Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Tono-Bungay Book 2 Chapter 4 - Parts 4-6

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Tono-Bungay Book 2 Chapter 4 - Parts 4-6 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, second chapter four, parts four to six of Tono Bungay.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William tom Coe. Tono
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Speaker 1: Bungay by H. G. Wells, Book, second chapter, fourth, parts
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Speaker 1: four to six. Four. I forget how many days intervened
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Speaker 1: between the last breaking off of our engagement and marian surrender.
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Speaker 1: But I recall now the sharpness of my emotion, the
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Speaker 1: concentrated spirit of tears and laughter in my throat as
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Speaker 1: I read the words of her unexpected letter. I have
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Speaker 1: thought over everything, and I was selfish. I rushed off
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Speaker 1: to wallum Green that evening to give back all she
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Speaker 1: had given me, to beat her altogether at giving. She
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Speaker 1: was extraordinarily gentle and generous that time, I remember, And
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Speaker 1: when at last I left her, she kissed me very sweetly.
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Speaker 1: So we were married. We were married with all the
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Speaker 1: customary incongruity I gave, perhaps after a while, not altogether ungrudgingly,
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Speaker 1: And what I gave Marian took with a manifest satisfaction.
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Speaker 1: After all, I was being sensible, so that we had
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Speaker 1: three livery carriages to the church, one of the pairs
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Speaker 1: of horses matched, and coachmen with improvised flavor and very
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Speaker 1: shabby silk hats bearing white favors on their whips. And
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Speaker 1: my uncle intervened with splendor and insisted upon having a
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Speaker 1: wedding breakfast sent in from a caterer's in Hammersmith. The
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Speaker 1: table had a great display of chrysanthemums, and there was
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Speaker 1: orange blossoms in the significant place, and a wonderful cake.
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Speaker 1: We also circulated words of a score of wedges of
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Speaker 1: that accompanied by silver printed cards in which Marian's name
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Speaker 1: of Ramboat was stricken out by an arrow in favor
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Speaker 1: of Ponderevo. We had a little rally of Marian's relations,
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Speaker 1: and several friends and friend's friends from Smithy's appeared in
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Speaker 1: the church and drifted vestry ward. I produced my aunt
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Speaker 1: and uncle a select group of two. The effect in
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Speaker 1: that shabby little house was one of exhilarating congestion. The
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Speaker 1: sideboard in which lived the tablecloth and the apartment's card
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Speaker 1: was used for a display of the presence eked out
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Speaker 1: by the unused balance of the silver printed cards. Marian
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Speaker 1: wore the white raiment of her bride, white silk and
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Speaker 1: satin that did not suit her, that made her seem
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Speaker 1: larger and strange to me. She obtruded bows and unfamiliar contours.
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Speaker 1: She went through all this strange ritual of an English
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Speaker 1: wedding with a sacramental gravity that I was altogether too
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Speaker 1: young and egotistical to comprehend. It was all extraordinarily central
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Speaker 1: and important to her. It was no more than an offensive, complicated,
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Speaker 1: and disconcerting intrusion of a world I was already beginning
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Speaker 1: to criticize, very bitterly. To me, what was all this
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Speaker 1: fuss for the mere indecent advertisement that I had been
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Speaker 1: passionately in love with Marian. I think, however, that Marian
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Speaker 1: was only very remotely aware of my smoldering exact spiration, and,
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Speaker 1: having in the end behaved nicely, I had played up
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Speaker 1: to the extent of dressing my part. I had an
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Speaker 1: admirably cut frock coat, a new silk hat, trousers as
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Speaker 1: light as I could endure them, lighter in fact, a
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Speaker 1: white waistcoat, night tie, light gloves. Marian, seeing me despondent,
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Speaker 1: had the unusual enterprise to whisper to me that I
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Speaker 1: looked lovely. I knew too well. I didn't look myself.
