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The Passionate Friends Chapter 10 - Mary Writes Parts 1-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter ten, parts one to three of The Passionate Friends
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Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells. This LibriVox recording is in the
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Speaker 1: public domain recording by Peter Eastman. Chapter the tenth, Mary
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Speaker 1: writes one. It was in the early spring of nineteen
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Speaker 1: o nine that I had a letter from Mary. By
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Speaker 1: that time my life was set fully upon its present
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Speaker 1: courses gidding and I had passed from the stage of
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Speaker 1: talking and scheming to definite undertakings. Indeed, by nineteen o
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Speaker 1: nine things were already organized upon their present lines. We
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Speaker 1: had developed a huge publishing establishment, with one big printing
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Speaker 1: plant in Barcelona and another in Manchester, and we were
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Speaker 1: studying the peculiar difficulties that might attend the establishment of
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Speaker 1: a third plant in America. Our company was an English
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Speaker 1: company under the name of Alphabet and Molentrove, and we
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Speaker 1: were rapidly making it the broadest and steadiest flow of
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Speaker 1: publication the world had ever seen. Its streams already reached
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Speaker 1: further and carried more than any single firm had ever
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Speaker 1: managed to do before. We were reprinting and as carefully
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Speaker 1: edited and revised editions as we could the whole of
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Speaker 1: the English, Spanish and French literature, and we were only
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Speaker 1: waiting for the release of machinery to attack German, Russian
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Speaker 1: and Italian, and were giving each language not only its own,
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Speaker 1: but a very complete series of good translations of the
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Speaker 1: classical writers in every other tongue. We had a little
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Speaker 1: band of editors and translators permanently at our service. At
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Speaker 1: each important literary center. We had, for example, more than
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Speaker 1: a score of men at work translating Bengali fiction and
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Speaker 1: verse into English. A lot of that new literature is
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Speaker 1: wonderfully illuminating to an intelligent Englishmen, and we had a
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Speaker 1: couple of men hunting about for new work in Arabic.
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Speaker 1: We meant to give so good and cheap a book,
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Speaker 1: and to be so comprehensive in our choice of books,
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Speaker 1: excluding nothing, if only it was real and living on
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Speaker 1: account of any inferiority of quality, obscurity of subject, or
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Speaker 1: narrowness of demand, that in the long run anybody anywhere
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Speaker 1: desiring to read anything, would turn naturally and inevitably to
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Speaker 1: our lists. Ours was to be, in the first place,
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Speaker 1: a world literature, then afterwards upon its broad currents of distribution,
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Speaker 1: and in the same forms, we meant to publish new
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Speaker 1: work and new thought we were also planning and encyclopedia.
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Speaker 1: Behind our enterprise of translations and reprints. We were getting
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Speaker 1: together and putting out a series of guide books, gazzetteers, dictionaries,
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Speaker 1: textbooks and books of reference, and we were organizing revising
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Speaker 1: staff for these, a staff that should be constantly keeping
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Speaker 1: them up to date. It was our intention to make
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Speaker 1: every copy we printed bear the date of its last
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Speaker 1: revision in a conspicuous place, and we hoped to get
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Speaker 1: the whole line of these books ultimately upon an annual basis,
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Speaker 1: and to sell them upon repurchasing terms that would enable
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Speaker 1: us to issue a new copy and take back and
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Speaker 1: send the old one to the pulping mill at a
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Speaker 1: narrow margin of profit. Then we meant to spread our
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Speaker 1: arms wider and consolidate and offer our whole line of textbooks,
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Speaker 1: guide books and gazetteers, bibliographies, atlases, dictionaries and directories as
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Speaker 1: a new world encyclopedia that should also annually or at
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Speaker 1: longest biennially renew its youth. So far we had gone
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Speaker 1: in the creation of a huge international organ of information
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Speaker 1: and of a kind of gigantic modern bible of world literature,
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Speaker 1: and in the process of its discre distribution. We were
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Speaker 1: rapidly acquiring an immense detailed knowledge of the book and
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Speaker 1: publishing trade, finding congestions here, neglected opportunities there, and devising
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Speaker 1: and drawing up a hundred schemes for relief, assistance, amalgamation
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Speaker 1: and rearrangement. We had branches in China, Japan, Peru, Iceland,
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Speaker 1: and a thousand remote places that would have sounded as
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Speaker 1: far off as the moon to an English or American bookseller.
