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In the Days of the Comet Book Third Chapter First Section 2-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book three, Chapter one, sections two and three of In
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  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In
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  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells, Book three,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter one, sections two and three. The talk we three
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  Speaker 1: had together in the dawn of a new time is
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  Speaker 1: very strongly impressed upon my memory. There was something fresh
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  Speaker 1: and simple about it, something young and flushed and exalted.
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  Speaker 1: We took up. We handled with a certain naive timidity,
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  Speaker 1: the most difficult questions the change had raised for men
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  Speaker 1: to solve. I recall we made little of them. All.
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  Speaker 1: The old scheme of human life had desire and passed away.
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  Speaker 1: The narrow competitiveness, the greed and base aggression, the jealous
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  Speaker 1: aloofness of soul from soul? Where had it left us?
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  Speaker 1: That was what we and a thousand million others were discussing. It.
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  Speaker 1: Chances that this last meeting with Nettie is inseparably associated,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know why, with the landlady of the menton inn.
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  Speaker 1: The Mentoneane was one of the rare, pleasant corners of
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  Speaker 1: the old order. It was an inn of unusual prosperity,
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  Speaker 1: much frequented by visitors from Chaphambury, and given to the
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  Speaker 1: serving of lunches and teas. It had a broad, mossy
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  Speaker 1: bowling green, and round about it were creeper covered arbors,
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  Speaker 1: amidst beds of snap dragon and hollyhock, and blue delphinium,
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  Speaker 1: and many such tall, familiar summer flowers. These stood out
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  Speaker 1: against the background of law arrels and holly. And above
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  Speaker 1: these again rose the gables of the inn and its
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  Speaker 1: sign post, a white horse George slaying the dragon against
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  Speaker 1: copper beeches under the sky. While I waited for Nettie
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  Speaker 1: and veryl in this agreeable trysting place, I talked to
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  Speaker 1: the landlady, a broad shouldered, smiling, freckled woman, about the
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  Speaker 1: morning of the change. That motherly, abundant, red haired figure
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  Speaker 1: of health was brilliantly sure that everything in the world
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  Speaker 1: was now to be changed for the better. That confidence
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  Speaker 1: and something in her voice made me love her. As
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  Speaker 1: I talked to her. Now we're awake, she said, all
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  Speaker 1: sorts of things will be put right that hadn't any
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  Speaker 1: sense in them. Why, oh, I'm sure of it. Her
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  Speaker 1: kind blue eyes met mine in an infinitude of friendliness,
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  Speaker 1: her lips in her pawses shaped in a pretty faint smile.
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  Speaker 1: Old tradition was still strong in us. All English inns
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  Speaker 1: in those days charged the unexpected. And I asked what
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  Speaker 1: our lunch was to cost? Pay or not? She said,
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  Speaker 1: and what you like? It's holiday these days. I suppose
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  Speaker 1: we'll still have paying and charging however we manage it.
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  Speaker 1: But it won't be the worry it has been that
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  Speaker 1: I feel sure. It's the part I never had no fancy.
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  Speaker 1: For many a time I peeped through the bushes, worrying
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  Speaker 1: to think what was just and right to me and
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  Speaker 1: mine and what would send them away satisfied. It isn't
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  Speaker 1: the money I care for. They'll be mighty changes, be
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  Speaker 1: sure of that. But here I'll stay and make people happy,
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  Speaker 1: them that go by on the roads. It's a pleasant
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  Speaker 1: place here. When people are merry. It's only when they're
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  Speaker 1: jealous or mean, or tired, or eat up beyond any
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  Speaker 1: stomach's digesting, or when they got the drink in em
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  Speaker 1: that satan comes into this garden. Many's the happy face
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  Speaker 1: I've seen here, and many that come again like friends.
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  Speaker 1: But nothing to equal what's going to be now. Things
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  Speaker 1: are being set right, She smiled, that bounteous woman with
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  Speaker 1: the joy of life. And hope you shall have an omelet,
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  Speaker 1: she said, you and your friends such an omelet, like
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  Speaker 1: they'll have em in heaven. I feel there's cooking in
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  Speaker 1: me these days like I've never cooked before. I'm rejoiced
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  Speaker 1: to have it to do. It was just then that
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  Speaker 1: Nettie and Verel appeared under a rustic archway of crimson
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  Speaker 1: roses that led out from the inn. Nettie wore white
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  Speaker 1: and a sun hat, and Veril was a figure of gray.
