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The Passionate Friends Chapter 3 - Intentions and the Lady Mary Christian Parts 1-6 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter three, Parts one to six 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 Third Intentions
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  Speaker 1: and the Lady Mary Christian One. I know that before
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  Speaker 1: the end of my Harbory days, I was already dreaming
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  Speaker 1: of a career of some great and conspicuous usefulness in
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  Speaker 1: the world that has always haunted my mind and haunts it.
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  Speaker 1: Now I may be cured, perhaps of the large and
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  Speaker 1: showy anticipations of youth. I may have learnt to drop
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  Speaker 1: the great and conspicuous. But still I find it necessary
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  Speaker 1: to believe that I matter, that I play a part
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  Speaker 1: no one else can play, in a progress in a
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  Speaker 1: universal scheme, moving towards triumphant ends. Almost wholly. I think
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  Speaker 1: I was dreaming of public service. In those days. The
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  Speaker 1: Harbury tradition pointed steadfastly towards the state, and all my
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  Speaker 1: world was bare of allurements to any other type of ambition.
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  Speaker 1: Success in art or literature did not appeal to us,
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  Speaker 1: and a Harbury boy would as soon think of being
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  Speaker 1: a great tinker as a great philosopher. Science we called stinks.
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  Speaker 1: Our three science fasters were ex officio ridiculous, and the
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  Speaker 1: practical laboratory a refuge for oddities. But a good half
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  Speaker 1: of our fathers at least were peers or members of parliament,
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  Speaker 1: and our sense of politics was close and keen. History,
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  Speaker 1: and particularly history as it came up through the eighteenth
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  Speaker 1: century to our own times, supplied us with a gallery
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  Speaker 1: of intimate models. Our great uncles and grandfathers and ancestors
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  Speaker 1: at large figured abundantly in the story and furnished the
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  Speaker 1: patterns to which we caught our anticipations of life. It
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  Speaker 1: was a season of imperialism, the picturesque imperialism of the
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  Speaker 1: earlier Kipling phase, and we were all of us enthusiasts
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  Speaker 1: for the empire. It was the empire of the white
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  Speaker 1: man's Burthen. In those days, the sordid anti climax of
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  Speaker 1: the teriff Rey Form movement was still some years ahead
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  Speaker 1: of us. It was easier for us at Harbury to
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  Speaker 1: believe then than it has become since in our own
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  Speaker 1: racial and national and class supremacy. We were the Anglo Saxons,
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  Speaker 1: the elect of the Earth, leading the world in social organization,
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  Speaker 1: in science and economic method In India and the East,
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  Speaker 1: more particularly, We were the apostles of even handed justice,
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  Speaker 1: relentless veracity, personal cleanliness, and modern efficiency in a spirit
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  Speaker 1: of adventurous benevolence. We were spreading those blessings over a
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  Speaker 1: reluctant and occasionally recalcitrant world of people. For the most part,
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  Speaker 1: colored our success in this had aroused the bitter envy
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  Speaker 1: and rivalry of various continental nations, and particularly of France,
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  Speaker 1: Russia and Germany. But France had been diverted to North Africa,
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  Speaker 1: Russia to Eastern Asia, and Germany was already the most
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  Speaker 1: considered antagonist in our path towards an empire over the world.
