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The New Machiavelli Chapter 6 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter six, Section two of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
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  Speaker 1: Antoniogus five. Altiora, I remember, preluded Margaret's reappearance by announcing
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  Speaker 1: her as a new type. I was accustomed to go
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  Speaker 1: early to the Bailey's dinners in those days for a
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  Speaker 1: preliminary gossip with Altiora in front of her drawing room.
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  Speaker 1: Fire One got her alone, and that early arrival was
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  Speaker 1: a little sign of appreciation. She valued she had every
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  Speaker 1: woman's need of followers and servants. I am going to
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  Speaker 1: send you down to night, she said, with a very
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  Speaker 1: interesting type, indeed, one of the new generation of serious gals,
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  Speaker 1: middle class origin and quite well off rich. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: her stepfather was a solicitor and something of an entreponeur.
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  Speaker 1: Towards the end I fancy in the Black country, there
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  Speaker 1: was a little brother died, and she's lost her mother
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  Speaker 1: quite recently, quite on her own, so to speak. She's
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  Speaker 1: never been out into society very much, and doesn't seem
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  Speaker 1: really very anxious to go. Not exactly an intellectual person,
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  Speaker 1: you know, but quiet and great force of character. Came
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  Speaker 1: up to London on her own and came to us.
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  Speaker 1: Someone had told her we were the sort of people
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  Speaker 1: to advise her to ask what to do. I'm sure
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  Speaker 1: she'll interest you. What can people of that sort do?
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  Speaker 1: I asked, Is she capable of investigation? Altiorra compressed her
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  Speaker 1: lips and shook her head. She always did shake her
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  Speaker 1: head when you ask that of anyone. Of course, what
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  Speaker 1: she ought to do, said Altiora, with her silk dress
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  Speaker 1: pulled back from her knee before the fire, and with
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  Speaker 1: a lift of her voice towards a chuckle at her
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  Speaker 1: daring way of putting things is to marry a member
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  Speaker 1: of parliament and see he does his work. Perhaps she will.
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  Speaker 1: It's a very exceptional gal who could do anything by herself,
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  Speaker 1: quite exceptional. The more serious they are without being exceptional,
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  Speaker 1: the more we want them to marry. Her exposition was
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  Speaker 1: truncated by the entry of the type in question. Well,
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  Speaker 1: cried Altiora, turning and with a high note of welcome,
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  Speaker 1: here you are. Margaret had gained indignity and prettiness by
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  Speaker 1: the lapse of five years, and she was now very
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  Speaker 1: beautifully and richly and simply dressed. Her fair hair had
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  Speaker 1: been done in some way that made it seem softer
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  Speaker 1: and more abundant than it was in my memory. And
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  Speaker 1: a gleam of purple velvet set diamond showed amidst its
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  Speaker 1: mist of little golden and brown lines. Her dress was
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  Speaker 1: of white and violet, the last trace of mourning for
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  Speaker 1: her mother, and confessed the gracious droop of her tall
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  Speaker 1: and slender body. She did not suggest Staffordshire at all,
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  Speaker 1: and I was puzzled for a moment to think where
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  Speaker 1: I had met her. Her sweetly shaped mouth, with the
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  Speaker 1: slight obliquity of the lip, and the little kink in
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  Speaker 1: her brow were extraordinarily familiar to me, But she had
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  Speaker 1: either been prepared by Altiora or she remembered my name.
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  Speaker 1: We met, she said, while my stepfather was alive at Misterton.
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  Speaker 1: You came to see us, And instantly I recalled the
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  Speaker 1: sunshine between the apple blossom and a slender, pale blue,
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  Speaker 1: girlish shape among the daffodils, like something that had sprung
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  Speaker 1: from a bulb itself. I recalled at once that I
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  Speaker 1: had found her very interesting, though I did not clearly
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  Speaker 1: remember how it was she had interested me. Other guests arrived.
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  Speaker 1: It was one of Altiora's boldly blended mixtures of people
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  Speaker 1: with ideas and people with influence or money who might
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  Speaker 1: perhaps be expected to to them. Bailey came down late
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  Speaker 1: with an air of hurry, and was introduced to Margaret
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  Speaker 1: and said absolutely nothing to her, there being no information
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  Speaker 1: either to receive or in part, and nothing to do,
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  Speaker 1: but stood snatching his left cheek until I rescued him
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  Speaker 1: and her and left him free to congratulate the new
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  Speaker 1: lady snape on her husband's k c B. I took
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  Speaker 1: Margaret down. We achieved no feats of mutual expression, except
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  Speaker 1: that it was abundantly clear we were both very pleased
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  Speaker 1: and interested to meet again, and that we have both
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  Speaker 1: kept memories of each other. We made that mister tan
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  Speaker 1: tea party and the subsequent marriages of my cousins, and
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  Speaker 1: the world of Burslem generally matter for quite an agreeable conversation,
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  Speaker 1: until at last Altiora, following her invariable custom, called me
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  Speaker 1: by name, imperatively out of our duologue, mister Remington. She said,
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  Speaker 1: we want your opinion, in her entirely characteristic effort to
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  Speaker 1: get all the threads of conversation into her own hands.
