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The Dream Chapter the Fifth - Fanny Discovers Herself Parts 11 and 12 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section seventeen of The Dream, a Novel. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: The Dream a Novel by H. G. Wells. Chapter the
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  Speaker 1: fifth Fanny discovers herself parts eleven and twelve. Part eleven.
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  Speaker 1: I concealed altogether from my mother the share that Fanny
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  Speaker 1: had had in getting me my new job, and all
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  Speaker 1: the opportunities it carried with it in Thunderstone House, and
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  Speaker 1: so it was possible for her to find some pride
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  Speaker 1: and satisfaction in my increasing prosperity. I was presently able
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  Speaker 1: to double, and then still further to increase my contribution
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  Speaker 1: to the household expenses. And I exchanged my attic, which
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  Speaker 1: was handed over to Proof for her very own, for
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  Speaker 1: the room which had once sheltered the old margaridges. It
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  Speaker 1: was re arranged as a bed sitting room for me,
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  Speaker 1: and soon I had first one and then several shelves
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  Speaker 1: full of books in a writing desk of my own.
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  Speaker 1: And also I concealed from my mother, for there was
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  Speaker 1: no use in distressing her the frequency of my visits
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  Speaker 1: to Fanny, we began to make little excursions together. For
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  Speaker 1: Fanny I discovered was often very lonely. Newbury was a
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  Speaker 1: very busy man, and often he could not come near
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  Speaker 1: her for ten days or a fortnight. And although she
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  Speaker 1: had some women friends in classes and lectures, there were gaps,
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  Speaker 1: often of several days when she would have had no
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  Speaker 1: one to speak to but the servant who came in
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  Speaker 1: daily to her. If it had not been for me,
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  Speaker 1: but all this companioning of Fanny I tried to hide
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  Speaker 1: from my mother though, and then her suspicions stabbed my
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  Speaker 1: falsehoods Ernie and Prue, however, were able to follow the
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  Speaker 1: calls of love unhampered by the family shame, and presently
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  Speaker 1: they were both engaged, and his young lady and her
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  Speaker 1: young man were brought to a Sunday tea party in
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  Speaker 1: the drawing room, through the kind permission of mister and
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  Speaker 1: missus Milton, who were as usual away. Ernie's young lady,
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  Speaker 1: I've completely forgotten her name, proved to be a well dressed,
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  Speaker 1: self possessed young woman with a vast knowledge of people
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  Speaker 1: in what we used to call society. She talked freely
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  Speaker 1: and fashionably, taking the larger share of the conversation of
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  Speaker 1: Askcot in Monte Carlo and the court prues. Mister Pettigrew
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  Speaker 1: was of a more serious quality, and of the things
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  Speaker 1: he said I remember now only that he expressed a
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  Speaker 1: firm conviction that messages from the dead were bound to
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  Speaker 1: come in a few years time. He was a cherupodist,
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  Speaker 1: very well thought of in chiro po dological circles, cried Radiant,
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  Speaker 1: what is this you are talking nonsense, Sarnac. What is
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  Speaker 1: jirobro pote illogical? Hand foot scientific? I thought you'd ask
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  Speaker 1: me that, said Sarnac, smiling. Sureopity was corn cutting, corn
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  Speaker 1: cutting harvesting, said Starlight. But where do the hands and
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  Speaker 1: feet come in? There were machines then, were there not? No,
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  Speaker 1: this was a different sort of corn. Mister Hamburg's shop
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  Speaker 1: was full of corn salves and corn cures. Corns were
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  Speaker 1: painful and tiresome colossies produced on people's feet by the
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  Speaker 1: pressure of ill fitting boots. We don't know of such
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  Speaker 1: things nowadays, but they darkened scores of lives in Pimlico.
