling.

  “But he must let these things happen. Or why do they happen?”

  “No,” said Mr. Britling. “It is the theologians who must answer that. They have been extravagant about God. They have had silly absolute ideas—that he is all-powerful. That he’s omni-everything. But the common sense of men knows better. Every real religious thought denies it. After all, the real God of the Christians is Christ, not God Almighty; a poor mocked and wounded God nailed on a cross of matter. … Some day he will triumph. … But it is not fair to say that he causes all things now. It is not fair to make out a case against him. You have been misled. It is a theologian’s folly. God is not absolute; God is finite. … A finite God who struggles in his great and comprehensive way as we struggle in our weak and silly way—who is with us—that is the essence of all real religion. … I agree with you so——Why! If I thought there was an omnipotent God who looked down on battles and deaths and all the waste and horror of this war—able to prevent these things—doing them to amuse himself—I would spit in his empty face. …”