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Speaker 1: In the seventies, China in particular was a growing market.
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Speaker 1: We had a subsidiary company running a flourishing line of
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Speaker 1: bookshops in the East end of London and others in
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Speaker 1: New Jersey, Chicago, Buenos Aires, the south of France, and Ireland. Incidentally,
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Speaker 1: we had bought up some thousands of miles of Labrador
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Speaker 1: forest to insure our paper supply, and we could believe
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Speaker 1: that before we died, there would not be a corner
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Speaker 1: of the world in which any book of interest or value,
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Speaker 1: you whatever, would not be easily attainable by any intelligent
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Speaker 1: person who wanted to read it. And already we were
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Speaker 1: taking up the more difficult and ambitious phase of our
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Speaker 1: self appointed task and considering the problem of using these
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Speaker 1: channels we were mastering and deepening and supplementing for the
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Speaker 1: stimulation and wide diffusion of contemporary thought. There we went
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Speaker 1: outside the province of alphabet and Molentrove and into an
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Speaker 1: infinitely subtler system of interests. We wanted to give sincere
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Speaker 1: and clear thinking writers encouragement and opportunity to improve the
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Speaker 1: critical tribunal and make it independent of advertising interests, so
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Speaker 1: that there would be a readier welcome for luminous thinking
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Speaker 1: and writing, and a quicker explosion of intellectual imposture. We
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Speaker 1: sought to provide guides and intelligencers to contemporary thought. We
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Speaker 1: had already set up, or subsidized, or otherwise able assert
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Speaker 1: a number of magazines and periodicals that seemed to us independent, spirited, outspoken,
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Speaker 1: and well handled. But we had still to devise our
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Speaker 1: present scheme of financing groups of men to create magazines
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Speaker 1: and newspapers which became their own separate but inalienable property
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Speaker 1: after so many years of success. But all this I
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Speaker 1: hope you will already have become more or less familiar
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Speaker 1: with when the story reaches your hands, and I hope
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Speaker 1: by the time it does so, we shall be far
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Speaker 1: beyond our present stage of experiment, and that you will
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Speaker 1: have come naturally to play your part in this most
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Speaker 1: fascinating business of maintaining an onward intellectual movement in the world,
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Speaker 1: a movement not simply independent of, but often running counter to,
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Speaker 1: all sorts of political and financial interests. I tell you
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Speaker 1: this much here for you to understand that already in
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Speaker 1: nineteen o nine, and considering the business side of my
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Speaker 1: activities alone, I was a hard worker and very strenuously employed.
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Speaker 1: And in addition to all this huge network of enterprises
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Speaker 1: I had developed with getting I was still pretty actively
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Speaker 1: a student. I wasn't I never shall be absolutely satisfied
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Speaker 1: with my general ideas. I was inquiring keenly and closely
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Speaker 1: into those problems of group and crowd psychology from which
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Speaker 1: all this big publishing work has arisen, and giving particular
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Speaker 1: attention to the war, panics and outbreaks of international hostility
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Speaker 1: that were then passing in deepening waves across Europe. I
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Speaker 1: had already accumulated a mass of notes for the book
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Speaker 1: upon group Jealousy in religious persecution, racial conflicts and War,
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Speaker 1: which I hope to publish the year after next, and
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Speaker 1: which therefore I hope you will have read long before
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Speaker 1: this present book can possibly come to you. And moreover,
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Speaker 1: Rachel and I had established our home in London, in
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Speaker 1: the house we now occupied during the winter and spring,
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Speaker 1: and both you and your little sister had begun your
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Speaker 1: careers as inhabitants of this earth. Your little sister had, indeed,
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Speaker 1: but just begun. And then one morning, at the breakfast table,
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Speaker 1: I picked a square envelope out of a heap of
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Speaker 1: letters and saw the half forgotten and infinitely familiar handwriting
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Speaker 1: of Lady Mary. Justin the sight of it gave me
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Speaker 1: an odd mixture of sensations. I was startled, I was disturbed.
