Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Tono-Bungay Book 4 Chapter 1 - Parts 1-3

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Tono-Bungay Book 4 Chapter 1 - Parts 1-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book fourth Chapter, first parts one to three of Tono Bungay.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William tom Cooe. Tono
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  Speaker 1: Bungay by H. G. Wells, Book fourth Chapter, first parts
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  Speaker 1: one to three, Book the fourth The Aftermath of Tono Bungay,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter the first, The Stick of the Rocket. One that
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  Speaker 1: evening I talked with my uncle in the Hartingham for
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  Speaker 1: the last time. The atmosphere of the place had altered
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  Speaker 1: quite shockingly. Instead of the crowd of importunate courtiers, there
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  Speaker 1: were just half a dozen uninviting men journalists waiting for
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  Speaker 1: an interview. Ropper, the big Commissionaire, was still there, but
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  Speaker 1: now indeed he was defending my uncle from something more
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  Speaker 1: than time wasting intrusions. I found the little man alone
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  Speaker 1: in the inner office, pretending to work but really brooding.
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  Speaker 1: He was looking yellow and deflated. Lord, he said, at
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  Speaker 1: the sight of me, you're lean, George. It makes that
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  Speaker 1: scar of yours show up. We regarded each other gravely
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  Speaker 1: for a time. Quap, I said, is at the bottom
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  Speaker 1: of the Atlantic there's some bills we've got to pay.
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  Speaker 1: The men. Seen the papers, read em all in the
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  Speaker 1: train at Bay, he said, I been at Bay for
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  Speaker 1: a week, yelping round me and me facing the music.
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  Speaker 1: I'm feeling a bit tired, he blew and wiped his glasses.
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  Speaker 1: My stomach isn't what it was, he explained, one finds
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  Speaker 1: it these times. How did it all happen? George, you're Marconigram.
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  Speaker 1: It took me in the wind a bit, I told
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  Speaker 1: him concisely. He nodded to the paragraphs of my narrative,
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  Speaker 1: and at the end he poured something from a medicine
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  Speaker 1: bottle into a sticky little wineglass and drank it. I
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  Speaker 1: became aware of the presence of drugs of three or
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  Speaker 1: four small bottles before him, among his disorder of papers,
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  Speaker 1: of a faint, elusively familiar odor in the room. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: he said, wiping his lips and recorking the bottle. You've
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  Speaker 1: done your best, George. De luck's been against us, he reflected,
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  Speaker 1: bottle in hand. Sometimes the luck goes with you, and
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  Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it doesn't, And then where are you?
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  Speaker 1: Grass in the oven? Fight or no fight? He asked?
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  Speaker 1: A few questions, and then his thoughts came back to
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  Speaker 1: his own urgent affairs. I tried to get some comprehensive
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  Speaker 1: account of the situation from him, but he would not
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  Speaker 1: give it. Oh, I wish I'd had you. I wish
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  Speaker 1: i'd have you, George. I've had a lot on my hands.
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  Speaker 1: You're clear headed at times. What has happened O boom
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  Speaker 1: infernal things? Yes, but how I'm just off the sea. Remember,
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  Speaker 1: it'd worry me too much to tell you now it's
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  Speaker 1: tied up in a skein. He muttered something to himself
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  Speaker 1: and mused darkly, and roused himself to say, besides, you'd
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  Speaker 1: better keep out of it. It's getting tight. Get him talking,
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  Speaker 1: Go down to Crest Hill and fly. That's your affair
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  Speaker 1: for a time. His manner set free queer anxieties in
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  Speaker 1: my brain again. I will confess that that Mordet Island
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  Speaker 1: nightmare of mine returned, and as I looked at him,
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  Speaker 1: his hand went out for the drug again. Stomach, George,
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  Speaker 1: he said, I've been fightin' on that. Every man fights on.
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  Speaker 1: Something gives way, somewhares head heart, something z gives way somewhere.
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  Speaker 1: Napoleon did at last, all through the Waterloo campaign. His stomach.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't a stomach worse than mine, no end. The
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  Speaker 1: mood of depression passed as the drug worked within him.
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  Speaker 1: His eyes brightened. He began to talk big. He began
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  Speaker 1: to dress up the situation for my eyes to recover
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  Speaker 1: what he had admitted to me. He put it as
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  Speaker 1: a retreat from Russia. There were still the chances of Leipzig.
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  Speaker 1: It's a battle, George, a big fight. We're fighting for millions.