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Speaker 1: I looked like a special colored supplement to men'swear, or
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Speaker 1: the tailor and cutter full dress for ceremonial occasions. I
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Speaker 1: had even the disconcerting sensations of an unfamiliar collar. I
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Speaker 1: felt lost in a strange body, and when I glanced
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Speaker 1: down myself for reassurance, the straight white abdomen, the alien
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Speaker 1: legs confirmed that impression. My uncle was my best man
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Speaker 1: and looked like a banker, a little banker in flower.
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Speaker 1: He wore a white rose in his button hole. He wasn't,
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Speaker 1: I think, particularly talkative. At least I recalled very little
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Speaker 1: from him. George, he said, once or twice, this is
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Speaker 1: a great occasion for you, a very great occasion. He
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Speaker 1: spoke a little doubtfully. You see, I had told him
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Speaker 1: nothing about Marian until about a week before the wedding.
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Speaker 1: Both he and my aunt had been taken altogether by surprise.
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Speaker 1: They couldn't, as people say, make it out. My aunt
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Speaker 1: was intensely interested, much more than my uncle. It was then,
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Speaker 1: I think for the first time, that I really saw
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Speaker 1: that she cared for me. She got me alone. I remember,
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Speaker 1: after I had made my announcement. Now, George, she said,
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Speaker 1: tell me everything about her. Why didn't you tell me
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Speaker 1: at least before? I was surprised to find how difficult
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Speaker 1: it was to tell her about Marian, I perplexed her.
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Speaker 1: Then is she beautiful? She asked at last, I don't
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Speaker 1: know what you'll think of her, I parried, I think yes,
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Speaker 1: I think she might be the most beautiful person in
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Speaker 1: the world. And isn't she to you? Of course, I said,
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Speaker 1: nodding my head, yes she is. And while I don't
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Speaker 1: remember anything my ownuncle said or did at the wedding,
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Speaker 1: I do remember very distinctly certain little things, scrutiny, solicitude,
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Speaker 1: a curious, rare flash of intimacy in my aunt's eyes.
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Speaker 1: It dawned on me that I wasn't hiding anything from
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Speaker 1: her at all. She was dressed very smartly, wearing a
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Speaker 1: big plumed hat that made her neck seemed longer and
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Speaker 1: slenderer than ever. And when she walked up the aisle
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Speaker 1: with that rolling stride of hers and her eye all
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Speaker 1: on Marian perplexed into self forgetfulness. It wasn't somehow funny
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Speaker 1: she was. I do believe, giving my marriage more thought
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Speaker 1: than I had done. She was concerned beyond measure at
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Speaker 1: my black rage and Marian's blindness. She was looking with
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Speaker 1: eyes that knew what loving is, for love in the vestry.
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Speaker 1: She turned away as we signed, and I verily believe
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Speaker 1: she was crying, though to this day I can't say
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Speaker 1: why she should have cried. And she was near crying
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Speaker 1: too when she squeezed my hand at parting, And she
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Speaker 1: never said a word or looked at me, but just
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Speaker 1: squeezed my hand. If I had not been so grim
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Speaker 1: in spirit, I think I should have found much of
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Speaker 1: my wedding amusing. I remember a lot of ridiculous detail
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Speaker 1: that still declines to be funny in my memory. The
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Speaker 1: officiating clergyman had a cold and turned his ends to D's,
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Speaker 1: and he made the most mechanical compliment conceivable about the
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Speaker 1: bride's age. When the register was signed. Every bride he
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Speaker 1: had ever married had had it, one knew, and two
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Speaker 1: middle aged spinsters, cousins of Marian's and dressmakers at Barking
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Speaker 1: stand out. They wore marvelously bright and gay blouses and
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Speaker 1: dim old skirts, and had an immense respect for mister Ramboat.
