The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

Coldly: in time, and in the ceaseless effort to answer them as strength returned and as he was encouraged to get up and walk the ward, he found himself thinking, nay, forced himself to think, of Mr. Puddlebox without emotion: without emotion watching that very scene upon the ledge, that drop into the water, that lumped-up body bobbing round the cliff. For him! Was he worth it? No, not worthy it in any degree. Had he done anything to deserve it? He had done nothing. Narrowly, coldly, he searched every moment of his days in Mr. Puddlebox's company. There was not one revealed a single action, even a single thought, that might give claim to such a sacrifice. Far from it! Consciously and actively and intentionally he had lived in all that period for himself alone. Till then he had devoted all his life to others. Through all the time thereafter it had been his aim to live for himself—to care for no one's feelings, himself to have no feelings: simply to do things, simply to inflict upon his body whatsoever recklessness his mind conceived: through his body experience it, in his mind never to be touched by it. Whatever suffering it had caused him, gleefully he had relished. But Mr. Puddlebox also it had caused suffering and discomfort, and Mr. Puddlebox had not relished it at all: very much the reverse. What claim then had he on Mr. Puddlebox's affections?

Affections! What had affections to do with such a case? Admit affections—God alone knew why, but admit that the companionship of their many days together, their many adventures, experiences, had aroused common affection in Mr. Puddlebox. Admit that you scarcely could live with a man day by day, night by night, hour by hour, without of two results one: hating him and leaving him, or becoming accustomed to him and accepting him. That might arouse affections, just as affections might be aroused by any inanimate thing always carried: a stick, a penknife, a comfortable old coat. Admit affections then: what had affection to do with accepting that dreadful death—or any death? That was more than affection. That was as much more than affection as a mountain a hill, an ocean a stream. That was love: nay, that was love's very apotheosis. Ridiculous, outrageous to imagine for himself in Mr. Puddlebox any love: how much more preposterous love in that degree! Preposterous, ridiculous—then why? Leave it—ah, leave it, leave it, and come to How. Think of it coldly. Divorce emotion from its searching and coldly examine How. How had Mr. Puddlebox gone to such a death? What found within himself, what quality possessed, to swing him off his hands and go, and drown, and die? Courage? Be cold, be cruel, be sane! Courage? Puddlebox had no courage. Carelessness of life? He was very fond of life. Look at the man! Remember him, not as he died, but in his grotesque personality as he lived. Consider his idle, slothful habit of mind and of body. Recall his dislike of work, of any hardship. Look at his ideal of comfort—to shuffle about the countryside doing nothing; to have food to eat; to get comfortably drunk. How in such character the courage to die so suddenly, so horribly? How? Lo, How was more impossible than Why. Nay, How was Why. What but supremest love could have invested him with strength to go to such a death? What but divinest love to conceive of such a sacrifice? And love was out of consideration. Useless to try to delude these questions with: "He must have loved me." Clear that he could not have. Then why? Then done by possession of what attribute? Was there some quality in life unknown to Mr. Wriford?

II

Ah, was there? That same question, a barrier insurmountable, a void dark, boundless, unfathomable, similar to that which ended his questioning of Mr. Puddlebox's sacrifice, ended also his searching along another train of thought which, as he grew stronger, more and more closely occupied him—inquiry relative to his own condition. He had had a shot at life. He had cast aside every bond, every scruple, every fear, every habit, which formerly—as he had thought—had tied him up in misery. That phase was over. It attracted no more. He had longed to do it; he had done it. What profit? He was very weak. He found that there had passed out of him with the vigour of his body the violent desire to make his body do and feel and suffer. Vigour would return. He would grow stronger. Daily already he was regaining strength. But that desire never would return. It had been exorcised. It had been fulfilled. When he was in London, when he was in all the tumult of that London life, he had thought—God! if only he could break away from it all! break away and rest his mind and bring the labour of living from his head to his hands, from his brain to his body! He had imagined his hands hard, his body sweating, his mind free, and he had thought: "God, God, there, there, could I but get at it, lies, not the labour of living, but the joy of living!" Well, he had got at it. He had done it. Horny and hard he had made his hands; sore and asweat he had wearied his body. What profit? He had wanted to do things—things arduous, reckless, violent. He had done them. What benefit? He had wanted to care for nobody and nothing, to mind nobody's feelings, to have none himself. He had done it. He had wantonly insulted, he had wilfully outraged; he had mastered fear, he had stifled moral consciousness. What virtue? Look back upon it! That which he had desired to do he had done. He had seized the course where labour of living should be made joy of living. He had run it to the uttermost. Mad dog—he had lived, as he had wished to live, a mad dog life, impervious to all sensation, moral or physical. No qualm, no scruple, no thought, no fear had checked him. He had drunk of it full and drunk of it deep. What profit? Soul, soul, look back with me and see where we have come! In the old life never free. In the new life utterly free. In the old responsible. Utterly irresponsible in the new. In the old tied up—tied up, that had been his cry. In the new released. What profit? In the old assured that happiness lay in the new. Now the new tried, and happiness still to seek—nay, happiness more lost, more deeply hidden than ever before. Then it had seemed to lie in freedom; now freedom had been searched and it was not. Where then? Was there some secret of happiness that he had missed?