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  Speaker 1: This was the spacious and by no means ignoble project
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  Speaker 1: of the later nineties. Most of us Harbury Boys, trained
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  Speaker 1: as I had been trained to be uncritical, saw the
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  Speaker 1: national outlook in those terms. We knew little or nothing
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  Speaker 1: until the fierce wranglings of the free traders and terraff
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  Speaker 1: reformers a few years later brought it home to us
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  Speaker 1: of the commercial, financial, and squalid side of our relations,
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  Speaker 1: with the vast conjuries of acts, exploited new territories and
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  Speaker 1: subordinated and subjugated populations. We knew nothing of the social
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  Speaker 1: conditions of the massive people in our own country. We
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  Speaker 1: were blankly ignorant of economics. We knew nothing of that
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  Speaker 1: process of expropriation and the exploitation of labor which is
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  Speaker 1: giving the world the servile state. The very phrase was
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  Speaker 1: twenty years ahead of us. We believed that an Englishman
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  Speaker 1: was a better thing in every way than any other
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  Speaker 1: sort of man. That English literature, science and philosophy were
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  Speaker 1: a shining and unapproachable light to all other peoples. That
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  Speaker 1: our soldiers were better than all other soldiers, and our
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  Speaker 1: sailors than all other sailors. Such civilization at enterprise as
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  Speaker 1: existed in Germany, for instance, we regarded as a shadow,
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  Speaker 1: an envious shadow, following our own. It was still generally
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  Speaker 1: believed in those days that German trade was concerned entirely
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  Speaker 1: with the dishonest imitation of our unapproachable English goods. And
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  Speaker 1: as for the United States, well, the United States, though
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  Speaker 1: blessed with a strain of English blood, were nevertheless out
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  Speaker 1: of it, marooned in a continent of their own. And
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  Speaker 1: we had to admit it corrupt. Given such ignorance, you know,
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't by any means ignoble to be patriotic to
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  Speaker 1: dream of this propagandist empire of ours, spreading its great
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  Speaker 1: peace and culture, its virtue, and its amazing and unprecedented honesty,
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  Speaker 1: its honesty round the world. Two. When I look and
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  Speaker 1: try to recover those early intentions of mine, I am
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  Speaker 1: astonished at the way in which I took them ready
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  Speaker 1: made from the world immediately about me. In some way,
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  Speaker 1: I seem to have stopped looking, if ever I had
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  Speaker 1: begun looking, king at the heights and depths above and
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  Speaker 1: below that immediate life. I seem to have regarded these
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  Speaker 1: profounder realities no more during this phase of concentration than
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  Speaker 1: a cow in a field regards the sky. My father's vestments,
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  Speaker 1: the Burnmore altar, the Harbury pulpit, and mister Siddens stood
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  Speaker 1: between me and the idea of God, so that it
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  Speaker 1: needed years and much bitter disillusionment before I discovered by
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  Speaker 1: need of it. And I was as wanting in subtlety
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  Speaker 1: as in depth. We did no logic nor philosophy at
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  Speaker 1: Harbury and at Oxford. It was not so much thought
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  Speaker 1: we came to deal with as a mistranslation and vulgarization
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: of ancient and alien exercises in thinking, there is no
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  Speaker 1: such effective serum against philosophy as the scholarly decoction of
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  Speaker 1: a dead philosopher. The philosophical teaching of Oxford at the
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  Speaker 1: end of the last century was not so much teaching
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  Speaker 1: as a protective inoculation. The stuff was administered with a
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  Speaker 1: mysterious gilding of Greek and reverence. Old Hegel's Monstrous Web
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  Speaker 1: was the ultimate modernity. And Plato, that intellectual journalist artist,
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  Speaker 1: that bright, restless experimentalist in ideas, was, as it were,
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  Speaker 1: the God of wisdom, only a little less omniscient, and
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  Speaker 1: on the whole more of a scholar and a gentleman
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  Speaker 1: than the God of fact. So I fell back upon
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  Speaker 1: the Empire in my first attempts to unify my life.
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  Speaker 1: I would serve the Empire. That should be my total significance.
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  Speaker 1: There was a Roman touch I perceive in this devotion.
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  Speaker 1: Just how or where I should serve the Empire I
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  Speaker 1: had not as yet determined. At times I thought of
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  Speaker 1: the civil service. In my more ambitious moments, I turned
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  Speaker 1: my thoughts to politics, But it was doubtful whether my
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  Speaker 1: private expectations made the last a reasonable possibility. I would
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  Speaker 1: serve the empire three and all the while that the
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  Speaker 1: first attempts to consolidate, to gather one's life together into
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  Speaker 1: a purpose and a plan of campaign, are going on
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  Speaker 1: upon the field of the young man's life. There come
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  Speaker 1: and go and come again. In the sky above him,
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  Speaker 1: the threatening clouds, the ethereal cirrus, the red dawns, and
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  Speaker 1: glowing afternoons, of that passion of love which is the
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  Speaker 1: source and renewal of being. There are times when that
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  Speaker 1: solicitude matters no more than a springtime sky to a
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  Speaker 1: runner who wins towards the post. There are times when
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  Speaker 1: its passionate urgency dominates every fact in his world. Four.
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  Speaker 1: One must have children and love them passionately before one
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  Speaker 1: realizes the deep indignity of accident in life. It is
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  Speaker 1: not that I mind so much when unexpected and disconcerting
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  Speaker 1: things happen to you or your sisters, but that I
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  Speaker 1: mind before they happen. My dreams and anticipations of your
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: lives are all marred by my sense of the huge
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  Speaker 1: importance mere chance, encounters and incalculable necessities will play in them,
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  Speaker 1: and in friendship. And still more here in the central
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  Speaker 1: business of love, accident rules. It seems to me almost altogether.
