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The Passionate Friends Chapter 11 - The Last Meeting Parts 1-6 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter eleven, Parts one to six of The Passionate Friends
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Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells. This LibriVox recording is in the
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Speaker 1: public domain recording by Peter Eastman, chapter the eleventh, the
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Speaker 1: last meeting one. In the summer of nineteen eleven, immediately
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Speaker 1: after the coronation of King George, there came one of
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Speaker 1: those storms of international suspicion that ever and again threatened
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Speaker 1: Europe with war. It seems to have been brewed by
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Speaker 1: some German adepts at Veldt politic, those privileged makers of
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Speaker 1: giant bombs, who sit at the ears of foreign ministers,
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Speaker 1: suggesting idiotic wickedness. And it was brewed with a sublime
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Speaker 1: ignorance of nearly every reality. In the case, a German warship,
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Speaker 1: without a word of notice, seized Agadeer on the Atlantic
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Speaker 1: coast of Morocco. Within the regions reserved to French influence.
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Speaker 1: An English demand for explanations was uncivilly disregarded, and England
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Speaker 1: and France, and presently Germany began vigorous preparations for war.
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Speaker 1: All over the world. It was supposed that Germany had
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Speaker 1: at last flung down the gauntlet. In England, the war
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Speaker 1: party was only too eager to grasp what it considered
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Speaker 1: to be a magnificent opportunity. Heaven knows what the Germans
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Speaker 1: had hoped or intended by their remarkable coup. The amazing
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Speaker 1: thing to note is that they were not prepared to fight.
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Speaker 1: They had not even the necessary money ready, and they
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Speaker 1: could not get it. They had perhaps never intended to fight.
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Speaker 1: And the autumn saw the danger disperse again into diplomatic
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Speaker 1: bickerings and insincerely pacific professions. But in the high summer
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Speaker 1: the danger had not dispersed, and in common with every
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Speaker 1: reasonable man, I found myself on nder the shadow of
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Speaker 1: an impending catastrophe that would have been none the less
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Speaker 1: gigantic and tragic because it was an imbecility. It was
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Speaker 1: an occasion when everyone needs must act, however trivially disproportionate
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Speaker 1: his action may be to the danger. I cabled getting
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Speaker 1: who was in America to get together whatever influences were
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Speaker 1: available there upon the side of Pacific intervention, and I
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Speaker 1: set such British organs as I could control or approach
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Speaker 1: in the same direction. It seemed probable that Italy would
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Speaker 1: be drawn into any conflict that might ensue. It happened
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Speaker 1: that there was to be a conference of peace societies
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Speaker 1: in Milan early in September, and thither I decided to
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Speaker 1: go in the not very certain hope that out of
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Speaker 1: that assemblage some form of European protest might be evolved.
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Speaker 1: That August I was very much run down. I had
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Speaker 1: been staying in London through almost intolerably hot weather to
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Speaker 1: attend a race's congress that had greatly disappointed me. I
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Speaker 1: don't know particularly now why I had been disappointed, nor
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Speaker 1: how far the feeling was due to my being generally
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Speaker 1: run down by the pressure of detailed work and the
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Speaker 1: stress of thinking about large subjects in little scraps of time.
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Speaker 1: But I know that a kind of despair came over
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Speaker 1: me as I sacked and looked at that multicolored assembly,
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Speaker 1: and heard, in succession the heavy platitudes of white men,
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Speaker 1: the slick, thin cleverness of Hindus, the rich toned, florid
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Speaker 1: rhetoric of Negroes. I lost sight of any germ of
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Speaker 1: splendid possibility in all those people, and saw all too
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Speaker 1: plainly the vanity, the jealousy, the self interests that show
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Speaker 1: up so harshly against the professions of every ultrusts moment,
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Speaker 1: it seemed all such a windy business against the firm prejudices,
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Speaker 1: the vast accumulated interests that grind race against race. We
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Speaker 1: had no common purpose at all at that conference, no
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Speaker 1: proposal to hold us together. So much of it was
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Speaker 1: like bleeding on a hill side. I wanted a holiday badly,
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Speaker 1: and then came this war crisis, and I felt unable
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Speaker 1: to go away for any length of time. Even bleeding,
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Speaker 1: it seemed to me, was better than acquiesce in a
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Speaker 1: crime against humanity. So to get heart to bleat at Milan,
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Speaker 1: I snatched at ten days in the Swiss mountains en route.
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Speaker 1: A tour with some taciturn guide involving a few middling
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Speaker 1: climes and glacier excursions seemed the best way of recuperating.
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Speaker 1: I had never had any time for Switzerland since my
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Speaker 1: friend exile there years ago. I took the advice of
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Speaker 1: a man in the club whose name I now forget,
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Speaker 1: if ever I knew it, a dark man with a scar,
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Speaker 1: and went up to the Schwarzegut above Grindelwaldt and over
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Speaker 1: the straw Leg to the Grimsel. I had never been
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Speaker 1: up into the central mass of the Bernese Oberland before,
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Speaker 1: and I was amazed and extraordinarily delighted by the vast,
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Speaker 1: lonely beauty of those interminable uplands of ice. I wished
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Speaker 1: I could have lingered up there, but that is the
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Speaker 1: tragedy of those sunlit desolations. One may not stay. One
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Speaker 1: sees and exclaims, and then looks at a watch. I
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Speaker 1: wonder no one has ever taken an Arctic equipment up
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Speaker 1: into that wilderness and had a good healing spell of
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Speaker 1: lonely exultation. I found the descent from the Strawleg as
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Speaker 1: much of a climb as I I was disposed to undertake.
