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The Country of the Blind and Other Stories - A Dream of Armageddon · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Section twenty five of the Country of the Blind and
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Speaker 1: Other Stories by H. G. Wells. This LibriVox recording is
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Speaker 1: in the public domain. Read by Peter Yearsley, a Dream
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Speaker 1: of Armageddon, the man with the white face entered the
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Speaker 1: carriage at Rugby. He moved slowly in spite of the
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Speaker 1: urgency of his porter, and even while he was still
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Speaker 1: on the platform, I noted how ill he seemed. He
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Speaker 1: dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh,
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Speaker 1: made an incomplete attempt to arrange his traveling shawl, and
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Speaker 1: became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently, he was
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Speaker 1: moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me,
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Speaker 1: and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then
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Speaker 1: he glanced again in my direction. I feigned to read.
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Speaker 1: I feared I had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in a
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Speaker 1: moment I was surprised to find him speaking. I beg
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Speaker 1: your pardon, said I. That book, he repeated, pointing a
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Speaker 1: lean finger, is about dreams, obviously, I answered, for it
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Speaker 1: was Fortnum Roscoe's Dream States, and the title was on
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Speaker 1: the cover. He hung silent for a space, as if
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Speaker 1: he sought words yes, he said at last, But they
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Speaker 1: tell you nothing. I did not catch his meaning for
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Speaker 1: a second. They don't know, he added. I looked a
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Speaker 1: little more attentively at his face. There are dreams, he said,
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Speaker 1: and dreams that sort of proposition I never dispute, I suppose,
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Speaker 1: he hesitated. Do you ever dream? I mean vividly? I
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Speaker 1: dream very little, I answered. I doubt if I have
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Speaker 1: three vivid dreams in a year. Ah, he said, and
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Speaker 1: seemed for a moment to collect his thoughts. Your dreams
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Speaker 1: don't mix with your memories, he asked abruptly. You don't
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Speaker 1: find yourself in doubt. Did this happen or did it not?
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Speaker 1: Hardly ever, except just for a moment hesitation now and then.
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Speaker 1: I suppose few people do, does he say? He indicated.
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Speaker 1: The book says it happens at times, and gives the
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Speaker 1: usual explanation about intensity of impression and the like to
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Speaker 1: account for its not happening. As a rule, I suppose
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Speaker 1: you know something of these theories, very little, except that
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Speaker 1: they are wrong. His emaciated hand played with the strap
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Speaker 1: of the window for a time. I prepared to resume reading,
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Speaker 1: and that seemed to precipitate his next remark. He leaned forward,
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Speaker 1: almost as though he would touch me. Isn't there something
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Speaker 1: called consecutive dreaming that goes on night after night? I
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Speaker 1: believe there is. There are cases given in most books
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Speaker 1: on mental trouble. Mental trouble, Yes, I dare say there are.
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Speaker 1: It's the right place for them. But what I mean,
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Speaker 1: he looked at his bony knuckles, is that sort of
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Speaker 1: thing always dreaming? Is it dreaming? Or is it something else?
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Speaker 1: Might it be something else? I should have snubbed his
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Speaker 1: persistent conversation, but for the drawn anxiety of his face.
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Speaker 1: I remember now the look of his faded eyes and
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Speaker 1: the lids red stained. Perhaps you know that look. I'm
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Speaker 1: not just arguing about a matter of opinion, he said.
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Speaker 1: The thing's killing me. Dreams, if you call them dreams,
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Speaker 1: night after night, vivid, so vivid, this, he indicated, the
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Speaker 1: landscape that went streaming by the window, seems unreal. In comparison.
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Speaker 1: I can scarcely remember who I am, what business I
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Speaker 1: am on, he paused, Even now the dream is always
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Speaker 1: the same. Do you mean, I asked, it's over? You
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Speaker 1: mean I died, died, smashed and killed and an how
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Speaker 1: so much of me as that dream was is dead
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Speaker 1: dead forever? I dreamt I was another man, you know,
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Speaker 1: living in a different part of the world, and in
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Speaker 1: a different time. I dreamt that night after night, night
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Speaker 1: after night. I've woke into that other life, fresh scenes
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Speaker 1: and fresh happenings, until I came upon the last when
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Speaker 1: you died, when I died, and since then, No, he said,
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Speaker 1: thank God, that was the end of the dream. It
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Speaker 1: was clear I was in for this dream, and after
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Speaker 1: all I had an hour before me. The light was
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Speaker 1: fading fast, and Fortnum Roscoe has a dreary way with him.
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Speaker 1: Living in a different time, I said, do you mean
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Speaker 1: in some different age? Yes? Past, No, to come to
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Speaker 1: come the year three thousand, for example, I don't know
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Speaker 1: what year it was. I did when I was asleep,
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Speaker 1: when I was dreaming, that is, but not now, not
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Speaker 1: now that I'm awake. There's a lot of things I
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Speaker 1: have forgotten since I woke out of these dreams, though
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Speaker 1: I knew them at the time when I was I
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Speaker 1: suppose it was dreaming. They called thee differently from our
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Speaker 1: way of calling the ear. What did they call it?
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Speaker 1: He put his hand to his forehead, No, said he
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Speaker 1: I forget. He sat smiling weakly. For a moment, I
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Speaker 1: feared he did not mean to tell me his dream.
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Speaker 1: As a rule, I hate people who tell me their dreams,
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Speaker 1: but this struck me differently. I proffered assistance even it began,
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Speaker 1: I suggested. It was vivid from the first. I seemed
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Speaker 1: to wake up in it suddenly. And it's curious that
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Speaker 1: in these dreams I am speaking of, I never remembered
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Speaker 1: this life I'm living now. It seems as if the
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Speaker 1: dream life was enough while it lasted. Perhaps, But I
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Speaker 1: will tell you how I find myself when I do
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Speaker 1: my best to recall it all. I don't remember anything
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Speaker 1: clearly until I found myself sitting in a sort of lodgia,
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Speaker 1: looking out over the sea. I had been dozing, and
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Speaker 1: suddenly I woke up, fresh and vivid, not a bit
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Speaker 1: dream like, because the girl had stopped fanning me. The girl, yes,
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Speaker 1: the girl. You must not interrupt, or you'll put me out,
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Speaker 1: he stopped abruptly. You ain't think I'm mad, he said, no,
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Speaker 1: I answered, you've been dreaming. Tell me your dream. I
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Speaker 1: woke up, I say, because the girl had stopped fanning me.
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Speaker 1: I was not surprised to find myself there or anything
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Speaker 1: of that sort. You understand, I did not feel I'd
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Speaker 1: fallen into it suddenly. I simply took it up. At
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Speaker 1: that point, whatever memory I had of this life, this
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Speaker 1: nineteenth century life, faded as I woke, vanished like a dream.
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Speaker 1: I knew all about myself, knew that my name was
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Speaker 1: no longer Cooper but Hedon, and all about my position
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Speaker 1: in the world. I've forgotten a lot since I woke.
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Speaker 1: There's a want of connection, but it was all quite
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Speaker 1: clear and matter of fact. Then he hesitated again, gripping
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Speaker 1: the window strap, putting his face forward and looking up
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Speaker 1: to me appealingly. This seems bosh to you. No, no,
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Speaker 1: I cried, go on, tell me what this lodgire was.
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Speaker 1: It was not really a lodgier. I don't know what
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Speaker 1: to call it. It faced south, It was small. It
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Speaker 1: was all in shadow except the semicircle above the balcony
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Speaker 1: that showed the sky and sea, and the corner where
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Speaker 1: the girl stood. I was on a couch. It was
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Speaker 1: a metal couch with light striped cushions, and the girl
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Speaker 1: was leaning over the balcony with her back to me.
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Speaker 1: The light of the sunrise fell on her ear and cheek,
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Speaker 1: her pretty white neck and the little curls that nestled there,
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Speaker 1: and her white shoulder were in the sun, and all
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Speaker 1: the grace of her body was in the cool blue shadow.
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Speaker 1: She was dressed. How can I describe it? It was
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Speaker 1: easy and flowing, and altogether there she stood, so that
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Speaker 1: it came to me how beautiful and desirable she was,
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Speaker 1: as though I had never seen her before. And when
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Speaker 1: at last I sighed and raised myself upon my arm,
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Speaker 1: she turned her face to me. He stopped. I have
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Speaker 1: lived three and fifty years in this world. I have
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Speaker 1: had mother, sisters, friends, wife and daughters. All their faces,
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Speaker 1: the play of their faces I know. But the face
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Speaker 1: of this girl, it is much more real to me.
