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Chapter the Seventh: Love And Death. Parts 1 to 4 · The Dream: A Novel

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Section twenty one of The Dream, a Novel. This is a LibriVox recording.
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All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to
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volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Tess Hoak. The Dream,
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a Novel by H. G. Wells. Chapter the seventh, Love
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and Death, Part one to four, Part one. In the two years
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that followed, I learned to love and trust my stiff spirited wife more and
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more. She was very brave in a conscious and deliberate way, very clear
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headed, very honest. I saw her fight, and it was not an
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easy fight to bring our son into the world. And that sort of crisis
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was a seal between man and women in those days, even as it is
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to day. If she never got to any just intuitions about my thoughts and
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feelings, I did presently arrive at a fairly clear sense of hers. I
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could feel for her ambitions and humiliations. She worked hard to make our home
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bright and efficient. She had a taste for sound and solid things and temperate
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harmonies. In that old world, encumbered with possessions and with an extreme household
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autonomy, servants were a very important matter, indeed, and she managed ours
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with just that measured kindliness and just that avoidance of intimacy that was needed by
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the social traditions of the time. She had always been intelligently interested in the
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internal politics of Thunderstone House, and she showed the keenest desire for my success
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there. I'll see you a director before ten years, she said. And
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I worked very hard, indeed, and not merely for ambition's sake. I
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really understood and believed in the educational importance of that great Slovenly business. Newberry
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came to recognize in me a respect to his own ideas. He would consult
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me about new schemes and the modifications of old procedure. He relied on me
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more and more, and talked with me more and more frequently. And it
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is a queer thing to recall that, by a sort of convention between us,
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we never mentioned or alluded to my sister Fanny in any of our discussions.
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I changed a good deal during my first two and a half years of
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married life. I matured and heartened. I became a man of the world.
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I was put up for and elected a member of a good club,
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and developed my gift for talk. I met a widening variety of people,
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and some of them were quite distinguished people, and I found they did not
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overawe me. I possessed a gift for caustic commentary that gained me some reputation
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as a wit, and I felt a growing interest in the showy and sterile
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game of party politics. My ambitions grew. I was acting, I was
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self satisfied. I had largely forgotten my intense sexual humiliation. But I was
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not a very happy man. My life was like a handsome, well appointed
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room with a north light. The bowls were full of cut flowers, but
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the sunlight never came. In Part two, for two years and a half
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I saw nothing of Hetty, and it was not my fault that I ever
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saw her again. I did everything I could to eradicate her from my existence.
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I destroyed her photographs and every little vestige of her that might distress me
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by its memories. If I caught myself in a reverie in which she figured,
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I forced my attention to other things. Sometimes, when I made a
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new success, I had a flash of desire that she should witness it.
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Ugly, I agree, but is it not what we still are? Except
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for civilization? She came back sometimes in dreams, but they were angersoach dreams.
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And I cultivated my pride and love for Milly with increasing prosperity. Milly's
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skill in dressing herself developed. She became a very handsome, effective woman.
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She gave herself to me with a smiling sense of temperate and acceptable giving.
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In those days, we had not learn to analyze our motives. We were
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much less observant of ourselves than men and women are to day. I to
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set my mind upon loving Milly, and I did not realize that the essential
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thing in loving is a thing beyond our wills. Fanny and Hetty I loved
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by nature and necessity. But my days were now far too completely apportioned between
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work and Milly for much companionship with Fanny to survive. And Hetty in my
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heart was like one of those poor, shriveled corpses of offending monks that walled
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up in the monasteries during the age of christiendom in Europe, but I found
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now a curious liveliness in my interest in women in general. I did not
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ask what these wanderings of attention signified. I was ashamed of them, but
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I gave way to them. Even when I was in Milly's company, I
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would look at other women and find a vague excitement if the intent of my
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glances was returned, and I began to read novels in a new spirit.
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Though I did not know why I was taking to novels, I was reading
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them, I see now for the sake of the women I found in them.
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I do not know, Sunray, whether you realize how much the novels
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and plays of those days served to give men and women love phantoms with whom
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they made imaginative excursions. We successful and respectable ones went about our dignified and
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satisfied ways, assuaging the thin protests of our starved possibilities with such unsubstantial refreshment.
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But it was because of that wandering eye for women that I encountered Hetty
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again. It was in the springtime that I came upon her, either in
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March or very early, in some public gardens quite near to Chester Terrace.