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  Speaker 1: I've still chances. There's still a card or so. I
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  Speaker 1: can't tell all my plans, like speaking on the stroke,
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  Speaker 1: you might, I began, I can't, George. It's like asking
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  Speaker 1: to look at some embryo. You got to wait. I know,
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  Speaker 1: in a sort of way. I know, but to tell it. No.
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  Speaker 1: You've been away so long, and everything got complicated. My
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  Speaker 1: perception of disastrous entanglements deepened with the rise of his spirits.
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  Speaker 1: It was evident that I could only help to tie
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  Speaker 1: him up in whatever net was weaving round his mind
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  Speaker 1: by forcing questions and explanations upon him. My thoughts flew
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  Speaker 1: off at another angle. How's aunt, Susan said I. I
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  Speaker 1: had to repeat the question. His busy whispering lips stopped
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  Speaker 1: for a moment, and he answered in the note of
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  Speaker 1: one who repeats a formula. She liked to be in
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  Speaker 1: the battle with me. She liked to be here in London.
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  Speaker 1: But there's corners I got to turn alone. His eye
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  Speaker 1: rested for a moment on the little bottle beside him,
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  Speaker 1: and things have happened. You might go down now and
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  Speaker 1: talk to her, he said, in a director voice. I
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  Speaker 1: shall be down tomorrow night, I think. He looked up
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  Speaker 1: as though he hoped that would end our talk. For
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  Speaker 1: the week end, I asked for the week end. Thank
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  Speaker 1: God for week ends, George two. My return home to
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  Speaker 1: Lady Grove was a very different thing from what I
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  Speaker 1: had anticipated when I had got out to sea with
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  Speaker 1: my load of coop and fancy. The perfect filament was
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  Speaker 1: safe within my grasp. As I walked through the evening
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  Speaker 1: light along the downs, the summer stillness seemed like the
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  Speaker 1: stillness of something newly dead. There were no lurking workmen
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  Speaker 1: any more, no cyclists on the high road. Cessation was
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  Speaker 1: manifest everywhere. There had been, I learnt from my aunt
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  Speaker 1: a touching and quite voluntary demonstration when the Crest Hill
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  Speaker 1: work had come to an end, and the men had
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  Speaker 1: drawn their last pay. They had cheered my uncle, and
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  Speaker 1: hoo did the contractors and Lord Boom. I cannot now
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  Speaker 1: recall the manner in which my aunt and I greeted
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  Speaker 1: one another. I must have been very tired there, but
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  Speaker 1: whatever impression was made has gone out of my memory.
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  Speaker 1: But I recall very clearly how we sat at the
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  Speaker 1: little round table near the big window that gave on
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  Speaker 1: the terrace, and dined and talked. I remember her talking
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  Speaker 1: of my uncle. She asked after him and whether he
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  Speaker 1: seemed well. I wish I could help, she said, but
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  Speaker 1: I've never helped him much. Never. His way of doing
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  Speaker 1: things was never mine, And since since since he began
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  Speaker 1: to get so rich, he'd kept things from me. In
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  Speaker 1: the old days, it was different there he is. I
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  Speaker 1: don't know what he's doing. He won't have me near him,
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  Speaker 1: worse kept from me than anyone. The very servants won't
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  Speaker 1: let me know. They try and stop the worst of
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  Speaker 1: the papers, booms things from coming upstairs. I suppose they've
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  Speaker 1: got him in a corner. George, poor old Teddy, poor
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  Speaker 1: old Adam and Eve, we are ficial receivers with flaming
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  Speaker 1: swords to drive us out of our garden. I'd hoped
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  Speaker 1: we'd never have another trek. Well, anyway, it won't be
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  Speaker 1: Crest Hill. But it's hard on Teddy. He must be
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  Speaker 1: in such a mess up there, poor old Chap. I
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  Speaker 1: suppose we can't help him. I suppose we'd only worry him.
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  Speaker 1: Have some more soup, George, while there is some. The
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  Speaker 1: next day was one of those days of strong perception
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  Speaker 1: that stand out clear in one's memory when the common
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  Speaker 1: course of days is blurred. I can recall now the
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  Speaker 1: awakening in the large, familiar room that was always kept
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  Speaker 1: for me, and how I lay staring at its chintz
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  Speaker 1: covered chairs, its spaced fine furniture, its glimpse of the
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  Speaker 1: cedars without, and thought that all this had to end.
