Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Certain Personal Matters - How I Died

Transcript

Certain Personal Matters - How I Died · The H. G. Wells Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty nine of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Recording by Larry Wilson. Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: How I died. It is now ten years ago since
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I received my death warrant. All these ten years I
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: have been, and am and shall be, I hope, for
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: years yet a doomed a man. It only occurred to
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: me yesterday that I had been dodging missing, rather than
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: dodging a common enemy, for such a space of time.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Then I know I respected him. It seemed he marched
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: upon me, inexorable, irresistible. Even at last I felt his
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: grip upon me. I bowed in the shadow, and he passed.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Ten years ago, and once since he and I have
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: been very near. But now he seems to me but
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a blind man, and we, with all our solemn folly
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: of medicine and hygiene, but players in a game of
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: blind man's bluff. The gaunt, familiar hand comes out suddenly, swiftly,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: this time surely, and it passes close to my shoulder.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I hear someone near me cry, And it is over
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: another realm of paper. There is time at least for
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: a great book. Still very close to the tragedy of
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: life is the comedy rightest upon the very edge of
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the dark. And I remember now with a queer touch
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of sympathetic amusement, my dear departedself of the middle eighties,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: how the thing staggered me. I was full of the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: vast ambition of youth. I was still at the age
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: when death is quite out of sight, and when life
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: is still an interminable vista of years. And then suddenly,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: with a gout of blood upon my knuckle, with a
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: queer familiar taste in my mouth, that cough, which had
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: been a bother, became a tragedy. And this world that
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: hath been so solid, grew faint and thin. I saw
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: through it, saw his face near to my own, suddenly
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: found him beside me. When I had been dreaming he
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: was far beyond there, far away over the hills. My
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: first face was an immense sorrow for myself. It was
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: a purely selfish emotion. You see, I had been saving
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: myself up, denying myself half the pride of life and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: most of its indulgence, billing myself like a drill sergeant,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: with my eyes on those now unattainable hills. Had I
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: known it was to end so soon, I should have
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: planned everything so differently. I lay in bed, mourning my
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: truncated existence. Then presently the sorrow broadened. They were so sorrow,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: so genuinely sorry for me, and they considered me so much.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Now I had this, and that they would never have
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: given me before, the stateliest betting, the costliest food I
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: could feel from my bed, the suddenly disorganized house, the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: distressed friends, the new born solicitude. Insensibly, a realization of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: enhanced importance came to temper my regrets for my neglected sins.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: The lost world that had seemed so brilliant and attractive
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: dwindled steadily. As the days of my illness wore on.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I thought more of the world's loss and less of
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: my own. Then came the long journey, the princely style
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: of it, the sudden awakening on the part of external humanity,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: which had hitherto been wont to jostle me, to help
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: itself before me, to turn its back upon me to
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: my importance. He has diseased long cannot live long I
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: was going into the dark, and was not afraid with ostentation.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I still regard that, though now with scarcely so much gravity,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: as heretofore, as a very magnificent period in my life.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: For nearly four months I was dying with immense dignity.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Plutarch might have recorded it. I wrote in touching unsteady pencil,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: to all my intimate friends, and indeed to many other people,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I saw the littleness of hate and ambition. I forgave
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: my enemies, and they were subdued and owned to it.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: How they must regret these admissions. I made many memorable remarks.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: This lasted, I say, nearly four months. The medical profession,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: which had pronounced my death sentence, reiterated it steadily, has
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: indeed done so now this ten years. Towards the end
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: of those four months, however, dying lost its freshness for me.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I began to detect a certain habitual quality in my service.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I had exhausted all my memorable remarks upon the subject,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: and the strain began to tell upon all of us.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: One day in the spring time, I crawled out alone,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: carefully wrapped and with a stick, to look once more,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: perhaps for the last time on sky and earth, and
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the first scatter skirmishers of the coming army of flowers.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: It was a day of soft wind, when the shadows
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: of the clouds go sweeping over the hills. Quite casually,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I happened upon a girl clambering over a hedge, and
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: her dress had caught in a bramble. And the chat
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: was quite impromptu and most idillic. I remember she had
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: three or four wooden enemies in her hand, wind Stars,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: she called them, and I thought it a pretty name.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And we talked of this and that with a light
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: in our eyes, as young folks willed. I quite forgot
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I was a doomed man. I surprised myself walking home
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: with a confident stride that jarred with the sudden recollection
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: of my funeral circumstances. For a moment I tried in
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: vain to think what it was had slipped from memory.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Then it came colorless and remote O death. He's a bore,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I said, I've done with him, and laught to think
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: of having done with him? And why not? So said I?
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: End of chapter thirty nine, end of Certain Personal Matters
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells