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Chapter the Sixth: Marriage in War Time. Parts 1 and 2 · The Dream: A Novel

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Section eighteen of The Dream, a novel. This is a Libertybox recording.
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All libertyvox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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please visit libertywox dot org. The Dream and Novel by H. G.
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Wells, Section eighteen, Chapter six. Marriage in Wartime, Parts one,
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end two, Part one and now, said Sarnak comes a change of
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costume. You have been thinking of me. I suppose as a gawky youth
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of seventeen or eighteen, dressed in those ill feeding, wholesale clothes we used
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to call ready mates. That youth a white collar round his neck, and
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a black jacket and dark gray trousers of a confused furtive patterning, and his
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head was a black hemisphere with a little brim called a bowler. Now he
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changed into another sort of ready mates, even more ill, fitting the khaki
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uniform of a young British soldier in the Great World War against Germany in nineteen
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fourteen, Annold Domini a magic wand the want of political catastrophe waved to and
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fro over Europe. In the aspect of that world changed, Accumulation gave place
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to destruction, and all the generation of young men I have described as being
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put together from such shops as those one saw in Chips presently went into a
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khaki and fell into ranks and tramped off to the lines of ditches and desolation
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that had extended themselves across Europe. It was a war of holes and barbed
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wire and bombs and big guns, like no war that had ever happened before.
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It was a change of phase in the world model. It was like
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some liquid which has been growing hotter and hotther suddenly beginning to boil, and
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very swiftly boiling over. Or it was like a tobaggon track in the mountains
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when after a long, easy, almost level around, one comes to a
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swift drop and the wild zigzag of downward curves. It was the same old
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downward ran at a dramatic point change of costume. There was an change of
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atmosphere. I can still recall the scared excitements of the August days when the
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war began, and how incredulous we English were when we heard that our own
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little army was being driven back before the German hosts like a splattering kitten pushed
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by a broom, and that the French lions were collapsing. Then came the
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radio of September. At the beginning, we British youngsters had been excited spectators.
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But as the tale of our army's efforts and losses came home to us,
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we crowded to the recruiting offices by thousands and scores of thousands, until
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at last our volunteers could be counted by the million. I went with the
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crowd. It may seem a curious thing to you that I lived through all
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the Great World War against Germany, That I was a soldier in it,
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and was wounded, and went back and took part in the final offensive.
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That my brother Ernest became a sergeant and won a Middle for gallantry, and
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was killed within a few weeks of the concluding armistice, That all the circumstances
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of my life were revolutionized by the war, And that nevertheless, it does
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not come into the story of my life, is a thing of importance in
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itself to that story. As I think of it now, I think of
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the Great World War as a sort of geography or atmospheric fact, like living
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ten miles from your working place, or being married in an apprial shower.
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One would have to travel the ten miles every day, or put up an
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umbrella as one came out of church, But it wouldn't touch what one was
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intimately, or altered in any essential, the living substance of one's life.
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Of course, the World War killed and tortured millions of US, impoverished us
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all, and dislocated the whole world. But that only meant that so many
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millions went out of life, and that there was a fractional increase in everyone's
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anxiety and disorder. It didn't change the nature and passions, the ignorances and
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bad habits of thought of the millions who remained. The World War rose out
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of these ignorances and misconceptions, and it did nothing to alter them. After
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it was all over, the world was a good deal rattled and much shabbier
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than before, but it was still the same old, mean, and haphazard
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world, acquisitive, divided, candidly patriotic, idiotically prolific, duty, disease,
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spiteful and conceited. It has taken two score centuries of research and teaching,
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training, thought and work to make any great alteration in that. I
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admit the outbreak of the World War had a really tremendous air of being an
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end and the beginning. There were great days in it at first, and
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for us British, as much as for any people, we apprehended the thing
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in splendid terms. We thought, quite honestly, I speak of the common
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people, that the imperialism of Central Europe were wholly wrong, and that we
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were wholly right. Hundreds of thousands of us gave ourselves gladly in the sincere
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belief that the new world was to be worn by victory. That spirit was
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not confined to Britain nor to either side in this war. I am convinced
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that the years nineteen fourteen, nineteen fifteen and nineteen sixteen saw finer crops of
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brave and generous deeds and noble sacrifices, of heroic toil and heroic passions than
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any years that ever came beIN in the whole history of mankind, or within
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any of the years that followed. For many centuries, the young people were
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wonderful. Death and honor reaped gloriously among them. And then the inherent unsoundness
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of the issue began to wear through, and that false dawn faded out of
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men's hearts. By the end of nineteen seventeen. The whole world was a
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disillusioned world, with but one hope left, the idealism of the United States
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of America and the still untested greatness of President Wilson. But of that and