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Speaker 1: They threw rice, They brought a whole bag with them,
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Speaker 1: and gave handfuls away to unknown little boys at the
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Speaker 1: church door, and so created a little Putian riot. And
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Speaker 1: one had meant to throw a slipper. It was a
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Speaker 1: very warm, old silk slipper. I know, because she dropped
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Speaker 1: it out of a pocket in the aisle. There was
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Speaker 1: a sort of jumble in the aisle, and I picked
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Speaker 1: it up for her. I don't think she actually threw it,
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Speaker 1: for as we drove away from the church, I saw
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Speaker 1: her in a dreadful and it seemed to me hopeless
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Speaker 1: struggle with her pocket. And afterwards my eye caught the
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Speaker 1: missile of good fortune lying it or its fellow, most
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Speaker 1: obviously mislaid behind the umbrella stand in the hall. The
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Speaker 1: whole business was much more absurd, more incoherent, more human
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Speaker 1: than I had anticipated, But I was far too young
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Speaker 1: and serious to let the latter quality atone for its shortcomings.
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Speaker 1: I am so remote from this phase of my youth
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Speaker 1: that I can look back at it all as dispassionately
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Speaker 1: as one looks at a picture, at some wonderful, perfect
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Speaker 1: sort of picture that is inexhaustible. But at the time
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Speaker 1: these things filled me with unspeakable resentment now I go
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Speaker 1: round at all, look into its details, generalize about its aspects.
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Speaker 1: I am interested, for example, to square it with my
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Speaker 1: bladesover theory of the British social scheme. Under stress of tradition.
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Speaker 1: We were all of us trying, in the fermenting chaos
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Speaker 1: of London to carry out the marriage ceremonies of a
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Speaker 1: blad's over tenant or one of the chubby, middling sort
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Speaker 1: of people. In some dependent country town there a marriage
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Speaker 1: is a public function with a public significance. There the churches,
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Speaker 1: to a large extent, the gathering place of the community,
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Speaker 1: and you are going to be married a thing of
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Speaker 1: importance to every one you pass on the road. It
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Speaker 1: is a change of status that quite legitimately interests the
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Speaker 1: whole neighborhood. But in London there are no neighbors. Nobody knows,
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Speaker 1: nobody cares. An absolute stranger in an office took my notice,
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Speaker 1: and our bands were proclaimed to ears that had never
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Speaker 1: pre obviously heard our names. The clergyman, even who married us,
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Speaker 1: had never seen us before, and didn't in any degree
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Speaker 1: intimate that he wanted to see us again. Neighbors in
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Speaker 1: London the ramboats did not know the names of the
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Speaker 1: people on either side of them. As I waited for
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Speaker 1: Marian before we started off upon our honeymoon flight, mister Ramboat,
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Speaker 1: I remember, came and stood beside me and stared out
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Speaker 1: of the window. There was a funeral over there yesterday,
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Speaker 1: he said, by way of making conversation, and moved his
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Speaker 1: head at the house opposite. Quite a smart affair it was,
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Speaker 1: with a glass erse, and our little procession of three
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Speaker 1: carriages with white favor adorned horses and drivers went through
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Speaker 1: all the huge, noisy, indifferent traffic, like a lost China
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Speaker 1: image in the coal shoot of an ironclad Nobody made
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Speaker 1: way for us, Nobody cared for us. The driver of
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Speaker 1: an omnibus jeered for a long time. We crawled behind
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Speaker 1: an unamiable dust cart. The irrelevant clatter and tumult gave
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Speaker 1: a queer flavor of indecency to this public coming together
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Speaker 1: of lovers. We seemed to have obtruded ourselves shamelessly. The
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Speaker 1: crowd that gathered outside the church would have gathered in
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Speaker 1: the same spirit and with a greater alacrity for a
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Speaker 1: street accident at Charing Cross. We were going to Hastings.
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Speaker 1: The experienced eye of the guard detected the significance of
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Speaker 1: our unusual costume, and he secured us a compartment. Well,
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Speaker 1: said I, as the train moved out of the station.
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Speaker 1: That's all over. And I turned to Marian, a little unfamiliar,
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Speaker 1: still in her unfamiliar clothes, and smiled. She regarded me gravely, timidly.
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Speaker 1: You're not cross, she asked, cross? Why and having it
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Speaker 1: all proper, my dear Marian, said I, and by way
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Speaker 1: of answer, took and kissed her white gloved, leather scented hand.
