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

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

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Speaker 1: Book, third Chapter, fourth, 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 Tomko Tono Bungay
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Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells, Book, third Chapter, fourth, Parts one
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Speaker 1: to three, Chapter the fourth How I stole the heaps
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Speaker 1: of quap from Mordett Island. One. We got to make
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Speaker 1: a fight for it, said my uncle. We got to
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Speaker 1: face the music. I remember that even at the sight
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Speaker 1: of him, I had a sense of impending calamity. He
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Speaker 1: sat under the electric light, with the shadow of his
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Speaker 1: hair making bars down his face. He looked shrunken and
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Speaker 1: as though his skin had suddenly got loose and yellow.
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Speaker 1: The decks of the room seem to have lost freshness,
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Speaker 1: and outside the blinds were up. There was not so
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Speaker 1: much fog as a dune darkness. One saw the dingy
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Speaker 1: outlines of the chimneys opposite quite distinctly, and then a
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Speaker 1: sky of such brown as only London can display. I
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Speaker 1: saw a placard, I said, more ponderrevity. That's boom, he said, boom,
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Speaker 1: and his damned newspapers. He's trying to fight me down.
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Speaker 1: Ever since I offered to buy the Daily Decorator, he's
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Speaker 1: been at me and he thinks consolidating. Do ut cut
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Speaker 1: down the ads? He wants everything. Damn him, he's got
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Speaker 1: no sense of dealing. I'd like to bash his face. Well,
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Speaker 1: I said, what's to be done? Keep going, said my uncle.
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Speaker 1: I'll smash Boom. Yet, he said, with sudden savagery, nothing else.
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Speaker 1: I asked, We got to keep going. There's a scare on.
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Speaker 1: Did you notice the rooms? Half the people out there
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Speaker 1: this morning are reporters, And if I talk, they touch
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Speaker 1: it up. They didn't use to touch things up. Now
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Speaker 1: they put in character touches, insulting. You don't know what
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Speaker 1: journalism's coming to. It's all Boom's doing. He cursed Lord
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Speaker 1: Boom with considerable imaginative vigor. Well said I what can
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Speaker 1: he do? Shove us up against time, George, make money
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Speaker 1: tight for us. He's been handling a lot of money,
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Speaker 1: and he tightens us up. We're sound, Oh we're sound, George,
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Speaker 1: trust me for that. But all the same, there's such
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Speaker 1: a lot of imagination in these things. We're sound enough,
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Speaker 1: that's not it he blew. Damn boom, he said, and
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Speaker 1: his eyes over his glasses met mine defiantly. We can't.
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Speaker 1: I suppose run close hauled for a bit. Stop expenditure
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Speaker 1: where well? Crest Hill? What? He shouted me, stop Crest
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Speaker 1: Hill for boom. He waved a fist as if to
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Speaker 1: hit his ink pot, and controlled himself with difficulty. He
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Speaker 1: spoke at last, in reasonable voice. If I did, he said,
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Speaker 1: he'd kick up a fuss. It's no good, even if
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Speaker 1: I wanted to. Everybody's watching the place. If I was
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Speaker 1: to stop building, we'd be down in a week. He
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Speaker 1: had an idea. I wish I could do something to
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Speaker 1: start a strike or something. No such luck. Treat those
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Speaker 1: workmen a sight too well. No sink or swim. Crest
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Speaker 1: Hill goes on until we're under water. I began to
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Speaker 1: ask questions and irritated him instantly. Oh dash these explanations, George,
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Speaker 1: he cried, You only make things look rottener than they are.
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Speaker 1: It's your way. It isn't a case of figures. We're
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Speaker 1: all right. There's only one thing we got to do. Yes,
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Speaker 1: show value, George. That's where this quap comes in. That's
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Speaker 1: why I fell in so readily with what you brought
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Speaker 1: to me week before last. Here we are, we got
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Speaker 1: our option on the perfect filament, and all we wants canadium.
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Speaker 1: Nobody knows there's more canadium in the world than will
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Speaker 1: go on the edge of a sixpence except me and you.
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Speaker 1: Nobody has an id the perfect filaments more than just
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Speaker 1: a bit of theorizing fifty tons of quap and we'd
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Speaker 1: turn that bit of theorizing into something. We'd make the
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Speaker 1: lamp trade sit on its tail and howl. We'd put
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Speaker 1: EdiSwan and all of em into a parcel without last
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Speaker 1: year's trousers and a hat and swap em off for
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Speaker 1: a pot of geraniums. See, we do it through business organizations.