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Speaker 1: For an hour, we were coming down frozen snow that
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Speaker 1: wasn't so much a slope as a slightly inclined precipice.
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Speaker 1: From the Grimsel, I went over the Rhone Glacier to
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Speaker 1: the inn on the Furka Pass, and then, paying off
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Speaker 1: my guide and becoming frankly a pedestrian, I made my
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Speaker 1: way round by the Schullenen Gorge to Goskanen and over
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Speaker 1: the Sustan Yach to the Sustan Pass and Stein, meaning
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Speaker 1: to descend to Meyringen, but I still had four days
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Speaker 1: before I went on to Italy, and so I decided
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Speaker 1: to take one more mountain. I slept at the stein
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Speaker 1: Inn and started in the morning to do that agreeable
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Speaker 1: first mountain of all the Titlis, whose shining genial head
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Speaker 1: attracted me. I did not think a guide necessary, but
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Speaker 1: a boy took me up by a track near Godman
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Speaker 1: and left me to my ziegried map. Some way up
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Speaker 1: the great ridge of rocks that overlooks the Youngst len Alp,
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Speaker 1: I a little overestimated my mountaineering, and it came about
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Speaker 1: that I was benighted while I was still high above
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Speaker 1: the Yak Pass. On my descent. Some of this was
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Speaker 1: steep and needed caution. I had to come down slowly
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Speaker 1: with my folding lantern, in which a reluctant candle went
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Speaker 1: out at regular intervals, and I did not reach the
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Speaker 1: little inn at angstlen Alp until long after eleven at night.
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Speaker 1: By that time I was very tired and hungry. They
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Speaker 1: told me I was lucky to get a room. Only
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Speaker 1: one stood vacant. I should certainly not have enjoyed sleeping
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Speaker 1: on a billiard table after my day's work, and I
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Speaker 1: ate a hearty supper smoked for a time meditated emptily
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Speaker 1: and went wearily to bed, but I could not sleep.
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Speaker 1: Usually I am a good sleeper, but ever and again,
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Speaker 1: when I have been working too closely or over exerting myself,
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Speaker 1: I have spells of wakefulness. And that night, after perhaps
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Speaker 1: an hour's heavy slumber, I became thinly alert and very
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Speaker 1: weary in body and spirit. And I do not think
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Speaker 1: I slept again. The pain in my leg that the
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Speaker 1: panther had torn had been revived by the day's exertion.
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Speaker 1: For the greater part of my life, insomnia has not
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Speaker 1: been disagreeable to me. In the night, in the stillness,
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Speaker 1: one has a kind of detachment from reality. One floats
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Speaker 1: there without light, without weight, feeling very little of one's body.
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Speaker 1: One has a certain disembodiment, and one can achieve a
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Speaker 1: magnanimity of thought forgiveness and self forgetfulness that are impossible
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Speaker 1: while the body clamors upon one's senses. But that night,
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Speaker 1: because I suppose I was so profoundly fatigued, I was
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Speaker 1: me melancholy and desponded. I could feel again the weight
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Speaker 1: of the great beast upon me as he clawed me down,
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Speaker 1: and I clung desperately in that interminable instant before he
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Speaker 1: lost his hold. Yes, I was extraordinarily wretched that night.
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Speaker 1: I was filled with self contempt and self disgust. I
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Speaker 1: felt that I was utterly weak and vain, and all
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Speaker 1: the pretensions and effort of my life mere florid, fruitless pretensions,
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Speaker 1: and nothing more. I had lost all control over my mind.
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Speaker 1: Things that had seemed secondary before became primary. Difficult things
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Speaker 1: became impossible things. I had been greatly impeded and irritated
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Speaker 1: in London by the maneuvers of a number of people
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Speaker 1: who were anxious to make capital out of the crisis,
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Speaker 1: self advertising, people who wanted at any cost to be
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Speaker 1: lifted into a position of unique protest. You see that
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Speaker 1: unfortunate Nobel prize has turned the advocacy of peace into
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Speaker 1: a highly speculative profession. The qualification for the winner is
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Speaker 1: so vaguely defined that a vast multitude of voluntary idealists
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Speaker 1: has been created, and has still greater number diverted from
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Speaker 1: the unendowed pursuit of human welfare in other directions. Such
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Speaker 1: a man as myself, who is known to command a
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Speaker 1: considerable publicity, is necessarily a prey to those moral entrepreneurs
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Speaker 1: all sorts of ridiculous and petty incidents had forced the
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Speaker 1: side of public effort upon me. But hitherto I had
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Speaker 1: been able to say, with a laugh for sigh, as
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Speaker 1: the case warranted so much as dear old humanity and
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Speaker 1: all of us, and to remember the great residuum of
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Speaker 1: nobility that remained. Now that last safing consideration refused to
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Speaker 1: be credible, I lay with my body and my mind
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Speaker 1: in pain, thinking these people, over thinking myself, over too,
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Speaker 1: with the rest of my associates, thinking drearily and weakly,
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Speaker 1: recalling spites, dishonesties and vanities, feuds and absurdities, until I
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Speaker 1: was near persuaded that all my dreams of wider human understandings,
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Speaker 1: of great ends, beyond the immediate aims and passions of
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Speaker 1: common everyday lives, could be at best no more than
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Speaker 1: the refuge of shy and weak and ineffective people from
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Speaker 1: the failure of their personal lives. We idealists are not
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Speaker 1: jolly people, not honest, simple people, the strain tells upon us,
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Speaker 1: even to ourselves, we are unappetizing, aren't the burly bellowing
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Speaker 1: fellows after all, rider with their simple natural hostility to
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Speaker 1: everything foreign, their valiant hatred of everything unlike themselves, their
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Speaker 1: contempt for aspiring weakness, their beer and lush sentiment. They're
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Speaker 1: here to day and gone tomorrow, can viviality and fellowship
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Speaker 1: good fellows, while we others, lost in filmy speculations, in
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Speaker 1: moon and star snaring and the chase of dreams, stumble
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Speaker 1: where even they walk upright. You know, I have never
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Speaker 1: quite believed in myself, never quite believed in my work
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Speaker 1: or my religion. So it has always been with me,
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Speaker 1: and always I suppose will be. I know I am purblind.