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Speaker 1: I don't remember much else about the journey an hour
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Speaker 1: or so. It was of undistinguished time, for we were
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Speaker 1: both confused and a little fatigued, and Marian had a
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Speaker 1: slight headache and did not want caresses. I fell into
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Speaker 1: a reverie about my aunt and realized, as if it
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Speaker 1: were a new discovery, that I cared for her very greatly.
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Speaker 1: I was acutely sorry I had not told her earlier
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Speaker 1: of my marriage. But you will not want to hear
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Speaker 1: the history of my honeymoon. I have told all that
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Speaker 1: was needed to serve my present purpose. Thus, and thus
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Speaker 1: it was the will in things had its way with me,
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Speaker 1: driven by forces I did not understand, diverted altogether from
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Speaker 1: the science, the curiosities and work to which I had
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Speaker 1: once given myself. I fought my way through a tangle
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Speaker 1: of traditions, customs, obstacles and absurdities, enraged myself, limited myself,
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Speaker 1: gave myself to occupations I saw with the clearest vision
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Speaker 1: were dishonorable and vain, and at last achieved the end
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Speaker 1: of purblind nature, the relentless immediacy of her desire, and
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Speaker 1: held far short of happiness. Marian, weeping and reluctant in
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Speaker 1: my arms. Five Who can tell the story of the
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Speaker 1: slow estrangement of two married people, the weakening of first
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Speaker 1: this bond and then that of that complex contact. Least
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Speaker 1: of all can one of the two participants, Even now,
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Speaker 1: with an interval of fifteen years to clear it up.
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Speaker 1: For me, I still find a mass of impressions of Marian,
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Speaker 1: as confused, as discordant, as unsystematic, and self contradictory as life.
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Speaker 1: I think of this thing, and love her of that,
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Speaker 1: and hate her of a hundred aspects in which I
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Speaker 1: can now see her with an unimpassioned sympathy. As I
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Speaker 1: sit here trying to render some vision of this infinitely
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Speaker 1: confused process, I recall moments of hard and fierce estrangement,
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Speaker 1: moments of clouded intimacy, the passage of transition all forgotten.
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Speaker 1: We talked a little language together whence were friends, and
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Speaker 1: I was Mutney and she was ming, and we kept
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Speaker 1: up such an outward show that till the very end
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Speaker 1: Smithy thought our household the most amiable in the world.
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Speaker 1: I cannot tell to the full how Marian thwarted me
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Speaker 1: and failed in that life of intimate emotions, which is
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Speaker 1: the kernel of love. That life of intimate emotions is
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Speaker 1: made up of little things. A beautiful face differs from
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Speaker 1: an ugly one by a difference of surfaces and proportions
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Speaker 1: that are sometimes almost infinitesmally small. I find myself setting
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Speaker 1: down little things, and little things, none of them do
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Speaker 1: more than demonstrate those essential temperamental discords I have already
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Speaker 1: sought to make clare some readers will understand. To others,
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Speaker 1: I shall seem no more than an unfeeling brute who
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Speaker 1: couldn't make allowances. It's easy to make allowances now, but
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Speaker 1: to be young and ardent, and to make allowances to
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Speaker 1: see one's married life open before one, the life that
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Speaker 1: seemed in its dawn, a glory, a garden of roses,
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Speaker 1: a place of deep, sweet mysteries and heart throbs and
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Speaker 1: wonderful silences, and to see it a vista of tolerations
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Speaker 1: and baby talk, a compromise, the least effectual thing in
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Speaker 1: all one's life. Every love romance I read seemed to
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Speaker 1: mock our dull intercourse, Every poem, every beautiful picture reflected
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Speaker 1: upon the uneventful succession of gray hours we had together.
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Speaker 1: I think our real difference was one of esthetic sensibility.
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Speaker 1: I do still recall as the worst and most disastrous
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Speaker 1: aspect of all that time, her absolute disregard of her
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Speaker 1: own beauty. It's the prettiest thing to record, I know.