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  Speaker 1: For the climax that always wound up her dinners, how
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  Speaker 1: the other women used to hate those concluding raids of hers.
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  Speaker 1: I forget most of the other people at that dinner,
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  Speaker 1: nor can I recall what the crowning rally was about.
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  Speaker 1: It didn't in any way join on to my impression
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  Speaker 1: of Margaret. In the drawing room of the matting floor,
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  Speaker 1: I rejoined her without your's manifest connivance, And in the
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  Speaker 1: interval I had been thinking of our former meeting. Do
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  Speaker 1: you find London, I asked, give you more opportunity for
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  Speaker 1: doing things and learning things than Burslem. She showed at
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  Speaker 1: once she appreciated my allusion to her former confidences. I
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  Speaker 1: was very discontented, then, she said, and paused, I've really
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  Speaker 1: only been in London for a few months. It's so different.
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  Speaker 1: In Bursam, life seems all business and getting without any reason.
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  Speaker 1: One went on, and it didn't seem to mean anything,
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  Speaker 1: at least anything that mattered. London seemed to be so
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  Speaker 1: full of meanings, all mixed up together. She knitted her
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  Speaker 1: brows over her words and smiled appealingly at the end,
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  Speaker 1: as if for consideration for her inadequate expression. Appealingly and
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  Speaker 1: almost humorously. I looked understandingly at her. We have all
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  Speaker 1: I agreed to come to London. One sees so much distress,
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  Speaker 1: she added, as if she felt she had completely omitted
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  Speaker 1: something and needed a codicil. What are you doing in London?
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  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of studying some social question. I thought perhaps
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  Speaker 1: I might go and study social conditions as missus Bailey did. Go,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps as a work girl, or see the reality of
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  Speaker 1: living in But missus Bailey thought, perhaps it wasn't quite
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  Speaker 1: my work. Are you studying? I am going to a
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  Speaker 1: good many lectures, and perhaps I shall take up a
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  Speaker 1: regular course at the Westminster School of Politics and Sociology.
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  Speaker 1: But Missus Bailey doesn't seem to believe very much in
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  Speaker 1: that either. Her faintly whimsical smile returned. I seem rather indefinite,
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  Speaker 1: she apologized. But one does not want to get entangled
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  Speaker 1: in things one can't do one one has so many advantages.
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  Speaker 1: One's life seems to be such a trust and such
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  Speaker 1: a responsibility, she stopped. A man gets driven into work,
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  Speaker 1: I said, it must be splendid to be missus Bailey.
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  Speaker 1: She replied, with a glance of envious admiration across the room.
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  Speaker 1: She has no doubts anyhow, I remarked, She had said, Margaret,
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  Speaker 1: with the pride of one who has received great confidences.
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  Speaker 1: Six you've met before, said Altiora. A day or two later,
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  Speaker 1: I explained, when you find her interesting? I saw in
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  Speaker 1: a flash that Altiora meant to marry me to Margaret.
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  Speaker 1: Her intention became much clearer as the year developed. Altiora
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  Speaker 1: was systematic, even in matters that evade system I was
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  Speaker 1: to marry Margaret and freed from the need of making
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  Speaker 1: an income. I was to come into politics as an
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  Speaker 1: exponent of Baileyism. She put it down with the other
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  Speaker 1: excellent and advantageous things that should occupy her summer holiday.
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  Speaker 1: It was her pride and glory to put things down
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  Speaker 1: and plan them out in detail beforehand. And I am
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  Speaker 1: not quite sure that she did not even mark off
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  Speaker 1: the day upon which the engagement was to be declared.
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  Speaker 1: If she did, I disappointed her. We didn't come to
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  Speaker 1: an engagement in spite of the broadest hints and the
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  Speaker 1: glaring obousness of everything that summer. Every summer the bailies
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  Speaker 1: went out of London to some house they hired or borrowed,
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  Speaker 1: leaving their secretaries toiling behind. And they went on working
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  Speaker 1: hard in the mornings and evenings, and taking exercise in
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  Speaker 1: the open air in the afternoon. They cycled assiduously and
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  Speaker 1: went for long walks at a trot, and raided and studied,
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  Speaker 1: and incidentally explained themselves too any social types that lived
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  Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. One invaded type resentful under a search,
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  Speaker 1: described them with a dreadful aptness as Donna Quixot and
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  Speaker 1: Sancho Panza, and himself as a harmless windmill, hurting no
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  Speaker 1: one and signifying nothing. She did rather tilted things. This
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  Speaker 1: particular summer they were at a pleasant farmhouse in level
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  Speaker 1: country near Pangbourne, belonging to the Honorable Wilfrid Winchester, and
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  Speaker 1: they asked me to come down to rooms in the neighborhood.