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  Speaker 1: But why did they wear ill fitting boots? Demanded Radiant. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: never mind, never mind, I know a mad world, which
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  Speaker 1: made boots at hazard without looking at the feet that
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  Speaker 1: had to wear them, and wore boots that hurt it
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  Speaker 1: when no sane people would dream of wearing boots. Go
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  Speaker 1: on with your story. Let me see said some I
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  Speaker 1: was talking of a tea party, a family tea party
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  Speaker 1: in the drawing room, in which we talked of everything
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  Speaker 1: in the world but my sister Fanny. And quite a
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  Speaker 1: little while after that tea party, my mother fell ill
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  Speaker 1: and died. It was a swift and sudden illness. She
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  Speaker 1: caught a cold and would not go to bed. When
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  Speaker 1: she did go to bed, she got up after one
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  Speaker 1: day of it because she couldn't bear to think of
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  Speaker 1: all that prood might be doing or not doing in
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  Speaker 1: the housework downstairs. And her cold turned to pneumonia, the
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  Speaker 1: same sort of inflammation that had carried off the Mauger Ridges,
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  Speaker 1: and she died in three days now. When the fever
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  Speaker 1: came upon her, she changed suddenly from something white and
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  Speaker 1: hard and unapproachable to something flushed and pitiful. Her face
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  Speaker 1: grew smaller and younger, looking, her eyes bright, and something
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  Speaker 1: came into them that reminded me of Fanny. When Fanny
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  Speaker 1: was distressed and all my habit of sullen resistance to
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  Speaker 1: my mother melted when I saw her struggling for breath
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  Speaker 1: on her tumbled pillow, and realized that she might be
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  Speaker 1: near the end of all her hates and drudgery. Matilda
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  Speaker 1: Good became again the old friend who had known her
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  Speaker 1: since she was a young woman, and they called each
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  Speaker 1: other Tilda and Marty instead of Matilda and Martha. Matilda,
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  Speaker 1: for all her Verico's veins, was up and down stairs
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  Speaker 1: fifty times a day, and there was much sending out
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  Speaker 1: for expensive things, the more expensive, the better than Matilda
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  Speaker 1: thought my mother might fancy. They stood appealingly untouched upon
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  Speaker 1: the table by her bedside. Once or twice towards the end,
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  Speaker 1: my mother asked for me, And when I came in
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  Speaker 1: the evening and bent over her, she whispered hoarsely, Airy boy,
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  Speaker 1: promised me, promise me. I sat down and took the
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  Speaker 1: hand she held up to me, and so holding to me,
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  Speaker 1: she dozed. What she wanted me to promise she never said,
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  Speaker 1: and whether it was some last vow she wanted to
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  Speaker 1: extract from me that would separate me from Fanny forever,
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  Speaker 1: or whether her thoughts about Fanny had changed under the
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  Speaker 1: shadow of death, and she had some new message for her.
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  Speaker 1: I cannot imagine to this day. Perhaps she herself did
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  Speaker 1: not know what I had to promise. A dying desire
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  Speaker 1: for predominance moved her will stirred in her, and faded
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  Speaker 1: again to nothing. Promise me Fanny, she never mentioned by name,
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  Speaker 1: and we did not dare to bring my sister in
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  Speaker 1: to her. Earnest came and kissed her, and knelt down
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  Speaker 1: by the bedside, and suddenly dreadfully wept aloud like the
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  Speaker 1: child he was, and set us all weeping. He was
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  Speaker 1: her first born in her dearest. He had known her
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  Speaker 1: before her final embitterment. He had always been a dutiful
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  Speaker 1: sun to her. Presently she was lying there, very straight
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  Speaker 1: and still, as hushed and still as my father's shop
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  Speaker 1: on Sundays, and the traffics and struggles and angers of
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  Speaker 1: life had done with her forever. Her face was now
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  Speaker 1: neither young nor old, a marble face of peace. All
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  Speaker 1: her peevish resentment was smooth and wiped away. It had
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  Speaker 1: never occurred to me before that she had or had
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  Speaker 1: not good looks, But now I saw that Fanny's fine
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  Speaker 1: regularity of feature came from her. She was like Fanny,
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  Speaker 1: like an immobile, unhumorous Fanny. I stood beside her still body,
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  Speaker 1: oppressed by a grief too wide and deep for tears,
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  Speaker 1: an immense grief that was not so much for her
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  Speaker 1: as for all that distress of life she had embodied.