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Speaker 1: I can bring it back into memory so that I
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Speaker 1: can see it again. I could draw it or paint it.
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Speaker 1: And after all he stopped, But I said nothing. The
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Speaker 1: face of a dream, the face of a dream. She
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Speaker 1: was beautiful, Not that beauty which is terrible, cold and worshipful,
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Speaker 1: like the beauty of a saint, nor that beauty that
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Speaker 1: stirs fierce passions, but a sort of radiation, sweet lips
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Speaker 1: that softened into smiles, and grave gray eyes. And she
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Speaker 1: moved gracefully. She seemed to have part with all pleasant
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Speaker 1: and gracious things. He stopped, and his face was downcast
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Speaker 1: and hidden. Then he looked up at me and went on,
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Speaker 1: making no further attempt to disguise his absolute belief in
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Speaker 1: the reality of his story. You see, I had thrown
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Speaker 1: up my plans and ambitions, thrown up all I had
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Speaker 1: ever worked for or desired, for her sake. I had
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Speaker 1: been a master man away there in the north, with
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Speaker 1: influence and property and a great reputation, but none of
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Speaker 1: it had seemed worth having Beside her. I had come
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Speaker 1: to the place, this city of sunny pleasures, with her,
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Speaker 1: and left all those things to wreck and ruin, just
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Speaker 1: to save a remnant, at least of my life. While
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Speaker 1: I had been in love with her, before I knew
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Speaker 1: that she had any care for me, before I had
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Speaker 1: imagined that she would dare, that we should dare, all
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Speaker 1: my life had seemed vain and hollow, dust and ashes.
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Speaker 1: It was dust and ashes, night after night, and through
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Speaker 1: the long days I had longed and desired. My soul
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Speaker 1: had beaten against the thing forbidden. But it is impossible
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Speaker 1: for one man to tell another just these It's emotion
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Speaker 1: It's a tint, a light that comes and goes. Only
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Speaker 1: while it's there, everything changes, everything. The thing is. I
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Speaker 1: came away and left them in their crisis to do
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Speaker 1: what they could. Left whom I asked, puzzled the people
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Speaker 1: up in the north there you see in this dream. Anyhow,
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Speaker 1: I had been a big man, the sort of man
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Speaker 1: men come to trust in, to group themselves about. Millions
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Speaker 1: of men who had never seen me were ready to
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Speaker 1: do things and risk things because of their confidence in me.
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Speaker 1: I had been playing that game for years, that big,
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Speaker 1: laborious game, that vague, monstrous political game. Amidst intrigues and betrayals,
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Speaker 1: speech and agitation. It was a vast, weltering world. And
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Speaker 1: at last I had a sort of leadership against the gang.
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Speaker 1: You know. It was called the Gang, a sort of
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Speaker 1: compromise of scoundrelly projects and base ambitions and vast public
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Speaker 1: emotional stupidities and catchwords, the gang that kept the world
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Speaker 1: noisy and blind year by year, and all the while
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Speaker 1: that it was drifting, drifting towards infinite disaster. But I
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Speaker 1: can't expect you to understand the shades and complications of
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Speaker 1: the year, the year something or other ahead I had
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Speaker 1: it all down to the smallest details in my dream.
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Speaker 1: I suppose I had been dreaming of it before I awoke,
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Speaker 1: and the fading outline of some queer new development I
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Speaker 1: had imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes.
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Speaker 1: It was some grubby affair that made me thank God
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Speaker 1: for the sunlight. I sat up on the couch and
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Speaker 1: remained looking at the woman and rejoicing, rejoicing that I
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Speaker 1: had come away out of all that tumult and folly
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Speaker 1: and violence before it was too late. After all, I thought,
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Speaker 1: this is life, Love and beauty, desire and delight. Are
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Speaker 1: they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague, gigantic ends.
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Speaker 1: And I blamed myself for having ever sought to be
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Speaker 1: a leader, when I might have given my days to love.
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Speaker 1: But then thought I, if I had not spent my
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Speaker 1: early days sternly and austerely, I might have wasted myself
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Speaker 1: upon vain and worthless women. And at the thought, all
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Speaker 1: my being went out in love and tenderness to my
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Speaker 1: dear mistress, my dear lady, who had come at last
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Speaker 1: and compelled me, compelled me by her invincible charm, for
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Speaker 1: me to lay that life aside. You are worth it,
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Speaker 1: I said, speaking without intending her to hear. You are
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Speaker 1: worth it, my dearest one. Worth pride and praise and
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Speaker 1: all things. Love to have you is worth them all together.
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Speaker 1: And at the murmur of my voice she turned about.
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Speaker 1: Come and see, she cried, I can hear her. Now,
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Speaker 1: come and see the sunrise upon Monte Solaro. I remember
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Speaker 1: how I sprung to my feet and joined her at
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Speaker 1: the balcony. She put a white hand upon my shoulder
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Speaker 1: and pointed towards great masses of limestone, flushing as it
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Speaker 1: were into life. I looked, but first I noted the
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Speaker 1: sunlight on her face, caressing the lines of her cheeks
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Speaker 1: and neck. How can I describe to you the scene
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Speaker 1: we had before us? We were at Capri. I have
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Speaker 1: been there, I said, I have clambered up Monte Solaro
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Speaker 1: and drunk vero Capri, muddy stuff like cider at the summit, Ah,
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Speaker 1: said the man with the white face. Then perhaps you
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Speaker 1: can tell me. You will know if this was indeed Capri,
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Speaker 1: for in this life I have never been there. Let
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Speaker 1: me describe it. We were in a little room, one
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Speaker 1: of a vast multitude of little rooms, very cool, and sunny,
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Speaker 1: hollowed out of the limestone of a sort of cape,
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Speaker 1: very high above the sea. The whole island, you know,
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Speaker 1: was one enormous hotel complex, beyond explaining. And on the
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Speaker 1: other side there were miles of flat, floating hotels and
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Speaker 1: huge floating stages to which the flying machines came. They
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Speaker 1: called it a pleasure city. Of course, there was none
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Speaker 1: of that in your time. Rather, I should say, is
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Speaker 1: none of that now? Of course? Now? Yes, well, this
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Speaker 1: room of ours was at the extremity of the cape,
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Speaker 1: so that one could see east and west. Eastward was
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Speaker 1: a great cliff, a thousand feet high, perhaps coldly gray,
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Speaker 1: except for one bright edge of gold, and beyond it
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Speaker 1: the Isle of the Sirens, and a falling coast that
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Speaker 1: faded and passed into the hot sunrise. And when one
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Speaker 1: turned to the west, distinct and near was a little bay,
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Speaker 1: a little beach, still in shadow, And out of that
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Speaker 1: shadow rose Solaro, straight and tall, flushed and golden, crested,
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Speaker 1: like a beauty throned, and the white moon was floating
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Speaker 1: behind her in the sky. And before us, from east
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Speaker 1: to west stretched the many tinted sea, all dotted with
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Speaker 1: little sailing boats. To the eastward, of course, these little
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Speaker 1: boats were gray and very minute and clear. But to
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Speaker 1: the westward there were little boats of gold, shining gold,
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Speaker 1: almost like little flames. And just below us was a
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Speaker 1: rock with an arch worn through it. The blue sea
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Speaker 1: water broke to green and foam all round the rock,
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Speaker 1: and a gully came gliding out of the arch. I
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Speaker 1: know that rock, I said, I was nearly drowned there.
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Speaker 1: It is called the Faraglione. Faraglione, yes, she called it.
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Speaker 1: That answered the man with the white face. There was
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Speaker 1: some story, but that he put his hand to his
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Speaker 1: forehead again. No, he said, I forget that story. Well,
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Speaker 1: that is the first thing I remember, the first dream
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Speaker 1: I had, that little shaded room, and the beautiful air
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Speaker 1: and sky, and that dear lady of mine, with her
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Speaker 1: shining arms and her graceful robe, And how we sat
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Speaker 1: and talked in half whispers to one another. We talked
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Speaker 1: in whispers, not because there was any to hear, but
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Speaker 1: because there was still such a freshness of mind between
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Speaker 1: us that our thoughts were a little frightened. I think
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Speaker 1: defines themselves at last in words, and so they went softly.
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Speaker 1: Presently we were hungry, and we went from our apartment,
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Speaker 1: going by a strange passage with a moving floor, until
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Speaker 1: we came to the great breakfast room. There was a
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Speaker 1: fountain and music. A pleasant and joyful place it was,
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Speaker 1: with its sunlight and splashing and the murmur of plucked strings.