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  Speaker 1: I have never been greedy for money, I have never
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  Speaker 1: wanted to be rich, but I felt now an immense
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  Speaker 1: sense of impending deprivation. I read the newspapers after breakfast,
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  Speaker 1: I and my aunt together, and then I walked up
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  Speaker 1: to see what Cothope had done in the matter of
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  Speaker 1: Lord Robert's b Never before had I appreciated so acutely
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  Speaker 1: the ample brightness of the lady Grove gardens, the dignity
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  Speaker 1: and wide piece of all about me. It was one
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  Speaker 1: of those warm mornings in late May that have won
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  Speaker 1: all the glory of summer without losing the gay delicacy
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  Speaker 1: of spring. The shrubbery was bright with labornum and lilac,
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  Speaker 1: the beds swarmed with daffodils and narcissi, and with lilies
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  Speaker 1: of the valley in the shade. I went along the
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  Speaker 1: well kept paths among the rhododendra, and through the private
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  Speaker 1: gate into the woods, where the bluebells and common orchid
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  Speaker 1: were in profusion. Never before had I tasted so completely
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  Speaker 1: the fine sense of privilege and ownership. And all this
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  Speaker 1: has to end, I told myself, all this has to end.
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  Speaker 1: Neither my uncle nor I had made any provision for disaster.
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  Speaker 1: All we had was in the game, and I had
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  Speaker 1: little doubt now of the completeness of our ruin. For
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  Speaker 1: the first time in my life since he had sent
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  Speaker 1: me that wonderful telegram of his, I had to consider
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  Speaker 1: that common anxiety of mankind employment. I had to come
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  Speaker 1: off my magic carpet and walk once more in the world.
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  Speaker 1: And suddenly I found myself at the cross drives where
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  Speaker 1: I had seen Beatrice for the first time after so
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  Speaker 1: many years. It is strange, but so far as I
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  Speaker 1: can recollect, I had not thought of her once since
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  Speaker 1: I had landed at Plymouth. No doubt she had filled
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  Speaker 1: the background of my mind, but I do not remember
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  Speaker 1: one definite, clear thought. I had been intent on my
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  Speaker 1: uncle and the financial collapse. It came like a blow
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  Speaker 1: in the face. Now all that, too, had to end.
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  Speaker 1: Suddenly I was filled with the thought of her, and
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  Speaker 1: a great longing for her. What would she do when
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  Speaker 1: she realized our immense disaster? What would she do? How
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  Speaker 1: would she take it? It filled me with astonishment to
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  Speaker 1: realize how little I could tell should I perhaps presently
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  Speaker 1: happened upon her. I went on through the plantations and
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  Speaker 1: out upon the downs, and thence I saw Cathope with
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  Speaker 1: a new glider of his own design, soaring downwind to
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  Speaker 1: my old familiar grounding place. To judge by its long rhythm,
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  Speaker 1: it was a very good glider, like Cathope's cheek, thought
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  Speaker 1: I to go on with the research. I wonder if
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  Speaker 1: he's keeping notes, But all this will have to stop.
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  Speaker 1: He was sincerely glad to see me. It's been a
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  Speaker 1: rum go he said he had been there without wages
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  Speaker 1: for a month, a man forgotten in the rush of events.
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  Speaker 1: I just stuck on and did what I could with
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  Speaker 1: the stuff. I got a bit of money of my own,
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  Speaker 1: and I said to myself, well, here you are, with
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  Speaker 1: the gear and no one to look after you. You
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  Speaker 1: won't get such a chance again, my boy, not in
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  Speaker 1: all your born days. Why not make what you can
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  Speaker 1: with it? How's Lord Roberts B. Kathope lifted his eyes browse.
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  Speaker 1: I've had to refrain, he said, But he's looking very handsome.
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  Speaker 1: God's I said, I'd like to get him up just
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  Speaker 1: once before we smash. You read the papers, you know
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  Speaker 1: we're going to smash. Oh, I read the papers. It's scandalous, sir,
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  Speaker 1: Such work as ours should depend on things like that.
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  Speaker 1: You and I ought to be under the state, sir,
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  Speaker 1: if you'll excuse me, nothing to excuse, I said, I've
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  Speaker 1: always been a socialist of a sort in theory. Let's
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  Speaker 1: go and have a look at him. How is he deflated?
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  Speaker 1: Just about quarter full? That last oil glaze of yours
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  Speaker 1: holds the gas something beautiful. He's not lost a cubic meter.