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Speaker 1: I know I do not see my way clearly, nor
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Speaker 1: very far I have to do with things imperfectly apprehended.
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Speaker 1: I cannot cheat my mind away from these convictions. I
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Speaker 1: have a sort of hesitation of the soul, as other
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Speaker 1: men have a limp in their gait. God, I suppose,
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Speaker 1: has a need for lame men. God, I suppose, has
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Speaker 1: a need for blind men and fearful and doubting men,
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Speaker 1: and does not intend life to be altogether swallowed up
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Speaker 1: in staring sight. Some things are to be reached best
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Speaker 1: by a hearing that is not distracted by any clearer senses.
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Speaker 1: But so it is with me, and this is the
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Speaker 1: innermost secret I have to tell you. I go on
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Speaker 1: valiantly for the most part, I know, but despair is
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Speaker 1: always near to me in the common hours of my life.
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Speaker 1: It is as near as a shark may be near
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Speaker 1: a sleeper in a ship. The thin, effectual plank of
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Speaker 1: my deliberate faith keeps me secure. But in these rare
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Speaker 1: distresses of the darkness, the plank seems to become transparent,
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Speaker 1: to be on the verge of dissolution. A sense of
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Speaker 1: life as of an abysmal flood, full of cruelty, densely feudle,
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Speaker 1: blackly aimless, penetrates my defenses. I don't think I can
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Speaker 1: call these stumblings from conviction unbelief. The limping man walks
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Speaker 1: for all his limping, and I go on in spite
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Speaker 1: of my falls. Though he slay me, Yet will I
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Speaker 1: trust in him? I fell into an inconsecutive review of
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Speaker 1: my life under this light that touched every endeavor with
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Speaker 1: the pale tints of failure. And as that flow of
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Speaker 1: melancholy reflection went on, it was shot more and more
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Speaker 1: frequently with thoughts of Mary. It was not a discursive
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Speaker 1: thinking about Mary, but a definite, fixed direction of thought
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Speaker 1: towards her. I had not so thought of her for
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Speaker 1: many years. I wanted her, I felt, to come to
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Speaker 1: me and help me out of this distressful pit into
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Speaker 1: which my spirit had fallen. I believed she could. I
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Speaker 1: perceived our separation as an irreparable loss. She had a harder,
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Speaker 1: clearer quality than I, a more assured courage, a readier,
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Speaker 1: surer movement of the mind. Always she had lift for me.
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Speaker 1: And then I had a curious impression that I had
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Speaker 1: heard her voice calling my name, as one might call
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Speaker 1: out in one sleep. I dismissed it as an illusion,
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Speaker 1: and then I heard it again so clearly that I
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Speaker 1: sat up and listened breathless. Mixed up with all this
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Speaker 1: was the intolerable uproar and talking of a little cascade
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Speaker 1: not fifty yards from the hotel. It is curious how
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Speaker 1: distressing that clamour of running water, which is so characteristic
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Speaker 1: of the Alpine night, can become at last. Those sounds
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Speaker 1: can take the likeness of any voice. Whatever the water,
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Speaker 1: I decided had called to me, and now it mocked
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Speaker 1: and laughed at me. The next morning, I descended at
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Speaker 1: some late hour by Swiss reckoning, and discovered two ladies
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Speaker 1: in the morning sunlight, awaiting breakfast at a little green table.
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Speaker 1: One rose slowly at the side of me, and stood
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Speaker 1: and surveyed me with a glad amazement. Two. There she stood,
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Speaker 1: real and solid, a little unfamiliar in her tweeds, and
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Speaker 1: with her shining eyes, intimate and unforgettable, as though I
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Speaker 1: had never ceased to see them for all those intervening years,
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Speaker 1: and bracing us both and holding back our emotion, was
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Speaker 1: quite unmistakably Miss Summersley Satchel, a blond, businesslike young woman
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Speaker 1: with a stumpy nose, very cruelly corrugated and inflamed by
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Speaker 1: a ponsney that savagely did much more than its duty
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Speaker 1: by its name. She remained seated, tilting her chair a little,
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Speaker 1: pushing herself back from the table, and regarding me intelligently.
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Speaker 1: It was one of those moments in life when one
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Speaker 1: is taken unawares. I think our common realization of the
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Speaker 1: need of masking the reality of our encounter, the hasty
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Speaker 1: search in our minds for some plausible face upon this meeting,
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Speaker 1: must have been very obvious to the lady who observed us.
