Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / In the Days of the Comet Book Second Chapter Second Section 3-4

Transcript

In the Days of the Comet Book Second Chapter Second Section 3-4 · The H. G. Wells Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Book two, Chapter two, sections three and four of In
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells, Book two,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Chapter two, Sections three and four. Picture to yourself what
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: happened between the printing and composing of the copy of
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: the new paper that lies before me? Now? It was
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the first newspaper that was printed upon Earth after the
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Great Change. It was pocket worn and browned, made of
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: a paper no man ever intended for preservation. I found
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: it on the arbor table in the inn garden while
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I was waiting for Nettie, and all before that last
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: conversation of which I have presently to tell. As I
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: look at it, all that scene comes back to me.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: And Neddie stands in her white raiment against the blue
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: green background of sunlit garden, scrutinizing my face. As I read.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: It is so frayed that the sheet cracks along the
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: folds and comes to pieces in my hands. It lies
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: upon my desk, a dead sylvan air of the dead
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: ages of the world of the ancient passions of my heart.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I know we discussed its news, but for the life
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: of me, I cannot recall what we said. Only I
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: remember that Neddie said very little, and that for all
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: for a time read it over my shoulder, and I
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: did not like him to read over my shoulder. The
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: document before me must have helped us through the first
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: awkwardness of that meeting. But of all that we said
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and did then I must tell in a later chapter.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: It is easy to see the new paper had been
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: set up over night, and then large pieces of the
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: stereo plates replaced subsequently. I do not know enough of
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: the old methods of printing to know precisely what happened.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: The thing gives one an impression of large pieces of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: type having been cut away and replaced by fresh blocks.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: There is something very rough and ready about it all,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: and the new portions print darker and more smudgily than
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: the old, except toward the left, where they have missed
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: ink and indented. A friend of mine, who knows something
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of the old typography, has suggested to me that the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: machinery actually in use for the new paper was damaged
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: that night, and that on the morning of the change
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Banghurst borrowed a neighboring office, perhaps in financial dependence upon him,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: to print in the outer pages belonged entirely to the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: old period. The only parts of a paper that had
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: undergone alteration are the two middle leaves. Here we found
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: set forth in a curious little four column oblong of print.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: What has happened this cut across a column with scare
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: headings beginning great naval battle now in progress, the fate
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: of two empires in the balance reported loss of two more.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: These things one gathered were beneath Notice now probably it
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: was guesswork and fabricated news. In the first instance, it
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: is curious to piece together the worn and frayed fragments
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and reread this discolored first intelligence of the new epic.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: The simple, clear statements in the replaced portion of the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: paper impressed me at the time I remember as bald
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: and strange in that framework of shouting bad English. Now
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: they seem like the voice of a sane man amidst
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the vast faded violence. But they witness to the prompt
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: recovery of London from the gas, the new swift energy
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: of rebound in that huge population. I am surprised now
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: as I reread to note how much research, experiment and
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: induction must have been accomplished in the day that elapsed
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: before the paper was printed. But that is by the way,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: as I sit and muse over this partly carbonized sheet,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and that same curious remote vision comes again to me
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: that quickened in my mind that morning, a vision of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: those newspaper offices I have already described to you. Going
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: through the crisis. The catalytic wave must have caught the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: place in full swing in its nocturnal high fever, indeed
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: in a quite exceptional state of fever, what with the
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: comet and the war, and more particularly with the war.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Very probably the change into the office imperceptibly amidst the
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: noise and shouting and the glare of electric light that
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: made the night atmosphere in that place, even the green
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: flashes may have passed unobserved. There the preliminary descending trails
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: of green vapor seemed no more than unseasonable drifting wisps
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: of London fog. In those days, London, even in summer,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: was not safe against dark fogs. And then at the
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: last the change poured in and overtook them. If there
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: was any warning at all. For them, it must have
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: been a sudden, universal tumult in the street, and that
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: a much more universal quiet. They could have had no
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: other intimation. There was no time to stop the presses
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: before the main development of green vapor had overwhelmed every one.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: It must have folded about them, tumbled them to the earth, masked,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and still them. My imagination as always curiously stirred by
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: the thought of that, because I suppose it's the first
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: picture I succeeded in making for myself of what happened
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: in the towns. It has never quite lost its strangeness
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: for me that when the change came, machinery went on working.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I don't precisely know why that should have seemed so
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: strange to me, but it did, and still, to a
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: certain extent does one is so customed. I suppose to
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: regard machinery as an extension of human personality at the
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: extent of its autonomy. The change displayed came as a
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: shock to me. The electric lights, for example, hazy green
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: hayload nebulas must have gone on burning at least for
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: a time amidst the thickening darkness. The huge presses must
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: have roared on, printing, folding, throwing aside copy after copy
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: of that fabricated battle report with its quarter column of
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: scare headlines, And all the place must have still quivered
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: and throbbed with the familiar roar of the engines. And
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: this though no men ruled there at all any more.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Here and there, beneath that thickening fog were crumpled or
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: outstretched forms of men lay still a wonderful thing. That
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: must have seemed had any man had, by chance the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: power of resistance to the vapor, and could he have
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: walked amidst it? And soon the machines must have exhausted
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: their feet of ink and paper, and thumped and banged
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and rattled emptily amidst the general quiet. And then I
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: suppose the furnaces failed for want of stoking. The steam
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: pressure fell in the pistons, the machinery slackened, the lights
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: burnt dim and came and went with the ebb of
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: energy from the power station. Who can tell precisely the
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: sequence of these things? Now? And then you know, amidst
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the weakening and terminating noises of men, the green vapor