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Speaker 1: But she could wear curl papers in my presence. It
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Speaker 1: was her idea, too, to wear out her old clothes,
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Speaker 1: and her failures at home when no one was likely
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Speaker 1: to see her, no one being myself, She allowed me
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Speaker 1: to accumulate a store of ungracious and slovenly memories. All
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Speaker 1: our conceptions of life differed. I remember how we differed
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Speaker 1: about furniture. We spent three or four days in Tottenham
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Speaker 1: Court Road, and she chose the things she fancied with
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Speaker 1: an inexorable resolution, sweeping aside my suggestions with oh, you
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Speaker 1: want such queer things, She pursued some limited, clearly seen
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Speaker 1: and experienced ideal that excluded all other possibilities. Over every
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Speaker 1: mantle was a mirror that was draped. Our sideboard was
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Speaker 1: wonderfully good and splendid with beveled glass. We had lamps
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Speaker 1: on long metal stalks, and cozy corner and plants in
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Speaker 1: grog tubs. Smithy approved at all. There wasn't a place
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Speaker 1: where one could sit and read in the whole house.
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Speaker 1: My books were upon shelves in the dining room recess,
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Speaker 1: and we had a piano, though Marian's playing was at
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Speaker 1: an elementary level. You know, it was the cruelest look
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Speaker 1: for Marion that I, with my restlessness, my skepticism, my
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Speaker 1: constantly developing ideas, had insisted on marriage with her. She
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Speaker 1: had no faculty of growth or change. She had taken
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Speaker 1: her mold, she had set in the limited ideas of
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Speaker 1: her peculiar class. She preserved her conception of what was
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Speaker 1: right in drawing room chairs, and in marriage, ceremonial, and
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Speaker 1: in every relation of life, with a simple and luminous
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Speaker 1: honesty and conviction, with an immense, unimaginative inflexibility, as a
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Speaker 1: tailor bird builds its nest or a beaver makes its damn.
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Speaker 1: Lindy Hay over this history of disappointments and separation, I
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Speaker 1: might tell of waxings and waning of love between us,
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Speaker 1: but the whole was waning. Sometimes she would do things
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Speaker 1: for me, make me a tie or a pair of slippers,
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Speaker 1: and fill me with none the less gratitude because the
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Speaker 1: things were absurd. She ran our home and our one
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Speaker 1: servant with a hard, bright efficiency. She was inordinately proud
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Speaker 1: of house and garden. Always by her lights. She did
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Speaker 1: her duty by me. Presently, the rapid development of Tono
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Speaker 1: Bungay began to take me into the provinces, and I
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Speaker 1: would be away sometimes for a week together. This she
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Speaker 1: did not like. It, left her dull, she said. But
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Speaker 1: after a time she began to go to Smithy's again
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Speaker 1: and to develop an independence of me. At Smithy's she
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Speaker 1: was now a woman with a position. She had money
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Speaker 1: to spend. She would take Smithy to theaters and out
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Speaker 1: to lunch and talk interminably of the business, and Smithy
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Speaker 1: became a sort of permanent weekender with us. Also, Marian
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Speaker 1: got a spaniel and began to dabble with the minor arts,
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Speaker 1: with poker work and a kodak and hyacinths in glasses.
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Speaker 1: She called once on a neighbor. Her parents left Wallam Green.
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Speaker 1: Her father severed his connection with the gas works and
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Speaker 1: came to live in a small house I took for
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Speaker 1: them near us, and they were much with us. Odd
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Speaker 1: the littleness of the things that exasperate when the fountains
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Speaker 1: of life are embittered. My father in law was perpetually
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Speaker 1: catching me in moody moments and urging me to take
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Speaker 1: to gardening. He irritated me beyond measure. You think too much,
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Speaker 1: he would say. If you was to lit in a
19:48
Speaker 1: bit with a spade, you might soon have that garden
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Speaker 1: of yours, a vision of flowers. That's better than thinking George.