Suppose he were strong again. Imagine the few weeks passed that would return him his strength and let him leave this place. Would he go back to the wild things, the reckless things, the schooling of his body by exposure to pain, to hunger, to fatigue? No, for it had been tried. No, for he had tasted it and was nothing attracted to taste of it again. Was he afraid of its hurts? No, impervious to them, minding them not at all. But he had exulted in them, he had been exalted by them. He had believed they were leading somewhere. Ah, here he was looking back upon them, and he knew that they led nowhere. He had come through them, and he found himself come through empty. They might fall about him again when he was strong and went out to them—they might fall about him, but they would arouse nothing in him. He might once again challenge them and cause them furiously to assail him. He would know while he did so and while they scourged him that they were barren of virtue, empty, dry as ashes, profitless, containing nothing, concealing nothing.

Where stood he? Where? Look, in the old days he had been slave of his mind, hounded by his brain. He had cast that away. He had escaped from it. Look, in the new he had turned for joy of living to his body and had mastered his body and all his fears and all his thoughts. He had lived through two lives—life that was not his own but given to others; life that was all his own and to none but himself belonged. Fruitless both. Was there some secret of happiness that he had missed?

III

Ah, was there? This, as the new year broke its bonds, displaced all other thoughts, became Mr. Wriford's sole obsession. Was there something in life that he had missed? He was able now to take exercise daily in the Infirmary grounds. He would go on these occasions to its furthest recesses. His desire was to escape the other inmates of the convalescent ward; to be alone; to get away where in solitude he could pursue the question that ceaselessly he revolved: Was there some secret of happiness that he had missed? He brought, he could bring, no train of sequent reasoning to its investigation. He merely brooded upon it. He merely reviewed life as he had known it, saw how it had crumbled at every step, and how it crumbled anew at every re-examination of it, and wondered vaguely was there some quality might have been brought into it to cement it into a stable bridge that would have borne him cheerily upraised upon it, something that might yet be found—something that he had missed? And often, as his review carried him searching along the period of Mr. Puddlebox, wondered vaguely whether the final question of that sacrifice was related to this final question of himself. Had Mr. Puddlebox some quality unknown to him? Was there something in life that he himself had missed? Were the two questions one question? Was there one answer that should supply both answers?

IV

Daily, walking in the grounds or watching from the windows, he watched the new year struggling from her bonds. He came to greet her in all her different moods as a sentient creature—to envisage her as one in like situation to his own. She was struggling for freedom—nay, not for freedom, but for her own possession. The old year had her. In winter's guise he held her. Sometimes she escaped him, sometimes she was laughing all about and everywhere, a young thing, a wild thing, a timid thing. For three days together she would so reign, smiling, fluttering, free. Then winter snatched her back, overlaid her, jealously crushed her in his iron bonds. Sometimes she wept. Sometimes here and there she ran and laid her pretty trinkets on branch and bough and hedge. Winter would out and catch her, drag her away, despoil all her little traces. Sometimes she fought him. Sometimes as she smiled, as she danced, as she bedecked herself, winter would come shouting, blustering, threatening. A bonny sight to see her hold her own! Bolder she grew, weaker he. He had his moments. She sulked, she cried, she pouted, then laughingly she tricked him. Here he would catch her. Look, there she was away! Here tear up her handiwork: look, there her fingers ran! His legions sank exhausted: she laughed and called her own. Warmly, timidly, fragrantly her breezes moved about her; greenly, freshly, radiantly she smiled to their caress. They piped, she danced. She was out, she was free. She was high upon the hillside, she was deep within the valley, she was painting in the hedgerows, she was piping in the trees.