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Speaker 1: Mary's first thought was for a pseudonym mine to make
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Speaker 1: it plain. We met by accident. It's mister Stephen, said Mary.
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Speaker 1: It's you dropped out of the sky from over there.
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Speaker 1: I was benighted and got there late, very late, one
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Speaker 1: gleam of light and a yawning waiter or I should
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Speaker 1: have had to break windows, and then I meet you. Then,
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Speaker 1: for a moment or so we were silent, with our
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Speaker 1: sense of the immense gravity of this position growing upon us.
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Speaker 1: A little tow headed waiter boy appeared with her coffee
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Speaker 1: and rolls on a tray poised high on his hand.
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Speaker 1: You'll have your coffee out here with us, said Mary.
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Speaker 1: Where else? Said I, as though there was no conceivable alternative,
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Speaker 1: and told the tow headed waiter belatedly. Mary turned to
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Speaker 1: introduce me to her secretary, my friend, Miss Summersley Satchel,
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Speaker 1: Mister Stephen. Miss Satchell and I bowed to each other
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Speaker 1: and agreed that the lake was very beautiful in the
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Speaker 1: morning light. Mister Stephen said Mary, in entirely unnecessary explanation,
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Speaker 1: is an old friend of my mother's, and I haven't
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Speaker 1: seen him for years. How is missus Stephen and the children?
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Speaker 1: I answered briefly, and began to tell of my climb
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Speaker 1: down the titless I addressed myself with unnecessary explicitness to
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Speaker 1: Miss Satchel, I did perhaps over accentuate the extreme fortuitousness
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Speaker 1: of my appearance. From where I stood the whole course
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Speaker 1: of the previous day. After I had come over the
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Speaker 1: shoulder was visible. It seemed a soft, little shining pathway
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Speaker 1: to the top. But the dangers of the descent had
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Speaker 1: a romance intensification in the morning light. The rule of
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Speaker 1: the game, said I, is that one stops and waits
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Speaker 1: for daylight. I wonder if anyone keeps that rule. We
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Speaker 1: talked for a time of mountains, I still standing a
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Speaker 1: little aloof until my coffee came. Miss Summersley Satchell produced
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Speaker 1: that frequent and most unpleasant by product of a British education,
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Speaker 1: an intelligent interest in etymology. I wonder, she said, with
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Speaker 1: a brow of ruffled omniscience, and eyeing me rather severely
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Speaker 1: with a magnified eye. Why it is called titlss. There
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Speaker 1: must be some reason. Presently, Miss Satchell was dismissed indoors
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Speaker 1: on a transparent excuse, and Mary and I were alone together.
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Speaker 1: We eyed one another gravely, perhaps all the more gravely
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Speaker 1: because of the wild excitement that was quickening our pulse
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Speaker 1: and bre and thrilling through our nerves. She pushed back
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Speaker 1: the plate before her and put her dear elbows on
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Speaker 1: the table and dropped her chin between her hands, in
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Speaker 1: an attitude that seemed all made of little memories. I
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Speaker 1: suppose she said, something of this kind was bound to happen.
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Speaker 1: She turned her eyes to the mountains shining in the
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Speaker 1: morning light. I'm glad it has happened in a beautiful place.
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Speaker 1: It might have been anywhere. Last night, I said, I
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Speaker 1: was thinking of you and wanting to hear your voice again.
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Speaker 1: I thought, I did, I too. I wonder if we
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Speaker 1: had some dim perception. She scanned my face, Stephen, You're
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Speaker 1: not much changed. You're looking well, But your eyes their
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Speaker 1: dog tired eyes. Have you been working too hard? A conference?
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Speaker 1: What did you call them? Once? A Carnegie conference in London?
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Speaker 1: Hot weather and fussing work and endless hours of weak, gray,
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Speaker 1: dusty speeches. And perhaps that clamor over there yesterday was
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Speaker 1: too much. It was too much in India, I damaged
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Speaker 1: a leg. I had meant to rest here for a day. Well,
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Speaker 1: rest here with you? Why not? Now you are here?
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Speaker 1: But after all we've promised. It's none of our planning. Stephen.
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Speaker 1: It seems to me I ought to go right on
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Speaker 1: so soon as breakfast is over. She weighed that with
22:48
Speaker 1: just the same still pause, the same quiet moment of
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Speaker 1: lips and eyes that I recalled so well. It was
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Speaker 1: as things had always been between us, that she should
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Speaker 1: make her decision first and bring me to it. It
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Speaker 1: isn't natural. She decided, with the sun rising and the
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Speaker 1: day still freshly beginning, that you should go, or that
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Speaker 1: I should go. I've wanted to meet you like this
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Speaker 1: and talk about things ten thousand times. And as for me, Stephen,
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Speaker 1: I won't go, and I won't let you go if
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Speaker 1: I can help it. Not this morning, anyhow. No go
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Speaker 1: later in the day if you will, and let us
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Speaker 1: to take this one talk that God himself has given us.
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Speaker 1: We've not planned it. It's his doing, not ours. I
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Speaker 1: sat yielding. I am not so sure of God's participation,
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Speaker 1: I said, but I know I am very tired and
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Speaker 1: glad to be with you. I can't tell you how
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Speaker 1: glad so glad, I think I should weep if I
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Speaker 1: tried to say it three four five hours. Perhaps even
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Speaker 1: if people know, is it so much worse than thirty minutes.