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  Speaker 1: For now I saw that there was not, and there
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  Speaker 1: never had been, anything hateful in her. I saw for
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  Speaker 1: the first time the devotion of her, the misguided passion
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  Speaker 1: for right, the mute, blundering, tormented and tormenting love in
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  Speaker 1: her heart. Even her love of Fanny was a love
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  Speaker 1: capsized and inverted. Her fallen daughter had been to her
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  Speaker 1: a detested changing for the pretty, clever little girl who
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  Speaker 1: was to have been a paragwon of feminine virtue except
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  Speaker 1: for earnest. How bitterly and repeatedly had we children offended
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  Speaker 1: her rigid and implacable standards. Fanny and I openly rebelliously
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  Speaker 1: and proved by discovery for prue and will not tell
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  Speaker 1: you the details of Matilda's exposure Pilford. Long before we
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  Speaker 1: children began to thwart my mother, there must have been
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  Speaker 1: a still more monstrous disappointment for her. What sort of
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  Speaker 1: dreams of manly piste and decorum had she wrapped about
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  Speaker 1: my poor maundering, ramshackle, loose limbed father when he and
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  Speaker 1: she walked out together in their Sunday clothes, making the
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  Speaker 1: best and more than the best of themselves. He must
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  Speaker 1: have been a tall, good looking young man then, and
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  Speaker 1: reassuringly apt with pious reflections. What shocks had he grows clumsy, wayward,
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  Speaker 1: ignorant and incompetent, as the dear man was inflicted upon
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  Speaker 1: her set and limited expectations. And then think of my
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  Speaker 1: uncle John Julip again, that wonderful and adored elder brother,
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  Speaker 1: with the manners of a sporting baronet, who had slowly
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  Speaker 1: shriveled down to the figure of a drunken thief. Everything
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  Speaker 1: had shriveled for her poor soul in our streets. In
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  Speaker 1: those old days, men were permitted to sell brightly colored
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  Speaker 1: distended bladders to children, the most apt instruments for acute
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  Speaker 1: disappointment you can imagine. And the lifeguard had given my
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  Speaker 1: mother was very like one of these bladders. It had
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  Speaker 1: burst and shriveled down to limp, an empty residue that
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  Speaker 1: nothing could ever restore. She had faced her declining day's prematurely, wrinkled, weary, laborious,
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  Speaker 1: and unloved except by one dutiful son. Yes, the thought
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  Speaker 1: of Ernest was a consolation to me. Surely his loyalty
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  Speaker 1: had meant happiness for her, Sarnak paused. I find it
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  Speaker 1: impossibly said to disentangle my thoughts as I stood by
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  Speaker 1: my mother's deathbed, from a thousand things that have come
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  Speaker 1: to me since about her, I've had to tell of
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  Speaker 1: her as an antagonist, as a hard, uncharitable soul. That
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  Speaker 1: was her role in my story. But she was indeed
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  Speaker 1: just the creature, a victim of that disordered age, which
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  Speaker 1: had turned her natural tenacity to a blind intolerance, and
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  Speaker 1: wasted her moral passion upon ugly and barren ends. If
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  Speaker 1: Annie and Earnest did not had shown any stoutness against
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  Speaker 1: the disadvantages of our started life, if we had won
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  Speaker 1: for ourselves any knowledge or respect, we inherited that much
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  Speaker 1: steadfastness from her, Such honesty as we had was hers. Ever,
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  Speaker 1: moral harshness had overshattered and embittered our adolescence. Her passionate
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  Speaker 1: mothering had sheltered our childhood. Our father would have loved us,
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  Speaker 1: wondered at us, and left us about, but early in
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  Speaker 1: her life, that fear, that terror stricken, hatred of sex,
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  Speaker 1: that overshattered the Christian centuries, that frantic resort to the suppressions, subjugations,
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  Speaker 1: and disciplines of a stereotyped marriage. In its harshness form
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  Speaker 1: a marriage is easy to step into his and as
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  Speaker 1: hard to leave as a steel trap, with its teeth
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  Speaker 1: hidden by the most elaborate secrecies and misrepresentations, had set
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  Speaker 1: its pitiless grip upon my mother's imagination and blackened all
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  Speaker 1: the happier impulses in life. For her. She was ready,
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  Speaker 1: if necessary, to pass all her children through the flowers
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  Speaker 1: of that Moloch, if by so doing their souls might
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  Speaker 1: be saved. She did it the more bitterly because she
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  Speaker 1: was doing it against the deeper, undeveloped things in her
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  Speaker 1: own nature. Such things more dimly appreciated, perhaps passed through
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  Speaker 1: the mind of Harry Mortimer Smith, my former self, as
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  Speaker 1: he stood beside his dead mother. He was torn. I
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  Speaker 1: was torn by a sense of irrational separation and by
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  Speaker 1: the haunting persuasion of lost opportunities. There were things I
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  Speaker 1: felt that I might have said, propitious moments I might
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  Speaker 1: have seized to make things better between us. I had
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  Speaker 1: differed from her so harshly, I might have been so
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  Speaker 1: much kinder to her and still have held my way.