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  Speaker 1: What personalities you will encounter in life and have for
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  Speaker 1: a chief interest in life is nearly as much a
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  Speaker 1: matter of chance as the drift of a grain of
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  Speaker 1: pollen in the pine forest. And once the light hazard
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  Speaker 1: has blown, it has blown, never to drive again. In
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  Speaker 1: other school room roombs and nurseries, in slum living rooms perhaps,
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  Speaker 1: or workhouse wars, or palaces round the other side of
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  Speaker 1: the earth, in Canada or Russia or China, other little
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  Speaker 1: creatures are trying their small limbs, clutching at things about
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  Speaker 1: them with infantile hands. Who someday will come into your life,
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  Speaker 1: with the power and magic, monstrous and irrational and irresistible.
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  Speaker 1: They will break the limits of your concentrating self. Call
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  Speaker 1: you out to the service of beauty and the service
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  Speaker 1: of the race. Sound you to your highest and your lowest.
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  Speaker 1: Give you your chance to be godlike or filthy, divine
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  Speaker 1: or utterly ignoble. React together with you upon the very
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  Speaker 1: core and essence of your being. These unknowns are the
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  Speaker 1: substance of your fate. You will, in extreme intimacy, love them,
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  Speaker 1: hate them, serve them, struggle with them, and in that
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  Speaker 1: interaction the vital force in you and the substance of
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  Speaker 1: your days will be spent, and who they may chance
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  Speaker 1: to be, and their peculiar quality and effect is haphazard,
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  Speaker 1: utterly beyond designing. Law and custom conspire with the natural
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  Speaker 1: circumstances of man to exaggerate every consequence of this accumulating
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  Speaker 1: accident and make it definite and fatal. I find it
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  Speaker 1: quite impossible now to recall the steps and stages by
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  Speaker 1: which this power of sex invaded my life. It seems
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  Speaker 1: to me now that it began very much as a
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  Speaker 1: gale begins in cat's paws upon the water, and little
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  Speaker 1: rustlings among the leaves, and then stillness, and then a
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  Speaker 1: distant sowing again, and a pause, and then a wider
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  Speaker 1: and longer disturbance, and so more and more, with the
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  Speaker 1: gathering continuity, until at last the stars were hidden, the
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  Speaker 1: heavens were hidden, all the heights and depths of life
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  Speaker 1: were obscured by stormy impulses and passionate desires. I suppose
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  Speaker 1: that quite at the first there were simple curiosities, No
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  Speaker 1: doubt they were vivid at the time, but they have
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  Speaker 1: left scarcely a trace. There were vague first intimations of
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  Speaker 1: a peculiar excitement I do remember more distinctly faces when
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  Speaker 1: there was a going out for myself towards these things,
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  Speaker 1: these interests, and then a reaction of shame and concealment.
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  Speaker 1: And these memories were mixed up with others not sexual
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  Speaker 1: at all, and particularly with the perception of beauty in
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  Speaker 1: things inanimate, with lights seen at twilight, and the tender
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  Speaker 1: mysteriousness of the dusk, and the confused, disturbing scents of
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  Speaker 1: flowers in the evening, and the enigmatical, serene animation of
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: stars in the summer sky. I think perhaps that my
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: boyhood was exceptionally free from vulgarizing influences in this direction.
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  Speaker 1: There were few novels in my father's house, and I
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  Speaker 1: neither saw nor read any plays until I was near manhood,
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  Speaker 1: so that I thought naturally about love, and not rather
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  Speaker 1: artificially round and about love, as so many imaginative young
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  Speaker 1: people are trained to do. I fell in love once
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  Speaker 1: or twice while I was still quite a boy. These
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: earliest experiences rarely got beyond a sort of dumb awe,
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  Speaker 1: a vague, vast, ineffectual desire for self immolation. For a time,
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  Speaker 1: I remember I worshiped Lady Ladislaw with all my being.