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Speaker 1: And there you are see Capern's padded filament, the ideal
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Speaker 1: and the real. George, we'll do it. We'll it off
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Speaker 1: and then we'll give such a facer to Boom. He'll
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Speaker 1: think for fifty years he's laying up for our London
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Speaker 1: and African meeting. Let him he can turn the whole
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Speaker 1: paper on to us. He says, the business organization's shares
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Speaker 1: aren't worth fifty two, and we quote him at eighty four. Well,
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Speaker 1: here we are getting ready for him loading our gun.
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Speaker 1: His pose was triumphant. Yes, I said, that's all right,
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Speaker 1: But I can't help thinking where should we be if
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Speaker 1: we hadn't just by accident got Catherine's perfect filament. Because
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Speaker 1: you know it was an accident my buying up that
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Speaker 1: he crumpled up his nose into an expression of impatient
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Speaker 1: distaste at my unreasonableness. And after all the meetings in June,
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Speaker 1: and you haven't begun to get the clop. After all,
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Speaker 1: we've still got to load our gun. They start on Tuesday.
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Speaker 1: Had they got the brig. They've got a brig, Gordon Nasmyth.
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Speaker 1: I doubted safe as a bank. He said. More I
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Speaker 1: see of that man, the more I like him. All
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Speaker 1: I wish is we'd get a steamer instead of a
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Speaker 1: sailing ship. And I went on, you seem to overlook
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Speaker 1: what used to weigh with us a bit, this Canadian
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Speaker 1: side of the business, and the capern chance has rushed
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Speaker 1: you off your legs. After all, it's stealing and in
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Speaker 1: its way, an international outrage. They've got two gunboats on
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Speaker 1: the coast. I jumped up and went and stared out
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Speaker 1: at the fog, and by jove, it's about our only chance,
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Speaker 1: I didn't dream. I turned on him. I've been up
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Speaker 1: in the air, I said, Heaven knows where I haven't been,
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Speaker 1: and here's our only chance. And you give it to
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Speaker 1: that adventurous lunatic to play in his own way in
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Speaker 1: a brig. Well, you had a voice. I wish i'd
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Speaker 1: been in this before. We'll not to have run out
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Speaker 1: a steamer to Lagos or one of those west coast
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Speaker 1: places had done it from there. Fancy a brig in
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Speaker 1: the channel at this time of year, if it blows southwest.
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Speaker 1: I'd to say, you'd have shoved it. George. Still, you know, George,
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Speaker 1: I believe in him, Yes, I said, yes, I believe
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Speaker 1: in him too, in a way. Still, we took up
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Speaker 1: a telegram that was lying on his desk and opened it.
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Speaker 1: His face became a livid yellow. He put the flimsy
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Speaker 1: paper down with a slow, reluctant movement, and took off
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Speaker 1: his glasses. George, he said, the luxe against us? What?
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Speaker 1: He grimaced with his mouth in the queerest way at
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Speaker 1: the telegram that I took it up and read, motor smashed, compound,
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Speaker 1: fracture of the leg Gordon nasmyth, What price moored it
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Speaker 1: now for a moment, neither of us spoke. That's all right,
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Speaker 1: I said. At last, EH said my uncle. I'm going.
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Speaker 1: I'll get that quap or bust. Two. I had a
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Speaker 1: ridiculous persuasion that I was saving the situation. I'm going,
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Speaker 1: I said, quite consciously and dramatically. I saw the whole affair.
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Speaker 1: How shall I put it in American colors? I sat
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Speaker 1: down beside him. Give me all the data you've got,
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Speaker 1: I said, And I'll pull this thing off. But nobody
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Speaker 1: knows exactly where Nasmuth does. And he'll tell me. He's
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Speaker 1: been very close, said my uncle, and regarded me. He'll
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Speaker 1: tell me all right. Now he's smashed, he thought. I
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Speaker 1: believe he will. George, he said, if you pull this
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Speaker 1: thing off once or twice before you've stepped in with
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Speaker 1: that sort of whush of yours. He left the sentence unfinished.
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Speaker 1: Give me that note book, I said, and tell me
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Speaker 1: all you know, where's the ship, where's Pollock? And where's
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Speaker 1: that telegram from? If that coaps to be got, I'll
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Speaker 1: get it or bust. If you'll hold on here until
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Speaker 1: I get back with it. And so it was. I
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Speaker 1: jumped into the wildest adventure of my life. I requisitioned
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Speaker 1: my uncle's best car. Forthwith I went down that night
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Speaker 1: to the place of despatch named on Nasma's telegram Bampton
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Speaker 1: s o Oxen routed him out with a little trouble
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Speaker 1: from that center, made things right with him and got
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Speaker 1: his explicit directions, and I was inspecting the maud Mary
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Speaker 1: with young Pollock, his cousin and aide, the following afternoon.