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  Speaker 1: She laid there, a feeble, little old woman, thin worn
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  Speaker 1: and prematurely aged. How often had I struck at her
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  Speaker 1: with all my rebel strength, blind to the fact that
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  Speaker 1: I could wound her as only a child can wound
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  Speaker 1: the mother who bore it. She had been darkened, and
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  Speaker 1: I also had been darkened. And now now it was
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  Speaker 1: all too late. The door had closed between us, and
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  Speaker 1: was closed forever for ever. Part twelve, the year and
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  Speaker 1: a half that intervened between my mother's death and the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of the First World War, the war that came
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  Speaker 1: before the Poison Gas War, and the Great Desolation, were
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  Speaker 1: years of rapid growth for me, mental and physical alike.
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  Speaker 1: I remained with Matilda good because I had come to
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  Speaker 1: love that clumsy, wise, friendly creature, almost as if she
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  Speaker 1: was my second mother. But now I was prosperous enough
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  Speaker 1: to occupy the whole of the second floor and have
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  Speaker 1: a sitting room separate from my bedroom. I still came
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  Speaker 1: down to the underground breakfast room for breakfast, supper, high tea,
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  Speaker 1: because I liked talking with Matilda. Prue had married mister
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  Speaker 1: Pettigrew by that time, and in her stead two gray
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  Speaker 1: and sedulous women came in. They were sisters, one a
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  Speaker 1: spinster and the other the wife of a broken down
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  Speaker 1: prize fighter, to do the drudgeries Prue and my mother
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  Speaker 1: had done. My chief companion in those days was my
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  Speaker 1: sister Fanny. Our childhood's alliance was renewed and strengthened. We
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  Speaker 1: had a need for each other. We were able to
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  Speaker 1: help each other as no one else could help us.
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  Speaker 1: I found out very soon that Fanny's life was divided
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  Speaker 1: into two very unequal parts. That she had hours and
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  Speaker 1: sometimes days of excitement and happiness with Newberry, who loved
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  Speaker 1: her greatly and gave her all the time he could
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  Speaker 1: steal away for her, and introduced her to such friends
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  Speaker 1: as he could trust to respect her and keep their secret.
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  Speaker 1: And also she had long stretches of uneventful solitude in
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  Speaker 1: which she was terribly left to herself. My sister Fanny
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  Speaker 1: was plucky and loyal and devoted. But before we two
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  Speaker 1: got together again, I think she found those great intervals
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  Speaker 1: of suspended animation dreary and dangerous, and sometimes almost intolerable.
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  Speaker 1: Often she had nothing to live for it all, nothing
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  Speaker 1: bright and vital, but the almost daily note, a hasty worder.
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  Speaker 1: So he scribbled to her, and the better he was,
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  Speaker 1: the worse it was for her. The fact that he
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  Speaker 1: was pleasant and delightful and deeply in love with her,
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  Speaker 1: the very brightness of being with him, made those great
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  Speaker 1: intervals seem darker and duller. Hadn't she work, asked Sunray,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: and fellow workers and other women asked Firefly. Not in
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  Speaker 1: her position, not as an unmarried woman of lowly origins
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  Speaker 1: with a lover. But there were others in the same position.
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  Speaker 1: Surely there were many, a scattered class, a class made
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  Speaker 1: to be ashamed of itself. Newberry and Fanny were lovers,
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  Speaker 1: such lovers as we are today. They got through with it,
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  Speaker 1: and at last, I believe they married according to the
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  Speaker 1: custom of the time. But they were the exceptional ones.
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  Speaker 1: They knew what they wanted and had stout hearts. Most
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: of these irregular unions succumbed to the boredom in between,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and to the temptations of separation, forgetfulness, and jealous He
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: played havoc with these insecure couples. The girls in their
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: phases of loneliness picked up with other men, and the
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  Speaker 1: first lover suspected their infidelities, and straightaway I have a
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: lot to tell you yet about jealousy. In the old world,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: it was not regarded as an ugly but as a
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: rather high spirited thing. People let it go, and we're
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: proud of it. And the majority of these irregular unions
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  Speaker 1: were not even love unions in the first they were
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: vice unions, dishonest on either side. Drugs and drink crept
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: very easily into lives divided between over excitement and tedium,
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  Speaker 1: and darkened by a general disapproval. The defiant pose was
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  Speaker 1: the easiest pose. The unmarried lover was made a social
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: outcast and driven towards other sorts of social outcasts, more
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  Speaker 1: evil and unhappy. You see perhaps now why my sister
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Fanny was rather alone and aloof, for all that she
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: belonged to a numerous class. I suppose, said Sonak, that
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the object of that rigid legal marriage of the old
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: world was to keep lovers together. In countless cases, it
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: kept the wrong people together and lovers apart. But then
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you must remember that in those days children were supposed
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: to be providential accidents. They were indeed accidents of cohabitation,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: and that altered all the conditions of the question. There
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: were no proper schools for children, no sort of refuge
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: if the parents parted and tore the home asunder. We
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: are so secure it is hard to imagine now the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: chancy insecurity of the ancient days. It is hard to
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: imagine the dangers that hung about an unprotected child in
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: our world. Nowadays we all seem to get paired. Sooner
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  Speaker 1: or later each finds a mate in marriages, a natural
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: and necessary relationship instead of a compulsory device. All the
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: priests of all the religions that have ever been in
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the world could not bind me to Sunray more firmly
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: than I am bound to day. Does one get a
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: book in an altar to marry the axe to its handle?