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  Speaker 1: Here are my friends, I said, But for all the
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  Speaker 1: magic of the change, something past the thwart the sunlight
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  Speaker 1: in my soul, like the passing of the shadow of
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  Speaker 1: a cloud. A pretty couple, said the landlady, as they
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  Speaker 1: crossed the velvet green toward us. They were indeed a
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  Speaker 1: pretty couple. But that did not greatly gladden me. No,
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  Speaker 1: I winced a little at that section three. This old newspaper,
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  Speaker 1: this first reissue of the new paper, desiccated last relic
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  Speaker 1: of a vanished age, is like the little piece of
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  Speaker 1: identification the superstitious of the old days, those queer religionists
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  Speaker 1: who brought a certain black clad missus Piper to the
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  Speaker 1: help of Christ, used to put into the hand of
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  Speaker 1: a clairvoyant at the crisp touch of it. I look
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  Speaker 1: across a gulf of fifty years, and see again the
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  Speaker 1: three of us sitting about that table in the arbor.
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  Speaker 1: And I smell again the smell of a sweet briar
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  Speaker 1: that filled the air about us. And here in our
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  Speaker 1: long pauses the abundant murmuring of bees among the hiliotroop
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  Speaker 1: of the borders. It is the dawn of a new time,
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  Speaker 1: but we bear all three of us the marks and
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  Speaker 1: liveries of the old. I see myself, a dark, ill
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  Speaker 1: dressed youth, with the bruise Lord red Car gave me
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  Speaker 1: still blue and yellow beneath my jaw, and young Vero
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  Speaker 1: sits corner wise to me, better grown, better dressed, fair
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  Speaker 1: and quiet, two years my senior, indeed, but looking no
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  Speaker 1: older than I because of his light complexion. And opposite
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  Speaker 1: me is Nettie, with dark eyes upon my face, graver
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  Speaker 1: and more beautiful than I had ever seen her in
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  Speaker 1: the former time. Her dress is still that white one
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  Speaker 1: she had worn when I came upon her in the park,
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  Speaker 1: and still about her dainty neck she wears her string
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  Speaker 1: of pearls and that little coin of gold. She is
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  Speaker 1: so much the same, she is so changed a girl
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  Speaker 1: then and now a woman, and all my agony and
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  Speaker 1: all the marvel of the change between. Over the end
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  Speaker 1: of the green table about which we sit, a spotless
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  Speaker 1: cloth is spread. It bears a pleasant lunch, spread out
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  Speaker 1: with a simple equipage. Behind me is the liberal sunshine
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  Speaker 1: of the green and various garden. I see it all again.
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  Speaker 1: I sit there, eating awkwardly, this paper lies upon the table,
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  Speaker 1: and Veril talks of the change. You can't imagine, he says,
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  Speaker 1: in his sure, fine accents, how much the change has
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  Speaker 1: destroyed of me. I still don't feel awake. Men of
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  Speaker 1: my sword are so tremendously made. I never suspected it before.
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  Speaker 1: He leans over the table toward me, with an evident
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  Speaker 1: desire to make himself perfectly understood. I find myself like
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  Speaker 1: some creature that has taken out of its shell, soft
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  Speaker 1: and new. I was trained to dress in a certain way,
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  Speaker 1: to behave in a certain way, to think in a
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  Speaker 1: certain way. I see now it's all wrong, and narrow,
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  Speaker 1: most of it. Anyhow, a system of class. Shibaleths we
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  Speaker 1: were decent to each other in order to be a
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  Speaker 1: gang to the rest of the world. Gentlemen, indeed, but
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  Speaker 1: it's perplexing. I can hear his voice saying that now,
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  Speaker 1: and see the lift of his eyebrows and his pleasant smile.
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  Speaker 1: He paused, he had wanted to say that, but it
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  Speaker 1: was not the thing we had to say. I leaned
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  Speaker 1: forward a little and took hold of my glass very tightly.
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  Speaker 1: You too, I said, will marry? They looked at one another.
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  Speaker 1: Nettie spoke very softly. I did not mean to marry
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  Speaker 1: when I came away, she said, I know, I answered.
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  Speaker 1: I looked up with a sense of effort and met
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  Speaker 1: Beryl's eyes. He answered me, I think we too have
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  Speaker 1: joined our lives. But the thing that took us was
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  Speaker 1: a sort of madness. I nodded. All passion, I said,
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  Speaker 1: is madness. Then I fell into a doubting of those words.
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  Speaker 1: Why did we do these things? He said, turning to her. Suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: her hands were clasped under her chin, her eyes downcast.
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  Speaker 1: We had to, she said, with her old trick of
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  Speaker 1: inadequate expression. Then she seemed to open out Suddenly. Willie
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  Speaker 1: she cried with a sudden directness, with her eyes appealing
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  Speaker 1: to me. I didn't mean to treat you badly, indeed
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  Speaker 1: I didn't. I kept thinking of you and the father
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  Speaker 1: and mother all the time. Only it didn't seem to
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  Speaker 1: move me. It didn't move me, not one bit from
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  Speaker 1: the way I had chosen. Chosen, I said. Something seemed
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  Speaker 1: to have hold of me. She admitted, it's all so unaccountable.