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what it came to you read about in the history books, and I will
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not talk about it now. A god in that man's position might have unified
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the world in the twentieth century and saved it centuries of tragic struggle. President
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Wilson was not a god. And I do not think I need to tell
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you very much of the war itself. As I saw it. It was
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a strange phase in human experience, and it was described and painted and photographed
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and put on a record very completely. Most of us have read quite a
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lot about it, except of course, Firefly. You know how human life
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concentrated for four whole years upon the trenches that stretched across Europe on either front
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of Germany. You know how thousands of miles of land were turned into wildernesses
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of mud holes and wire. Nowadays, of course, nobody reads the books
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of the generals and admirals and politicians of that time, and all the official
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war histories sleep the eternal sleep in the vaults of the great libraries. But
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probably you have all read one or two such human books as Enid Pignol's Diary
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without Dates, or Coxwell's Ermitage and the curate or barbous Litheux, or Arthur
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Green's Story of a Prisoner of War, or that curious anthology the war stories
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of Private Thomas Atkins. And probably you have seen photographs and films, and
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also pictures painted by such men as Nevinson and Orpen and Mure head Bone and
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will Rothenstein. All of them, I can certify now are very true books
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and pictures, the tale of desolation passing like the shadow of an eclipse across
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the human scene. But the mind has the power of reducing and effacing every
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sort of impression that drags pain with it. I spent great parts out of
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two years in that noxious gun poked land of haste in hiding, and that
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time now seems less than many days of my peacetime life. I killed two
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men with a bay in it in a trench, and it remains as though
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it was done by someone else and had no significance for me at all.
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I remember much more clearly that I felt very sick when afterwards, I found
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my sleeve saturated with blood, and blood on my hand, and how I
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tried to get it off by rubbing my arm in the sand because there was
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no water to be got in the trenches. Life was hideously uncomfortable and tedious.
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And why it lasted I was, I know, interminably bored by the
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drag of the hours. But all those hours are concentrated now into a record
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of the fact. I remember the shock of the first shell that burst near
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me, and how slowly the smoke and dust unfolded, and how there was
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a redness in the smoke, and how for a time it blotted out the
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light. The shell burst in a field of yellow flowering weeds and stubble against
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the sun. But I do not recall what preceded it, nor what for
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it. Shellbursts rattled me more and more as the war went on, but
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they left weaker and weaker pictures. One of my most vivid memories of that
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time is the excitement of my first leave from the front, and how my
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party arrived at Victoria Station and were guided in a clattering throng to a sort
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of transport train called the underground Railway by elderly volunteers wearing brasserts. I was
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still muddy from the trenches. There had been no time for a wash and
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a brush up, and I was carrying my rifle and other gear. We
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crowded into a brightly lit first class carriage, in which were a number of
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people and even dress who were going out to dinner and to the theater.
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There couldn't have been more vivid contrast if I had seen Firefly there, in
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all her loveliness. There was one young man, not much older than myself,
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between two gorgeously dressed women. He had a little white bow under his
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pink chin and a silk neck wrap. He had a black cloak with a
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cape and an opera head. I suppose he was an invalid, but he
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looked as fit as I. I felt a momentary impulse to say something humulating
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to him. I don't think I did. I do not remember that I
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did. But I looked at him, and then at the brown stain on
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my sleeve, and the wonder of life possessed me. No I said nothing.
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I was in a state of intense exhilaration. The other fellow were gay
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and inclined to be noisy. One or two were a little drunk, But
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I was quietly exalted. I seemed to be hearing and seeing and perceiving with
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such an acuteness as I had never known before. Fanny I should see on
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the morrow, But that evening I hoped to see Headie Marcus, with whom
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I was in love. I was in love with her with an intensity that
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only soldier boys who had been living in the mud of Flanders for half a
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year could understand. Part two, How asked Sarnak, Can I make you
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see HEADI Marcus, dark eyed, warm skinned, wayward and fragile, who
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brought me to love and death two thousand years ago? In a way,
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she was like Sunray. Here was of her type. She had the same
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darkness in her eyes, the same still bearing. She was like Sunray's hungry
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sister, with a touch of fire in her blood. Yes, and she
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had those same stumpy little fingers. Look at them. I met her on
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those very downs. I used to walk over with my father when I was
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a boy, to steal the produce from Lord Bramble's gardens. I had a
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short leave before I was drafted to France, and I did not spend it
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in London with Matilda Good and Fanny, as you may think I should have
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done. But I went with three other youngsters who had enough money to do
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so, to Cliffstone. I don't know whether I can make it clear to
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you why I went to Cliffstone. I was excited at the thought of going
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into the actual warfare. I meant to do brave and wonderful things over there.
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But also I was terribly overshadowed by the thought that I might be killed.
