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The Dream Chapter the Third - Misfortunes Come Upon the Smith Family Parts 1 and 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Section five of The Dream, a Novel. This is a
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Speaker 1: The Dream, a Novel by H. G. Wells, Chapter the
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Speaker 1: third Misfortunes come upon the Smith family Parts one and two.
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Speaker 1: Part one and now, said Sarnak, I have to tell
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Speaker 1: of a tornado of mischances that broke up our precarious
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Speaker 1: little home at Cherry Gardens altogether. In that casual, planless
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Speaker 1: overpopulated world, there were no such things as security or
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Speaker 1: social justice. As we should understand these words nowadays, it
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Speaker 1: is hard for us to imagine its universal ramshackle insecurity.
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Speaker 1: Think of it. The whole world floated economically upon a
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Speaker 1: cash and credit system that was fundamentally fictitious and conventional.
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Speaker 1: There were no adequate protections against greedy abuses of those
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Speaker 1: monetary conventions, no watch kept over world production and world consumption,
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Speaker 1: no knowledge of the variations of climate year by year,
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Speaker 1: and the fortunes not only of individuals but of states
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Speaker 1: and nations fluctuated irrationally and uncontrollably. It was a world
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Speaker 1: in which life was still almost as unsafe for men
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Speaker 1: and women as life remains today for a field mouse
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Speaker 1: or a midge, which is never safe from one moment
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Speaker 1: to another. In a world of cats and owls and
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Speaker 1: swallows and the like, people were born half hazard, gladdened, distressed, glorified,
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Speaker 1: or killed half hazard, and no one was ready for
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Speaker 1: either their births or their deaths sudden death. There is
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Speaker 1: still in the world a bright adventure that life yesterday
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Speaker 1: might have killed all or any of us. But such
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Speaker 1: death is a rare thing and a clean thing. There
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Speaker 1: is none of the distressful bearing down to death through want,
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Speaker 1: anxiety and illness, ill tended and misunderstood that was the
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Speaker 1: common experience in the past. And one death does not
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Speaker 1: devastate a dozen or more lives, as deaths often did
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Speaker 1: in the old days. A widow in the old days
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Speaker 1: had lost not only her lover but her living. Yet
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Speaker 1: life is full of subtle compensations. We did not feel
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Speaker 1: our endless dangers in those days. We had a wonderful
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Speaker 1: power of disregard until the chances struck us. All children,
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Speaker 1: said Sarnak, start with an absolute confidence in the permanence
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Speaker 1: of the things they find about them. Disillusionment about safety
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Speaker 1: postulates clear headedness. You could not realize your dangers unless
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Speaker 1: you were clear headed, and if you were clear headed,
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Speaker 1: you had the fortitude to face your dangers. That old
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Speaker 1: world was essentially a world of muddle headed, sophisticated children,
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Speaker 1: blind to the universal catastrophe of the top heavy and
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Speaker 1: collapsing civilization in which they played their parts. They thought
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Speaker 1: that life was generally safe in a world of general insecurity.
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Speaker 1: Misfortune astonished everyone in those days, though I cannot understand
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Speaker 1: why they should have been astonished at any misfortune. The
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Speaker 1: first blow fell without notice, about six weeks after I
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Speaker 1: had come back from Chasing Hangar to my last half
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Speaker 1: year of schooling before I became a gardener. It was
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Speaker 1: late afternoon and I was home from school. I was
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Speaker 1: downstairs reading a book, and my mother was clearing away
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Speaker 1: tea and grumbling at Fanny, who wanted to go out.
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Speaker 1: The lamp was lit, and both I and my father,
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Speaker 1: who was having what he called a bit of a
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Speaker 1: read at the news paper, were as close up to
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Speaker 1: its insufficient light as we could get. We heard the
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Speaker 1: shop bell jangle overhead. Drat, it, said my father, what
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Speaker 1: do they want this time of day? He removed his spectacles.
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Speaker 1: He had bought a pair half hazard at a pawnbroker's
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Speaker 1: shop and always used them when he read. They've magnified
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Speaker 1: his large mild eyes very greatly. He regarded us protestingly.
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Speaker 1: What did they want? We heard the voice of Uncle
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Speaker 1: John Julip calling down the staircase more immer, he said,
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Speaker 1: in a voice that struck me as unusual. I had
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Speaker 1: never heard him call my father anything but smith before that. You, John, said,
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Speaker 1: my father standing up, it's me I want to speak
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Speaker 1: to you. Come down and have some tea, John cried
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Speaker 1: my father at the bottom of the stairs. Something to
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Speaker 1: tell you, you'd better come up here. Somethin' sere. I
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Speaker 1: speculated if it could be any misdeed of mine he
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Speaker 1: had come over about, but my conscience was fairly clear.
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Speaker 1: Now whatever can it be, asked my father. You'd better
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Speaker 1: go up and arst them, my mother suggested. My father went.
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Speaker 1: I heard my uncle say something about we're busted, We've
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Speaker 1: been give away and we're busted. And then the door
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Speaker 1: into the shop closed. We all listened to the movements above.
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Speaker 1: It sounded as though Uncle Julip was walking up and
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Speaker 1: down as he talked. My sister Fanny in her hat
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Speaker 1: and jacket, flitted unobtrusively up the stairs and out. After
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Speaker 1: a time, Prue came in. She had been helping teach
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Speaker 1: her tidy up, She said, though I knew better. Then,
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Speaker 1: after a long interval, my father came downstairs alone. He
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Speaker 1: went to the hearth rug like one in a trance,
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Speaker 1: and stood staring portentously in order to make my mother
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Speaker 1: ask what was the matter. Why hasn't John come down
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Speaker 1: for a bit of tea or something? Where's he gone? Morty,
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Speaker 1: He's gone for a van, said my father. That's where
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Speaker 1: he's gone for a van? Whatever for, asked my mother?
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Speaker 1: For a removal, said my father, that's what for removal?
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Speaker 1: We got to put him up here for a night
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Speaker 1: or so, put him up Who am in Adelaide? He's
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Speaker 1: coming to cherry gardens? You done mean, Morty, he's lost
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Speaker 1: his situation. I do so. Lordship turned against him. Mischief
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Speaker 1: has been made, spying, and they managed to get him
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Speaker 1: out of it. Turned out he is told to go,
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Speaker 1: but surely they give him notice, not a bit of it.
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Speaker 1: So Lordship came down to the gardens, ought an strong here,
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Speaker 1: he said, get out of it Like that, He said it.
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Speaker 1: You thank you're lucky stars. He said, I ain't put
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Speaker 1: the texts on to you and your snivelin' brother in law. Yes,
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Speaker 1: Sir Lordship said that, But what did he mean by it?
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Speaker 1: Morty mean he meant that certain persons who shall be
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Speaker 1: nameless had put a suspicion on John, told lies about
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Speaker 1: him and watched him, watched him they did. And me.
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Speaker 1: They've drawed me into it, Martha. They've drawed in young Airy.
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Speaker 1: They've made up a tale about us. I always said
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Speaker 1: we was a bit too regular. There it is. He
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Speaker 1: ain't a head gardener anymore. He ain't goin to have
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Speaker 1: references give 'em. He ain't ever goin to have another
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Speaker 1: regular job. He's been betrayed and ruined. And there we are.
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Speaker 1: But they say he took something. My brother John took
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Speaker 1: something surplus produce what's been a perquisite of every gardener
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Speaker 1: since the world began. I sat with burning ears and cheeks,
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Speaker 1: pretending not to hear this dreadful conversation. No one knew
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Speaker 1: of my own fatal share in my uncle's downfall, But
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Speaker 1: already in my heart, like the singing of a lark
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Speaker 1: after a thunder storm, was arising a realization that now
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Speaker 1: I might never become a gardener. My mother expressed her
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Speaker 1: consternation brokenly. She asked incredulous questions, which my father dealt
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Speaker 1: with in an oracular manner. Then suddenly my mother pounced
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Speaker 1: savagely on my sister Prue, reproaching her for listening to
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Speaker 1: what didn't concern her instead of washing up. This is
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Speaker 1: a very circumstantial scene, said Radiant. It was the first
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Speaker 1: great crisis of my dream life, said Tzardac. It is
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Speaker 1: very vivid in my memory. I can see again that
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Speaker 1: old kitchen in which we lived, and the faded table cloth,
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Speaker 1: and the paraffin lamp with its glass container. I think
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Speaker 1: if you gave me time, I could tell you everything
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Speaker 1: there was in that room. What's a hearth rug? Said
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Speaker 1: firefly suddenly, what sort of thing was your hearth rug?
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Speaker 1: Like nothing on earth to day, a hearth rug was
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Speaker 1: a sort of rug you put in front of a
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Speaker 1: coal fire, next to the fender, which prevented the ashes
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Speaker 1: creeping into the room. This one, my father had made
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Speaker 1: out of old clothes, trousers and such like things, bits
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Speaker 1: of flannel and bits of coarse sacking cut into strips
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Speaker 1: and sewn together. He had made it in the winter
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Speaker 1: evenings as he sat by the fireside, sewing and d mystriously.
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Speaker 1: Had it any sort of pattern none? But I shall
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Speaker 1: never tell my story if you ask questions. I remember
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Speaker 1: that my uncle, when he had made his arrangements about
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Speaker 1: the van, came in for a bread and cheese supper
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Speaker 1: before he walked back to Chessinghanger. He was very white
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Speaker 1: and distressed looking. Sir John had all faded away from him.
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Speaker 1: He was like a man who had been dragged out
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Speaker 1: from some hiding place. He was a very distressed and
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Speaker 1: pitiful man exposed to the light. I remember my mother
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Speaker 1: asked him, I was adelaide taking it? My uncle assumed
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Speaker 1: an expression of profound resignation. Starts a new pain, he said, bitterly.
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Speaker 1: At a time like this, my father and mother exchanged
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Speaker 1: sympathetic glances. I tell you, said my uncle, but did
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Speaker 1: not say what he told us. A storm of weak
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Speaker 1: rage wrung him. If I knew who'd done all this,
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Speaker 1: he said that that cat of ouse keeper cat, I
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Speaker 1: call her. She's got someone what wanted my place? If
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Speaker 1: she and Petterton framed it up. He struck the table,
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Speaker 1: but half heartedly my father poured him out some beer, Ugh,
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Speaker 1: said my uncle, and emptied the glass. Got to face it,
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Speaker 1: said my uncle, feeling better. Got to go through with it.
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Speaker 1: I suppose with all these tuppenny a penny fill of
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Speaker 1: gardens here, there's jobbing work to be got. I'll get something,
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Speaker 1: all right, think of it. Jobbing gardener, me a jobber
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Speaker 1: by the day. It'll set up some of these ears
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Speaker 1: season ticket clerks, no end to I have Lord Bramble's
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Speaker 1: gardener dragging a lawnmower for them. I can see him
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Speaker 1: showing me to their friends out of the window. Then
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Speaker 1: ed gardner to a lord. They'll say, well, well, it's
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Speaker 1: a come down, said my father, when my uncle had departed.
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Speaker 1: Say what you like, it's a come down. My mother
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Speaker 1: was preoccupied with the question of their accommodation. She'll have
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Speaker 1: to have the sofa in the sitting room, I expect,
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Speaker 1: and I'll have a bit of a shake up on
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Speaker 1: the floor. Don't suppose she'll like it. They'll have their
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Speaker 1: own bedding, of course. But Adelaide isn't the sort to
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Speaker 1: be comfortable on a sofa, poor woman. She was not.
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Speaker 1: Although my uncle and my father and mother all pointed
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Speaker 1: out to her the untimeliness and inconsiderateness of her conduct.
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Speaker 1: She insisted upon suffering so much that a doctor had
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Speaker 1: to be called in. He ordered a pro removal to
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Speaker 1: a hospital for an immediate operation. Those were days, said Sarnak,
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Speaker 1: of the profoundest ignorance about the body. The ancient Greeks
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Speaker 1: and the Arabs had done a little anatomy during their
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Speaker 1: brief phases of intellectual activity, but the rest of the
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Speaker 1: world had only been studying physiology in a scientific way
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Speaker 1: for about three hundred years. People in general still knew
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Speaker 1: practically nothing of vital processes. As I have told you.
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Speaker 1: They even bore children by accident and living the queer
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Speaker 1: lives they did with abnormal and ill prepared food. In
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Speaker 1: a world of unchecked infections, they found the very tissues
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Speaker 1: of the body going wrong and breaking out into the
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Speaker 1: queerest growths. Parts of these bodies would cease to do
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Speaker 1: anything but change into a sort of fungoid proliferation. Their
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Speaker 1: bodies were like their communities, said Radiant, the same sort
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Speaker 1: of thing. They had tumors and cancers and such like
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Speaker 1: things in their bodies, and cherry garden urban districts on
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Speaker 1: their countrysides. But these growths, they are dreadful even to recall.
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Speaker 1: But surely, said Willow, in the face of such a
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Speaker 1: horrible possibility which might afflict anyone, all the world must
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Speaker 1: have wanted to push on with physiological research, didn't they see,
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Speaker 1: said Sunray, that all these things were controllable and curable.
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Speaker 1: Not a bit of it, said Sarnak. They didn't positively
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Speaker 1: like these tumors and cancers. But the community was too
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Speaker 1: under vitalized to put up a real fight against these miseries.