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  Speaker 1: She gave a little gesture of despair. Vera's fingers played
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  Speaker 1: on the cloth for a space, then he turned his
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  Speaker 1: face to me again. Something said, take her everything. It
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  Speaker 1: was a raging desire for her. I don't know everything
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  Speaker 1: contributed to that or counted for nothing, you on, said
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  Speaker 1: I When I knew of you, I looked at Nettie.
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  Speaker 1: You never told him about me, I said, feeling as
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  Speaker 1: it were a sting out of the old time. Verol
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  Speaker 1: answered for her, No, but things dropped. I saw you
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  Speaker 1: that night. My instincts were all awake. I knew it
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  Speaker 1: was you. You triumphed over me. If I could, I
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  Speaker 1: would have triumphed over you, I said, But go on.
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  Speaker 1: Everything conspired to make it the finest thing in life.
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  Speaker 1: It had an air of generous recklessness. It meant mischief.
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  Speaker 1: It might mean failure in that life of politics and
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  Speaker 1: affairs for which I was trained, which it was my
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  Speaker 1: honor to follow. That made it all the finer. It
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  Speaker 1: meant ruin or misery for Nettie. That made it all
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  Speaker 1: the finer. No sane or decent man would have approved
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  Speaker 1: of what we did. That made it more splendid than ever.
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  Speaker 1: I had all the advantages of position and used them basely.
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  Speaker 1: That mattered, not at all. Yes, I said, it is true.
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  Speaker 1: And the same dark wave that lifted you swept me
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  Speaker 1: on to follow with that revolver and blubbering with hate
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  Speaker 1: and the word to you, Nettie, what was it? Give?
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  Speaker 1: Hurl yourself down the steep. Nettie's hands fell upon the table.
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  Speaker 1: I can't tell what it was, she said, speaking bare
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  Speaker 1: hearted straight to me. Girls aren't trained as men are
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  Speaker 1: trained to look into their minds. I can't see it. Yet.
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  Speaker 1: All sorts of mean, little motives were there, over and
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  Speaker 1: above the must mean motives. I kept thinking of his clothes,
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  Speaker 1: She smiled a flash of brightness at vereryl. I kept
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  Speaker 1: thinking of being like a lady, and sitting in a
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  Speaker 1: hotel with men like Butler's waiting. It's the dreadful truth, Willie.
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  Speaker 1: Things as mean as that, things meaner than that. I
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  Speaker 1: can see her now, pleading with me, speaking with a
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  Speaker 1: frankness as bright and amazing as the dawn of the
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  Speaker 1: first great morning. It wasn't all mean, I said, slowly,
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  Speaker 1: after a pause. No, they spoke together. But a woman
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  Speaker 1: chooses more than a man does. Nettie added, I saw
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  Speaker 1: it all in little bright pictures. Do you know that jacket?
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  Speaker 1: There's something you won't mind my telling you, But you
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  Speaker 1: won't now, I nodded. No. She spoke as if she
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  Speaker 1: spoke to my soul, very quietly and very earnestly, seeking
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  Speaker 1: to give the truth, something cottony in that cloth of yours.
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  Speaker 1: She said, I know there's something horrible in being swung
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  Speaker 1: round by things like that, but they did swing me
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  Speaker 1: round in the old time to have confessed that. And
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  Speaker 1: I hated Clayton and the grime of it, that kitchen,
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  Speaker 1: your mother's dreadful kitchen. And besides, Willie, I was afraid
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  Speaker 1: of you. I didn't understand you, and I did him.
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  Speaker 1: It's different now, but then I knew what he meant,
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  Speaker 1: and there was his voice yes, I said, the verel
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  Speaker 1: making these discoveries quietly. Yes, Verail, you have a good voice.
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  Speaker 1: I never thought of that before. We sat silently for
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  Speaker 1: a time before our vivisected passions. Gods, I cried, And
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  Speaker 1: there was our poor little top hamper of intelligence on
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  Speaker 1: all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, these foaming
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  Speaker 1: things of touch and sight, and feeling like like a
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  Speaker 1: coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas.
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  Speaker 1: Verel laughed approval of the image I had struck out
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  Speaker 1: a week ago, he said, trying it further, we were
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  Speaker 1: clinging to our chicken coops and going with a heave
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  Speaker 1: and pour. That was true enough a week ago, But
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  Speaker 1: to day to day, I said, the wind has fallen,
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  Speaker 1: the world's storm is over, and each chicken coop has changed,
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  Speaker 1: by a miracle, to a vessel that makes head against
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  Speaker 1: the sea. End of Book three, Chapter one, Sections two
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  Speaker 1: and three.