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  Speaker 1: Out took them for a month for me in August,
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  Speaker 1: and bored with them upon extremely reasonable terms. And when
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  Speaker 1: I got there I found Margaret sitting in a hammock
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  Speaker 1: at Altiora's feet. Lots of people I gathered were coming
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  Speaker 1: and going in the neighborhood. The Ponts were in a
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  Speaker 1: villa on the river, and the Rickhams houseboat was to
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  Speaker 1: moor for some days. But these eruptions did not impede
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  Speaker 1: a great deal of duelog between Margaret and myself. Altiora
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  Speaker 1: was efficient rather than an artistic in her match making.
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  Speaker 1: She sent us off for long walks together. Margaret was
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  Speaker 1: a fairly good walker. She exhumed some defective croquet things
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  Speaker 1: and incited us to croquet, not understanding that detestable game
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  Speaker 1: is the worst stimulant for lovers in the world. And
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  Speaker 1: Margaret and I were always getting left about and finding
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  Speaker 1: ourselves for other half hours in the kitchen garden with
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  Speaker 1: nothing to do except talk, or we were hold of
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  Speaker 1: the wave of the hand to run away and amuse
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  Speaker 1: each other. Altiori even tried a picnic in canoes, knowing
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  Speaker 1: from fiction rather than imagination or experience, the conclusive nature
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  Speaker 1: of such excursions. But there she fumbled at the last
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  Speaker 1: moment and elected at the river's brink to share a
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  Speaker 1: canoe with me. Bailey showed so much zeal and so
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  Speaker 1: little skill, his hat fell off, and he became miraculously
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  Speaker 1: nothing but paddle clutching hands and a vast wrinkled brow
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  Speaker 1: that at last he had to be paddled ignominiously by Margaret,
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  Speaker 1: while Altiora, after a phase of rigid discretion, as nearly
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  Speaker 1: as possible, drowned herself a min no doubt into the
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  Speaker 1: bargain with a sudden lateral gesture of the arm to
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  Speaker 1: emphasize the high note with which she dismissed the efficiency
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  Speaker 1: of the charity organization Society. We shipped about an inch
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  Speaker 1: of water and sat in it for the rest of
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  Speaker 1: the time, and in convenience she disregarded heroically. We had
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  Speaker 1: difficulties in landing Oscar from his frail craft upon the
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  Speaker 1: aut of our feasting. He didn't balance sideways and was
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  Speaker 1: much alarmed, And afterwards, as Margaret had a pain in
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  Speaker 1: her back, I took him in my canoe, let him
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  Speaker 1: hide his shame with an ineffectual but not positively harmful paddle,
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  Speaker 1: and towed the other by means of the joined painters. Still,
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  Speaker 1: it was the fault of the inadequate information supplied in
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  Speaker 1: the books, and not of Altorra, that that was not
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  Speaker 1: the date of my betrothal. I find it not a
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  Speaker 1: little difficult to state what kept me back from proposing
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  Speaker 1: marriage to Margaret that summer, and what urged me forward
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  Speaker 1: at last to marry her it is so much easier
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  Speaker 1: to remember one's resolutions than to remember the moods and
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  Speaker 1: suggestions that produced them. Marrying and getting married was, I think,
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  Speaker 1: a pretty simple affair to Altaorra. It was something that
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  Speaker 1: happened the adolescent and are married when you threw them
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  Speaker 1: together under the circumstances of health, warmth, and leisure. It
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  Speaker 1: happened with the kindly and approving smiles of the more
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  Speaker 1: experienced elders who had organized these proximities. The young people married,
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  Speaker 1: settled down, children ensued, and father and mother turned their
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  Speaker 1: minds now decently and properly disillusioned to other things. That
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  Speaker 1: to Altiora was the normal sexual life, and she believed
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  Speaker 1: it to be the quality of the great bulk of
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  Speaker 1: the life about her. One of the great barriers to
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  Speaker 1: human understanding is the wide temperamental difference one finds in
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  Speaker 1: the values of things relating to sex. It is the
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  Speaker 1: issue upon which people most need training in charity and
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  Speaker 1: imaginative sympathy. Here are no universal stands as at all,
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  Speaker 1: and indeed for no single man or woman does there
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  Speaker 1: seem to be any fixed standard. So much to the
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  Speaker 1: other accidents of circumstances and one's physical phases affect one's interpretations.