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Speaker 1: I was a little afraid I hadn't forgiven her yet
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Speaker 1: it needed but this touch to tell me how little
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Speaker 1: I had forgotten. Two. I sat with it in my
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Speaker 1: hand for a moment or so before I opened it,
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Speaker 1: hesitating as one hesitates before a door that may reveal
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Speaker 1: a dramatic situation. Then I pushed my chair a little
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Speaker 1: back from the table and ripped the envelope. It was
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Speaker 1: a far longer letter than Mary had ever ridden me
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Speaker 1: in the old days, and in a handwriting as fine
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Speaker 1: as ever, but now rather smaller. I have it still,
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Speaker 1: and here I open as Warren folds, and except for
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Speaker 1: a few trifling omissions, copy it out for you. A
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Speaker 1: few trifling omissions, I say, just one there is that
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Speaker 1: is not trifling, but that I must needs make. You
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Speaker 1: will never see any of these letters, because I shall
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Speaker 1: destroy them so soon as this copy is made. It
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Speaker 1: has been difficult, or I should have destroyed them before,
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Speaker 1: but something can be too hard for us. This first
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Speaker 1: letter is on the Marten's note paper. Its very heading
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Speaker 1: was familiar to me. The handwriting of the earlier sentences
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Speaker 1: is a little stiff and disjointed, and there are one
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Speaker 1: or two scribbled obliterations. It is like someone embarrassed in speaking.
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Speaker 1: And then it passes into her usual and characteristic ease.
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Speaker 1: And as I read slowly, my long cherished anger evaporated,
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Speaker 1: and the real Mary, outspoken and simple, whom I had
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Speaker 1: obscured by a cloud of fancied infidelities, returned to me,
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Speaker 1: My dear Stephen. She begins, about six weeks ago I
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Speaker 1: saw in the Times that you have a little daughter.
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Speaker 1: It set me thinking, picturing you with the mite of
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Speaker 1: a baby in your arms. What little things they are, Stephen,
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Speaker 1: And your old face bent over it, so that presently
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Speaker 1: I went to my room and cried. It set me
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Speaker 1: thinking about you, so that I have at last written
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Speaker 1: you this letter. I love to think of you with
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Speaker 1: wife and children. About you, Stephen, I heard of your
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Speaker 1: son for the first time about a year ago. But
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Speaker 1: don't mistake me. Something wrings me too well. I too
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Speaker 1: have children. Have you ever thought of me as a mother?
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Speaker 1: I am? I wonder how much you know about me now?
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Speaker 1: I have two children, and the youngest is just two
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Speaker 1: years old. And somehow it seems to me that now
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Speaker 1: that you and I have both given such earnests of
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Speaker 1: our good behavior, such evidence that that side of life
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Speaker 1: anyhow is effectually settled for us, there is no reason
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Speaker 1: remaining why we shouldn't correspond. You are my brother, Stephen,
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Speaker 1: and my friend and by twin, and the core of
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Speaker 1: my imagination fifty babies. Cannot alter that we can live
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Speaker 1: but once and then die, and promise or no promise,
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Speaker 1: I will not be dead any longer in your world
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Speaker 1: when I'm not dead, nor will I have you if
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Speaker 1: I can help it. A cold, unanswering corpse in mine.
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Speaker 1: Too much of my life and being Stephen has been
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Speaker 1: buried and I am in rebellion. This is a breach
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Speaker 1: of the tomb, if you like, an irregular, private, premature
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Speaker 1: resurrection from an interment in error out of my alleged grave.
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Speaker 1: I poke my head and say hullo to you, Stephen,
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Speaker 1: old friend, dear friend. How are you getting on? What
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Speaker 1: is it like to you? How do you feel? I
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Speaker 1: want to know about you. I'm not doing this at
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Speaker 1: all furtively, and you can write back to me, Stephen,
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Speaker 1: as openly as your heart desires. I have told justin
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Speaker 1: I should do this. I rise, you see, blowing my
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Speaker 1: own trump. Let the other graves do as they please.