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  Speaker 1: None of which does in the least degree affect the
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: fact that my sister Fanny suffered dreadfully from loneliness before
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: she rediscovered me. She was full of curiosities and enterprise,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and she took possession of my leisure to explore all
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: sorts of shows and resorts in and about Old London. Museums,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: picture galleries, parks, gardens and heaths that I should otherwise
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: never have visited. Indeed, she might not have visited either
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  Speaker 1: if I had not been available as her escort, because
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: in that world of crazy suppressions, most of these places
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: were haunted by furtive love hunters and feeble minded folk,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: who might have been irritating and tarresome to a solitary
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  Speaker 1: girl so pretty as Fanny. They would have followed her
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  Speaker 1: about and accosted her when they got her alone, and
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  Speaker 1: thrust their disagreeable cravings between her and the beauty and sunshine.
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  Speaker 1: But together we went gaily to all sorts of interesting things.
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  Speaker 1: This old London i'm describing to you had a large
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: share of parks and gardens. There was a pleasing quaintness
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  Speaker 1: about all of them, and much unpremeditated loveliness. There was
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: a certain Richmond Park to which we often resorted, with
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  Speaker 1: many fine old trees and grassy spaces, and wildernesses of
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: bracken that got very yellow and gay in autumn, and
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: a quantity of deer. You might have been transported from
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: this age to Richmond Park two thousand years ago and
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: still fancied yourself in the Northland parks of today. The
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: great trees like nearly all trees in those days, where
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  Speaker 1: it is true, infested with fungus and partly decayed. The
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Fanny and I never noticed that they seemed great healthy
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  Speaker 1: trees to us. And there was a view from a
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  Speaker 1: hill crest of the winding times, a very delightful view.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: And then there were the oddest old gardens and flower
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: spaces at que. I remember a quite good rock garden
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: and glass houses of flowers, the brightest flowers the old
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: world imagined possible. And there were passed through a jungle
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: of rhododendra, primitive small rhododendra, but bright colored, in a
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: great delight to Fannia meat. There was a place where
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: we had tea at little tables in the open air,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: in that frousty old germ saturated world, with its dread
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: of drafts and coals and coughs. They gave one a
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: bright sense of adventure to eat food in the open air.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: We went to museums and picture galleries and talked about
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: what the pictures meant, and we talked of a thousand
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: things together. There comes back to me one conversation we
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: had at a place called Hampton Court, a Queer old
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: red brick palace with a great grapevine underglass, and an
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: ancient garden beside the Thames. There were flower beds full
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: of half while herbagious flowers, and we walked beside them
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: under trees, until we came to a low wall that
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: looked upon the river, and we sat down on a seat,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: and there after a silence. Suddenly Fanny, like one who
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: has been pent up beyond endurance, began talking of love.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: She began by asking questions about the girls I've met,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: and the girls at Thunderstone House. I described one or
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: two of them to her. My chief friend among them
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: was Milly Kimpton from the Counting House. We had got
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: to the pitch of taking teas together and such like
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: friendly acts. That's not love, said Fanny the wise, lending
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: each other books. You don't begin to know what love
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: is yet, Harry. But you will, Harry, you will. Don't
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: you be too late about it, Harry. There's nothing in
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: life like loving someone, Harry. People don't talk to you
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: about it, and lots of people don't know what they
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: are missing. It's all the difference between being nothing or something.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: It's all the difference between being dead or alive. When
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: you are loving someone you're all right and nothing can
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: harm you. And when you aren't, nothing is right. Everything
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: is wrong. But love is a queer thing, Harry, and
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: about as dreadful as it is dear It gets wrong.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it all goes wrong, and it's awful. It slipped
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: from you somehow, it goes and you're left mean and
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: little ever so mean, and you can't get back, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: it seems you hardly want to get back. You're dead,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: and you're damned and done for, And then again it
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: all comes back again, like the sunrise, like being born afresh.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And then with a desperate shamelessness, she began to talk
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: of Newberry and how much she loved him. She told little,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: irrelevant things about his ways. He comes to me whenever