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  Speaker 1: There is nothing in the whole range of sexual fact
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  Speaker 1: that may not seem supremely beautiful or humanly jolly, or
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  Speaker 1: magnificently wicked, or disgusting, or trivial or utterly insignificant according
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  Speaker 1: to the eye that sees or the mood that colours.
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  Speaker 1: Here is something that may fill the skies in every
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  Speaker 1: waking hour, or be almost completely banished from a life.
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  Speaker 1: It may be everything on Monday and less than nothing
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  Speaker 1: on Saturday. And we make our laws and rules as
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  Speaker 1: though in these matters all men and women were commensurable
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  Speaker 1: one with another, with an equal steadfast passion and in
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  Speaker 1: equal constant duty. I don't know what dreams Altiora may
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  Speaker 1: have had in her schoolroom days. I always suspected her
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  Speaker 1: of suppressed and forgotten phases, but certainly her general effect
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  Speaker 1: now was of an entirely passionate worldliness in these matters. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: so far as I could get at her, she regarded
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  Speaker 1: sexual passion as being hardly more legitimate in a civilized
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  Speaker 1: person than, let us say, homicidal mania. She must have forgotten,
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  Speaker 1: and Bailey too, I suspect she forgot before she married him.
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  Speaker 1: I don't suppose either of them had the slightest intimation
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  Speaker 1: of the dimension sexual love can take in the thoughts
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  Speaker 1: of the great majority of people with whom they come
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  Speaker 1: in contact. They loved in their way, an intellectual way
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  Speaker 1: it was, and a fond way, but it had no
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  Speaker 1: relation to beauty and physical sensation, except that there seemed
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  Speaker 1: a decree of exile against these things. They got their
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  Speaker 1: glow in high moments of altruistic ambition, and in moments
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  Speaker 1: of vivid worldly success. They sat at opposite ends of
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  Speaker 1: their dinner table with so and so captured and so
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  Speaker 1: and so flushed with a mutual approval. They saw people
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  Speaker 1: in love forgetful and distraught about them, and just put
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  Speaker 1: it down to forgetfulness and distraction at any rate. Altiora
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  Speaker 1: manifestly viewed my situation Margaret's with an abnormal and entirely
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  Speaker 1: misleading simplicity. There was the girl rich with an acceptable
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  Speaker 1: claim to be beautiful, shiningly virtuous, quite capable of political interests.
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  Speaker 1: And there was I, talented, ambitious, and full of political
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  Speaker 1: and social passion, in need of just the money, devotion,
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  Speaker 1: and regularization Margaret could provide. We were both unmarried, white
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  Speaker 1: sheets of uninscribed paper. Was there ever a simpler situation?
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  Speaker 1: What more could we possibly want? She was even a
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  Speaker 1: little offended at the inconclusiveness that did not settle things
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  Speaker 1: at Pangbourn. I seemed to her I suspect to reflect
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  Speaker 1: upon her judgment and good intentions. I didn't see things
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  Speaker 1: with Altiorra's simplicity. I admired Margaret very much. I was
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  Speaker 1: fully aware of all that she and I might give
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  Speaker 1: each other. Indeed, so far as Alteorra went, we were
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  Speaker 1: quite in agreement. But what seemed solid ground to Altiora
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  Speaker 1: and the ultimate footing of her emasculated world was to
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  Speaker 1: me just the superficial covering of a gulf oh abysses
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  Speaker 1: of vague and dim and yet stupendously significant things. I
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  Speaker 1: couldn't dismiss the interests and the passion of sex. As
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  Speaker 1: Altiora did work, I agreed was important career and success.
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  Speaker 1: But deep, unanalyzable instincts told me this preoccupation was a
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  Speaker 1: thing quite as important, dangerous, interfering, destructive, indeed, but nonetheless
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  Speaker 1: a dominating interest in life. I have told how flittingly
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  Speaker 1: and uninvited it came like a moth from the outer
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  Speaker 1: twilight into my life. How it grew in me with
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  Speaker 1: my manhood, how it find its way to speech and
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  Speaker 1: grew daring and led me at last to experience. After
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  Speaker 1: that adventure at Lacano, sex and the interests and desires
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  Speaker 1: of sex never left me for long. At peace, I
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  Speaker 1: went on with my work and my career, and all
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  Speaker 1: the time it was like like someone talking ever and
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: again in a room while one tries to write. There
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  Speaker 1: were times when I could have wished the world a
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  Speaker 1: world all of men. So greatly did this unassimilated series
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  Speaker 1: of motives and curiosities hamper me, And times when I
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  Speaker 1: could have wished the world all of women. I seemed
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  Speaker 1: always to be seeking something in women, in girls, and
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  Speaker 1: I was never clear what it was I was seeking.