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Speaker 1: We've broken the rules already, We've been flung together. It's
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Speaker 1: not our doing. Stephen. A little while longer adds so
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Speaker 1: little to the offense and means to us. Yes, I said,
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Speaker 1: but if Justin knows, he won't your companion. There was
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Speaker 1: the briefest moment of reflection. She's discretion itself, she said. Still,
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Speaker 1: if he's going to know the harm is done, we
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Speaker 1: may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,
24:50
Speaker 1: and he won't know. No one will know the people here.
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Speaker 1: Nobody's here, not a soul who matters. I doubt if
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Speaker 1: they know my name. No one ever talks to me.
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Speaker 1: I sat in the bright sunshine, profoundly enervated and quite convinced,
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Speaker 1: but still maintaining out of mere indolence, a show of hesitation.
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Speaker 1: You take the good things God sends you, Stephen, as
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Speaker 1: I do. You stay and talk with me now, before
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Speaker 1: the curtain falls again. We've tired of letters. You stay
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Speaker 1: and talk to me. Here we are, Stephen, and it's
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Speaker 1: the one chance that is ever likely to come to
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Speaker 1: us in all our lives. We'll keep the point of honor,
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Speaker 1: and you shall go to day but don't. Let's drive
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Speaker 1: the point of honor into the quick. Go easy, Stephen,
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Speaker 1: old friend, My dear, my dear, what has happened to you?
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Speaker 1: Have you forgotten? Of course? Is it possible for you
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Speaker 1: to go mute? With so much that we can say,
26:00
Speaker 1: and these mountains and the sunlight. I looked up to
26:06
Speaker 1: see her with her elbows on the table and her
26:08
Speaker 1: hands clasped under her chin, that face close to mine,
26:13
Speaker 1: her dear blue eyes watching me, and her lips a
26:16
Speaker 1: little apart. No other human being has ever had that
26:21
Speaker 1: effect upon me, so that I seemed to feel the
26:25
Speaker 1: life and stir in that other body more than I
26:28
Speaker 1: feel my own. Three from the moment when I confessed
26:37
Speaker 1: my decision to stay, we gave no further thought to
26:40
Speaker 1: the rightfulness or wisdom of spending the next few hours together.
26:45
Speaker 1: We thought only of those hours things lent themselves to us.
26:52
Speaker 1: We stood up and walked out in front of the hotel,
26:56
Speaker 1: and there, moored to a stake at the edge of
26:58
Speaker 1: the water was a little leakunt the one vessel on
27:02
Speaker 1: the Unst. Lind's A. We would take food with us,
27:06
Speaker 1: as we decided, and row out there to where the
27:09
Speaker 1: vast cliffs came sheer from the water, out of earshot
27:13
Speaker 1: or interference, and talk for all the time we had.
27:18
Speaker 1: And I remember now how Mary stood and called to
27:21
Speaker 1: Miss Satchel's window to tell her of this intention, and
27:25
Speaker 1: how I discovered again that exquisite, slender grace I knew
27:30
Speaker 1: so well, you know, the very rowing out from the
27:36
Speaker 1: shore had in it something sweet and incredible. It was
27:40
Speaker 1: as if we were but dreaming together and might at
27:44
Speaker 1: any moment awaken again. Countless miles and a thousand things apart.
27:50
Speaker 1: I rode slowly with those clumsy Swiss oars that one
27:54
Speaker 1: must thrust forward, breaking the smooth crystal of the lake.
27:58
Speaker 1: And she sat sideways, looking forward, saying very little, and
28:03
Speaker 1: with much the same sense I think of enchantment and unreality.
28:09
Speaker 1: And I saw now for the first time, as I
28:11
Speaker 1: watched her over my oars, that her face was changed.
28:15
Speaker 1: She was graver, and I thought, stronger than the merry
28:19
Speaker 1: I had known. Even now I can still doubt if
28:25
Speaker 1: that boat and lake were real. And yet I remember
28:29
Speaker 1: even minute and irrelevant details of the day's impressions with
28:33
Speaker 1: an extraordinary and exquisite vividness. Perhaps it is that very
28:40
Speaker 1: luminous distinctness which distinguishes these events from the common experiences
28:44
Speaker 1: of life, and puts them so above the quality of
28:48
Speaker 1: things that are ordinarily real. We rowed slowly past a
28:55
Speaker 1: great headland and into the bay at the upper end
28:58
Speaker 1: of the water. We had not realized at first that
29:02
Speaker 1: we could row beyond the range of the hotel windows.
29:06
Speaker 1: The rock that comes out of the lake is a clear,
29:09
Speaker 1: dead white when it is dry, and very faintly tinted.
29:13
Speaker 1: But when it is wetted it lights warmly with flashes
29:16
Speaker 1: and blotches of color, and is seen to be full
29:19
Speaker 1: of the most exquisite and delicate veins. It splinters vertically
29:24
Speaker 1: and goes up in cliffs, very high and sculptured, with
29:28
Speaker 1: the quality almost of porcelain, that at a certain level
29:32
Speaker 1: suddenly become more rude and massive and begin to overhang
29:38
Speaker 1: under the cliffs. The water is very deep and blue green,
29:41
Speaker 1: and runs here and there into narrow clefts. This place
29:46
Speaker 1: where we landed was a kind of beach left by
29:49
Speaker 1: the recession of the ice. All the rocks immediately about
29:52
Speaker 1: us were ice worn, and the place was paved with
29:55
Speaker 1: ice worn boulders. Two huge bluffs put their foreheads together
30:01
Speaker 1: above us, and hid the glacier from us, but one
30:05
Speaker 1: could feel the near presence of ice in the air.