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These gardens were not in my direct way from the underground railway station, which
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took me to and fro between home and business and my house. But I
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was in no hurry for Milly's tea party and the warmth and sunlight drew me
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to this place of blossom and budding green. They were what we should call
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spring gardens nowadays, small but cleverly laid out for display, with an abundant
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use of daffodil, narcissus, hyacinthe, almond blossom and the like, with
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hard paths and seats placed to command happy patches of color. On one of
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these seats, a woman was sitting alone, with her back to me,
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looking at a patch of silas. I was struck by the loveliness of her
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careless pose. Such discoveries of the dear beauty that hides in the world would
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stir me like a challenge and then stab me with pain. She was dressed
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very poorly and simply, but her dingy clothing was no more than the smoked
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glass one us to see the brightness of the sun. I slackened my pace
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as I went past, and glanced back to see her face. And I
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saw the still face of Hetty, very grave and sorrowful. Hetty no longer
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a girl, but a woman, looking at the flowers, and quite unheedful
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of my regard. Something greater than pride or jealousy seized me. Then I
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went a few steps farther and stopped and turned, as though no other thing
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was possible. At that she became aware of me. She looked up,
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doubted and recognized me. She watched me with that motionless face of hers.
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As I came and sat down beside her. I spoke in a voice of
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astonishment, on the edge of a storm of emotion, Hetty, I said,
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I couldn't go past you. She did not answer. Immediately, are
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you? She began and stopped. I suppose we were bound to meet again,
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she said, sooner or later. You look as if you had grown
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Harry. You look well and prosperous. Do you live in this part of
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London? I asked, campt in town? Just now? She said,
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we move about. You married Sumner. What did you expect me to do?
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What else was there to do? I've drunk my cup to the dregs,
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Harry, But you had the child. It died. It died,
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all right, poor little Mite. And my mother died a year ago.
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Well you've got Sumner. I've got Sumner at any time before that, meaning
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I should have exulted over the death of Sumner's child, But in the presence
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of Hetty's misery, that old hatred would not come back for its gratification.
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I was looking at her face, which was so familiar and so changed,
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and it was if I woke up again to love for her after two years
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and a half of insensibility. What a beaten and unhappy thing she was,
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she whom I had loved and hated so bitterly. It seems a long way
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back now to Kent, Harry and mother's farm. She said, you've parted
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with it, farm and furniture, and mostly it's gone. Sumner bets.
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He's betted most of it away. It's hard, you see, to find
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a job, but easy to fancy a winner which doesn't win. My father
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used to do that. I said, I'd like to shoot every race horse
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in England. I hated selling the farm, She said, I sold the
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farm and came into this dingy old London. Sumner dragged me here and he's
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dragging me down. It's not his fault, it's how he's made. But
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when a spring day comes like this, think of Kent and the winds on
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the downs, and the blackthorn in the hedges, and the little yellow noses
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of the primroses, and the first elder leaves coming out until I want to
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cry and scream. There's no getting out of it here, I am,
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I've come to look at these flowers here. What's the good? They just
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hurt me. She stared at the flowers. My God, I said,
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but this hurts me too. I didn't expect. What did you expect,
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she asked, and turned that still face of hers to me and silenced me.
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I don't see that it should hurt you, she said. I brought
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it on myself. You didn't do it. It happened to me. It
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was my fault, though, Why God made me love beautiful things and then
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set a trap for me and made me fool enough to fall into it.
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Silence fell between us. Meeting you like this, I began, presently makes
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me see things so differently you see in those days. In some ways you
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seem so much stronger than I was. I didn't understand. I see this
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makes me feel I ought to have taken better care of you, or shown
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me mercy. I was dirty and shameful, yes all that, But you
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were merciless, Harry. Men are merciless to women. I did all through.
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I loved you, Harry, in a way I've always loved you,
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and I love you now. When I looked up and saw it was you
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coming back to me. For a minute, you were just like the old
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Harry. For a moment, it was like spring coming real. But it's
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no good talking like that now, Harry. It's too late, Yes,
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I agreed, too late. She watched my face through a long pause.
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I weighed my words. When I spoke up to now, I said,
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I've never forgiven Now, now I see you here, I wish, I
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wish to God I had forgiven you and made a fight for it with you.
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We might suppose, Hetty, suppose I had forgiven you, Harry,
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Dear, she said softly, you don't want to be seen here making a
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woman cry. We won't talk of that. Tell me about yourself. I've
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heard you married again, a beautiful woman. Sumner saw that. I heard
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of that. Are you happy, Harry. You look prosperous, and everyone
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isn't prosperous these post war times. That's all so and so, Hetty.