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: cleared and vanished in an hour. Indeed, it had gone,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and it maybe a breeze, stirred and blew and went
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: about the earth. The noises of life were all dying away,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: but some there were that abated nothing, that sounded triumphantly
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: amidst the universal ebb to a heedless world. The church
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: towers tolled out two and then three. Clocks ticked and
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: chimed everywhere about the earth to deafened ears. And then
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: came the first flush of morning, the first rustlings of
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the revival. Perhaps in that office, the filaments of the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: lamps were still glowing, the machinery was still pulsing weakly.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: When the crumpled, booted heaps of cloth became men again
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: and began to stir and stare. The chapel of the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: printers was, no doubt shocked to find itself asleep amidst
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: that dazzling dorn. The new paper woke to wonder, stood
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: up and blinked at its amazing self. The clocks of
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the city churches, one pursuing another, struck four. The staffs,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: crumpled and disheveled, but with a strange refreshment in their veins,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: stood about the damaged machinery, marveling and questioning. The editor
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: read as over night headlines with incredulous laughter. There was
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: much involuntary laughter that morning outside the mailman patted the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: necks and rubbed the knees of their awakening horses. Then,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: you know, slowly and with much conversation and doubt, they
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: set about to produce the paper. Imagine those bemused, perplexed people,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: carried on by the inertia of their old occupations, and
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: doing their best with an enterprise that had suddenly become
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: altogether extraordinary and irrational. They worked amidst questionings, and yet lightheartedly.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: At every stage. There must have been interruptions for discussion.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: The paper only got down to Menton five days late.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Section four. Then, let me give you a vivid little
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: impression I received of a certain prosaic person, a grocer
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: named Wiggins, and how he passed through the change. I
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: heard this man's story in the post office at Menton,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: when in the afternoon of the first day I bethought
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: me to telegraph to my mother. The place was also
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: a grocer's shop, and I found him and the proprietor
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: talking as I went in. They were trade competitors, and
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Wiggins had just come across the street to break the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: hostile silence of a score of years. The sparkle of
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the change was in their eyes, their slightly flushed cheeks,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: their more elastic gestures spoke of new physical influences that
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: had invaded their beings. It did us no good, all
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: our hatred, mister Wiggins said to me, explaining the emotion
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: of their encounter. It did our customer's no good. I've
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: come to tell him that you bear that in mine,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: young man, if ever you come to have a shop
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: of your own. It was sort of stupid bitterness possessed us,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: and I can't make out we didn't see it before
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: in that light, not so much downright wickedness. It wasn't
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: as stupidity, a stupid jealousy. Think of it, two human
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: beings within a stone's throw who have not spoken for
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: twenty years, heartening our hearts against each other. I can't
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: think how we came to such a state, mister Wiggans said,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the other, packing tea into pound packets out of mere
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: habit As he spoke, it was wicked pride and obstinacy.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: We knew it was foolish all the time I stood
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: affixing the adhesive stamp to my telegram only the other morning,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: he went on to me, I was cutting French eggs,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: selling at a loss to do it. He'd marked down
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: with a great staring ticket to ninepence a dozen. I
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: saw it as I went past. Here's my answer, He
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: indicated a ticket eightpence a dozen, same as old elsewhere,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: for ninepence a whole penny down, bang off, just a
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: touch above cost if that, And even then he leant
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: over the counter to say, impressively, not the same eggs. Now,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: what people in their senses would do things like that,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: said mister Wiggins. I sent my telegram. The proprietor despatched
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: it for me, and while he did so, I fell
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: exchanging experiences with mister Wiggins. He knew no more than
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I did than the nature of the change that had
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: come over things. He had been alarmed by the green flashes,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: he said, so much so that, after watching for a
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: time from behind his bedroom window blind, he had got
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: up and hastily dressed, and made his family get up also,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: so that they might be ready for the end. He
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: made them put on their Sunday clothes. They all went
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: out into the garden together, their minds divided between admiration
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: at the gloriousness of the spectacle and the great and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: growing awe. They were dissenters and very religious people, out
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: of business hours, and it seemed to them in those
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: last magnificent moments that after all science must be wrong,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and the fanatics right with the green vapors. Came conviction,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: and they prepared to meet their God. This man, you
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: must understand, was a common looking man, in his shirt
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: sleeves and with an apron about his paunch, and he
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: told his story in an Anglian accent that sounded mean
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: and clipped to my Staffordshire ears. He told his story
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: without a thought of pride, and as it were, incidentally,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: and yet he gave me a vision of something heroic.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: These people did not run hither and thither as many
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: people did. These four simple common people stood beyond their
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: back door, in their garden pathway between the gooseberry bushes,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: with the terrors of their God and his judgments closing
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: in upon them swiftly and wonderfully. And there they began
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: to sing. There they stood father and mother and two daughters,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: chanting out stoutly, but no doubt a little flatly, after
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: the manner of their kind in Zion's Hope, abiding my
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: soul in triumph sings, until one by one they fell
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and lay still. The postmaster had heard them in the
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: gathering darkness, in Zion's Hope Abiding. It was the most
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: extraordinary thing in the world to hear this flushed and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: happy eyed man telling that story of his recent death.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: It did not seem at all possible to have happened
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: in the last twelve hours. It was minute and remote,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: these people who went singing through the darkling to their God.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: It was like a scene shown to me, very small
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and very distinctly painted in a locket. But that effect
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: was not confined to this particular thing. A vast number
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of things that had happened before the coming of the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: comet had undergone the same transfiguring reduction. Other people, too,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I have learned since, had the same illusion a sense
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: of enlargement. It seems to me even now that the
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: little dark creature who had stormed across England in pursuit
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: of Nettie and her lover must have been about an
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: inch high. That all that previous life of ours had
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: been an ill lit marionette show acted in the twilight.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: In the book Number two, Chapter two, Sections three and four,