30:09
Speaker 1: Out between them. Boiled a little torrent and spread into
30:13
Speaker 1: a hundred intercommunicating channels amidst the great pebbles. And those
30:18
Speaker 1: pebbles were covered by a network of marvelously gnarled and
30:22
Speaker 1: twisted stems bearing little leaves and blossoms, a network at
30:27
Speaker 1: once very ancient and very fresh, giving a peculiar gentleness
30:31
Speaker 1: and richness to the alpine severity that had dwarfed and
30:35
Speaker 1: tangled them. It was astounding that any plant could find
30:39
Speaker 1: nourishment among those stones. The great headland, with patches of
30:45
Speaker 1: yellowish old snow still lingering here and there upon, its
30:48
Speaker 1: upper masses, had crept insensibly between us and the remote hotel,
30:54
Speaker 1: and now hid it altogether. There was nothing to remind
30:58
Speaker 1: us of the world that had separated us, except that
31:01
Speaker 1: old and leaky boat we had drawn up upon the
31:03
Speaker 1: stones at the limpid water's edge. It is as if
31:09
Speaker 1: we had come out of life together, she whispered, giving
31:14
Speaker 1: a voice to my thought. She sat down upon a boulder,
31:19
Speaker 1: and I sat on a lower slab a yard or
31:22
Speaker 1: so away, and we looked at one another. It's still unreal,
31:27
Speaker 1: she said. I felt awkward and at a loss as
31:32
Speaker 1: I sat there before her, as a man unused to
31:36
Speaker 1: drawing rooms might feel in the presence of a strange hostess.
31:41
Speaker 1: You are so you, I said, so altogether, my nearest thing,
31:47
Speaker 1: and so strange, too so far off that I feel shy.
31:54
Speaker 1: I'm shy, I repeated. I feel that if I speak loudly,
31:58
Speaker 1: all this will vanish. I looked about me. But surely
32:05
Speaker 1: this is the most beautiful place in the whole world,
32:09
Speaker 1: is it indeed in the world, Stephen, my dear, she began, presently,
32:16
Speaker 1: what a strange thing. Life is strange, The disproportions, the
32:22
Speaker 1: things that will not fit together, the little things that
32:26
Speaker 1: eat us up, and the beautiful things that might save
32:30
Speaker 1: us and don't save us don't seem indeed to have
32:34
Speaker 1: any meaning in regard to ordinary, sensible affairs. This beauty.
32:41
Speaker 1: Do you remember, Stephen, how long ago in the old
32:45
Speaker 1: park you and I talked about immortality, and you said
32:49
Speaker 1: then you did not want to know anything of what
32:52
Speaker 1: comes after life? Even now do you want to know?
32:57
Speaker 1: You are too busy, and I am not busy enough.
33:01
Speaker 1: I want to be sure, not only to know, but
33:04
Speaker 1: to know that it is so, that this life, no,
33:08
Speaker 1: not this life, but that life is only the bleak
33:11
Speaker 1: twilight of the morning. I think death, just dead, death
33:17
Speaker 1: after the life I have had, is the most impossible
33:20
Speaker 1: of ends. You don't want particularly, I want to passionately.
33:28
Speaker 1: I want to live again, out of this body, Stephen,
33:31
Speaker 1: and all that it carves with it, to be free
33:35
Speaker 1: as beautiful things are free, to be free, as this
33:38
Speaker 1: is free, an exquisite, clean freedom. I can't believe that
33:46
Speaker 1: the life of this earth is all that there is
33:48
Speaker 1: for us. For why should we ever think it strange?
33:52
Speaker 1: Why should we still find the ordinary, matter of fact
33:56
Speaker 1: things of every day strange? We do because they aren't us,
34:02
Speaker 1: eating stuffing into ourselves, thin slices of what we're queer, little,
34:08
Speaker 1: hot and eager beasts, the perpetual need to do such things,
34:13
Speaker 1: and all the mad fury of sex, Stephen. We don't live,
34:18
Speaker 1: We suffocate in our living bodies. They storm and rage
34:22
Speaker 1: and snatch. It isn't us, Stephen, Really it can't be us.