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  Speaker 1: But never, even at my coursest, was I moved by
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  Speaker 1: physical desire alone. Was I seeking help and fellowship? Was
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: I seeking some intimacy with beauty? It was a thing
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  Speaker 1: too formless to state that I seemed almost desiring to attain,
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  Speaker 1: and never attaining. Waves of gross sensuousness arose out of
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  Speaker 1: this preoccupation carried me to a crisis of gratification or
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  Speaker 1: disappointment that was clearly not the needed thing. They passed
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  Speaker 1: and left my mind free again for a time to
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  Speaker 1: get on with the permanent pursuits of my life. And
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: then presently this solicitude would have me again an irrelevance,
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  Speaker 1: as it seemed, and yet a constantly recurring demand. I
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  Speaker 1: don't want particularly to dwell upon things that are disagreeable
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  Speaker 1: for others to read, but I cannot leave them out
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  Speaker 1: of my story and get the right proportions of the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: forces I am balancing. I was no abnormal man, and
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  Speaker 1: that world of order we desire to make must be
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  Speaker 1: built of such staff as I was and I am
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  Speaker 1: and can beget. You cannot have a world of bailies.
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  Speaker 1: It would end in one orderly generation. Humanity is forgotten
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  Speaker 1: in desire. Lives by desire. Love, which is lust, is
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  Speaker 1: the lamp in the tomb. Love, which is lust, is
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  Speaker 1: the call from the gloom. I echo Henley. I suppose
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  Speaker 1: the life of celibacy, which the active, well fed, well exercised,
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  Speaker 1: and imaginatively stirred young man of the educated classes is
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  Speaker 1: supposed to lead from the age of nineteen or twenty,
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  Speaker 1: when nature certainly meant him to marry to thirty or
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: more when civilization permits him to do so. Is the
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  Speaker 1: most impossible thing in the world. We deal here with
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: facts that are kept secret and obscure. But I doubt,
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  Speaker 1: for my own part, if more than one man out
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  Speaker 1: of five in our class satisfies that ideal demand. The
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  Speaker 1: rest are even as I was, and hathily esmir and
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  Speaker 1: all the men I knew. I draw no lessons and
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  Speaker 1: often no panacea. I have to tell the quality of life,
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  Speaker 1: and this is how it is. This is how it
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  Speaker 1: will remain until men and women have the courage to
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  Speaker 1: face the facts of life. I was no systematic libertine.
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  Speaker 1: You must understand things happened to me, and desire drove me.
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  Speaker 1: Any young man would have served for that Lacano adventure.
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  Speaker 1: And after that what had been a mystic and wonderful
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  Speaker 1: thing passed rapidly into a gross, manifestly misdirected and complicating one.
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  Speaker 1: I can count a meager tale of five illicit loves
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: in the days of my youth, to include that first experience,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: and of them all only two were sustained relationships. Besides
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: these five affairs, on one or two occasions I dipped
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: so low as the inky, dismal sensuality of the streets,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: and made one of those pairs of correlated figures, the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: woman in her squalid finery sailing homeward, the man modestly
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: aloof and behind that every night in the London year
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: flit by the score of thousands across the site of
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the observant. How ugly it is to recall ugly and
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: shameful now without qualification, Yet at the time there was
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: surely something not altogether ugly in it, something that has vanished,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: some fine thing mortally ailing. One such occasion I recall
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: as if it were a vision deep down in a pit,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: as if it had happened in another state of existence
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: to someone else. And yet it is a sort of
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: thing that has happened once or twice at least to
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: half the men in London who have been in a
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: position to make it possible. Let me try and give
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: you its peculiar effect. Man or woman, you ought to
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: know of it. Figure to yourself a dingy room somewhere
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: in that network of streets that lies about Tottenham Court Road,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: A dingy bedroom lit by a solitary candle, and carpeted
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: with scraps and patches, with curtains of Creton closing the window,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: and a tawdry ornament of paper in the grate. I
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: sit on a bed beside a weary eyed, fair haired,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: sturdy young woman, half undressed, who is telling me in
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: broken German something that my knowledge of German is at
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: first inadequate to understand. I thought she was boasting about
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: her family, and then slowly the meaning came to me.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: She was a let from near Libau in Courland, and
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: she was telling me, just as one tells something too
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: strange for comment or emotion, how her father had been
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: shot and her sister outraged and murdered before her eyes.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: It was as if one had dipped into something premordial
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and stupendous. Beneath the smooth and trivial surfaces of life.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: There was I, you know, the promising young don from Cambride,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: who wrote quite brilliantly about politics, and might presently get
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: into Parliament with my collar and tie my hand, and
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: a certain sense of shameful adventure fading out of my mind.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Ach got She sighed by way of comment, and mused
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: deeply for a moment before she turned her face to
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: me as to something forgotten and remembered and assumed the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: half hearted, meretricious smile. Ben kinda hoopsha, she asked, like
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: one who repeats a lesson. I was moved to crave
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: her pardon and come away. beIN kinda hoopsha, she asked,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a little anxiously, laying a detaining hand upon me, and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: evidently not understanding a word of what I was striving
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: to say. Eight. I find it extraordinarily difficult to recall
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the phases by which I passed from my first admiration
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: of Margaret's earnestness and unconscious daintiness to an intimate acquaintance.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: The earlier encounters stand out clear and hard, but then
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the impressions become crowded and mingle, not only with each other,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: but with all the subsequent developments of relationship, the enormous
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: evolutions of interpretation and comprehension between husband and wife. Dipping
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: into my memories is like dipping into a rag bag.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: One brings out this memory or that with no intimation
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: of how they came in time or what led to
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: them and joined them together, and they are all mixed
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: up with subsequent associations, with sympathies and discords, habits, of intercourse,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: surprises and disappointments, and discovered misunderstandings. I know only that
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: always my feelings for Margaret were complicated feelings, woven of
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: many and various strands. It is one of the curious
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: neglected aspects of life. How at the same time, and
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: in relation to the same reality, we can have in
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: our minds streams of thought at quite different levels. We
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: can be at the same time idealizing a person and
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: seeing on criticizing that person quite coldly and clearly, and
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: we slip unconsciously from level to level and produce all
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: sorts of inconsistent acts. In a sense, I had no
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: illusions about Margaret. In a sense, my conception of Margaret
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: was entirely poetic illusion. I don't think I was ever
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: blind to certain defects of hers, and quite as certainly
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: they didn't seem to matter in the slightest degree. Her
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: mind had a curious want of vigor. Flatness is the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: only word she never seemed to escape from her phrase,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: her way of thinking, her way of doing was indecisive.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: She remained in her attitude. It did not flow out
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: to easy conformatory action. I saw this quite clearly, and
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: when we walked and talked together. I seemed always trying
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: for animation in her and never finding it. I would
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: state my ideas I know, she would say, I know.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I talked about myself and she listened wonderfully, but she
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: made no answering revelations. I talked politics, and she remarked,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: with her blue eyes wide in earnest. Every word you
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: say seemed so just. I admired her appearance tremendously, but
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I can only express it by saying I didn't want
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: to touch her. Her fair hair was always delectably done.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: It flowed beautifully over her pretty small ears, and she
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: would tie its fair coilings with filets of black or
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: blue velvet that carried pretty buckles of silver and paste.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: The light, the faint down on her brow and cheek
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: was delightful, and it was clear to me that I
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: made her happy. My sense of her deficiencies didn't stand
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: in the way of my falling at last, very deeply
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: in love with her. Her very shortcoming seemed to offer
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: me something. She stood in my mind for goodness and
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: for things from which it seemed to me my hold
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: was slipping. She seemed to promise away of escape from
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the deepening opposition in me between physical passions and the
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: constructive career, the career of wide aims and human service
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: upon which I had embarked. All the time that I
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: was seeing her as a beautiful, fragile rather an effective girl,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I was also seeing her just as consciously as a shining,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: slender figure, a radiant reconciliation coming into my darkling disorders
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: of lust and impulse. I could understand clearly that she
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: was incapable of the most necessary subtleties of political thought,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: and yet I could contemplate praying to her and putting
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: all the intricate troubles of my life life at her feet.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Before the reappearance of Margaret in my world at all,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: an unwonted disgust with the consequences and quality of my
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: passions had arisen in my mind. Among other things, that
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: moment with the Lettish girl haunted me persistently. I would
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: see myself again and again sitting amidst those sluttish surroundings,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: collar and tie in hand, while her heavy German words
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: group themselves to a slowly apprehended meaning. I would feel, again,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: with a fresh stab of remorse, that this was not
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: a flash of adventure. This was not seeing life in
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: any permissible sense, but a dip into tragedy, dishonor hideous degradation,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: and the pitiless cruelty of a world as yet uncontrolled
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: by any ordered will. Good God, I put it to
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: myself that I should finish the work those Cossacks had begun. I,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: who want order and justice before everything. There's no way out,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: no decent excuse. If I didn't think, I ought to
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: have thought, how did I get to it? I would
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: ransack the phases of my development, from the first shy
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: unveiling of a hidden wonder to the last extremity. As
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: a man will go through muddled account books to find
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: some disorganizing error, I was also involved at that time.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I find it hard to place these things in the
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: exact order of their dates, because they were so disconnected
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: with the regular progress of my work and life. In
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: an intrigue, a clumsy, sensuous, pretentious, artificially stimulated intrigue with
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: a Missus Larimer, a woman living separated from her husband.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: I will not go into particulars of that episode, nor
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: how we quarreled and chafed one another. She was at
