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

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  Speaker 1: Book three, Chapter two, Section four of In the Days
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  Speaker 1: of the Comet. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
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  Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In the Days
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  Speaker 1: of the Comet by H. G. Wells, Book three, Chapter two,
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  Speaker 1: Section four. When presently that illness, that fading weakness that
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  Speaker 1: made an euphanasia for so many of the old people
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  Speaker 1: in the beginning of a new time took hold upon
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  Speaker 1: my mother, there came Anna Reeves to daughter her. After
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  Speaker 1: a new custom. She chose to come. She was already
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  Speaker 1: known to us a little from chance meetings and chance
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  Speaker 1: services she had done my mother in the garden. She
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  Speaker 1: sought to give her help. She seemed then just one
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  Speaker 1: of those plainly good girls the world and its worst
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  Speaker 1: has never failed to produce. Who were, indeed, in the
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  Speaker 1: dark old times, the hidden antiseptic of all our hustling, hating,
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  Speaker 1: faithless lives. They made their secret voiceless worship. They did
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  Speaker 1: their steadfast, uninspired, unthanked, unselfish work, as helpful daughters, as nurses,
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  Speaker 1: as faithful servants, as the humble providences of holmes. She
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  Speaker 1: was almost exactly three years older than I. At first
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  Speaker 1: I found no beauty in her. She was short, but
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  Speaker 1: rather sturdy and ruddy, with red tinged hair and fair
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  Speaker 1: hairy brows and red brown eyes. But her freckled hands,
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  Speaker 1: I found, were full of apt help. Her voice carried
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  Speaker 1: good cheer. At first she was no more than a
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  Speaker 1: blue clad, white aproned benevolence that mood in the shadows
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  Speaker 1: behind the bed on which my old mother lay and
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  Speaker 1: sank restfully to death, she would come forward to anticipate
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  Speaker 1: some little need, to prefer some simple comfort, And always
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  Speaker 1: then my mother smiled on her. In a little while
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  Speaker 1: I discovered the beauty of that helpful poise of her
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  Speaker 1: woman's body. I discovered the grace of untiring goodness, the
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  Speaker 1: sweetness of a tender pity, and the great riches of
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  Speaker 1: her voice, of her few reassuring words and freezes. I
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  Speaker 1: noted and remembered very clearly how once my mother's lean
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  Speaker 1: old hand patted the firm, gold flecked strength of hers
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  Speaker 1: as it went by upon its duties with the coverlet.
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  Speaker 1: She is a good girl to me, said my mother
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  Speaker 1: one day, A good girl, like a daughter should be.
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  Speaker 1: I never had a daughter, really, she mused peacefully for
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  Speaker 1: a space. Your little sister died, She said, I had
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  Speaker 1: never heard of that little sister. November the tenth, said
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  Speaker 1: my mother, twenty nine months and three days. I cried.
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  Speaker 1: I cried, that was before you came, dear, so long ago,
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  Speaker 1: and I can see it now. I was a young
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  Speaker 1: wife then, and your father was very kind. But I
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  Speaker 1: could see its hands, its dear, little quiet hands. Dear.
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  Speaker 1: They say that now now they will not let the
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  Speaker 1: little children die. No, dear mother, I said, we shall
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  Speaker 1: do better now. The club doctor could not come. Your
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  Speaker 1: father went twice. There was some one else, some one
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  Speaker 1: who paid, So your father went on into swothingly, and
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  Speaker 1: that man wouldn't come unless he had his fee. And
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  Speaker 1: your father had changed his clothes to look more respectful,
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  Speaker 1: and he hadn't any money, not even his tram fare home.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed cruel to be waiting there with my baby
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  Speaker 1: thing in pain. And I can't help thinking perhaps we
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  Speaker 1: might have saved her. But it was like that with
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  Speaker 1: the poor, always in the bad old times. Always when
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  Speaker 1: the doctor came at last, he was angry. Why wasn't
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  Speaker 1: I called before? He said, And he took no pains.
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  Speaker 1: He was angry because some one hadn't explained that I
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  Speaker 1: begged him, but it was too late. She said these
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  Speaker 1: things very quietly, with drooping eyelids, like one who describes
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  Speaker 1: a dream. We're going to manage all those things better now,
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  Speaker 1: I said, feeling a strange resentment at this pitiful little story.
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  Speaker 1: Her faded, matter of fact voice was telling me. She talked.
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  Speaker 1: My mother went on. She talked for her age wonderfully. Hippopotamus. Huh,
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  Speaker 1: I said, hippopotamus, dear, quite plainly one day, when her
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  Speaker 1: father was showing her pictures and her little prayers. Now
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  Speaker 1: I lay me down to sleep. I made her little
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  Speaker 1: socks knitted. They was dear, and the heel most difficult.
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  Speaker 1: Her eyes were closed. Now she spoke no longer to me,
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  Speaker 1: but to herself. She whispered other vague things, little sentences,
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  Speaker 1: ghosts of long dead moments. Her words grew less distinct.
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  Speaker 1: Presently she was asteep, and I got up and went
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  Speaker 1: out of the room. But my mind was queerly obsessed
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  Speaker 1: by the thought of that little life that had been
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  Speaker 1: glad and hopeful, only to pass so inexplicably out of
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  Speaker 1: hope again into nonentity. The sister of whom I had
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  Speaker 1: never heard before, And presently I was in a black
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  Speaker 1: rage at all the irrecoverable sorrows of the past, of
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  Speaker 1: that great ocean of avoidable suffering, of which this was
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  Speaker 1: but one luminous and quivering red drop. I walked in
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  Speaker 1: the garden, and the garden was too small for me.
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  Speaker 1: I went out to wander on the moors. The past
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  Speaker 1: is past, I cried, and all the while across the
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  Speaker 1: gulf of five and twenty years, I could hear my
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  Speaker 1: poor mother's heart wrung, weeping for that daughter baby, who
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  Speaker 1: had suffered and died. Indeed, that old spirit of rebellion
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  Speaker 1: has not altogether died in me. For all the transformation
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  Speaker 1: of the new time, I quieted down at last to
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  Speaker 1: a thin and austere comfort in thinking that the whole
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  Speaker 1: is not told to us, that it cannot perhaps be
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  Speaker 1: told to such minds as ours, And anyhow, and what
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  Speaker 1: was far more sustaining, that now we have strength and
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  Speaker 1: courage and this new gift of wise love. Whatever cruel
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  Speaker 1: and sad things marred the past, none of these sorrowful
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  Speaker 1: things that made the very warp and woof of the
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  Speaker 1: old life need now go on happening. We could foresee,
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  Speaker 1: we could prevent and save. The past is past, I said,
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  Speaker 1: between sighing and resolve, as I came into view again
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  Speaker 1: on my homeward way of a hundred sunset lit windows
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  Speaker 1: of the old Lochester House. Those sorrows are sorrows no more.
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  Speaker 1: But I could not altogether cheat that common sadness of
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  Speaker 1: the new time, that memory and insoluble riddle of the
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  Speaker 1: countless lives that had stumbled and failed in pain and
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  Speaker 1: darkness before our air grew clear. End of Book three,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter two, Section four