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I work hard. I've got ambitions. I'm still a publisher's assistant at the
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old place, but I'm near to being a director. I'm high up.
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My wife. She's a dear and great help to me. Somehow meeting you,
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my god, Hetty, what a mess we've made of things. It's
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all very well, but the second time of marrying isn't like the first.
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You and I. I'm a sort of blood brother to you, and nothing
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can change it. The wood, that little wood where you can kissed me?
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Why did we smash it up? Hetty? Why did we do it?
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Two fools who got so precious a thing that's all past? But hate
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is dead between us, that's past. Two. If there was anything I
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could do for you now, I would do it. A gleam of the
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old humor came. If you could kill Sumner, she said, and smash
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the world and destroy the memories of three years. It's no good, Harry.
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I ought to have kept myself clean, and you you might have been
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gentler with me. I couldn't, Hetty. I knew you couldn't, and
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I couldn't foresee that my blood would betray me. One evening and here we
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are, like mating after we are dead. Spring comes now, but it
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comes for other people. And all these little carcass trumpets like a brass band,
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it is. They are trumpeting up the next lot of lovers. Better
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luck to them. We sat still for a time. In the background of
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my mind, Billy and her assembled teacups became evident as a faint urgency.
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You're late, she'd say. Where are you living, Hetty? I asked,
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what is your address? She shook her head after a moment's thought better.
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You shouldn't know, But somehow I might help. We'd only disturb us
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all. I've got my cup of dirty water to drink. I've got to
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stand what I'm in for. What could you do to help me? Well,
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said I. My address, any how, is easy to keep in
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mind. It's just what it was when we in the days when we lived
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Thunderstone House. It is some day there might be something. It's good of
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you. We stood up face to face, and we stood there. A
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thousand circumstances vanished, and nothing remained but our hurt and injured selves. Goodbye,
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Hetty, I said, good luck our hands met. Good luck to
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you, Harry. It's no good, but I'm glad we met like this,
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and to find you forgive me a little at last Part three. That
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meeting had a profound effect upon me, banished much aimless reverie from my mind
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and unlocked the prison in which a whole multitude of forbidden thoughts had been confined.
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I thought enormously of Hetty. They were vague and impossible thoughts. They
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came in the night, on the way to business, even during slack moments
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in business hours, rehearsals of dramatized encounters, explanations, magic turns, the
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circumstances that suddenly restored our lost world to us. I tried to suppress these
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cloudy imaginations, but with little avail. They overspread my mental skies in spite
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of me. I can't tell you how many times I walked through those gardens
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in Regent's Park. That detour became my normal route from the station to my
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home, but even go out of my customary way along some side paths because
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I had caught a glimpse far off between the tree branches and the flower beds
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of a solitary woman. But Hetty never came back there. In my brooding
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over Hetty, a jealousy and hatred of Sumner developed steadily. I do not
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think I had any desire for Hetty myself, but I wanted intensely to get
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her away from him. This hostility to Sumner was the ugly undertow of my
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remorse and reawakened love of Hetty. He was the evil thing that had deprived
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me of Hetty. I did not reflect for a moment that it was I,
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with my relentless insistence upon divorce, that had forced her back to him.
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And all this dreaming and brooding and feudal planning, and all this body
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of desire for something more to happen between Hetty and myself went on without my
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breathing a word of it to any living soul. It was on my conscience
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that it was disloyal to Milly, and I even made a half hearted attempt
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to tell Milly that I had met Hetty and been shocked at her poverty and
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unhappiness. I wanted to bring her into my own state of mind and have
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her feel as I did. I threw out a remark one day we had
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gone to Hampstead Heath for a walk one afternoon, that I had once walked
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along that ridge by the round pond with Hetty during my last leave. I
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wonder how she is living now, I said. Milly did not answer immediately,
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and when I looked at her, her face was flushed and hard.
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I hoped you had forgotten her, she said, in a suffocated voice.
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This brought it back to me. I tried never to think of her.
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You don't know what that woman meant to me. The humiliation was not only
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for myself, she added, it was for you. She said, no
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more, but it was manifest how terribly the mere name of Hetty had disturbed
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her. Poor little things, cried Firefly, how insanely jealous you all were.