34:28
Speaker 1: It's all so excessive. If it is anything more than
34:32
Speaker 1: the first furious rush into existence of beings that will
34:36
Speaker 1: go on go on at last to quite beautiful, real
34:40
Speaker 1: things like this. Perhaps today the world is beautiful indeed,
34:46
Speaker 1: with the sun shining and love shining, and you, my dear,
34:51
Speaker 1: so near to me, it's so incredible that you and
34:55
Speaker 1: I must part today. HiT's as if someone told me
34:59
Speaker 1: that the sun was a little mad. It's so perfectly
35:03
Speaker 1: natural to be with you again. Her voice sank. She
35:10
Speaker 1: leant a little forward towards me, Stephen. Suppose that you
35:15
Speaker 1: and I were dead today. Suppose that when you imagined
35:20
Speaker 1: you were climbing yesterday you died. Suppose that yesterday you died,
35:25
Speaker 1: and that you just thought you were still climbing as
35:28
Speaker 1: you made your way to me. Perhaps you are dead
35:31
Speaker 1: up there on the mountain, and I am lying dead
35:34
Speaker 1: in my room in this hotel. And this is the
35:37
Speaker 1: great beginning, Stephen. I am talking nonsense because I am
35:43
Speaker 1: so happy to be with you here. Four. For a
35:51
Speaker 1: time we said very little, Then irregularly, disconnectedly, we began
35:57
Speaker 1: to tell each other things about ourselves. The substance of
36:02
Speaker 1: our lives seemed strangely objective. That day we had, as
36:07
Speaker 1: it were, come to one another, clean out of our
36:09
Speaker 1: common conditions. She told me of her troubles and her
36:13
Speaker 1: secret weaknesses. We bared our spirits and confessed both of
36:19
Speaker 1: us had the same tale of mean and angry and
36:22
Speaker 1: hasty impulses. Both of us could find kindred inconsistencies. Both
36:28
Speaker 1: had an exalted assurance that the other would understand completely
36:33
Speaker 1: and forgive and love. She talked for the most part,
36:38
Speaker 1: she talked much more than I, with a sort of
36:41
Speaker 1: wonder at the things that had happened to her. And
36:45
Speaker 1: for long spaces we did not talk at all, nor
36:47
Speaker 1: feel the need of talking. And what seems very strange
36:51
Speaker 1: to me now, seeing that we had been impassioned lovers,
36:55
Speaker 1: we never kissed. We never kissed at all. I do
37:00
Speaker 1: not even remember that I thought of kissing her. We
37:04
Speaker 1: had a shyness between us that kept us a little apart,
37:08
Speaker 1: and I cannot remember that we ever touched one another,
37:11
Speaker 1: except that for a time she took me and led
37:14
Speaker 1: me by the hand towards a little place of starry
37:16
Speaker 1: flowers that had drawn her eyes, and which she wished
37:20
Speaker 1: me to see. Already for us too, our bodies were
37:24
Speaker 1: dead and gone. We were shy, shy of any contact.
37:30
Speaker 1: We were a little afraid of one another. There was
37:33
Speaker 1: a kind of awe between us that we had met again,
37:39
Speaker 1: and in that strange and beautiful place. Her fancy that
37:43
Speaker 1: we were dead together had a fitness that I cannot
37:46
Speaker 1: possibly convey to you. I cannot give you by any writing.
37:51
Speaker 1: The light and the sweet freshness of that high desolation.
37:56
Speaker 1: You would need to go there. What was love lee
38:00
Speaker 1: in our talk being said in that setting would seem
38:04
Speaker 1: but a rambling discourse were I to write it down,
38:08
Speaker 1: as I believe that even now I could write it
38:11
Speaker 1: down word for word, almost every thought of it, so
38:16
Speaker 1: fresh does it remain with me, my dear, Some moments
38:22
Speaker 1: are eternal. It seems to me that as I write
38:26
Speaker 1: to tell you of this, I am telling you not
38:28
Speaker 1: of something that happened two years ago, but of a
38:32
Speaker 1: thing immortal. It is as if I and Mary were
38:37
Speaker 1: together there, holding the realities of our lives before us,
38:41
Speaker 1: as though they were little sorry tales written in books
38:45
Speaker 1: upon our knees. Five. It was still in the early
38:53
Speaker 1: afternoon that we came down again across the meandering ice
38:57
Speaker 1: water streams to our old boat, and pushed off and
39:01
Speaker 1: rode slowly out of that magic corner back to every
39:05
Speaker 1: day again. Little we knew to what it was we rode.
39:11
Speaker 1: As we glided across the water and rounded the headland,
39:15
Speaker 1: and came slowly into view of the hotel. Again, Mary
39:18
Speaker 1: was reminded of our parting, and for a little while
39:21
Speaker 1: she was disposed to make me remain. If you could
39:26
Speaker 1: stay a little longer, she said, another day. If any
39:30
Speaker 1: harm is done, it's done. It has been beautiful, I said,
39:36
Speaker 1: this meeting. It's just as if when I was so
39:40
Speaker 1: jaded and discouraged that I could have put my work
39:43
Speaker 1: aside and despaired altogether, some power had said, have you
39:49
Speaker 1: forgotten the friendship I gave you? But we shall have
39:53
Speaker 1: had our time. We've met, We've seen one another, we've
39:57
Speaker 1: heard one another, We've hurt no one. Will you go
40:03
Speaker 1: to day before sunset? Isn't it right that I should
40:08
Speaker 1: go stay? She whispered, with a light in her eyes. No,
40:15
Speaker 1: I dare not. She did not speak for a long time.
40:23
Speaker 1: Of course, she said, at last, you're right. You only
40:27
Speaker 1: said I would have said it for you if you
40:31
Speaker 1: had not. You are so right, Stephen. I suppose, poor
40:37
Speaker 1: silly little things, that if you stayed, we should certainly
40:41
Speaker 1: begin making love to each other. It would be necessary.
40:47
Speaker 1: We should fence about a little, and then there it
40:50
Speaker 1: would be no barrier to stop us. And neither of
40:55
Speaker 1: us wants it to happen. It isn't what we want.
40:59
Speaker 1: You would become urgent, I suppose, and I should be
41:03
Speaker 1: coquettish in spite of ourselves. That power would make us puppets,
41:09
Speaker 1: as if already we hadn't made love. I could find
41:13
Speaker 1: it in my heart now, Stephen, I could make you stay. Oh,
41:18
Speaker 1: why are we so tormented? Stephen? In the next world
41:22
Speaker 1: we shall meet, and this will trouble us no longer.