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Speaker 1: She was rather a shock to me, and not at
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Speaker 1: all in my style, a beast of a brig inured
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Speaker 1: to the potato trade, and she reeked from end to
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Speaker 1: end with a faint, subtle smell of raw potatoes, so
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Speaker 1: that it prevailed even over the temporary smell of new paint.
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Speaker 1: She it was a beast of a brig, all hold
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Speaker 1: and dirty framework, and they had ballast at her with
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Speaker 1: old iron and old rails and iron sleepers, and got
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Speaker 1: a miscellaneous lot of spades and iron wheelbarrows against the
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Speaker 1: loading of the coop. I thought her over with Pollock,
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Speaker 1: one of those tall blond young men who smoke pipes
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Speaker 1: and don't help much, and then by myself, and as
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Speaker 1: a result, I did my best to sweep gravescand clean
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Speaker 1: of wheeling planks and got in as much cord and
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Speaker 1: small rope as I could for lashing. I had an
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Speaker 1: idea we might need to run up a jetty in
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Speaker 1: addition to much ballast. She held remotely hidden in a
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Speaker 1: sort of inadvertent way, a certain number of ambiguous cases,
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Speaker 1: which I didn't examine, but which I gathered were a
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Speaker 1: provision against the need of a trade. The captain was
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Speaker 1: a most extraordinary creature, under the impression we were after
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Speaker 1: copper Ore. He was a Romanian jew with twitch excitable features,
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Speaker 1: who had made his way to a certificate after some
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Speaker 1: preliminary naval experiences in the Black Sea. The mate was
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Speaker 1: an Essex man of impenetrable reserve. The crew were astoundingly
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Speaker 1: ill clad and destitute and dirty, most of them youths
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Speaker 1: unwashed out of colliers. One the cook was a Mulatto,
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Speaker 1: and one the best built fellow of them all was
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Speaker 1: a Breton. There was some subterfuge about our position on board.
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Speaker 1: I forget the particulars now. I was called the supercargo,
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Speaker 1: and Pollock was the steward. This added to the piradical
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Speaker 1: flavor that insufficient funds and gordon Nasmi's original genius had
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Speaker 1: already given the enterprise. Those two days of bustle at Gravesend,
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Speaker 1: under dingy skies in narrow, dirty streets were a new
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Speaker 1: experience for me. It is like nothing else in my life.
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Speaker 1: I realized that I was a modern and a civilized man.
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Speaker 1: I found the food filthy and the coffee horrible. The
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Speaker 1: whole town stank in my nostrils. The landlord of the
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Speaker 1: good intent on the quay had a stand up quarrel
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Speaker 1: with us before I could get even a hot bath.
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Speaker 1: And the bedroom I slept in was infested by a
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Speaker 1: quantity of exotic but voracious flat parasites called locally bugs
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Speaker 1: in the walls, in the woodwork everywhere. I fought them
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Speaker 1: with insect powder and found them comatose in the morning.
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Speaker 1: I was dipping down into the dingy underworld of the
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Speaker 1: contemporary state, and I liked it no better than I
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Speaker 1: did my first dip into it, when I stayed with
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Speaker 1: my uncle Nicodemus Frapp at the bakery at Chatham, where
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Speaker 1: by the bye we ought to deal with cockroaches of
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Speaker 1: a smaller, darker variety, and also with bugs of sorts.
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Speaker 1: Let me confess that through all this time before we started,
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Speaker 1: I was immensely self conscious, and that Beatrice played the
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Speaker 1: part of all audience in my imagination. Throughout I was,
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Speaker 1: as I say, saving the situation, and I was acutely
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Speaker 1: aware of that. The evening before we sailed, instead of
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Speaker 1: revising our medicine chest as I had intended, I took
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Speaker 1: the car and ran across country to Lady Grove to
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Speaker 1: tell my aunt of the journey. I was making dress
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Speaker 1: and astonish Lady Osprey. By an after dinner call. The
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Speaker 1: two ladies were at home and alone beside a big
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Speaker 1: fire that seemed wonderfully cheerful after the winter night. I
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Speaker 1: remember the effect of the little parlor in which they
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Speaker 1: sat as very bright and domestic. Lady Osprey, in a
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Speaker 1: costume of mauve and lace, sat on a chintz sofa
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Speaker 1: and played an elaborately spread out patience by the light
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Speaker 1: of a tall shaded lamp. Beatrice, in a whiteness that
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Speaker 1: showed her throat, smoked a cigarette in an arm chair
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Speaker 1: and read with a lamp at her elbow. The room
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Speaker 1: was white paneled and chintz curtained. About those two bright
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Speaker 1: centers of light were warm, dark shadow, in which a
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Speaker 1: circular mirror shone like a pool of brown water. I
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Speaker 1: carried off my raid by behaving like a slave of etiquette.