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I did not think of wounds or suffering. I do not think I
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feared those things at all. But I had a profound dread and hatred of
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extinction before ever I had fully lived, before I had ever tasted many of
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the most alluring things in life. I had always promised myself love and great
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adventures with women, and I was passionately distressed at the possibility of being cheated
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of those intensities. All of young innocence were in the same case. It
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was I who had thought of Cliffstone nearer to our training camp, with its
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band and promenade and its fleeting glancing girls. There, if anywhere, it
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seemed to me, we must snatch something from life before the great shells splashed
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us to pieces, and the clay of Flanders devoured us. We sneaked off
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from our families, with those fires of protesting romance in our brains and veins.
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You cannot imagine how many millions of leads they were in Europe, then,
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pitifully eager not to miss altogether the secret and magic experiences of love before
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they died. I cannot tell you of the pothouses and prostitutes that lay in
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wait for us, all of the gaunt moonlight on the beach. I cannot
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tell you of temptation and ignorance and disease. It's too ugly to tell you.
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Such things are past and done with, and men suffer them no more.
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We groped in darkness, where now men walk in the light. One
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of my mates had an ugly misadventure. All had ugly experiences, and I
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escaped by chance, rather than any merit of my own, from those slowly
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snares. I was, for a moment fastidious, and I recoiled. And
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I had not drunken as the others had, because some streak of pride in
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me had made me habitually weary with drink. But I was in a storm
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of excitements and distresses. I was slipping into the pit, though I hated
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it, and to escape it, I set myself to revive my memories of
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the days when I was a boy. I went to Cherry Gardens to see
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the old home, and then to my father's grave. It was neat and
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pretty with Fanny's money. And then I determined to walk over the downs to
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recall if I could, something of the wonder that I had felt when first
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I went over them to Chasing Hanger. And also, if you understand me,
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I felt love and the romance would be there. I hadn't abandoned the
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quest that had brought me to Cliffstone. I had only jumped a foul ditch
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on my way. When I was a child, I had supposed heaven was
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over the downs, and certainly the golden sumwher sense its were. It seemed
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natural to turn my back on a cliff stone and go up into the only
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really lovely country I had ever known. If I wanted to find romance,
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and I found it. I was thrilled, but not a bit surprised when
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I saw Heady a pair over the skylon of the hill and come right over
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the brow and stand with her hands behind her back, and the sun shining
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on her hair, looking out across the woods and corn fields to breathe,
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and the distant marshes and the sea. She had taken her head off and
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was holding it behind her. She wore an ivory colored silk blouse, very
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open at the neck, and it was just as though you could see her
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body through the flimsy stuff. She dropped into a sitting position, now looking
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at her world, and now plucking at the little dwarfish flowers in the downland
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turf. I stood for a time agape at her. Then my whole being
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was filled with a tremulous resolve to talk to her. My path curled up
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the slope and carried me over the shoulder of the hill, not very far
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from her. I followed it, stopping ever and again as if to look
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at the land and see below, until it brought me as near to her
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as it could. And then I left it, and with a clumsy affectation
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of carelessness, strolled up to the summit until I stood beside her, and
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about six yards away. I pretended not to observe her. I clenched my
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hands to keep myself control. She had become aware of me, and she
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was quite motionless, now sitting up and looking at me. But she did
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not seem in the least dismayed your fine face. She had sun ray and
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your dark eyes. And I have never known anyone, not even you,
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who could keep a face so still, not rigid or hard or staring.
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It was, but quietly, profoundly still, like a face in some beautiful
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picture. I was all a tremble, My heart was beating fast, but
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I kept my wits about me. Was there avery lovelier view? I said,
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I suppose that bit of blue there that looks like a raft where the
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water shines, I suppose that tenseness. She did not answer for what seemed
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a long time. She surveyed me with an unfathomable expression. Then she spoke,
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And as she spoke she smiled. You know that dangeness as well as
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I do. I smiled at her smile. Shy pretenses were not for her.
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I came a step or so nearer, with a conversational air. I
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have known this view, I said, since I was a boy of ten.
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But I didn't know anyone else said any value upon it, nor I
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she said. I came to look at it, perhaps for the last time.
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She vouchsafed. I'm going away. I'm going away too. Over there,
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she asked, and nodded her head to where the land of France hung
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like a cloud in the sky. In a week or so, I'll get
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to France too, but not so soon as a week or two. But
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I'm going into the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, and I know I shall get
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over there at last. I join up tomorrow. How can one stay at
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home with all you boys out there getting She was going to say, getting
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killed, but she caught the word back and finished it with getting into all
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sorts of danger and trouble. One has to go, I said. She
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looked at me with her head a little on one side. Tell me,
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she said, do you want to go? Not a bit? I hate
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the whole monstrous business, but there is no way out. The Germans have
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put it on us and we have to go through with it. That was
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how we all saw it in England during the war. But I wan't stop
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now to argue what really caused a war that ended two thousand years ago.