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  Speaker 1: A week, Cathope returned to socialism as we went toward
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  Speaker 1: the sheds. Glad to think you're a socialist, sir, he said,
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  Speaker 1: it's the only civilized state. I've been a socialist some
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  Speaker 1: years off the clarion. It's a and scramble this world.
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  Speaker 1: It takes the things we make and invent, and it
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  Speaker 1: plays a silly fool with him. We scientific people. We'll
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  Speaker 1: have to take things over and stop all this financing
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  Speaker 1: and advertisement, and that it's too silly. It's a nuisance.
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  Speaker 1: Look at us, Lord Roberts b even in his partially
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  Speaker 1: deflated condition in his shed, was a fine thing to
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  Speaker 1: stare up at. I stood side by side with Cathope
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  Speaker 1: regarding him, and it was borne in upon me more
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  Speaker 1: acutely than ever that all this had to end. I
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  Speaker 1: had a feeling, just like the feeling of a boy
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  Speaker 1: who wants to do wrong, that I would use up
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  Speaker 1: the stuff while I had it, before the creditors descended.
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  Speaker 1: I had a queer fancy too. I remember that if
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  Speaker 1: I could get into the air, it would advertise my
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  Speaker 1: return to Beatrice. We'll fill her, I said, concisely. It's
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  Speaker 1: all ready, said Cathope, and added, as an afterthought, unless
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  Speaker 1: they cut off the gas. I worked and interested myself
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  Speaker 1: with Cothope all the morning, and for a time forgot
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  Speaker 1: my other troubles. But the thought of Beatrice flooded me
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  Speaker 1: slowly and steadily. It became an unintelligent sick longing to
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  Speaker 1: see her. I felt that I could not wait for
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  Speaker 1: the filling of Lord Robert's b that I must hunt
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  Speaker 1: her up and see her soon. I got everything forward
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  Speaker 1: and lunched with Cothope, and then, with the feeblest excuses,
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  Speaker 1: left him in order to prowl down through the woods
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  Speaker 1: toward Bedley Corner. I became a prey to wretched hesitations
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  Speaker 1: and diffidence. Ought I to go near her now? I
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  Speaker 1: asked myself, reviewing all the social abasements of my early years.
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  Speaker 1: At last, about five I called at the dower house.
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  Speaker 1: I was greeted by their charlotte with a forbidding eye,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: and a cold astonishment both Beatrice and Lady Osprey were
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: out there came into my head some prowling dream of
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  Speaker 1: meeting her. I went along the lane towards walking the
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  Speaker 1: lane down which we had walked five months ago. In
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  Speaker 1: the wind and rain, I mooned for a time in
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  Speaker 1: our former footsteps, then swore and turned back across the fields,
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  Speaker 1: and then conceived a distaste for cathope, and went downward.
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  Speaker 1: At last I found myself looking down on the huge,
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  Speaker 1: abandoned masses of the Crest Hill House. That gave my
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  Speaker 1: mind a twist into a new channel. My uncle came
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  Speaker 1: uppermost again. What a strange, melancholy emptiness of intention, that
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: stricken enterprise seemed in the even evening sunlight, with vulgar
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: magnificence and crudity and utter absurdity. It was as idiotic
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  Speaker 1: as the pyramids. I sat down on the stile, staring
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  Speaker 1: at it as though I had never seen that forest
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  Speaker 1: of scaffold poles, that waste of walls and bricks and
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: plaster and shaped stones, that wilderness of broken soil and
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: wheeling tracks and dumps before it struck me suddenly as
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the compactest image and sample of all that passes for progress,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: of all the advertisement inflated spending, the amous building up
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  Speaker 1: and pulling down the enterprise and promise of my age.
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  Speaker 1: This was our fruit. This was what he had done.
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  Speaker 1: I and my uncle, in the fashion of our time.
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  Speaker 1: We were its leaders and exponents. We were the thing
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  Speaker 1: it most flourishingly produced. For this futility in its end.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: For an epoch of such futility, the solemn school of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: history had unfolded. Great God, I cried, but is this life?