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Speaker 1: Or in a torrent of exasperation, I I can't think George.
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Speaker 1: Why you don't get a bit of glass air this
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Speaker 1: sunny corner. You could do wonders with a bit of glass.
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Speaker 1: And in the summer time he never came in without
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Speaker 1: performing a sort of conjuring trick in the hall and
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Speaker 1: taking cucumbers and tomatoes from unexpected points of his person.
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Speaker 1: All out of my little bit, he'd say, in exemplary tones,
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Speaker 1: he left a trail of vegetable produce in the most
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Speaker 1: unusual places, on mantelboards, sideboards, the tops of pictures. Heavens,
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Speaker 1: how the sudden, unexpected tomato could annoy me. It did
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Speaker 1: much to widen our estrangement. That Marian and my aunt
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Speaker 1: failed to make friends became by a sort of instinct antagonistic.
20:46
Speaker 1: My Aunt, to begin with, called rather frequently, for she
20:50
Speaker 1: was really anxious to know Marian. At first. She would
20:53
Speaker 1: arrive like a whirlwind and pervade the house with an
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Speaker 1: atmosphere of hello. She dressed already with that cheer fully
21:00
Speaker 1: extravagant abandon that signalized her accession to fortune, and dressed
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Speaker 1: her best for these visits. She wanted to play the
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Speaker 1: mother to me. I fancy to tell Marian occult secrets
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Speaker 1: about the way I wore out my boots and how
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Speaker 1: I never could think to put on thicker things in
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Speaker 1: cold weather. But Marian received her with that defensive suspiciousness
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Speaker 1: of the shy person, thinking only of the possible criticism
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Speaker 1: of herself, and my Aunt perceiving this became nervous and slangy.
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Speaker 1: She says such queer things, said Marian once discussing her.
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Speaker 1: But I suppose it's witty. Yes, I said, it is
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Speaker 1: witty if I said things like she does. The queer
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Speaker 1: things my aunt said were nothing to the queer things
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Speaker 1: she didn't say. I remember her in our drawing room
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Speaker 1: one day, and how she cocked her eye. It's the
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Speaker 1: only expression at the India Rubber Plant in a dulton
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Speaker 1: ware pot which Marian had placed on the corner of
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Speaker 1: the piano. She was on the very verge of speech.
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Speaker 1: Then suddenly she caught my expression and shrank up like
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Speaker 1: a cat that has been discovered looking at the milk.
22:11
Speaker 1: Then a wicked impulse took her. Didn't say an old word, George,
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Speaker 1: she insisted, looking me full in the eye. I smiled,
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Speaker 1: You're a dear, I said not to as Marian came
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Speaker 1: lowering into the room to welcome her. But I felt
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Speaker 1: extraordinarily like a trader to the India rubber plant. I
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Speaker 1: suppose for all that nothing had been said. Your aunt
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Speaker 1: makes game of people, was Marian's verdict, and open mindedly
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Speaker 1: I suppose it's all right for her. Several times we
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Speaker 1: went to the house in Beckenham for lunch, and once
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Speaker 1: or twice to dinner. My aunt did her peculiar best
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Speaker 1: to be friends, but Marian was implacable. She was also,
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Speaker 1: I know, intensely uncomfortable, and she adopted as her social
22:59
Speaker 1: method an exhausting silence, replying compactly and without giving openings
23:05
Speaker 1: to anything that was said to her. The gaps between
23:08
Speaker 1: my aunt's visits grew wider and wider. My married existence
23:13
Speaker 1: became at last like a narrow, deep groove in the
23:16
Speaker 1: broad expanse of interests in which I was living. I
23:19
Speaker 1: went about the world, I met a great number of
23:22
Speaker 1: varied personalities. I read endless books in trains as I
23:26
Speaker 1: went to and fro. I developed social relationships at my
23:30
Speaker 1: uncle's house that Marian did not share. The seeds of
23:34
Speaker 1: new ideas poured in upon me and grew in me.