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Speaker 1: And everyone thought that he or she would escape until
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Speaker 1: it had them. There was a general apathy, and the
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Speaker 1: priests and journalists and so forth, the common opinion makers
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Speaker 1: were jealous of scientific men. They did their best to
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Speaker 1: persuade people that there was nothing hopeful in scientific research.
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Speaker 1: They did all they could to discredit its discoveries, to
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Speaker 1: ridicule its patient workers, and set people against them. That's
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Speaker 1: what puzzles me most, said son Ray. Their mental habits
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Speaker 1: were different. Their minds hadn't been trained to comprehensive thinking.
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Speaker 1: Their thinking was all in compartments and patches. The morbid
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Speaker 1: groats in their bodies were nothing to the morbid growths
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Speaker 1: in their minds. Part two. My aunt in the hospital,
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Speaker 1: with the lack of consideration from my uncle that had
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Speaker 1: always distinguished her, would neither recover nor die. She was
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Speaker 1: a considerable expense to him and no help. She added
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Speaker 1: greatly to his distresses. After some days, and at urgent
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Speaker 1: suggestion of my mother, he removed himself from our sitting
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Speaker 1: room to a two roomed lodging in the house of
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Speaker 1: a brick layer in an adjacent street. Into this he
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Speaker 1: crowded his furniture from chessing Hanger, but he frequented my
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Speaker 1: father's shop and showed a deepening attachment to my father's company.
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Speaker 1: He was not so successful a jobbing gardener as he
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Speaker 1: had anticipated. His short, contemptuous way with his new clients
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Speaker 1: in the villas of Cliffstone failed to produce the respect
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Speaker 1: he designed it to do. He would speak of their
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Speaker 1: flower beds as two panterns of all sorts, and compare
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Speaker 1: their gardens to a tablecloth or a window box, And
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Speaker 1: instead of welcoming these home truths, they resented them. But
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Speaker 1: they had not the manliness to clear up this matter
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Speaker 1: by a good, straightforward argument, in which they would have
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Speaker 1: had their social position very exactly defined. They preferred to
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Speaker 1: keep their illusions and just ceized to employ him. Moreover,
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Speaker 1: his disappointment with my aunt produced a certain misogyny which
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Speaker 1: took the form of a refusal to take orders from
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Speaker 1: the wives of his patrons when they were left in
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Speaker 1: sole charge of the house. As many of these wives
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Speaker 1: had a considerable influence over their husbands, this too injured
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Speaker 1: my uncle's prospects. Consequently, there were many days when he
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Speaker 1: had nothing to do but stand about our shop to
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Speaker 1: discuss with my father as hearer the defects of Cliffstone
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Speaker 1: Villa residence, the baseness of mister Petterton and that cat
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Speaker 1: cat he had called her, and the probable unworthiness of
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Speaker 1: any casual customer who strayed in range of comment. Nevertheless,
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Speaker 1: my uncle was resolved not to be defeated without a struggle.
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Speaker 1: There was a process which he called keeping his pecker up,
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Speaker 1: which necessitated I could not but perceive periodic visits to
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Speaker 1: the Wellington Public House at the station corner. From these
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Speaker 1: visits he returned markedly more garrulous, more like Sir John
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Speaker 1: French Cuthbertson, and exhaling a distinctively courageous smell when he
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Speaker 1: coughed or breathed heavily. After a time, as his business
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Speaker 1: difficulties became more oppressive, my father participated in these heartening excursions.
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Speaker 1: They broadened his philosophical outlook, but made it I fancied,
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Speaker 1: rather less distinct. My uncle had some indefinite sum of
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Speaker 1: money in the Post Office savings bank, and in his
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Speaker 1: determination not to be beaten without a struggle, he did
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Speaker 1: some courageous betting on what he called SERTs at the
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Speaker 1: race meetings on Byford Downs. SERTs beats me altogether, said
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Speaker 1: radiant assert was a horse that was certain to win
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Speaker 1: and never did. A dead cert was an extreme form
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Speaker 1: of the sert. You cannot imagine how the prospects and
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Speaker 1: quality of the chief race horses were discussed throughout the land.