41:26
Speaker 1: The love will be there. Oh, the love will be
41:29
Speaker 1: there like something that has at last got itself fully born,
41:33
Speaker 1: got itself free from some queer, clinging seed. Case. We
41:39
Speaker 1: shall be rid of jealousy, Stephen, that inflammation of the mind,
41:44
Speaker 1: that bitterness, that pitiless sore, So that I shan't be
41:48
Speaker 1: tormented by the thought of Rachel, and she will be
41:51
Speaker 1: able to tolerate me. She was so sweet and wonderful,
41:55
Speaker 1: a girl with those dark eyes. And I've never done
41:59
Speaker 1: her justice, never, nor she me I snatched you from her.
42:04
Speaker 1: I snatched you. Some day we shall be different. All
42:09
Speaker 1: this putting oneself round another person like a fence against
42:13
Speaker 1: every one else, almost against every thing else. It's so wicked,
42:18
Speaker 1: so fierce, It's so possible to be different sometimes now,
42:24
Speaker 1: sometimes for long parts of a day. I have no
42:27
Speaker 1: base passions at all, even in this life, to be
42:32
Speaker 1: like that always. But I can't see clearly how these
42:37
Speaker 1: things can be when dreams of them in a kind
42:40
Speaker 1: of luminous mist, and if one looks directly at them,
42:44
Speaker 1: they vanish again. Six and at last we came to
42:53
Speaker 1: the landing and moored the little boat and walked up
42:57
Speaker 1: the winding path to the hotel. The dull pain of
43:01
Speaker 1: separation was already upon us. I think we had forgotten
43:06
Speaker 1: Miss Summersley Satchel altogether. But she appeared as we sat
43:10
Speaker 1: down to tea at that same table at which we
43:13
Speaker 1: had breakfasted, and joined us. As a matter of course, conceivably,
43:18
Speaker 1: she found the two animated friends of the morning had
43:21
Speaker 1: become rather taciturn. Indeed, there came a lapse of silence
43:26
Speaker 1: so portentous that I roused myself to effort and told
43:30
Speaker 1: her all over again, as I realized afterwards the difficulties
43:34
Speaker 1: that had benighted me upon Titlas. Then Miss Satchel regaled
43:39
Speaker 1: Mary with some particulars of the various comings and goings
43:42
Speaker 1: of the hotel. I became anxious to end this tension
43:46
Speaker 1: and went into the inn to pay my bill and
43:49
Speaker 1: get my knapsack. When I came out, Mary stood up.
43:55
Speaker 1: I'll come just a little way with you, Stephen, she said,
44:00
Speaker 1: and I could have fancied. The glasses of the companion
44:03
Speaker 1: flashed to hear the surname of the morning reappear a
44:06
Speaker 1: Christian name in the afternoon. Is that woman behind us safe?
44:12
Speaker 1: I asked, breaking the silence. As we went up the
44:15
Speaker 1: mountain side. Mary looked over her shoulder for a contemplative second.
44:22
Speaker 1: She's always been discretion itself. We thought no more of
44:27
Speaker 1: miss Satchel. This parting, said Mary, is the worst of
44:33
Speaker 1: the price we have to pay. Now it comes to
44:36
Speaker 1: the end. There seem a thousand things one hasn't said.
44:42
Speaker 1: And presently she came back to that we shan't remember
44:46
Speaker 1: this so much. Perhaps it was there we met over
44:50
Speaker 1: there in the sunlight, among those rocks, I suppose perhaps
44:56
Speaker 1: we managed to say something. As the ascent grew steeper,
45:03
Speaker 1: it became clear that if I was to reach the
45:05
Speaker 1: Milk Say Inn by nightfall, our moment for parting had come,
45:10
Speaker 1: and with a well and a white lipped smile and
45:14
Speaker 1: a glance at the Argus Eyde hotel, she held out
45:18
Speaker 1: her hand to me. I shall live on this, brother, Stephen,
45:23
Speaker 1: she said, for years, I too, I answered. It was
45:30
Speaker 1: wonderful to stand and face her there, and see her
45:33
Speaker 1: reel and living, with a warm sunlight on her, and
45:37
Speaker 1: her face when glowing tenderness. We clasped hands, all the
45:43
Speaker 1: warm life of our hands met and clung and parted.
45:50
Speaker 1: I went on alone up the winding path it zigzags
45:55
Speaker 1: up the mountain side, in full sight of the hotel,
45:58
Speaker 1: for the better part of an hour, climbing steadily higher
46:02
Speaker 1: and looking back, and looking back, until she was just
46:06
Speaker 1: a little strip of white that halted and seemed to
46:10
Speaker 1: wave to me. I waved back and found myself weeping,
46:16
Speaker 1: You fool, I said to myself. Go on. And it
46:21
Speaker 1: was by an effort that I kept on my way
46:24
Speaker 1: instead of running back to her again. Presently the curvature
46:29
Speaker 1: of the slope came up between us and hid her altogether,
46:34
Speaker 1: hid the hotel, hid the lakes and the cliffs. It
46:39
Speaker 1: seemed to me that I could not possibly see her
46:42
Speaker 1: any more. It was as if I knew that sun
46:47
Speaker 1: had set forever. End of Chapter eleven, Parts one to six,