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And I did not go to Fanny and tell her about Hetty. For
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a time, I had misrepresented Hetty to her as a figure of common to
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privity, and I found it difficult to put that right. Nowadays I did
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not see so much of Fanny as I had formerly done. She was living
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halfway across London from me. Her relations with Newberry were now much more public
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than they had been. She developed a circle of acquaintances who cared for her.
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But this publicity made Millie Moore stiff toward her, because she feared that
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a scandal would be made about Fanny in relation to my position in the firm
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of Crane and Newberry near Pangborn. Newberry had taken a bungalow, and there
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Fanny would spend whole weeks at a time, quite out of our range.
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But presently the situation developed which sent me posthaste to Fanny for help and advice
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Part four. Suddenly, in July, when I was beginning to think I
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should never hear from her again, Hetty appealed to me for help. When
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I meet her one evening, she asked by the fountain in the park near
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the zological gardens, and then we could get chairs and she would tell me
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what she had in mind. She did not want me to write her a
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letter. Sumner had become very jealous of her, and so would I put
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an advertisement in the Daily Express with the letters A, B, C,
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D and giving the hour and date, and made an appointment for the earliest
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possible evening. Instead of the despondent and spiritless Hetty I had met in the
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spring, I found a Hetty high strung and excited. I want some place
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where we shan't be seen, she said. As I came out to her,
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she took my arm to turn me about, and led the way towards
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the two green chairs standing apart a little way from the vein walk that here
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traversed the park. I noted that she was still wearing the same shabby dress
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she had had on our previous encounter. Her manner with me was quite different
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from the manner of our former meeting. There was something familiar and confident about
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her, as though in between she had met me in imagination a multitude of
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time. Time is no doubt she had You meant all you said, Harry
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when we talked before she began everything. You will help me if you can
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everything I can suppose I asked you for some money. Naturally I want to
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get away from Sumner. I have a chance I could do it. Tell
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me about it, Hetty. All I can do I will. Things have
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changed, Harry, since that day we met. I got into a sort
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of despairing state. I took whatever came. Seeing you changed me. I
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don't know why it did. Perhaps I was going to change anyhow, but
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I can't stand being with Sumner any longer. There's a chance now I shall
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want a lot of money, sixty or seventy pounds. I thought that's quite
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possible, Hetty, if you can wait a week or so ten days.
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Say you see, I have a friend, a girl who married a Canadian.
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She stayed here to have her child when he went home, and now
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she goes out to him she's been ill. She's not very strong. She
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doesn't want to face the voyage alone. It would be easy for me to
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get out there with her as her cousin and companion if I had an outfit.
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We've discussed it all. She knows someone who could manage about a passport
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for me and my Maidenny. That's a scheme. I could have my outfit
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sent to her place. I could slip away. You'd take another name,
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begin again over there. Yes, I sat considering this project. It pleased
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me. There need be no trouble about the money. I said. I
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can't go on living with Sumner. You never saw him. You don't know
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what he's like. I've heard he was good looking, don't I know that
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face flushed and weak. He's a liar and a cheat. He has a
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conceit. He can best every one, and he's begun drinking. God knows
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why I married him. It seems the natural things somehow, since you had
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to forced me, the child had to have a father. But he discussed
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me, Harry, he discussed me. I can't go on. I can't
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endure it. You can't imagine it in those little lodgings in the hot weather,
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to keep a modlin, drunken man away from one. If I hadn't
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seen this way out, something worse might have happened. Can't you come away
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from him? At once? I asked, why should you ever go back
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to him? No, I must get clear away or there will be mischief,
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and you mustn't be in it. He'd think of you at once if
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he had a hint it was you. That's what you have to do about
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the money and everything, letters or anything. Get it to me without your
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being mixed up with it. He must get me money, not checks.
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We mustn't be seen to meet even about here. It's risky. He's got
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into a gang. He's been getting deeper and deeper into a rotten set.
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They blackmail the bookies. They go about with revolvers, pass on things to
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one another. It grew out of betting and had They call it getting a
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bit of their own back. If they spot you in it, they'll come
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for you. Trench warfare in London. I'll risk it. You needn't risk
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anything. If we are discreet. There was some one I could see who'd
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hand things on. I thought at once of my sister Fanny. That would
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be safe, said Hetty, as safe as could be, and I'd love
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to see her again. I loved her when I met her. But all
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this is awful good of you, Harry. I don't deserve a moment's kindness.
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Nonsense. I pushed you into the dirt, Hetty. I jumped into
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it, fell into it. It's nothing, very much, Hetty, to
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give you a hand to get out of it again. End of Section twenty one.