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: once unfaithful and jealous and full of whims about our meetings.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: She was careless of our secret and vulgarized our relation
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: by intolerable interpretations. Except for some glowing moments of gratification,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: except for the recurrent and essentially vicious desire that drew
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: us back to each other again, we both fretted that
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: a vexatious and unexpectedly binding intimacy. The interim was full
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: of the quality of work delayed, of time and energy, wasted,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: of insecure precautions against scandal and exposure. Disappointment is almost
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: inherent in illicit love I had, and perhaps it was
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: part of her recurrent irritation, also a feeling as though
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: one had followed something fine and beautiful into a net,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: into bird lime. These furtive scuffles, this sneaking into shabby
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: houses of our signation, was what we had made out
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: of the suggestion of pagan beauty. This was the reality
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: of our vision of nymphs and satires dancing for the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: joy of life amidst incessant sunshine. We had laid hands
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: upon the wondering glory of bodily love and wasted them.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: It was a sense of waste of finely beautiful possibilities
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: getting entangled and marred for ever that oppressed me. I
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: had missed, I had lost. I did not turn from
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: these things after the fashion of the bailies, as one
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: turns from something low and embarrassing. I felt that these
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: great organic forces were still to be wrought into a
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: harmony with my constructive passion. I felt too, that I
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: was not doing it. I had not understood the forces
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: in this struggle, nor its nature, And as I learned,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I failed. I had been started wrong. I had gone
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: on wrong in a world that was muddled and confused,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: full of false counsel and erratic shames and twisted temptations.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I learnt to see it so by failures that were
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: perhaps destroying any chance of profit. In my lessons, moods
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: of clear keen industry alternated with moods of relapse and indulgence,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and moods of dubiety and remorse. I was not going
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: on as the bailies thought I was going on. There
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: were times when the blindness of the bailies irritated me intensely.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Beneath the ostensible success of those years between twenty three
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: and twenty eight, this rottenness known to scarcely anyone but
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: myself grew and spread. My sense of the probability of
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: a collapse intensified. I knew, indeed now, even as Willesley
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: had prophesied five years before, that I was entangling myself
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: in something that might smother all my uses in the world.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Down there, among those incommunicable difficulties, I was puzzled and blundering.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I was losing my hold upon things. The chaotic and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: adventurous element in life was spreading upward and getting the
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: better of me, overmastering me and all my will to
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: rule and make, and the strength, the dragging urgency of
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: the passion. Margaret shone at times in my imagination like
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: a radiant angel in a world of mar and disorder,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: in a world of cravings, hot and dull, red like
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: scars inflamed. I suppose it was because I had so
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: great a need of such help as her whiteness proffered,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: that I could ascribe impossible perfections to her, a power
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of intellect, a moral power, and patience to which she,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: poor fellow mortal, had indeed no claim. If only a
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: few of us were angels and freed from the tangle
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: of effort, how easy life might be. I wanted her
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: so badly, so very badly, to be what I needed.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: I wanted a woman to save me. I forced myself
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: to see her as I wished to see her. Her
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: stupidities became infinite delicacies, her mental vagueness and atmospheric realism,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the harsh precisions of the bailies, and Altiora's blunt disrectness
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: threw up her fineness into relief and made a grace
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: of every weakness. Mixed up with the memory of times
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: when I talked with Margaret as one talks politely to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: those who are hopelessly inferior in mental quality, explaining with
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: a false lucidity, welcoming and encouraging the feeblest response when possible,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: molding and directing at times when I did indeed, as
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: the old phrase goes, worship the ground she trod on.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I was equally honest and unconscious of inconsistency at each extreme.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: But in neither phase could I find it easy to
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: make love to Margaret. For in the first I did
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: not want to, though I talked abundantly to her of
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: marriage and so forth, and was a little puzzled at
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: myself for not going on to some personal application, and
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: in the second she seemed in it accessible. I felt
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: I must make confessions and put things before her that
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: would be the grossest outrage upon the noble purity I
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: attributed to her. Nine I went to Margaret at last
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: to ask her to marry me, brought up to the
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: mood of one who stakes his life on a cast
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: separated from her, and with the resonance of an evening
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: of angry recriminations with missus Lara more echoing in my mind,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: I discovered myself to be quite passionately in love with Margaret.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Last shreads of doubt vanished. It has always been a
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: feature of our relationship that Margaret absent means more to
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: me than Margaret present. Her memory distills from its dross
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and purifies in me. All my criticisms and qualifications of
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: her vanished into some dark corner of my mind. She
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: was the lady of my salvation. I must win my
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: way to her or perish. I went to her at last,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: for all that I knew she loved me in passionate