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Speaker 1: And we sat and ate and smiled at one another,
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Speaker 1: and I would not heed a man who was watching
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Speaker 1: me from a table nearby. And afterwards we went on
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Speaker 1: to the dancing hall. But I cannot describe that all
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Speaker 1: the place was enormous, larger than any building you have
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Speaker 1: ever seen. And in one place there was the old
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Speaker 1: gate of Capri, caught into the wall of a gallery
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Speaker 1: high overhead light girders, stems and threads of gold burst
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Speaker 1: from the pillars like fountains, streamed like an aurora across
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Speaker 1: the roof, and interlaced like like conjuring tricks. All about
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Speaker 1: the great circle. For the dancers, there were beautiful figures,
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Speaker 1: strange dragons, and intricate and wonderful grotesques bearing lights. The
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Speaker 1: place was inundated with artificial light that shamed the new
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Speaker 1: born day. And as we went through the throng, the
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Speaker 1: people turned about and looked at us, for all through
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Speaker 1: the world, my name and face were known, and how
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Speaker 1: I had suddenly thrown up pride and struggle to come
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Speaker 1: to this place. And they looked also at the lady
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Speaker 1: beside me, though half the story of how at last
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Speaker 1: she had come to me was unknown or mistold. And
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Speaker 1: few of the men who were there, I know, but
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Speaker 1: judged me a happy man in spite of all the
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Speaker 1: shame and dishonor that had come upon my name. The
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Speaker 1: air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full
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Speaker 1: of the rhythm of beautiful motions. Thousands of beautiful people
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Speaker 1: swarmed about the hall, crowded the galleries, sat in a
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Speaker 1: myriad recesses. They were dressed in splendid colors and crowned
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Speaker 1: with flowers. Thousands danced about the great circle beneath the
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Speaker 1: white images of the ancient gods, and glorious processions of
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Speaker 1: youths and maidens came and went. We two danced, not
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Speaker 1: the dreary monotonies of your days, of this time, I mean,
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Speaker 1: but dances that were beautiful, intoxicating, And even now I
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Speaker 1: can see my lady dancing, dancing joyously. She danced, you know,
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Speaker 1: with a serious face. She danced with a serious dignity,
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Speaker 1: and yet she was smiling at me and caressing me,
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Speaker 1: smiling and caressing with her eyes. The music was different,
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Speaker 1: he murmured, it went, I cannot describe it, but it
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Speaker 1: was infinitely richer and more varied than any music that
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Speaker 1: has ever come to me awake. And then it was
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Speaker 1: when we had done dancing a man came to speak
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Speaker 1: to me. He was a lean resor lute man, very
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Speaker 1: soberly clad for that place. And already I had marked
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Speaker 1: his face watching me in the breakfasting hall, and afterwards,
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Speaker 1: as we went along the passage, I had avoided his eye.
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Speaker 1: But now, as we sat in a little alcove, smiling
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Speaker 1: at the pleasure of all the people who went to
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Speaker 1: and fro across the shining floor, he came and touched
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Speaker 1: me and spoke to me, so that I was forced
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Speaker 1: to listen. And he asked that he might speak to
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Speaker 1: me for a little time apart No, I said, I
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Speaker 1: have no secrets from this lady. What do you want
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Speaker 1: to tell me? He said? It was a trivial matter,
19:34
Speaker 1: or at least a dry matter for a lady to hear,
19:38
Speaker 1: perhaps for me to hear, said I. He glanced at
19:40
Speaker 1: her as though almost he would appeal to her. Then
19:44
Speaker 1: he asked me suddenly if I had heard of a
19:46
Speaker 1: great and avenging declaration that Gresham had made. Now, Gresham
19:51
Speaker 1: had always before been the man next to myself in
19:55
Speaker 1: the leadership of that great party in the North. He
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Speaker 1: was a forcible, hard and tactless man, and only I
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Speaker 1: had been able to control and soften him. It was
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Speaker 1: on his account, even more than my own. I think
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Speaker 1: that the others had been so dismayed at my retreat.
20:12
Speaker 1: So this question about what he had done reawakened my
20:16
Speaker 1: old interest in the life I had put aside just
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Speaker 1: for a moment. I've taken no heed of any news
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Speaker 1: for many days. I said, what has Gresham been saying?
20:25
Speaker 1: And with that the man began nothing loth And I
20:29
Speaker 1: must confess, ever, I was struck by Gresham's reckless folly
20:33
Speaker 1: in the wild and threatening words he had used. And
20:36
Speaker 1: this messenger they had sent to me not only told
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Speaker 1: me of Gresham's speech, but went on to ask counsel
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Speaker 1: and to point out what need they had of me.
20:45
Speaker 1: While he talked, my lady sat a little forward and
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Speaker 1: watched his face and mine my old habits of scheming
20:53
Speaker 1: and organizing reasserted themselves. I could even see myself suddenly
20:57
Speaker 1: returning to the North, and all the dramatic effect of it,
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Speaker 1: All that this man said witnessed to the disorder of
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Speaker 1: the party, indeed, but not to its damage. I should
21:09
Speaker 1: go back stronger than I had come. And then I
21:12
Speaker 1: thought of my lady. You see, how can I tell you?
21:15
Speaker 1: There were certain peculiarities of our relationship as things are,
21:20
Speaker 1: I need not tell you about that, which would render
21:22
Speaker 1: her presence with me impossible. I should have had to
21:26
Speaker 1: leave her, Indeed, I should have had to renounce her
21:29
Speaker 1: clearly and openly, if I was to do all that
21:32
Speaker 1: I could do in the North. And the man knew
21:35
Speaker 1: that even as he talked to her, and me knew
21:39
Speaker 1: it as well as she did that my steps to
21:41
Speaker 1: duty were first separation, then abandonment. At the touch of
21:46
Speaker 1: that thought, my dream of a return was shattered. I
21:49
Speaker 1: turned on the man suddenly, as he was imagining his
21:52
Speaker 1: eloquence was gaining ground with me. What have I to
21:55
Speaker 1: do with these things? Now? I said? I have done
21:57
Speaker 1: with them. Do you think I am coquetting with you
22:00
Speaker 1: people in coming here? No? He said, But why cannot
22:04
Speaker 1: you leave me? Alone. I have done with these things.
22:07
Speaker 1: I have ceased to be anything but a private man. Yes,
22:11
Speaker 1: he answered, but have you thought this talk of war,
22:14
Speaker 1: these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions. I stood up. No,
22:18
Speaker 1: I cried, I won't hear you. I took account of
22:22
Speaker 1: all those things, I weighed them, and I have come away.
22:26
Speaker 1: He seemed to consider the possibility of persistence. He looked
22:29
Speaker 1: from me to where the lady sat. Regarding us, war,
22:33
Speaker 1: he said, as if he was speaking to himself, and
22:35
Speaker 1: then turned slowly from me and walked away. I stood
22:39
Speaker 1: caught in the whirl of thoughts. His appeal had set going.
22:42
Speaker 1: I heard my lady's voice. Dear, she said, but if
22:45
Speaker 1: they have need of you, She did not finish her sentence.
22:49
Speaker 1: She let it rest there. I turned to her sweet face,
22:52
Speaker 1: and the balance of my mood swayed and reeled. They
22:56
Speaker 1: want me only to do the thing they dare not
22:59
Speaker 1: do themselves, I said. If they distrust Gresham, they must
23:03
Speaker 1: settle with him themselves. She looked at me doubtfully, But war,
23:08
Speaker 1: she said. I saw a doubt on her face that
23:11
Speaker 1: I had seen before, a doubt of herself and me.
23:15
Speaker 1: The first shadow of the discovery that seen strongly and completely,
23:20
Speaker 1: must drive us apart for ever. Now I was an
23:24
Speaker 1: older mind than hers, and I could sway her to
23:27
Speaker 1: disbelief or that, my dear one, I said, you must
23:31
Speaker 1: not trouble over these things. There will be no war.
23:35
Speaker 1: Certainly there will be no war. The age of wars
23:38
Speaker 1: is past. Trust me to know the justice of this case.