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The Germans put it on us. I hate going. I wanted to go
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on with the work I was doing. Now everything is upset, everything she
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said, and thought for some moments I had going too. She said.
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It drags on week after week, months after months, I complained, the
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boredom of it, the drills, the salutes, the silly little officers.
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If only they would take us and raffle us and kill us and have done
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with it, so that we could either die or go home and do something
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sensible. My life is being wasted. I have been in the machine a
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year, and I've only got thus far on my way to France. When
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I see a German soldier at last, I shall want to kiss him.
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I shall be so glad. But either I shall kill him or he will
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kill me, and that will be the end of the story. And yet
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one can't keep out of it, she said. And there's something tremendous about
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it. She went on. Once or twice I have been up here when
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there were air raids. I live quite close here. These air raids get
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more and more frequent nowadays. I don't know what they are coming to.
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You see the searchlights now every night, waving like the arms of a drunken
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man all over the sky. But before that you hear the pheasants in the
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woods, clacking and crying. They always hear it first. Other birds take
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it up. They cry and twitter, and then far away the guns begin
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rumbling, at first a little sound pot then like a wolf of a horse
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dog, and then one gun after another picks it up as the raid comes
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nearer. Sometimes you can catch the whirr of the engines of the gothas.
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There is a great gun behind a farmhouse. Wait there, and you wait
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for that, and when it fires, it hits you on the chest.
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Hardly anything is to be seen except the searchlights. There is a little flicker
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in the sky and star shells. But the gun's right. It's made,
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but its immense. It takes you. Either you are wild with fright,
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or you are wild with excitement. I can't sleep. I woke about my
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room and long to be out. Twice I've gone out into the night,
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into the moonlight, with everything a quiver, gone for long walks. Once
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shrapnel fell in our orchards with a hiss like rain. It dripped the bark
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of the apple trees and tore off twigs and branches, and killed a hedgehog.
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I found the little wrege in the morning, nearly cut in two death
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haphazard. I don't mind the death and danger so much. But it's the
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in the world I can't endure. Even in the daytime. Sometimes you can't
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quite hear them, but you can feel the guns over beyond there. Our
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old servant, she said, believes it's the end of the world for us.
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It may be, I said. She made no answer. I looked
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at her face, and my imagination right. I began to talk with a
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bear. Simplicity such as we rarely attained in that shy and entangled age.
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But my heart was beating fast. For years, I said, I have
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dreamt of the love of a girl. It was to have been the crown
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of life. I have saved myself up for it. I have had a
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friend or so, but it wasn't love. Now I'm near to going out
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there. It's only a few days before I go over there to whatever is
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waiting for me. And when it seems beyond hope, I come upon someone.
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Don't think me mad, Please don't think I'm lying. I'm in love
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with you, Indeed I am. You seem altogether beautiful to me, your
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voice, your eyes, everything, I could worship you. I couldn't say
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a word more For a moment or so. I rolled over on the turf
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and looked her in the face. I'm sorry, I said, I'm silly,
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young Tommy suddenly in love, oh, desperately in love. Her grave
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face regarded me. She did not look frightened or disconcerted. Perhaps her heart
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beat faster than I thought, But her voice when she spoke was constrained.
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Why are you talking like that? You've just met me? How can you
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love me? It isn't possible people should love like this. I've seen you
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long enough. I could not talk. I met her eyes, her dropped
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before mine, the warm color mounted to her cheeks. She beat her lips.
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You, she said, in a low voice. Are just in love
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with love? Anyhow? I am in love, I said. She plucked
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a spray of mined flowers and forgot it in her hand. This is your
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last day, she asked. It made my heart beat faster. It may
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be my last altogether for this sort of thing. Who can tell for a
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long time anyhow? Why should it hurt you to let me love you today?
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Why shouldn't you be kind to me? Civil to me? Anyhow?
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I don't ask for so very much. If suppose we went for a walk
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together, just a long walk. If we spend most of day together,
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somewhere we might get something to eat, she said, consider me gravely.
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Suppose I did, she said, as if to herself. Suppose I did,
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What harm could it do? You? What harm could it do?
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She repeated, with her eyes on mine. If I had been older and
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more experienced, I might have known from her warm, flushed face and her
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dark eyes that she too was in love with love that day, and that
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our encounter was as exciting for her as for me. Suddenly she smiled,
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She showed herself for an instant as ready as myself. Her constraint had vanished.
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I'll come, she decided, and rose with an effortless ease to her
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feet, and then, at my eager movement as I sprang up for her.
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But you'll have to be good. You know. It's just a walk
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and a talk. Why shouldn't we if we keep away from the village End
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of section eighteen.