So this time he'd asked himself right out, what he really wanted and needed in life, and he'd been ready, honestly ready, to take any answer he got, and dree his weird accordingly, as the best thing for everybody concerned, as the only honest thing, as the only thing that would put any bed-rock under him, as what Marise would want him to do. If it meant tramp-steamers, why it had to be tramp-steamers. Something could be managed for Marise and the children.
This was what he had asked. And what answer had he got? Why, of course, he hankered for the double-jointed, lawless freedom that the tramp-steamer stood for. He guessed everybody wanted that, more or less. But he wanted Marise and the children a damn sight more. And not only Marise and the children. He hadn't let himself lay it all on their backs, and play the martyr's rôle of the forcibly domesticated wild male. No, he wanted the life he had, outside the family, his own line of work; he wanted the sureness of it, the coherence of it, the permanence of it, the clear conscience he had about what he was doing in the world, the knowledge that he was creating something, helping men to use the natural resources of the world without exploiting either the natural resources or the men; he wanted the sense of deserved power over other human beings. That was what he really wanted most of all. You could call it smug and safe and bourgeois if you liked. But the plain fact remained that it had more of what really counted for him than any other life he could see possible. And when he looked at it, hard, with his eyes open, why the tramp-steamer to China sailed out of school-boy theatrical clouds and showed herself for the shabby, sordid little substitute for a real life she would have been to him.
He'd have liked to have that too, of course. You'd _like_ to have everything! But you can't. And it is only immature boys who whimper because you can't have your cake and eat it too. That was all there was to that.
What he had dug for was to find his deepest and most permanent desires, and when he had found them, he'd come home with a happy heart.
It even seemed to him that he had been happier and quieter than before. Well, maybe Marise's metaphor had something in it, for all it was so flowery and high-falutin. Maybe she would say that what he had done was exactly what she'd described, to dig it under the ground and let it fertilize and enrich his life.