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Speaker 1: Your letters will be respected, Stephen, if you choose to
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Speaker 1: rise also and write me a letter. Stephen, I've been
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Speaker 1: wanting to do this for for all the time. If
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Speaker 1: there was thought reading, you would have had a thousand letters.
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Speaker 1: But formerly I was content to submit, and latterly I've
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Speaker 1: chafed more. I think that as what they call passion
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Speaker 1: has faded, the immense friendliness has become more evident and
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Speaker 1: made the bar less and less justifiable. You and I
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Speaker 1: have had so much between us, beyond what somebody the
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Speaker 1: other day it was in a report in the Times.
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Speaker 1: I think who was calling materia matrimoniala And of course
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Speaker 1: I hear about you from all sorts of people, and
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Speaker 1: in all sorts of ways. Whatever you have done about me,
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Speaker 1: I've had a woman's sense of honor about you, and
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Speaker 1: I've managed to learn a great deal without asking forbidden questions.
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Speaker 1: I've pricked up my ears at the faintest echo of
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Speaker 1: your name. They say you have become a publisher with
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Speaker 1: an American partner, a sort of Harmsworth and Nelson and
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Speaker 1: Times book Club and Hooper and Jackson all ruled into one.
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Speaker 1: That seems so extraordinary to me that for that alone
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Speaker 1: I should have had to write to you. I want
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Speaker 1: to know the truth of that. I never see any
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Speaker 1: advertisement of Stratton in Company or get any inkling of
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Speaker 1: what it is you publish. Are you the power behind
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Speaker 1: the respectable Murgatroit and the honest Milvain. I know them both,
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Speaker 1: and neither has the slightest appearance of being animated by you.
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Speaker 1: And equally perplexing is your being mixed up with an
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Speaker 1: American like that man getting in peace conferences and social
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Speaker 1: reform congresses and so forth. It's so carnegii ise there,
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Speaker 1: I'm sure because I've seen your name in reports of meetings,
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Speaker 1: and I've read your last two papers in the Fortnightly.
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Speaker 1: I can't imagine you, of all people, with your touch
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Speaker 1: of reserve, launching into movements and rubbing shoulders with fattests.
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Speaker 1: What does it mean, Stephen? I had expected to find
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Speaker 1: you coming back into English politics, speaking and writing on
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Speaker 1: the lines of your old beginning, taking up that work
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Speaker 1: you dropped. It's six years now ago. I've been accumulating
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Speaker 1: disappointment for two years. Mister Arthur, you see on our side,
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Speaker 1: this you will remember, was in nineteen o nine. Stillt
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Speaker 1: steers are devious party courses, and the paraf reformers have
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Speaker 1: still to capture us. Weston Massingay was comparing them the
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Speaker 1: other night at a dinner at the Kleine's to a
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Speaker 1: crowded piratical galley trying to get alongside a good seaman
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Speaker 1: in rough weather. He was very funny about Leo Maxey
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Speaker 1: and the poop white and shrieking with passion, and the
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Speaker 1: motion and all the capitalists armed to the teeth and
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Speaker 1: hiding snug in the hold until the grappling irons were fixed.
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Speaker 1: Why haven't you come into the game, I'd hoped it,
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Speaker 1: if only for the sake of meeting you again? What
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Speaker 1: are you doing out beyond there? We are in it
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Speaker 1: so far as I can contrive, But I contrive very little.