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  Speaker 1: Then I talked to a girl in a train. I
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  Speaker 1: forget upon what journey, but I remember very vividly her
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  Speaker 1: quick cut and a certain roguish smile. I spread my
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  Speaker 1: adoration at her feet, fresh and frank. I wanted to
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  Speaker 1: write to her, Indeed, I wanted to devote all my
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  Speaker 1: being to her. I baked hard. But there was some
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  Speaker 1: one called Aunty, who had to be considered an uchepass
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  Speaker 1: for that thread of romance. Then there was a photograph
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  Speaker 1: in my father's study of the Delphic Sybil from the
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  Speaker 1: Sistine Chapel, that for a time held my heart. And yes,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: there was a girl in a tobacconist's shop in the
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  Speaker 1: Harbury High Street. Drawn by an irresistible impulse, I used
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  Speaker 1: to go and buy cigarettes and sometimes converse about the weather.
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  Speaker 1: But afterwards, in solitude I would meditate tremendous conversations and
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  Speaker 1: encounters with her. The cigarettes increased the natural melancholy of
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  Speaker 1: my state, and led to a reproof from Old Henson.
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  Speaker 1: Almost always, I suppose there is that girl in the
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  Speaker 1: tobacconist's shop. I believe if I made an effort, I
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  Speaker 1: could disinter some dozens of such memories more and more faded,
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  Speaker 1: until the marginal ones would be featureless and all but
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  Speaker 1: altogether effaced. As I look back at it now, I
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  Speaker 1: am struck by an absurd image. It is as if
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  Speaker 1: a fish nibbled at this bait and then at that
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: given but the slightest aid from accidental circumstances, and any
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  Speaker 1: of those slight attractions might have become a power to
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  Speaker 1: deflect all my life. The day of decision arrived when
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the Lady Mary Christian came smiling out of the sunshine
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  Speaker 1: to me into the pavilion at Burnmore. With that the
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  Speaker 1: phase of stirrings and intimations was over forever in my life.
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  Speaker 1: All those other impressions went then to the dusty lumber room,
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  Speaker 1: from which I now so slightingly disinter them. Five. We
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  Speaker 1: five had all been playmates together. There were Lord Maxton,
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  Speaker 1: who was killed at Pardiburg while I was in Ladysmith.
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  Speaker 1: He was my senior by nearly a year, Philip, who
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  Speaker 1: is now Earl Ladislaw and who was about eighteen months
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  Speaker 1: younger than I, Mary my contemporary within eight days. And
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  Speaker 1: Guy whom we regarded as a baby, and who was
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: called apparently on account of some early linguistic efforts Brugglesmith.
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  Speaker 1: He did his best to avenge his juniority as time
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  Speaker 1: passed on by an enormous length of limb. I had
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  Speaker 1: more imagination than Maxton, and was a good deal better read,
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  Speaker 1: so that Mary and I dominated most of the games
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: of Indians and warfare and exploration in which we passed
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: our long days together. When the Christians were at Burnmore,
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  Speaker 1: and they usually spent three or four months in the
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: year there, I had a kind of standing invitation to
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  Speaker 1: be with them. Sometimes there would also be two Christian
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  Speaker 1: cousins to swell our party, and sometimes there would be
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  Speaker 1: a raid of the fawny children with a detestable governess
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: who was perpetually vociferating reproaches. But these latter were absent, minded,
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  Speaker 1: lacks young persons, and we did not greatly love them.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: It is curious how little I remember of Mary's childhood.
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  Speaker 1: All that has happened between us since lies between that
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and my present self, like some luminous, impenetrable mist. I
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  Speaker 1: know we liked each other, that I was taller than
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: she was and thought her legs unreasonably thin, and that
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: once when I knelt by accident on a dead stick
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: she had brought into an Indian camp we had made
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: near the end of the West. True, she flew at
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: me in a sudden fury, smacked my face, scratched me,
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  Speaker 1: and had to be suppressed, and was suppressed with extreme
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: difficulty by the united manhood of us three elder boys.