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: he can, she said, and repeated this. Presently he's all
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: my life, she said, you don't know what he is
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: to me. Then her constant dread of a separation crept
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: up to the surface of her thoughts. Perhaps she said,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it will always go on like this. I don't care
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: if it does. I don't care if I never marry him.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't care. Not if at last I'm thrown aside.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I'd go through it all again and count myself lucky,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: even if I knew for certain I was to be
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: dropped and cast aside Queer Fanny. Her face was flushed
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and her eyes shining with tears. I asked myself what
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: had been happening. He'll never throw me aside, Harry. He'll
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: never throw me aside. He can't, he can't. He's half
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: as old again as I am. And yet he comes
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: to me in his trouble. Once. Once he cried to me, men,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: all of you are so strong and yet so helpless.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: You've got to have a woman to come to. Just
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: a little while ago, well, he was ill. He was
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: very ill. He has pain in his eyes, and sometimes
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: he's afraid about them. This time suddenly he had frightful pains,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and he thought he couldn't see. He came straight to me, Harry.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: He called a cab and came to me. And he
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: came feeling his way upstairs to me, and fumbling at
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the door. And I nursed him in my darkened room
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: until the pain had gone. He didn't go home, Harry,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: where there were servants and nurses to be got, and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: attendants and everything. He came to me. It was me.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: He came to me he's my man. He knows I'd
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: give my life for him. I would, Harry, I'd cut
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: my body to pieces, bit by pit if it would
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: make him happy. It wasn't so much the pain he had, Harry,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: as the fear. He's not the one to mind a
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: bit of pain or be afraid of many things. But
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: he was afraid and scared. He'd never been afraid before.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: But he was afraid of going blind. He was too
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: afraid to go to the specialist. It was like a
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: little child, Harry and him so big and strong, afraid
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: of the dark. He thought they'd get hold of him
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: so that perhaps he'd not be able to come to me.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: He thought he wouldn't be able to see his beloved
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: magazines and papers anymore. And the pain just turned the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: screw on him. He clung to me. It was me
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: made him go. I took him there. He wouldn't have
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: gone if it hadn't been for me. He'd have just
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: let things drift on, and not a soul in the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: world for all his money and power to mother him.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And then he might really have gone blind if it
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: hadn't been taken in time. I pretended to be his secretary,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and I took him and waited in the waiting room
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: for him. I dreaded they'd hurt him. I was listening
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: for something to happen all the time. I had to
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: look at their old graph says if I didn't care
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: a rap what they were doing to him. And then
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: he came out smiling with a green shade on, and
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: I had to stand up, stiff and cool and wait
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: to hear what he had to say. I was scared
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: by that shade, Harry scared. I held my breath. I
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: thought it had come. Isn't so bad as we fancied,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Miss Smith, He says, off and like you kept the taxi.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: You have to take my arm. I'm afraid, certainly, sir,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I said MIMSI like. I was careful to be kind
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: of awkward taking his arm. There were people there in
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: the waiting room, and you never know acted respect for
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: me that has had him in my arms a thousand times.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: But when we were in the taxi and safe, he
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: pushed up the shade and took me into his arms,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: and he hugged me and he cried. He cried wet
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: tears and held me because he'd got me still and
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: his sight still, and the work he loves to do.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Things would have to be done to his eyes, but
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: he keep his sight and he has. There's been no
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: trouble now, not for months, she said, looking away from
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: me over the shining river. How could he ever leave me,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: she said, after a time like that. Stoutly she spoke,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: but even to my youthful eyes she seemed little and lonely.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Sitting there on the old red wall, I thought of
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the busy, bustling man with the big tortoise shell glasses
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: away from her, and of one or two things I
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: had heard whispered about him. It seemed to me then
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: that no men were good enough for the women in
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the world. When he's tired or in trouble, said Vanny. Sure,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: and still he'll always come back to me. In the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: section seventeen,