23:42
Speaker 1: They have no right upon me, dearest, and no one
23:45
Speaker 1: has a right upon me. I have been free to
23:48
Speaker 1: choose my life, and I have chosen this but war,
23:53
Speaker 1: she said. I sat down beside her. I put an
23:56
Speaker 1: arm behind her and took her hand in mine. I
23:59
Speaker 1: set myself to drive that doubt away. I set myself
24:02
Speaker 1: to fill her mind with pleasant things. Again. I lied
24:05
Speaker 1: to her, and in lying to her, I lied also
24:09
Speaker 1: to myself. And she was only too ready to believe me,
24:13
Speaker 1: only too ready to forget. Very soon the shadow had
24:17
Speaker 1: gone again, and we were hastening to our bathing place
24:20
Speaker 1: in the Grotta del Bovo Marino, where it was our
24:24
Speaker 1: custom to bathe every day. We swam and splashed one another,
24:28
Speaker 1: and in that buoyant water I seemed to become something
24:31
Speaker 1: lighter and stronger than a man. And at last we
24:35
Speaker 1: came out, dripping and rejoicing, and raced among the rocks.
24:39
Speaker 1: And then I put on a dry bathing dress, and
24:42
Speaker 1: we sat to bask in the sun. And presently I nodded,
24:46
Speaker 1: resting my head against her knee, and she put her
24:48
Speaker 1: hand upon my hair and stroked it softly, and I dozed,
24:53
Speaker 1: and behold, as it were, with the snapping of the
24:55
Speaker 1: string of a violin, I was awakening, and I was
24:58
Speaker 1: in my own bed in Liverpool, in the light of
25:01
Speaker 1: to day. Only for a time I could not believe
25:05
Speaker 1: that all these vivid moments had been no more than
25:08
Speaker 1: the substance of a dream. In truth, I could not
25:11
Speaker 1: believe it a dream, for all the sobering reality of
25:15
Speaker 1: things about me. I bathed and dressed, as it were
25:19
Speaker 1: by habit, and as I shaved, I argued, why I,
25:22
Speaker 1: of all men, should leave the woman I loved, to
25:25
Speaker 1: go back to fantastic politics in the hard and strenuous North.
25:30
Speaker 1: Even if Gresham did force the world back to war,
25:33
Speaker 1: what was that to me? I was a man with
25:35
Speaker 1: the heart of a man, And why should I feel
25:38
Speaker 1: the responsibility of a deity for the way the world
25:42
Speaker 1: might go? You know, that is not quite the way
25:45
Speaker 1: I think about affairs, about my real affairs. I am
25:48
Speaker 1: a solicitor, you know, with a point of view. The
25:52
Speaker 1: vision was so real, you must understand, so utterly, unlike
25:56
Speaker 1: a dream that I kept perpetually recalling little irrelevant details.
26:01
Speaker 1: Even the ornament of a book cover that lay on
26:04
Speaker 1: my wife's sewing machine in the breakfast room, recalled with
26:08
Speaker 1: the utmost vividness the guilt line that ran about the
26:12
Speaker 1: seat in the alcove where I had talked with the
26:15
Speaker 1: messenger from my deserted party. Have you ever heard of
26:18
Speaker 1: a dream that had a quality like that, like so
26:22
Speaker 1: that afterwards you remembered little details you had forgotten? I
26:26
Speaker 1: thought I had never noticed the point before, but he
26:30
Speaker 1: was riot Never, I said, that is what you never
26:34
Speaker 1: seemed to do with dreams. No, he answered, but that
26:38
Speaker 1: is just what I did. I am a solicitor, you
26:41
Speaker 1: must understand. In Liverpool, and I could not help wondering
26:44
Speaker 1: what the clients and business men I found myself talking
26:47
Speaker 1: to in my office would think if I told them
26:51
Speaker 1: suddenly I was in love with a girl who would
26:54
Speaker 1: be born a couple of hundred years or so. Hence,
26:57
Speaker 1: and worried about the politics of my great great great grandchildren.
27:03
Speaker 1: I was chiefly busy that day negotiating a ninety nine
27:07
Speaker 1: year building lease. It was a private builder in a hurry,
27:10
Speaker 1: and we wanted to tie him in every possible way.
27:14
Speaker 1: I had an interview with him, and he showed a
27:16
Speaker 1: certain want of temper that sent me to bed still irritated.
27:20
Speaker 1: That night, I had no dream, nor did I dream
27:23
Speaker 1: the next night, at least to remember something of that
27:27
Speaker 1: intense reality of conviction vanished. I began to feel sure
27:31
Speaker 1: it was a dream, and then it came again. When
27:35
Speaker 1: the dream came again nearly four days later, it was
27:38
Speaker 1: very different. I think it certain that four days had
27:41
Speaker 1: also elapsed. In the dream, many things had happened in
27:45
Speaker 1: the north, and the shadow of them was back again
27:48
Speaker 1: between us, and this time it was not so easily dispelled.
27:52
Speaker 1: I began, I know, with moody musings, why in spite
27:57
Speaker 1: of all, should I go back, go back for all
28:00
Speaker 1: the rest of my days, to toil and stress, insults
28:05
Speaker 1: and perpetual dissatisfaction, simply to save hundreds of millions of
28:10
Speaker 1: common people, whom I did not love, whom too often
28:13
Speaker 1: I could not do other than despise from the stress
28:17
Speaker 1: and anguish of war and infinite misrule, and after all
28:22
Speaker 1: I might fail. They all sought their own narrow ends.
28:26
Speaker 1: And why should not I? Why should not I also
28:29
Speaker 1: live as a man? And out of such thoughts? Her
28:33
Speaker 1: voice summoned me, and I lifted my eyes. I found
28:37
Speaker 1: myself awake and walking. We had come out above the
28:40
Speaker 1: Pleasure City. We were near the summit of Monte Solaro,
28:44
Speaker 1: and looking towards the bay. It was the late afternoon
28:47
Speaker 1: and very clear. Far away to the left, Ischia hung
28:50
Speaker 1: in a golden haze between sea and sky, and Naples
28:55
Speaker 1: was coldly white against the hills. And before us was Vesuvius,
29:00
Speaker 1: with a tall and slender streamer, feathering at last towards
29:04
Speaker 1: the south, and the ruins of Torre de la Nunciata
29:08
Speaker 1: and Castellamari glittering and near. I interrupted, Suddenly, you have
29:13
Speaker 1: been to Capri. Of course, only in this dream, he said,
29:18
Speaker 1: Only in this dream. All across the bay, beyond Sorrento
29:22
Speaker 1: were the floating palaces of the Pleasure City, moored and chained,
29:27
Speaker 1: and northward were the broad floating stages that received the aeroplanes.
29:32
Speaker 1: Aeroplanes fell out of the sky every afternoon, each bringing
29:36
Speaker 1: its thousands of pleasure seekers, from the uttermost parts of
29:40
Speaker 1: the earth to Capri and its delights. All these things,
29:44
Speaker 1: I say, stretched below. But we noticed them only incidentally
29:49
Speaker 1: because of an unusual sight That evening had to show.
29:54
Speaker 1: Five war aeroplanes that had long slumbered useless in the
29:58
Speaker 1: distant arsenals of the Rhine Mouth were maneuvering now in
30:02
Speaker 1: the eastward sky. Gresham had astonished the world by producing
30:06
Speaker 1: them and others, and sending them to circle here and there.
30:10
Speaker 1: It was the threat material in the great game of
30:13
Speaker 1: bluff he was playing, and it had taken even me
30:16
Speaker 1: by surprise. He was one of those incredibly stupid, energetic
30:21
Speaker 1: people who seemed sent by heaven to create disasters. His energy,
30:26
Speaker 1: to the first glance, seemed so wonderfully like capacity. But
30:30
Speaker 1: he had no imagination, no invention, only a stupid, vast
30:35
Speaker 1: driving force of will and a mad faith in his stupid,
30:39
Speaker 1: idiot luck to pull him through. I remember how we
30:44
Speaker 1: stood out upon the headland, watching the squadron circling far away,
30:48
Speaker 1: and how I weighed the full meaning of the sight,
30:52
Speaker 1: seeing clearly the way things must go. And then even
30:56
Speaker 1: it was not too late, I might have gone back
30:59
Speaker 1: I think and saved the world. The people of the
31:02
Speaker 1: North would follow me. I knew, granted only that in
31:05
Speaker 1: one thing I respected their moral standards. The East and
31:09
Speaker 1: South would trust me as they would trust no other
31:13
Speaker 1: northern man. And I knew I had only to put
31:16
Speaker 1: it to and she would have let me go. Not
31:19
Speaker 1: because she did not love me, only I did not
31:23
Speaker 1: want to go. My will was all the other way about.
31:27
Speaker 1: I had so newly thrown off the incubus of responsibility.
31:32
Speaker 1: I was still so fresh a renegade from duty that
31:36
Speaker 1: the daylight clearness of what I ought to do had
31:39
Speaker 1: no power at all to touch my will. My will
31:43
Speaker 1: was to live, to gather pleasures and make my dear
31:46
Speaker 1: lady happy. But though this sense of vast neglected duties
31:51
Speaker 1: had no power to draw me, it could make me
31:54
Speaker 1: silent and preoccupied. It robbed the days I had spent
31:58
Speaker 1: of half their pride, and roused me into dark meditations
32:03
Speaker 1: in the silence of the night. And as I stood
32:06
Speaker 1: and watched Gresham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro those birds
32:11
Speaker 1: of infinite ill omen she stood beside me, watching me,
32:16
Speaker 1: perceiving the trouble, indeed, but not perceiving it clearly, her
32:20
Speaker 1: eyes questioning my face, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her
32:26
Speaker 1: face was gray because the sunset was fading out of
32:29
Speaker 1: the sky. It was no fault of hers that she
32:33
Speaker 1: held me. She had asked me to go from her,
32:36
Speaker 1: and again in the night time, and with tears she
32:39
Speaker 1: had asked me to go at last. It was the
32:43
Speaker 1: sense of her that roused me from my mood. I
32:45
Speaker 1: turned upon her suddenly and challenged her to race down
32:48
Speaker 1: the mountain slopes. No, she said, as if I jarred
32:52
Speaker 1: with her gravity. But I was resolved to end that
32:56
Speaker 1: gravity and made her run. No one can be very
32:59
Speaker 1: gray and safe, lad who is out of breath. And
33:02
Speaker 1: when she stumbled, I ran with my hand beneath her arm.
33:05
Speaker 1: We ran down past a couple of men who turned back,
33:08
Speaker 1: staring in astonishment at my behavior. They must have recognized
33:11
Speaker 1: my face. And half way down the slope came a
33:14
Speaker 1: tumult in the air. Blank clank, clank, clank, and we stopped,
33:19
Speaker 1: and presently over the hill crest, those war things came flying,
33:24
Speaker 1: one behind the other. The man seemed hesitating on the
33:27
Speaker 1: verge of a description. What were they like? I asked?
33:31
Speaker 1: They had never fought he said. They were just like
33:34
Speaker 1: our iron clads are nowadays. They had never fought. No
33:38
Speaker 1: one knew what they might do with excited men inside them.
33:42
Speaker 1: Few even cared to speculate. They were great driving things,
33:47
Speaker 1: shaped like spear heads without a shaft, with a propeller
33:51
Speaker 1: in the place of the shaft. Steel not steel, Aluminium, no, no,
33:57
Speaker 1: nothing of that sort. An alloy that was very common,
34:01
Speaker 1: as common as brass. For example, it was called let
34:04
Speaker 1: me see. He squeezed his forehead with the fingers of
34:08
Speaker 1: one hand. I am forgetting everything, he said. And they
34:12
Speaker 1: carried guns, little guns firing high explosive shells. They fired
34:17
Speaker 1: the guns backwards out of the base of the leaf,
34:20
Speaker 1: so to speak, and rammed with the beak. That was
34:23
Speaker 1: the theory, you know. But they had never been fought.
34:26
Speaker 1: No one could tell exactly what was going to happen.
34:29
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, I suppose it was very fine to go
34:32
Speaker 1: whirling through the air like a flight of young swallows,
34:36
Speaker 1: swift and easy, I guess. The captains tried not to
34:40
Speaker 1: think too clearly what the real thing would be like.
34:44
Speaker 1: And these flying war machines, you know, were only one
34:48
Speaker 1: sort of the endless war contrivances that had been invented
34:52
Speaker 1: and had fallen into abeyance. During the long piece, there
34:56
Speaker 1: were all sorts of these things that people were routing
34:59
Speaker 1: out and furbishing up. Infernal things, silly things, things that
35:04
Speaker 1: had never been tried, big engines, terrible explosives, great guns.
35:09
Speaker 1: You know, the silly way of these ingenious sort of
35:12
Speaker 1: men who make these things. They turn them out as
35:15
Speaker 1: beavers build dams, and with no more sense of the
35:18
Speaker 1: rivers they are going to divert and the lands they're
35:21
Speaker 1: going to flood. As we went down the winding stepway
35:25
Speaker 1: to our hotel again in the twilight, I foresaw it all.
35:29
Speaker 1: I saw how clearly and inevitably things were driving for
35:33
Speaker 1: war in Gresham's silly, violent hands. And I had some
35:38
Speaker 1: inkling of what war was bound to be under these
35:41
Speaker 1: new conditions. And even then, though I knew it was
35:45
Speaker 1: drawing near the limit of my opportunity, I could find
35:48
Speaker 1: no will to go back. He sighed, that was my
35:52
Speaker 1: last chance. We did not go into the city until
35:56
Speaker 1: the sky was full of stars. So we walked out
35:59
Speaker 1: upon the high terrace to and fro and she counseled
36:03
Speaker 1: me to go back, my dearest, she said, and her
36:07
Speaker 1: sweet face looked up to me. This is death. This
36:10
Speaker 1: life you lead is death. Go back to them, Go
36:13
Speaker 1: back to your duty. She began to weep, saying between
36:17
Speaker 1: her sobs and clinging to my arm as she said it,
36:21
Speaker 1: go back, go back. Then suddenly she fell mute, and
36:26
Speaker 1: glancing down at her face, I read in an instant
36:29
Speaker 1: the thing she had thought to do. It was one
36:32
Speaker 1: of those moments when one sees no. I said no,
36:37
Speaker 1: she asked, in surprise, and I think a little fearful
36:40
Speaker 1: at the answer to her thought. Nothing I said shall
36:44
Speaker 1: send me back. Nothing. I have chosen Love. I have chosen,
36:49
Speaker 1: and the world must go whatever happens. I will live
36:54
Speaker 1: this life. I will live for you it. Nothing shall
36:58
Speaker 1: turn me aside, nothing, my dear one, even if you died,
37:03
Speaker 1: Even if you died, Yes, she murmured softly, then I
37:08
Speaker 1: also would die. And before she could speak again, I
37:13
Speaker 1: began to talk, talking eloquently as I could do in
37:17
Speaker 1: that life, talking to exalt love, to make the life
37:20
Speaker 1: we were living seem heroic and glorious. And the thing
37:24
Speaker 1: I was deserting, something hard and enormously ignoble, that it
37:29
Speaker 1: was a fine thing to set aside. I bent all
37:32
Speaker 1: my mind to throw that glamor upon it, seeking not
37:35
Speaker 1: only to convert her but myself to that. We talked,
37:40
Speaker 1: and she clung to me, torn too between all that
37:44
Speaker 1: she deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet.
37:48
Speaker 1: And at last I did make it heroic, made all
37:51
Speaker 1: the thickening disaster of the world only a sort of
37:54
Speaker 1: glorious setting to our unparalleled love. And we two poor,
38:00
Speaker 1: poor foolish souls, strutted there, at last, clad in that
38:04
Speaker 1: splendid delusion, drunken rather with that glorious delusion, under the
38:10
Speaker 1: still stars. And so my moment passed. It was my
38:15
Speaker 1: last chance. Even as we went to and fro there,
38:19
Speaker 1: the leaders of the South and East were gathering their resolve,
38:23
Speaker 1: and the hot answer that shattered Gresham's bluffing for ever
38:27
Speaker 1: took shape and waited, And all over Asia and the
38:31
Speaker 1: ocean and the South, the air and the wires were
38:35
Speaker 1: throbbing with their warnings to prepare, prepare. No one living,
38:40
Speaker 1: you know, knew what war was. No one could imagine,
38:44
Speaker 1: with all these new inventions, what horror war might bring.
38:48
Speaker 1: I believe most people still believed it would be a
38:51
Speaker 1: matter of bright uniforms and shouting charges and triumphs and
38:56
Speaker 1: flags and bands, in a time when half of the
39:00
Speaker 1: world drew its food supply from regions ten thousand miles away.
39:06
Speaker 1: The man with the white face paused. I glanced at him,
39:09
Speaker 1: and his face was intent on the floor of the carriage,
39:12
Speaker 1: a little railway station, a string of loaded trucks, a
39:15
Speaker 1: signal box, and the back of a cottage shot by
39:19
Speaker 1: the carriage window, and a bridge passed with a clap
39:21
Speaker 1: of noise echoing the tumult of the train. After that,
39:26
Speaker 1: he said, I dreamt often for three weeks of nights.
39:30
Speaker 1: That dream was my life, and the worst of it
39:33
Speaker 1: was there were nights when I could not dream, when
39:35
Speaker 1: I lay tossing on a bed in this accursed life,
39:40
Speaker 1: and there somewhere, lost to me, things were happening, momentous,
39:44
Speaker 1: terrible things I lived at nights, My days, my waking days.