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  Speaker 1: Then it was I noted first the blazing blueness of
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  Speaker 1: her eyes. She was light and very plucky, so that
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  Speaker 1: none of us cared to climb against her, and she
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: was as difficult to hold as an eel. But all
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: these traits and characteristics vanished when she was transformed. For
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: what seems now a long space of time, I had
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: not seen her or any of the family except Philip.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: It was certainly a year or more, probably two. Maxton
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  Speaker 1: was out of Crammer's, and I think the others must
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: have been in Canada with Lord Ladislaw. Then came some
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: sort of estrangement between him and his wife, and she
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: returned with Mary and Guy to burn More and stayed
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: there all through the summer. I was in a state
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  Speaker 1: of transition between the infinitely great and the infinitely little.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I had just ceased to be that noble and potent
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: being that almost statesmanlike personage. A sixth form boy at Harbury,
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  Speaker 1: and I was going to be an Oxford undergraduate. Philip
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  Speaker 1: and I came down together by the same train from Harbury.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I shared the Burnmore dog cart and luggage cart, and
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: he dropped me at the rectory. I was a long
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: limbed youngster of seventeen, as tall as I am now,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: and fair, so fair that I was still boyish faced,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: while most of my contemporaries, and Philip, who favored his father,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: were at least smudgy with mustaches. With the head master's
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: valediction and the grave elder brotherliness of old Henson, and
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the shrill cheers of a little crowd of juniors still
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: going in my head, I very naturally came home in
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: a mood of exalted gravity. And I can still remember
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: pacing up and down the oblong lawn behind the rockery
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and the fig tree wall, with my father talking of
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: my outlook with all the tremendous savoir faire that was
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: natural to my age, and noting with a secret gratification
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: that our shoulders were now on a level no doubt.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: We were discussing Oxford and all that I was to
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: do at Oxford. I don't remember a word of her speech,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: though I recall the exact tint of its color and
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the distinctive feeling of our measured equal paces in the sunshine.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I must have gone up to Burnmore House the following afternoon.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: I went up alone, and I was sent out through
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the little door at the end of the big gallery
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: into the garden. In those days, Lady Ladislaw had made
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: an Indian pavilion under the tall trees at the east
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: end of the house, and here I found her with
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: her cousin Helena Christian, entertaining a mixture of people, a
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: carriage full from Hampton End, the two elder fawnies, and
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: a man in brown who had I think ridden over
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: from Chesthokster Castle. Lady Ladyslaw welcomed me with ample graciousness,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: as though I was a personage. The children, she said,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: were still at tennis, and as she spoke, I saw
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: guy grow nearly beyond recognition, and then a shining being
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: in white, very straight and graceful, with a big, soft
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: hat and overshadowed eyes that smiled come out from the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: hurried endearments of the sun flakes under the shadows of
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the great chestnuts into the glow of summer light. Before
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: the pavilion Steve arrived, she cried and waved a welcoming racket.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I do not remember what I said to her, or
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: what else she said, or what any one said, but
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I believe I could paint every detail of her effect.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: I know that when she came out of the brightness
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: into the shadow of the pavilion, it was like a
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: regal condescension. And I know that she was wonderfully self
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: possessed and helpful with her mother's hospitalities, and that I marveled.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I had never before perceived the subtler sweetness in the
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: cadence of her voice. I seem also to remember a
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: severe internal struggle for my self possession, and that I
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: had to recall my exalted position in the sixth form
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to save myself from becoming tongue tied and abashed and
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: awkward and utterly shamed. You see, she had her hair
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: up and very prettily dressed, and those aggressive lean legs
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: of hers had vanished, and she was sheathed in muslin
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: that showed her the most delicately slender and beautiful of
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: young women, and she seemed so radiantly sure of herself
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: after our first greeting. I do not think I spoke
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: to her or looked at her again throughout the meal.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I took things that she handed me with an appearance
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: of supreme indifference, was politely attentive to the elder Miss Fawnie,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: and engaged with Lady Ladyslaw and the Horsey little man
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: in Brown in a discussion of the possibility of mechanical
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: vehicles upon the high road that was in the early nineties.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: We were all of opinion that it was impossible to
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: make a sufficiently light engine for the purpose. Afterwards, Mary
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: confessed to me how she had been looking forward to
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: our meeting and how snubbed I had made her feel.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Then a little later than this meeting in the pavilion,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: though I am not clear now whether it was the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: same or some subsequent afternoon, we are walking in the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: sunken garden, and great clouds of purple clematis and some
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: less lavish heliotrope colored creeper foam up against the ruddy
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: stone balustrading. Just in front of us, A fountain gushes
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: out of a grotto of artificial stalagmite and bathes the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: pedestal of an absurd little statuette of the God of Love.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: We are talking almost easily. She looks sideways at my face,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: already with the quiet, controlled watchfulness of a woman interested
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in a man. She smiles, and she talks of flowers