23:37
Speaker 1: Those early and middle years of one's third decade are,
23:41
Speaker 1: I suppose, for a man, the years of greatest mental growth.
23:45
Speaker 1: They are restless years, and full of vague enterprise. Each
23:49
Speaker 1: time I returned to ealing life, there seemed more alien,
23:53
Speaker 1: narrow and unattractive, and Marian less beautiful, and more limited
23:58
Speaker 1: and difficult, Until at last she was robbed of every
24:01
Speaker 1: particle of her magic, she gave me always a cooler welcome,
24:05
Speaker 1: I think, until she seemed entirely apathetic. I never asked
24:10
Speaker 1: myself then, what heartache she might hide, or what her
24:13
Speaker 1: discontents might be. I would come home hoping nothing, expecting nothing.
24:19
Speaker 1: This was my faded life, and I had chosen it.
24:22
Speaker 1: I became more sensitive to the defects I had once
24:25
Speaker 1: disregarded altogether. I began to associate her sallow complexion with
24:30
Speaker 1: her temperamental insufficiency, and the heavier lines of her mouth
24:35
Speaker 1: and nostril with her moods of discontent. We drifted apart,
24:40
Speaker 1: wider and wider the gap opened. I tired of baby
24:44
Speaker 1: talk and stereotyped little fondlings. I tired of the latest
24:49
Speaker 1: intelligence from those wonderful work rooms, and showed it all
24:52
Speaker 1: too plainly. We hardly spoke when we were alone together.
24:56
Speaker 1: The mere, unreciprocated physical residue of my passion remained an
25:01
Speaker 1: exasperation between us. No children came to save us. Marian
25:06
Speaker 1: had acquired at Smithy's a disgust and dread of maternity.
25:11
Speaker 1: All that was the fruition and quintessence of the horrid
25:14
Speaker 1: elements in life, a disgusting thing, a last indignity that
25:18
Speaker 1: overtook unwary women. I doubt, indeed a little, if children
25:23
Speaker 1: would have saved us, we should have differed so fatally
25:26
Speaker 1: about her upbringing. Altogether, I remember my life with Marian
25:31
Speaker 1: as a long distress, now hard, now tender. It was
25:35
Speaker 1: in those days that I first became critical of my life,
25:38
Speaker 1: and burdened with a sense of error and maladjustment. I
25:42
Speaker 1: would lie awake in the night asking myself the purpose
25:45
Speaker 1: of things, reviewing my unsatisfying, ungainly home life, my day
25:50
Speaker 1: spent in rascal enterprise and rubbish selling, contrasting all I
25:55
Speaker 1: was being and doing with my adolescent ambitions, my Wimblehurst dreams.
26:02
Speaker 1: My circumstances had an air of finality, and I asked
26:06
Speaker 1: myself in vain why I had forced myself into them.
26:12
Speaker 1: Six the end of our intolerable situation came suddenly and unexpectedly,
26:17
Speaker 1: but in a way that I suppose was almost inevitable.
26:21
Speaker 1: My alienated affections wandered, and I was unfaithful to Marian.
26:26
Speaker 1: I won't pretend to extenuate the quality of my conduct.
26:30
Speaker 1: I was a young and fairly vigorous male. All my
26:33
Speaker 1: appetite for love had been roused and wedded, and none
26:36
Speaker 1: of it had been satisfied by my love affair and
26:39
Speaker 1: my marriage. I had pursued an elusive gleam of beauty
26:43
Speaker 1: to the disregard of all else, and it had failed me.
26:47
Speaker 1: It had faded when I had hoped it would grow brighter.
26:50
Speaker 1: I despaired of life and was embittered. And things happened
26:54
Speaker 1: as I am telling I don't draw any moral at
26:57
Speaker 1: all in the matter. And as for social remedy, I
27:00
Speaker 1: lead them to the social reformer. I've got to a
27:03
Speaker 1: time of life when the only theories that interest me
27:06
Speaker 1: are generalizations about realities. To go to our inner office
27:11
Speaker 1: in Raggatt Street, I had to walk through a room
27:14
Speaker 1: in which the typists worked. They were the correspondents typists.