39:49
Speaker 1: This life I am living now became a faded, far
39:53
Speaker 1: away dream, a trab setting. The cover of the book.
39:57
Speaker 1: He thought, I could tell you all, will tell you
40:01
Speaker 1: every little thing in the dream, But as to what
40:04
Speaker 1: I did in the daytime, no, I could not tell.
40:07
Speaker 1: I do not remember my memory. My memory has gone.
40:11
Speaker 1: The business of life slips from me. He leant forward
40:14
Speaker 1: and pressed his hands upon his eyes. For a long
40:17
Speaker 1: time he said nothing, and then said I the war
40:21
Speaker 1: burst like a hurricane. He stared before him at unspeakable things.
40:26
Speaker 1: And then I urged again. One touch of unreality, he said,
40:31
Speaker 1: in the low tone of a man who speaks to himself.
40:35
Speaker 1: And they would have been nightmares, but they were not nightmares.
40:38
Speaker 1: They were not nightmares. No. He was silent for so
40:42
Speaker 1: long that it dawned upon me that there was a
40:45
Speaker 1: danger of losing the rest of the story. But he
40:47
Speaker 1: went on talking again, in the same tone of questioning
40:50
Speaker 1: self communion. What was there to do but flight? I
40:54
Speaker 1: had not thought the war would touch Capri. I had
40:58
Speaker 1: seemed to see Capria's being out of it all as
41:01
Speaker 1: the contrast to it all. But two nights after, the
41:05
Speaker 1: whole place was shouting and bawling. Every woman almost and
41:10
Speaker 1: every other man wore a badge, Gresham's badge, and there
41:14
Speaker 1: was no music but a jangling war song, over and
41:18
Speaker 1: over again, and everywhere men enlisting, and in the dancing
41:22
Speaker 1: halls they were drilling. The whole island was a world
41:25
Speaker 1: with rumors. It was said again and again that fighting
41:29
Speaker 1: had begun. I had not expected this. I had seen
41:33
Speaker 1: so little of the life of pleasure that I had
41:36
Speaker 1: failed to reckon with this violence of the amateurs. And
41:40
Speaker 1: as for me, I was out of it. I was
41:43
Speaker 1: like a man who might have prevented the firing of
41:46
Speaker 1: a magazine. The time had gone. I was no one.
41:50
Speaker 1: The vainest stripling with a badge counted for more than I.
41:54
Speaker 1: The crowd jostled us and balled in our ears, that
41:58
Speaker 1: a cursed song us. A woman shrieked at my lady
42:02
Speaker 1: because no badge was on her. And we two went
42:06
Speaker 1: back to our own place again, ruffled and insulted. My
42:10
Speaker 1: lady white and silent, and I a quiver with rage.
42:15
Speaker 1: So furious was I I could have quarreled with her
42:18
Speaker 1: if I could have found one shade of accusation in
42:21
Speaker 1: her eyes. All my magnificence had gone from me. I
42:26
Speaker 1: walked up and down our rock cell, and outside was
42:30
Speaker 1: the darkling sea, and a light to the southward that
42:34
Speaker 1: flared and passed and came again. We must get out
42:39
Speaker 1: of this place, I said, over and over. I have
42:42
Speaker 1: made my choice, and I will have no hand in
42:44
Speaker 1: these troubles. I will have nothing of this war. We
42:47
Speaker 1: have taken our lives out of all these things. This
42:51
Speaker 1: is no refuge for us. Let us go. And the
42:54
Speaker 1: next day we were already in flight from the war
42:57
Speaker 1: that covered the world. And all the rest was flight,
43:01
Speaker 1: All the rest was flight. He mused darkly, How much
43:07
Speaker 1: was there of it? He made no answer. How many
43:10
Speaker 1: days his face was white and drawn, and his hands
43:14
Speaker 1: were clenched. He took no heed of my curiosity. I
43:17
Speaker 1: tried to draw him back to his story with questions,
43:20
Speaker 1: Where did you go? I said, when? When you left Capri? Southwest?
43:26
Speaker 1: He said, and glanced at me for a second. We
43:29
Speaker 1: went in a boat. But I should have thought an aeroplane.
43:33
Speaker 1: They had been seized. I questioned him no more. Presently
43:37
Speaker 1: I thought he was beginning again. He broke out in
43:40
Speaker 1: an argumentative monotone. But why should it be, if indeed,
43:45
Speaker 1: this battle, this slaughter and stress, is life? Why have
43:50
Speaker 1: we this craving for pleasure and beauty? If there is
43:54
Speaker 1: no refuge, if there is no place of peace, and
43:57
Speaker 1: if all our dreams of quiet places are a folly
44:01
Speaker 1: and a sneer, why have we such dreams? Surely it
44:05
Speaker 1: was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions had brought us
44:10
Speaker 1: to this. It was love had isolated us. Love had
44:14
Speaker 1: come to me with her eyes and robed in her beauty,
44:18
Speaker 1: more glorious than all else in life, in the very
44:21
Speaker 1: shape and color of life, and summoned me away. I
44:26
Speaker 1: had silenced all the voices, I had answered all the questions.
44:30
Speaker 1: I had come to her, and suddenly there was nothing
44:33
Speaker 1: but war and death. I had an inspiration, after all,
44:38
Speaker 1: I said. It could have been only a dream, A dream,
44:41
Speaker 1: he cried, flaming upon me, a dream. When even now,
44:47
Speaker 1: for the first time he became animated, A faint flush
44:50
Speaker 1: crept into his cheek. He raised his open hand and
44:53
Speaker 1: clenched it, and dropped it to his knee. He spoke,
44:57
Speaker 1: looking away from me, and for all the rest of
45:00
Speaker 1: the time he looked away. We are but phantoms, he said,
45:04
Speaker 1: And the phantoms of phantoms desires, like cloud shadows and
45:10
Speaker 1: wills of straw that eddy in the wind to day's
45:14
Speaker 1: pass use and want carry us through as a train
45:19
Speaker 1: carries the shadow of its lights. So be it. But
45:24
Speaker 1: one thing is real and certain. One thing is no
45:27
Speaker 1: dream stuff, but eternal and enduring. It is the center
45:32
Speaker 1: of my life, and all other things about it are
45:34
Speaker 1: subordinate or altogether vain. I loved her, that woman of
45:40
Speaker 1: a dream, and she and I are dead together a dream.
45:46
Speaker 1: How can it be a dream when it drenched a
45:49
Speaker 1: living life with unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all that
45:54
Speaker 1: I have lived for and cared for worthless and unmeaning.
46:00
Speaker 1: Until that very moment, when she was killed, I believed
46:04
Speaker 1: we had still a chance of getting away, he said.
46:07
Speaker 1: All through the night and morning that we sailed across
46:10
Speaker 1: the sea from Capri to Salerno, we talked of escape.
46:15
Speaker 1: We were full of hope, and it clung about us
46:18
Speaker 1: to the end, hope for the life together we should
46:21
Speaker 1: lead out of it, all, out of the battle and struggle,
46:25
Speaker 1: the wild and empty passions, the empty, arbitrary thou shalt
46:30
Speaker 1: and thou shalt not of the world. We were uplifted,
46:35
Speaker 1: as though our quest was a holy thing, as though
46:39
Speaker 1: love for one another was a mission. Even when from
46:43
Speaker 1: our boat we saw the fair face of that great
46:46
Speaker 1: rock Capri, already scarred and gashed by the gun, emplacements
46:51
Speaker 1: and hiding places that were to make it a fastness.
46:56
Speaker 1: We reckoned nothing of the imminent slaughter, though the fury
46:59
Speaker 1: of preparation hung about in puffs and clouds of dust
47:04
Speaker 1: at a hundred points amidst the gray. But indeed I
47:08
Speaker 1: made a text of that and talked there, you know,
47:12
Speaker 1: was the rock still beautiful for all its scars, with
47:16
Speaker 1: its countless windows and arches and ways tier upon tier
47:21
Speaker 1: for a thousand feet, a vast carving of gray, broken
47:25
Speaker 1: by vine clad terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and
47:30
Speaker 1: masses of a garvey and prickly pear, and puffs of
47:34
Speaker 1: almond blossom, and out under the archway that is built
47:38
Speaker 1: over the Piccolomarina, other boats were coming. And as we
47:42
Speaker 1: came round the cape and within sight of the mainland,
47:45
Speaker 1: another little string of boats came into view, driving before
47:49
Speaker 1: the wind towards the southwest. In a little while a
47:54
Speaker 1: multitude had come out the remoter, just little specks of
47:58
Speaker 1: ultramarine in the shadow of the eastward cliff. It is
48:02
Speaker 1: love and reason, I said, fleeing from all this madness
48:05
Speaker 1: of war. And though we presently saw a squadron of
48:09
Speaker 1: aeroplanes flying across the southern sky, we did not heed it.