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: self abasement, white and tremble. She was staying with the
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Rockleys at Woking, for Sheena Rockley had been at Bennett
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Hall with her, and they had resumed a close intimacy,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and I went down to her on an impulse, unheralded.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: I was kept waiting for some minutes. I remember in
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: a little room upon which a conservatory opened, a conservatory
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: full of pots of large mauve edged white sicklemens in flower,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: and there was a big lacquer cabinet, a Chinese thing,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: I suppose, a black and gold against the red toned wall.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: To this day, the thought of Margaret is inseparably bound
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: up with the sight of a sickleman's back turned petals.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: She came in, looking pale and drooping rather more than usual.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: I suddenly realized that Altiora's hint of a disappointmently leading
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: to positive illness with something more than a vindictive comment.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: She closed the door and came across to me, and
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: took and drop my hand and stood still. What is
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: it you want with me? She asked. The speech I
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: had been turning over and over in my mind on
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: the way vanished at the sight of her. I want
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: to talk to you, I answered lamely. For some seconds,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: neither of us said a word. I want to tell
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: you things about my life, I began, She answered with
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: a scarcely audible yes. I almost asked you to marry
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: me at Pangborn, I plunged. I didn't. I didn't because
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: because you had too much to give me, too much,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: she echoed, to give you. She had lifted her eyes
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: to my face and the color was coming into her cheeks.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Don't misunderstand me, I said, hastily. I want to tell
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: you things, things you don't know. Don't answer me. I
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: want to tell you. She stood before the fireplace, with
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: her ultimate aunts as shining through the quiet of her face.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Go on, she said, very softly. It was so pitilessly manifest.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: She was resolved to idealize the situation, whatever I might say.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I began walking up and down the room between those
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: si clemens and the cabinet. There were little gold fishermen
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: on the cabinet, fishing from little islands that each had
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: a pagoda and a tree. And there are also men
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: in boats or something. I couldn't determine what, And some
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: obscure suboffice in my mind concerned itself with that quite intently.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Yet I seem to have been striving with all my
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: being to get words for the truth of things. You see,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I emerged. You make everything possible to me. You and
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: give me help and sympathy, support understanding. You know my
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: political ambitions, you know all that I might do in
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: the world. I do so intensely want to do constructive things,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: big things, perhaps in this wild jumble, only you don't
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: know a bit what I am. I want to tell
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: you what I am. I'm complex, I'm streaked. I glanced
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: at her, and she was regarding me with an expression
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: of blissful disregard for any meaning I was seeking to convey. You. See,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: I said, I'm a bad man. She sounded a note
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: of valiant incredulity. Everything seemed to be slipping away from me.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: I pushed on to the ugly facts that remained over
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: from the wreck of my interpretation. What has held me back,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: I said, is a thought that you could not possibly
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: understand certain things in my life. Men are not pure
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: as women are. I have had love affairs. I mean,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: I have had affairs, passion, desire. You see, I have
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: had a mistress. I have been entangled. She seemed about
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: to speak, but I interrupted, I'm not telling you, I
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: said what I meant to tell you. I want you
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: to know clearly that there is another side to my life,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: a dirty side. Deliberately, I say dirty. It didn't seem
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: so at first. I stopped blankly. Dirty, I thought was
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: the most idiotic choice of words to have made. I
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: had never, in any tolerable sense of the word, been dirty.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: I drifted into this, as men do, I said, after
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: a little pause, and stopped again. She was looking at
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: me with her wide blue eyes. Did you imagine? She
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: began that. I thought you that I expected. But how
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: can you know? I know, I do know, but I began,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I know, She persisted, dropping her eyelids. Of course I know,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: and nothing could have convinced me more completely that she
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: did not know all men, She generalized, A woman does
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: not understand these temptations. I was astonished beyond measure at
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: a way of taking my confession. Of course, she said,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: hesitating a little over a transparent difficulty. It is all
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: over and past. It's all over and past, I answered.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: There was a little pause. I don't want to know,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: she said. None of that seems to matter now. In
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: the slightest degree. She looked up and smiled, as though
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: we had exchanged some acceptable commonplaces. Poor dear, she said,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: dismissing everything, and put out her arms. And it seemed
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: to me that I could hear the Lettish girl in
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: the background, doomed safety valve of purity in this intolerable world,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: telling something in indistinguishable German. I know not what nor why.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: I took Margaret in my arms and kissed her. Her
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: eyes were wet with tears. She clung to me and
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: was near I felt a sobbing. I have loved you,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: she whispered, presently. However, since we met in Misterton, six
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: years and more ago. End of Chapter six, Section two