16:46
Speaker 1: We are pillars of the Conservative Party. Want that Justin's
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Speaker 1: mind is firmly settled, And every now and then I
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Speaker 1: clamor urgently that we must do more for it. But
16:59
Speaker 1: Justin's ideas go no further than writing checks. Doing more
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Speaker 1: for the party means writing a bigger check. And there
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Speaker 1: are moments when I feel we shall simply bring down
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Speaker 1: a peerage upon our heads and bury my ancient courtesy
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Speaker 1: title under the ignominy of a new creation. He would
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Speaker 1: certainly accept it. He writes his check and turns back
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Speaker 1: at the earliest opportunity to his miniature gardens and the
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Speaker 1: odd little freaks of collecting that attract him. Have you
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Speaker 1: ever heard of chintz oil jars? No, you will say,
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Speaker 1: nor has any one else yet, except our immediate circle
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Speaker 1: of friends and a few dealers, who are, no doubt
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Speaker 1: industriously increasing the present scanty supply we possess three. They
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Speaker 1: are matronly shaped jars, about two feet or a yard high,
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Speaker 1: of a kind of terra cotta with wooden tops surmounted
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Speaker 1: by gilt acorns, and they have been covered with white paint.
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Speaker 1: And on this flowers and birds and figures from some
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Speaker 1: very rich old chintz have been stuck very cunningly. And
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Speaker 1: then everything has been varnished. And there you are. Our
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Speaker 1: first and best was bought for seven and sixpence, brought
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Speaker 1: home in the car, put upon a console table on
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Speaker 1: the second landing, and worshiped. It's really a very pleasant
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Speaker 1: mellow thing to see. Nobody had ever seen the like. Guests, sycophantic,
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Speaker 1: people of all sorts were taken to consider it. It
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Speaker 1: was looked at with heads at every angle. One man
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Speaker 1: even kept his head erect, and one went a little
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Speaker 1: upstairs and looked at it under his arm. Also, the
18:42
Speaker 1: most powerful lenses have been used for a minute examination,
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Speaker 1: and one expert licked the varnish and looked extremely thoughtful
18:51
Speaker 1: and wise at me as he turned the booty over
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Speaker 1: his gifted tongue. And now, God being with us, we
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Speaker 1: mean to possess every specimen in existence before the Americans
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Speaker 1: get hold of the idea. Yesterday Justin got up and
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Speaker 1: noted sixty miles to look at an alleged fourth, Oh,
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Speaker 1: my dear, I am writing chatter. You perceive I've reached
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Speaker 1: the chattering stage. It is the faded end of the
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Speaker 1: clever woman in a good social position. Nowadays her mind
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Speaker 1: beats against her conditions for the last time and breaks
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Speaker 1: up into this carping talk, this spume of observation and comment,
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Speaker 1: this anecdotal natural history of the restraining husband, as waves
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Speaker 1: burst out their hearts in a foam upon a reef.
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Speaker 1: But it isn't chatter. I want to write to you, Stephen.
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Speaker 1: I'm intolerably wretched. No creature has ever been gladder to
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Speaker 1: have been born than I was. For the first five
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Speaker 1: and twenty years of my life. I was full of hope,
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Speaker 1: and I was full, I suppose of vanity and rash confidence.
20:05
Speaker 1: I thought I was walking on solid earth with my
20:08
Speaker 1: head reaching up to the clouds, and that sea and
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Speaker 1: sky and all mankind were mine for the smiling. And
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Speaker 1: I am nothing, and worse than nothing. I am the
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Speaker 1: ineffectual mother of two children, A daughter whom I adore,
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Speaker 1: but of her I may not tell you. And a son,
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Speaker 1: A son who is too like his father for any
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Speaker 1: fury of worship, A stolid little creature that is all
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Speaker 1: I have done in the world, a mere blink of maternity,
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Speaker 1: and my blue Persian, who was scarcely two years old,
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Speaker 1: has already had nine kittens. My husband and I have
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Speaker 1: never forgiven each other the indefinable wrong of not pleasing
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Speaker 1: each other that embitters more and more. To take it
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Speaker 1: out of each other is our role. I have done
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Speaker 1: my duty to the great new line of Justine by
21:03
Speaker 1: giving it the air it needed. And now a polite
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Speaker 1: and silent separation has fallen between us. We hardly speak
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Speaker 1: except in company. I have not been so much married Stephen,
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Speaker 1: I find has collected and since our tragic misadventure. But
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Speaker 1: there were beautiful moments, Stephen, unforgettable glimpses of beauty in that.