48:14
Speaker 1: There it was a lion of little dots in the sky,
48:18
Speaker 1: and then more dotting the southeastern horizon, and then still more,
48:22
Speaker 1: until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with
48:26
Speaker 1: blue specks. Now they were all thin, little strokes of blue,
48:31
Speaker 1: and now one and now a multitude would heal and
48:35
Speaker 1: catch the sun and become short flashes of light. There
48:39
Speaker 1: came rising and falling, and growing larger, like some huge
48:43
Speaker 1: flight of gulls or rooks, or such like birds, moving
48:47
Speaker 1: with a marvelous uniformity. And ever as they drew nearer
48:51
Speaker 1: they spread over a greater width of sky. The southward
48:55
Speaker 1: wing flung itself in an arrow headed cloud athwart the sun.
48:59
Speaker 1: And then suddenly they swept round to the eastward and
49:02
Speaker 1: streamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller, and clearer and clearer again,
49:07
Speaker 1: until they vanished from the sky. And after that we
49:11
Speaker 1: noted to the northward and very high Gresham's fighting machines,
49:15
Speaker 1: hanging high over naples like an evening swarm of gnats.
49:20
Speaker 1: It seemed to have no more to do with us
49:23
Speaker 1: than a flight of birds. Even the mutter of guns
49:27
Speaker 1: far away in the southeast seemed to us to signify nothing.
49:32
Speaker 1: Each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted,
49:37
Speaker 1: still seeking that refuge where we might live and love,
49:41
Speaker 1: fatigue had come upon us, pain and many distresses. For
49:45
Speaker 1: though we were dusty and stained by our toilsome tramping,
49:49
Speaker 1: and half starved, and with the horror of the dead
49:53
Speaker 1: men we had seen, and the flight of the peasants,
49:56
Speaker 1: for very soon a gust of fighting swept up the peninsula.
50:01
Speaker 1: With these things haunting our minds, it still resulted only
50:04
Speaker 1: in a deepening resolution to escape. Oh, but she was
50:09
Speaker 1: brave and patient. She who had never faced hardship and exposure,
50:14
Speaker 1: had courage for herself and me. We went to and
50:19
Speaker 1: fro seeking an outlet, over a country all commandeered and
50:24
Speaker 1: ransacked by the gathering hosts of war. Always we went
50:29
Speaker 1: on foot. At first there were other fugitives, but we
50:33
Speaker 1: did not mingle with them. Some escaped northward, Some were
50:37
Speaker 1: caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept along the
50:39
Speaker 1: main roads. Many gave themselves into the hands of the
50:43
Speaker 1: soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed,
50:47
Speaker 1: but we kept away from these things. We had brought
50:50
Speaker 1: no money to bribe a passage north, and I feared
50:53
Speaker 1: for my lady at the hands of these conscript crowds.
50:57
Speaker 1: We had landed at Salerno and we had been turned
51:00
Speaker 1: back from Carver, and we had tried to cross towards
51:03
Speaker 1: Taranto by a pass over Mount Alburno, but we had
51:07
Speaker 1: been driven back for want of food, and so we
51:10
Speaker 1: had come down among the marshes by Piston, where those
51:14
Speaker 1: great temples stand alone. I had some vague idea that
51:18
Speaker 1: by Pestom it might be possible to find a boat
51:21
Speaker 1: or something and take once more to see. And there
51:24
Speaker 1: it was. The battle overtook us. A sort of soul
51:28
Speaker 1: blindness had me plainly. I could see that we were
51:32
Speaker 1: being hemmed in, that the great net of that giant
51:36
Speaker 1: warfare had us in its toils. Many times we had
51:40
Speaker 1: seen the levees that had come down from the north
51:42
Speaker 1: going to and fro, and had come upon them in
51:45
Speaker 1: the distance amidst the mountains, making ways for the ammunition
51:50
Speaker 1: and preparing the mounting of the guns. Once we fancied
51:53
Speaker 1: they had fired at us, taking us for spies. At
51:56
Speaker 1: any rate, a shot had gone shuddering over us. Several
51:59
Speaker 1: times we had hidden in woods from hovering aeroplanes. But
52:05
Speaker 1: all these things do not matter now, these nights of
52:09
Speaker 1: flight and pain. We were in an open place near
52:13
Speaker 1: those great temples at pistom at last on a blank,
52:17
Speaker 1: stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolate, and
52:23
Speaker 1: so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed
52:26
Speaker 1: to the feet of its stems. How I can see it.
52:30
Speaker 1: My lady was sitting down under a bush, resting a little,
52:34
Speaker 1: for she was very weak and weary, and I was
52:37
Speaker 1: standing up, watching to see if I could tell the
52:40
Speaker 1: distance of the firing that came and went. They were still,
52:44
Speaker 1: you know, fighting far from each other with these terrible
52:48
Speaker 1: new weapons that had never before been used, guns that
52:51
Speaker 1: would carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do what
52:56
Speaker 1: they would do no man could foretell. I knew that
53:01
Speaker 1: we were between the two armies, and that they drew together.
53:05
Speaker 1: I knew we were in danger, and that we could
53:07
Speaker 1: not stop there and rest. So all these things were
53:11
Speaker 1: in my mind. They were in the background. They seemed
53:14
Speaker 1: to be affairs beyond our concern. Chiefly I was thinking
53:18
Speaker 1: of my lady. An aching distress filled me. For the
53:22
Speaker 1: first time. She had owned herself beaten and had fallen
53:26
Speaker 1: a weeping behind me. I could hear her sobbing, but
53:30
Speaker 1: I would not turn round to her, because I knew
53:33
Speaker 1: she had need of weeping, and had held herself so
53:35
Speaker 1: far and so long for me. It was well. I
53:39
Speaker 1: thought that she would weep and rest, and then we
53:42
Speaker 1: would toil on again, For I had no inkling of
53:45
Speaker 1: the thing that hung so near. Even now I can
53:49
Speaker 1: see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon
53:52
Speaker 1: her shoulder, can mark again the deepening hollow of her cheek.
53:57
Speaker 1: If we had parted, she said, if I had let
54:00
Speaker 1: you go, no, said I. Even now, I do not repent.
54:04
Speaker 1: I will not repent. I made my choice, and I
54:08
Speaker 1: will hold on to the end. And then overhead in
54:11
Speaker 1: the sky flashed something and burst, and all about us
54:14
Speaker 1: I heard the bullets making a noise like a handful
54:17
Speaker 1: of peas suddenly thrown. They chipped the stones about us,
54:20
Speaker 1: and whirled fragments from the bricks and passed. He put
54:24
Speaker 1: his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips
54:28
Speaker 1: at the flash. I had turned about. You know. She
54:30
Speaker 1: stood up. She stood up, you know, and moved a
54:34
Speaker 1: step towards me, as though she wanted to reach me,
54:37
Speaker 1: and she had been shot through the heart. He stopped
54:42
Speaker 1: and stared at me. I felt all that foolish incapacity,
54:46
Speaker 1: an Englishman feels on such occasions. I met his eyes
54:50
Speaker 1: for a moment, and then stared out of the window.
54:53
Speaker 1: For a long space. We kept silence. When at last
54:56
Speaker 1: I looked at him. He was sitting back in his corner,
55:00
Speaker 1: his arms folded and his teeth gnawing at his knuckles.
55:03
Speaker 1: He bit his nail suddenly and stared at it. I
55:06
Speaker 1: carried her, he said, towards the temples in my arms,
55:11
Speaker 1: as though it mattered. I don't know why. They seemed
55:15
Speaker 1: a sort of sanctuary. You know, they had lasted so long.
55:18
Speaker 1: I suppose she must have died almost instantly. Only I
55:23
Speaker 1: talked to her all the way. Silence again. I have
55:27
Speaker 1: seen those temples, I said abruptly, And indeed he had
55:31
Speaker 1: brought those still sunlit arcades of worn sandstone very vividly
55:36
Speaker 1: before me. It was the brown one, the big brown one.