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Speaker 1: The English were not a nomadic people. Only a minority
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Speaker 1: could ride horses, but everybody could bet on them. The
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Speaker 1: King was, so to speak, head of the racing, just
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Speaker 1: as he was head of the army. He went in
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Speaker 1: person to the great race meetings, as if to bless
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Speaker 1: and encourage the bedding of his subjects. So that my
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Speaker 1: uncle John Julip was upheld by the most loyal and
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Speaker 1: patriot potic sentiments when he wasted his days and his
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Speaker 1: savings on byford downs. On several of these occasions, my
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Speaker 1: father went with him and wrestled with fortune. Also. They
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Speaker 1: lost generally. Finally they lost most of what they had,
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Speaker 1: but on one or two occasions, as my uncle put it,
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Speaker 1: they struck it rich. One day they pitched upon a
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Speaker 1: horse called Rococo, although it was regarded as the very
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Speaker 1: reverse of assert and the odds were heavy against it,
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Speaker 1: but an inner light seems to have guided my uncle.
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Speaker 1: It came in first, and they won as much as
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Speaker 1: thirty five pounds, a very large sum for them. They
20:46
Speaker 1: returned home in a state of solemn exultation, which was
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Speaker 1: only marred by some mechanical difficulty in pronouncing the name
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Speaker 1: of the winning horse. They began well, but after the
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Speaker 1: first syllable they went on more like a hen that
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Speaker 1: had laid an egg than like rational souls who had
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Speaker 1: spotted a winner. Rucococko, they would say, or Rococo coo
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Speaker 1: coo coo, or they would end in a hiccup, and
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Speaker 1: though each tried to help the other out, they were
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Speaker 1: not really helpful to each other. They diffused an unusually
21:23
Speaker 1: powerful odor of cigars and courage. Never had they smelt
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Speaker 1: so courageous. My mother made them tea tea, said my
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Speaker 1: uncle meaningly. He did not actually refuse the cup she
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Speaker 1: put before him, but he pushed it a little aside.
21:41
Speaker 1: For some moments it seemed doubtful whether he was going
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Speaker 1: to say something very profound or whether he was going
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Speaker 1: to be seriously ill. Mind triumphed over matter. Knew it
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Speaker 1: would come, marthe he said, knew along it would come directly.
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Speaker 1: I heard name Rook, he paused, Ko ko ko clucked
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Speaker 1: my father, Ko ko ko ko hiccup, said my uncle.
22:08
Speaker 1: I knew how hour had come. Some men smith, some
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Speaker 1: men have that instinct. I would have put my shirt
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Speaker 1: on the our smart only they wouldn't have took my shirt.
22:21
Speaker 1: He looked suddenly very hard at me. They wouldn't have
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Speaker 1: took it, Harry, he said, they don't take shirts. No,
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Speaker 1: he said, and became profoundly thoughtful. Then he looked up
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Speaker 1: thirty six to one against He said, we'd have had
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Speaker 1: shirts for a lifetime. My father saw it from a wider,
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Speaker 1: more philosophical point of view. Might never have been spared
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Speaker 1: to wear em out, he said, better as it is,
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Speaker 1: John and mind you, said my uncle, this is only
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Speaker 1: a beginning. Once I start spotting 'em, I go on spottingham.
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Speaker 1: Mind that this rock coco coo ko ko ko ko,
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Speaker 1: whatever it is, is only a beginning. So only the
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Speaker 1: first ray sunlight v A glorious day in that case,
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Speaker 1: said my mother. It seems to me some of us
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Speaker 1: might have a share. Certainly, said my uncle. Certainly, marth,
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Speaker 1: And amazingly he handed me a ten shilling piece. In
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Speaker 1: those days we had gold coins, and this was a
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Speaker 1: little disk of gold. Then he handed Prue the same.
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Speaker 1: He gave a whole sovereign, a golden pound to Fanny,
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Speaker 1: and a five pound Bank of England note to my mother.
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Speaker 1: Hold On, said my father, warningly, that's all right, smith,
23:52
Speaker 1: said my uncle, with a gesture of princely generosity. You
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Speaker 1: share seventeen pounds ten six poundunce ten leaves at levin.
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Speaker 1: Let's see one in five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten
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Speaker 1: leven Here. My father took the balance of the money
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Speaker 1: with a puzzled expression. Something eluded him yours, he said,
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Speaker 1: But his mild eye regarded the ten shilling piece I
24:21
Speaker 1: still held exposed in my hand. I put it away immediately,
24:26
Speaker 1: but his gaze followed my hand towards my pocket until
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Speaker 1: it met the table edge and got into difficulties thout
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Speaker 1: the turf smith. There wouldn't be such a country as England,
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Speaker 1: said my uncle John, and rounded his remarks off with
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Speaker 1: mark my words. My father did his best to do so.
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Speaker 1: End of Section five.