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  Speaker 1: For this? The armies drilled for this, the law was administered,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and the prisons did their duty for this. The millions
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: toiled and perished in suffering, in order that a few
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: of us should build palaces we never finished. Make billiard
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: rooms under ponds, run imbecile walls round, irrational estates, scorch
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: about the world in motor cars, devise flying machines, play golf,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and a dozen such foolish games of ball, crowd into
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  Speaker 1: chattering dinner parties, gambole, and make our lives one vast,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: dismal spectacle of witless waste. So it struck me then,
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  Speaker 1: and for a time I could think of no other interpretation.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: This was life. It came to me like a revelation,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: a revelation at once incredible and indisputable, of the abysmal
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: folly of our being. Three. I was roused from such
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  Speaker 1: thoughts by the sound of footsteps behind me. I turned
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  Speaker 1: half hopeful, So foolish is a lover's imagination, and stopped amazed.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: It was my uncle his face was white, white, as
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I had seen it in my dream. Hallo, I said,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: and stared, Why aren't you in London? It's all up,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: he said, adjudicated No. I stared at him for a moment,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and then got off the stile. We stood swaying, and
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: then came forward with a weak motion of his arms
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: like a man who cannot see distinctly, and caught at
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and leant upon the stile. For a moment we were
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: absolutely still. He made a clumsy gesture towards the great
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: futility below and choked. I discovered that his face was
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: wet with tears, that his wet glasses blinded him. He
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: put up his little fat hand and clawed them off clumsily,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: felt inefficiently for his pocket handkerchief, And then, to my horror,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: as he clung to me, he began to weep aloud,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: this little old world worn swindler. It wasn't just sobbing
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: or shedding tears. It was crying as a child cries.
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  Speaker 1: It was oh terrible, It's cruel, he blubbered. At last,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: they asked me questions. They kept asking me questions. George,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: He sought for utterance and spluttered the bloody bullies. He shouted,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the bloody bullies. He ceased to weep. He became suddenly
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: rapid and explanatory. It's not a fair game, George. They
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: tire you out, and I'm not well. My stomach's all wrong,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and I've been and got a cold. I've always been liable,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: too cold, and this one's on my chest. And then
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: they tell you to speak up. They bait you and
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: bait you and bait you. It's torture, the strain of it.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: You can't remember what you said. You're bound to contradict yourself.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: It's like Russia, George. It isn't fair play, prominent man.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I've been next at dinners with that chap Neil. I've
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: told him stories and he's bitter, sets out to ruin me.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Don't ask a civil question, bellows, He broke down again.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: I've been bellowed at, I've been bullied. I've been treated
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: like a dog. Dirty cads. They are dirty cads. I'd
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: rather be a three carts sharper than a barrister. I'd
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: rather sell cat's meat in the streets. They spring things
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: on me this morning, things I didn't expect. They rushed me.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: I'd got it all in my hands, and then I
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: was jumped by Neil. Neil, I've given city tips to Nil,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I've helped Nil. I couldn't swallow a mouthful nut in
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the lunch hour. I couldn't face it. It's true, George,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I couldn't face it. I said I'd get a bit
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: of air and slipped out and down to the embankment,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: and there I took a boat to Richmond, some I
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: d I took a rowing boat when I got there,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and I rowed about on the river for a bit.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: A lot of chaps and girls there was on the bank,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: laughing at my shirt sleeves and top hat, to say
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: they thought it was a pleasure trip, fat lot of pleasure.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: I rode round for a bit and came in. Then
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I came on here Windsor Way, and there they are
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: in London, doing what they like with me. I don't care,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: but I said, looking down at him, perplexed. It's abscondin.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: They'll have a warrant. I don't understand. I said, it's
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: all up, George, all up and over. And I thought
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I'd live in that place, George and die a lord.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: It's a great place, really, And Imperial if anyone has
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the sense to buy it and finish it that terrace.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I stood, thinking him over look here, I said, what's
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: that about a warrant? Are you sure they'll get a warrant?
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, uncle, but what have you done? Haven't I
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: told you yes, But they won't do very much to
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: you for that. They'll only bring you up for the
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: rest of your examination. He remained silent for a time.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: At last, he spoke, speaking with difficulty. It's worse than that.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I've done something. They're bound to get it out. Practically
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: they have got it out. What writin things down. I'd
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: done something for the first time in his life. I
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: believe he felt and looked ashamed. It filled me with
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: remorse to see him suffer. So we've all done things,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: I said, It's part of the game the world makes
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: us play. If they want to arrest you and you've
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: got no cards in your hand, they mustn't arrest you. No,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: That's partly why I went to Richmond. But I never
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: thought his little bloodshot eye stared at Crest Hill that
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Chap Whittaker write. He said he had his stuff ready.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: I haven't. Now you got it, George, that's the sort
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: of Hole I'm in. End of book, fourth chapter, first
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: parts one to three. Recording by William Tom Cowe