55:40
Speaker 1: I sat down on a fallen pillar and held her
55:43
Speaker 1: in my arms, silent. After the first babble was over,
55:48
Speaker 1: and after a little while the lizards came out and
55:50
Speaker 1: ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on,
55:54
Speaker 1: as though nothing had changed. It was tremendously still there,
55:59
Speaker 1: the sight high and the shadows still, even the shadows
56:03
Speaker 1: of the weeds upon the entablature were still, in spite
56:07
Speaker 1: of the thudding and banging that went all about the sky.
56:11
Speaker 1: I seemed to remember that the aeroplanes came up out
56:14
Speaker 1: of the south, and that the battle went away to
56:17
Speaker 1: the west. One aeroplane was struck and overset and fell.
56:21
Speaker 1: I remember that, though it didn't interest me in the least,
56:25
Speaker 1: it didn't seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull,
56:30
Speaker 1: you know, flapping for a time in the water. I
56:32
Speaker 1: could see it down the aisle of the temple, a
56:34
Speaker 1: black thing in the bright blue water. Three or four
56:38
Speaker 1: times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased.
56:42
Speaker 1: Each time that happened, all the lizards scuttled in and
56:45
Speaker 1: hid for a space. That was all the mischief done,
56:49
Speaker 1: except at once a stray bullet gashed the stone hard
56:53
Speaker 1: by made just a fresh, bright surface. As the shadows
56:57
Speaker 1: grew longer, the stillness seemed great. The curious thing, he remarked,
57:03
Speaker 1: with the manner of a man who makes a trivial conversation,
57:07
Speaker 1: is that I didn't think. I didn't think at all.
57:11
Speaker 1: I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones,
57:15
Speaker 1: in a sort of lethargy, stagnant, and I don't remember
57:20
Speaker 1: waking up. I don't remember dressing that day. I know
57:23
Speaker 1: I found myself in my office with my letters all
57:26
Speaker 1: slit open in front of me, and how I was
57:29
Speaker 1: struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing that in
57:33
Speaker 1: reality I was sitting stunned in that pistant temple with
57:38
Speaker 1: a dead woman in my arms. I read my letters
57:42
Speaker 1: like a machine. I have forgotten what they were about.
57:46
Speaker 1: He stopped, and there was a long silence. Suddenly I
57:50
Speaker 1: perceived that we were running down the incline from Chalk
57:53
Speaker 1: Farm to Euston. I started at this passing of time.
57:57
Speaker 1: I turned on him with a brutal question, with the
58:00
Speaker 1: tone of now or never, And did you dream again? Yes?
58:05
Speaker 1: He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was
58:09
Speaker 1: very low once more, and as it were, only for
58:13
Speaker 1: a few instants, I seemed to have suddenly awakened out
58:16
Speaker 1: of a great apathy, to have risen into a sitting position,
58:20
Speaker 1: and a body lay there on the stones beside me,
58:24
Speaker 1: a gaunt body, not her, you know so soon it
58:28
Speaker 1: was not her. I may have heard voices. I do
58:32
Speaker 1: not know. Only I knew clearly that men were coming
58:36
Speaker 1: into the solitude, and that that was a last outrage.
58:41
Speaker 1: I stood up and walked through the temple. And then
58:44
Speaker 1: there came into sight, first one man with a yellow face,
58:49
Speaker 1: dressed in a uniform of dirty white trimmed with blue,
58:52
Speaker 1: and then several climbing to the crest of the old
58:55
Speaker 1: wall of the vanished city and crouching there. They were
58:59
Speaker 1: little bright figures in the sunlight. And there they hung
59:02
Speaker 1: weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them. And further away
59:06
Speaker 1: I saw others, and then more at another point in
59:10
Speaker 1: the wall. It was a long black line of men
59:13
Speaker 1: in open order. Presently, the man I had first seen
59:17
Speaker 1: stood up and shouted at command, and his men came
59:20
Speaker 1: tumbling down the wall, then into the high weeds towards
59:24
Speaker 1: the temple. He scrambled down with them and led them.
59:27
Speaker 1: He came facing towards me, and when he saw me,
59:29
Speaker 1: he stopped. At first I had watched these men with
59:32
Speaker 1: a mere curiosity, But when I had seen they meant
59:35
Speaker 1: to come to the temple, I was moved to forbid them.
59:39
Speaker 1: I shouted to the officer, you must not come here,
59:42
Speaker 1: I cried, I am here, I am here with my dead.
59:46
Speaker 1: He stared and then shouted a question back to me
59:49
Speaker 1: in some unknown tongue. I repeated what I had said.
59:53
Speaker 1: He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood still. Presently,
59:57
Speaker 1: he spoke to his men and came forward. He carried
1:00:00
Speaker 1: a drawn sword. I signed to him to keep away,
1:00:03
Speaker 1: but he continued to advance. I told him again, very
1:00:07
Speaker 1: patiently and clearly, you must not come here. These are
1:00:11
Speaker 1: old temples, and I am here with my dead. Presently,
1:00:16
Speaker 1: he was so close I could see his face clearly.
1:00:19
Speaker 1: It was a narrow face, with dull gray eyes and
1:00:22
Speaker 1: a black mustache. He had a scar on his upper lip,
1:00:26
Speaker 1: and he was dirty and unshaven. He kept shouting unintelligible things, questions,
1:00:31
Speaker 1: perhaps at me. I know now that he was afraid
1:00:34
Speaker 1: of me, but at the time that did not occur
1:00:37
Speaker 1: to me. As I tried to explain to him, he
1:00:39
Speaker 1: interrupted me in imperious tones, bidding me, I suppose stand aside.
1:00:44
Speaker 1: He made just to go past me, and I caught
1:00:46
Speaker 1: hold of him. I saw his face change at my grip,
1:00:49
Speaker 1: you fool, I cried, don't you know she is dead?
1:00:53
Speaker 1: He started back. He looked at me with cruel eyes.
1:00:56
Speaker 1: I saw a sort of exultant resolve, leap into them delight.
1:01:00
Speaker 1: Then suddenly, with a scowl, he swept his sword back
1:01:04
Speaker 1: so and thrust. He stopped abruptly. I became aware of
1:01:09
Speaker 1: a change in the rhythm of the train. The brakes
1:01:11
Speaker 1: lifted their voices, and the carriage jarred and jerked. This
1:01:16
Speaker 1: present world insisted upon itself, became clamorous. I saw through
1:01:21
Speaker 1: the steamy window huge electric lights clearing down from tall
1:01:25
Speaker 1: masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages
1:01:30
Speaker 1: passing by, and then a signal box, hoisting its constellation
1:01:34
Speaker 1: of green and red into the murky London twilight, marched
1:01:38
Speaker 1: after them. I looked again at his drawn features. He
1:01:42
Speaker 1: ran me through the heart. It was with a sort
1:01:45
Speaker 1: of astonishment, no fear, no pain, but just amazement, that
1:01:50
Speaker 1: I felt it pierce me, felt the sword drive home
1:01:54
Speaker 1: into my body. It didn't hurt, you know, it didn't
1:01:57
Speaker 1: hurt at all. The yellow platform lights came into the
1:02:01
Speaker 1: field of view, passing first rapidly, then slowly, and at
1:02:05
Speaker 1: last stopping with a jerk. Dim shapes of men passed
1:02:09
Speaker 1: to and fro without Euston cried a voice, Do you
1:02:13
Speaker 1: mean there was no pain, no sting or smart amazement,
1:02:19
Speaker 1: and then darkness sweeping over everything. The hot, brutal face
1:02:24
Speaker 1: before me, the face of the man who had killed me,
1:02:27
Speaker 1: seemed to recede. It swept out of existence. Euston clamored
1:02:32
Speaker 1: the voices outside Euston the carriage door opened, admitting a
1:02:36
Speaker 1: flood of sound, and a porter stood regarding us. The
1:02:40
Speaker 1: sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof clatter of cab horses.
1:02:44
Speaker 1: And behind these things, the featureless, remote roar of the
1:02:48
Speaker 1: London cobblestones came to my ears. A truckload of lighted
1:02:52
Speaker 1: lamps blazed along the platform. A darkness, a flood of
1:02:56
Speaker 1: darkness that opened and spread and blotted out all things
1:03:01
Speaker 1: any luggish, sir, said the porter. And that was the end.
1:03:05
Speaker 1: I asked. He seemed to hesitate, Then, almost inaudibly, he answered, no,
1:03:11
Speaker 1: you mean I couldn't get to her. She was there
1:03:16
Speaker 1: on the other side of the temple. And then yes,
1:03:21
Speaker 1: I insisted, Yes, nightmares, he cried, nightmares. Indeed, my God,
1:03:28
Speaker 1: great birds that fort and tore. End of section twenty
1:03:34
Speaker 1: five