in heart-throbbing retreat. Yet terrible as was the danger we incurred,
the attraction of peeping was for both of us irresistible. And I recall
now with a sort of wonder that, in spite of the infinite danger in
which we were between starvation and a still more terrible death, we
could yet struggle bitterly for that horrible privilege of sight. We
would race across the kitchen in a grotesque way between eagerness and
the dread of making a noise, and strike each other, and thrust and
kick, within a few inches of exposure.
The fact is that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and habits
of thought and action, and our danger and isolation only accentuated
the incompatibility. At Halliford I had already come to hate the
curate s trick of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity of mind.
His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I made to think
out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent up and
intensified, almost to the verge of craziness. He was as lacking in
restraint as a silly woman. He would weep for hours together, and I
verily believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life thought
his weak tears in some way efficacious. And I would sit in the darkness
unable to keep my mind off him by reason of his importunities. He ate
more than I did, and it was in vain I pointed out that our only chance
of life was to stop in the house until the Martians had done with their
pit, that in that long patience a time might presently come when we
should need food. He ate and drank impulsively in heavy meals at long
intervals. He slept little.
As the days wore on, his utter carelessness of any consideration so
intensified our distress and danger that I had, much as I loathed doing
it, to resort to threats, and at last to blows. That brought him to
reason for a time. But he was one of those weak creatures, void of
pride, timorous, an mic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who
face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves.
It is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but I set
them down that my story may lack nothing. Those who have escaped the
dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash of
rage in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what is
wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to tortured men. But
those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to
elemental things, will have a wider charity.
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