21:28
Speaker 1: Thank God, I say impenitently for that. The door of
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Speaker 1: the expensively splendid cabinet that contains me, when it is
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Speaker 1: not locked, is very discreetly watched. I have no men, friends,
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Speaker 1: no social force, no freedom to take my line. My
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Speaker 1: husband is my official obstacle. We barb the limitations of
21:53
Speaker 1: life for one another. A little while ago he sought
21:56
Speaker 1: to chasten me, to rouse me rather through jealousy, and
22:01
Speaker 1: made me aware indirectly, but a little defiantly, of a
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Speaker 1: young person of artistic gifts, in whose dramatic career he
22:09
Speaker 1: was pretending a conspicuous interest. I was jealous and roused,
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Speaker 1: but scarcely in the way he desired. This, I said,
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Speaker 1: quite cheerfully means freedom for me, justin and the young
22:23
Speaker 1: woman vanished from the visible universe with an incredible celerity.
22:28
Speaker 1: I hope she was properly paid off and not simply
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Speaker 1: made away with my ominion. But I become more and
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Speaker 1: more aware of my ignorance of a great financier's methods
22:39
Speaker 1: as I become more and more aware of them. Stephen,
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Speaker 1: my dear, my brother, I am intolerably unhappy. I do
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Speaker 1: not know what to do with myself or what there
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Speaker 1: is to hope for in life. I am like a
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Speaker 1: prisoner in a magic cage, and I do not know
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Speaker 1: the word that will release me. How is it with you?
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Speaker 1: Are you unhappy beyond measure? Or are you not? And
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Speaker 1: if you are not, what are you doing with life?
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Speaker 1: Have you found any secret that makes living tolerable and understandable?
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Speaker 1: Write to me, Write to me at least and tell
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Speaker 1: me that please write to me. Do you remember how
23:24
Speaker 1: long ago you and I sat in the old park
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Speaker 1: at Burnmore, and how I kept pestering you and asking
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Speaker 1: you what is all this for? And you looked at
23:35
Speaker 1: the question as an obstinate mule looks at a narrow
23:37
Speaker 1: bridge he could cross but doesn't want to. Well, Stephen,
23:43
Speaker 1: you've had nearly how many years is it now to
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Speaker 1: get an answer? Ready? What is it all for? What
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Speaker 1: do you make of it? Never mind my particular case,
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Speaker 1: or the case of women with a capital W. Tell
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Speaker 1: me your solution. You are active, you keep doing things.
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Speaker 1: You find life worth living. Is publishing a way of
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Speaker 1: peace for the heart? I am prepared to believe even that.
24:12
Speaker 1: But justify yourself. Tell me what you have got there
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Speaker 1: to keep your soul alive. Three I read this letter
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Speaker 1: to the end and looked up, and there was my
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Speaker 1: home about me, a room ruddy brown and familiar with
24:33
Speaker 1: the row of old pewter things upon the dresser, the
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Speaker 1: steel engravings of former strattons that came to me from
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Speaker 1: my father, a convex mirror exaggerating my upturned face. And Rachel,
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Speaker 1: just risen again sat at the other end of the table,
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Speaker 1: A young mother, fragile and tender, eyed the clash of
24:55
Speaker 1: these two systems of reality was amazing. It was as
24:59
Speaker 1: though I had no parted from Mary for a day,
25:02
Speaker 1: as though all that separation and all that cloud of
25:05
Speaker 1: bitter jealousy had been a mere silence between two people
25:09
Speaker 1: in the same room. Indeed, it was extraordinarily like that,
25:14
Speaker 1: as if I had been sitting at a desk, imagining
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Speaker 1: myself alone, reading my present life as one reads in
25:21
Speaker 1: a book at a shaded lamp, and then suddenly that
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Speaker 1: silent other had spoken. And then I looked at the
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Speaker 1: page of my life before me, and became again a
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Speaker 1: character in the story. I met the enquiry in Rachel's eyes.