27:19
Speaker 1: Our books and invoicing had long since overflowed into the
27:22
Speaker 1: premises we had had the luck to secure on either
27:25
Speaker 1: side of us. I was, I must confess, always in
27:29
Speaker 1: a faintly, cloudly emotional way, aware of that collection of
27:34
Speaker 1: for the most part round shouldered femininity. But presently one
27:38
Speaker 1: of the girls detached herself from the others and got
27:41
Speaker 1: a real hold upon my attention. I appreciated her at
27:45
Speaker 1: first as a straight little back, a neater back than
27:49
Speaker 1: any of the others, as a softly rounded neck with
27:52
Speaker 1: a smiling necklace of sham pearls, as chestnut hair very
27:56
Speaker 1: neatly done, and as a sidelong glance. Presently, as a
28:00
Speaker 1: quickly turned face that looked for me. My eye would
28:05
Speaker 1: seek her as I went through on business things. I
28:08
Speaker 1: dictated some letters to her, and so discovered she had
28:11
Speaker 1: pretty soft looking hands with pink nails. Once or twice,
28:15
Speaker 1: meeting casually, we looked one another for the flash of
28:18
Speaker 1: a second in the eyes. That was all, But it
28:23
Speaker 1: was enough in the mysterious freemasonry of sex to say
28:26
Speaker 1: essential things. We had a secret between us. One day
28:31
Speaker 1: I came into Ragged Street at lunch time, and she
28:34
Speaker 1: was alone, sitting at her desk. She glanced up as
28:38
Speaker 1: I entered, and then became very still, with a downcast
28:41
Speaker 1: face and her hands clenched on the table. I walked
28:45
Speaker 1: right by her to the door of the inner office, stopped,
28:48
Speaker 1: came back and stood over her. We neither of us
28:52
Speaker 1: spoke for quite a perceptible time. I was trembling violently.
28:57
Speaker 1: Is that one of the new typewriters, I asked at last,
29:01
Speaker 1: for the sake of speaking. She looked up at me
29:04
Speaker 1: without a word, with her face flushed and her eyes alight,
29:07
Speaker 1: and I bent down and kissed her lips. She leaped
29:10
Speaker 1: back to put an arm about me, drew my face
29:13
Speaker 1: to her, and kissed me again and again. I lifted
29:17
Speaker 1: her and held her in my arms. She gave a
29:19
Speaker 1: little smothered cry to feel herself so held. Never before
29:24
Speaker 1: had I known the quality of passionate kisses. Somebody became
29:28
Speaker 1: audible in the shop outside. We started back from one
29:31
Speaker 1: another with flushed faces and bright and burning eyes. We
29:36
Speaker 1: can't talk here, I whispered, with a confident intimacy. Where
29:40
Speaker 1: do you go at five along the embankment to Charing Cross?
29:45
Speaker 1: She answered, as intimately, none of the others go that way.
29:50
Speaker 1: About half past five, yes, half past five, the door
29:55
Speaker 1: from the shop opened, and she sat down very quickly.
29:59
Speaker 1: I'm glad, I said, in a commonplace voice, that these
30:03
Speaker 1: new typewriters are all right. I went into the inner
30:07
Speaker 1: office and routed out the pay sheet in order to
30:09
Speaker 1: find her name, Effie Rink, and did no work at
30:13
Speaker 1: all that afternoon. I fretted about that dingy little den,
30:17
Speaker 1: like a beast in a cage. When presently I went out,
30:21
Speaker 1: Effie was working with an extraordinary appearance of calm, and
30:25
Speaker 1: there was no look for me at all. We met
30:28
Speaker 1: and had our talk that evening, a talk in whispers
30:31
Speaker 1: when there was none to overhear. We came to an understanding.
30:35
Speaker 1: It was strangely unlike any dream of romance I had
30:38
Speaker 1: ever entertained. End of book, second chapter, fourth parts four
30:45
Speaker 1: to six. Recording by William tom Coe