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and sunshine, the Canadian winter, and with an abrupt transition
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: of old times we've had together in the shrubbery and
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: the wilderness of bracken out beyond. She seems tremendously grown
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: up and womanly. To me, I am talking my best,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and glad and in a manner, scared at the thrill
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: her newly discovered beauty gives me, and keeping up my
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: dignity and coherence with an effort. My attention is constantly
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: being distracted to note how prettily she moves, to wonder
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: why it is I never noticed the sweet fall, the faint,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: delightful whisper of a lisp in her voice. Before we
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: agree about the flowers and the sunshine, and the Canadian winter,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: about everything. I think so often of those games we
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: used to invent. She declares, so do I. I say,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: so do I. And then, with a sudden boldness, once
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I broke a stick of yours, a rowden stick, you
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: thought a sound one. Do you remember? Then we laughed
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: together and seem to approach across a painful, unnecessary distance
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: that has separated us. It vanishes forever. I couldn't now,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: she says, smack your face like that, Stephen. That seems
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: to me a brilliantly daring and delightful thing for her
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: to say, and jolly of her to use my Christian
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: name too. I believe I scratched, she adds. You never scratched,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I assert with warm conviction. Never I did, she insists,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: And I deny you couldn't. We're growing up, she cries,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: That's what has happened to us. We shall never fight
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: again with our hands and feet, never until death. You
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: us part for better or worse, I say, with a
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: sense of wit and enterprise, beyond all human precedent, for
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: richer or poorer, she cries, taking up my challenge with
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: a lifting laugh in her voice. And then to make
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: it all nothing again, she exclaimed, eames at the white
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: lilies that rise against masses of sweet Bay along the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: further wall, How plainly I can recall it all, how
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: plainly and how brightly. As we came up the broad
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: steps at the further end, towards the tennis lawn. She
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: turned suddenly upon me and with a novel assurance of command,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: told me to stand still. There, she said, with a
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: hand out, and seemed to survey me with her chin
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: up and her white neck at the level of my eyes. Yes,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: a whole step, she estimated, and more taller than I.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: You will look down on me, Stephen. Now for all
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the rest of our days, I shall always stand, I answered,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: A step or so below you. No, she said, come
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: up to the level. A girl should be smaller than
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: a man. You are a man, Stephen, almost you must
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: be near six feet. Here's Guy with a box of balls.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: She flitted about the tennis court before me, playing with
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Philip against Guy and myself. She punished some opening condescensions
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: with a wicked vigor, and presently Guy and I were
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: straining every nerve to save the set. She had a low,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: close serve. I remember that seemed perfectly straightforward and simple,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: and was very difficult to return six All that golden
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: summer on the threshold of my manhood was filled by Mary.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I loved her with the love of a boy and
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: a man. Either I was with Mary or I was
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: hoping and planning to be with Mary, or I was
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: full of some vivid new impression of her, or some
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: enigmatical speech, some pregnant nothing, some glance or gesture engaged
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: and perplexed my mind. In those days I slept the profound,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: sweet sleep of youth. But whenever that deep flow broke
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: towards the shallows, as I sank into it at night
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: and came out of it at morning, I passed through
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: dreams of Mary to and from a world of waking
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: thought of her. There must have been days of friendly
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: intercourse when it seemed we talked nothings and wandered and
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: meandered among subjects, but always we had our eyes on
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: one another. And afterwards I would spend long hours in
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: recalling and analyzing those nothings, questioning their nothingness, making out
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: of things too submerged and impalpable for the rough drags
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: of recollection, promises and indications. I would invent ingenious things
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: to say, things pushing out suddenly from nothingness to extreme significance.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: I rehearsed a hundred declarations. It was easy for us
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: to be very much together. We were very free that summer,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: and life was all leisure. Lady Laddice Law was busied
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: with her own concerns. She sometimes went away for two
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: or three days, leaving no one but an attenuated governess
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: with even the shadow of a claim to interfere with Mary. Moreover,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: she was used to seeing me with her children at
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Burnmore We were still, in her eyes, no more than children.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: And also perhaps she did not greatly mind if indeed
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: we did a little fall in love together. To her,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: that may have seemed a very natural and slight and
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: transitory possibility. One afternoon of warm shadows in the wood
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: near the red lacquered Chinese Bridge, we two were alone together,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and we fell silent. I was trembling and full of
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: a wild courage. I can feel now the exquisite surmise,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: the doubt of that moment our eyes met. She looked
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: up at me with an unwonted touch of fear in
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: her expression, and I laid my hands on her. She
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: did not requil She stood mute, with her lips pressed together,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: looking at me steadfastly. I can feel that moment now
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: as a tremendous hesitation, blank and yet full of light
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: and life, like a clear sky. In the moment before dawn,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: she made a little move towards me. Impulsively, with no
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: word said, we kissed. End of Chapter three, Parts one
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: to six.