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Speaker 1: It's a letter from Mary, justin, I said. She did
25:46
Speaker 1: not answer. For a few moments. She became interested in
25:50
Speaker 1: the flame of the little spirit lamp that kept her
25:52
Speaker 1: coffee hot. She finished what she had to do with that,
25:56
Speaker 1: and then remarked, I thought you two were not to correspond. Yes,
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Speaker 1: I said, putting the letter down. That was the understanding.
26:08
Speaker 1: There was a little interval of silence, and then I
26:11
Speaker 1: got up and went to the fireplace, where the bacon
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Speaker 1: and sausages stood upon a trivet, I suppose, said Rachel.
26:19
Speaker 1: She wants to hear from you again. She thinks that
26:23
Speaker 1: now we have children, and that she has too, we
26:26
Speaker 1: can consider what was pasted, past and closed and done with,
26:30
Speaker 1: and she wants to hear about me Apart from everything else.
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Speaker 1: We were very great friends, of course, said Rachel, with
26:40
Speaker 1: lips a little awry. Of course you must have been
26:44
Speaker 1: great friends. And it's natural for her to write. I suppose,
26:50
Speaker 1: she added, her husband knows she's told him. She says.
26:57
Speaker 1: Her eye fell on the letter in my hand for
26:59
Speaker 1: this smllest fraction of a second, and it was as
27:03
Speaker 1: if hastily she snatched away a thought from my observation.
27:08
Speaker 1: I had a moment of illuminating embarrassment. So far we
27:12
Speaker 1: had contrived to do as most young people do when
27:15
Speaker 1: they marry. We had sought to make our lives unreservedly
27:19
Speaker 1: open to one another. We had effected an entire absence
27:23
Speaker 1: of concealments about our movements, our thoughts. If perhaps I
27:28
Speaker 1: had been largely silent to her about Mary, it was
27:31
Speaker 1: not so much that I sought to hide things from
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Speaker 1: her as that I myself sought to forget. It is
27:38
Speaker 1: one of the things that we learned too late, the
27:41
Speaker 1: impossibility of any such rapid and wilful coalescence of souls.
27:47
Speaker 1: But we had maintained a convention of infinite communism since
27:50
Speaker 1: our marriage. We had shown each other our letters, as
27:54
Speaker 1: a matter of course, shared the secrets of our friends
27:57
Speaker 1: gone everywhere together, as far as we possibly could. I
28:03
Speaker 1: wanted now to give her the letter in my hand
28:06
Speaker 1: to read, and to do so was manifestly impossible. Something
28:13
Speaker 1: had arisen between us that made out of our unity
28:16
Speaker 1: two abruptly separated figures masked and veiled. Here were things
28:22
Speaker 1: I knew and understood completely, and that I could not
28:26
Speaker 1: even describe. To Rachel, what would she make of Mary's
28:30
Speaker 1: write to me? Write to me a mere wish to resume.
28:36
Speaker 1: I would not risk the exposure of Mary's mind and
28:39
Speaker 1: heart and unhappiness to her possible misinterpretation. That letter fell, indeed,
28:47
Speaker 1: like a pitiless searchlight into all that region of differences
28:51
Speaker 1: ignored over which we had built the vaulted convention of
28:55
Speaker 1: our complete mutual understanding. In my memory, it seems to
29:01
Speaker 1: me now as though we hung silent for quite a
29:03
Speaker 1: long time over the evasions that were there so abruptly revealed.
29:11
Speaker 1: Then I put the letter into my pocket, with a
29:14
Speaker 1: clumsy assumption of carelessness, and knelt down to the fender
29:18
Speaker 1: and sausages. It will be curious, I said to write
29:23
Speaker 1: to her again, to tell her about things. And then,
29:29
Speaker 1: with immense interest, are these Chichester sausages you've got here, Rachel?
29:34
Speaker 1: Or some new kind? Rachel roused herself to respond with
29:39
Speaker 1: an equal affectation, and we made an eager conversation about
29:43
Speaker 1: bacon and sausages. For after that startling gleam of divergence,
29:50
Speaker 1: we were both anxious to get back to the superficialities
29:53
Speaker 1: of life again. End of chapter ten one two three,