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Speaker 1: There were moments when I think I really made Lady
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Speaker 1: Osprey believe that my call was an unavoidable necessity, that
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Speaker 1: it would have been negligent of me not to call,
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Speaker 1: just how and when I did. But at the best,
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Speaker 1: those were transitory moments. They received me with disciplined amazement.
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Speaker 1: Lady Osprey was interested in my face and scrutinized the scar.
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Speaker 1: Beatrice stood behind her solicitude. Our eyes met, and in
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Speaker 1: hers I could see startled interrogations. I'm going, I said,
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Speaker 1: to the west coast of Africa. They asked questions, but
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Speaker 1: it suited my mood to be vague. We've interests there.
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Speaker 1: It is urgent I should go. I don't know when
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Speaker 1: I may return. After that, I perceived, Beatrice surveyed me steady.
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Speaker 1: The conversation was rather difficult. I embarked upon lengthy thanks
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Speaker 1: for their kindness to me after my accident. I tried
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Speaker 1: to understand Lady Osprey's game of patience, but it didn't
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Speaker 1: appear that Lady Osprey was anxious for me to understand
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Speaker 1: her patience. I came to the verge of taking my leave.
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Speaker 1: You needn't go yet, said Beatrice abruptly. She walked across
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Speaker 1: to the piano, took a pile of music from the
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Speaker 1: cabinet near surveyed at Lady Osprey's back, and with a
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Speaker 1: gesture to me, dropped it all deliberately on to the floor.
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Speaker 1: Must talk, she said, kneeling close to me as I
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Speaker 1: helped her to pick it up. Turn my pages at
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Speaker 1: the piano. I can't read music. Turn my pages. Presently
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Speaker 1: we were at the piano and Beatrice was playing with
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Speaker 1: noisy inaccuracy. She glanced over her shoulder and Lady Osprey
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Speaker 1: had resumed her patience. The old lady was very pink
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Speaker 1: and appeared to be absorbed in some attempt to cheat
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Speaker 1: herself without our observing. It isn't West Africa a vile climate?
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Speaker 1: Are you going to live there? Why are you going?
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Speaker 1: Beatrice asked these questions in a low voice and gave
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Speaker 1: me no chance to answer. Then, taking a rhythm from
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Speaker 1: the music before her, she said, at the back of
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Speaker 1: the house is a garden, a door in the wall
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Speaker 1: on the lane. Understand. I turned over the pages without
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Speaker 1: any effect on her playing. When I asked, she dealt
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Speaker 1: in chords. I wish I could play this, she said midnight.
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Speaker 1: She gave her attention to the music for a time.
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Speaker 1: You may have to wait. I'll wait. She brought her
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Speaker 1: playing to an end by, as schoolboys say, stashing it up.
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Speaker 1: I can't play tonight, she said, standing up and meeting
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Speaker 1: my eyes. I wanted to give you a parting volunteer.
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Speaker 1: Was that Wagner Beatrice asked Lady Osprey, looking up from
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Speaker 1: her cards. It sounded very confused. I took my leave.
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Speaker 1: I had a curious twinge of conscience as I parted
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Speaker 1: from Lady Osprey. Either a first intimation of middle age
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Speaker 1: or my inexperience in romantic affairs was to blame, but
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Speaker 1: I felt a very distinct objection to the prospect of
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Speaker 1: invading this good lady's premises. From the garden door, I
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Speaker 1: motored up to the pavilion, found Cathope reading in bed,
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Speaker 1: told him for the first time of West Africa. Spent
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Speaker 1: an hour with him in settling all the outstanding details
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Speaker 1: of Lord Robert's b and left that in his hands
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Speaker 1: to finish. Against my return, I sent the motor back
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Speaker 1: to Lady grove, and still wearing my fur coat for
17:49
Speaker 1: the January night was damp and bitterly cold. Walked to
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Speaker 1: Bedley Corner. I found the lane to the back of
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Speaker 1: the dour house without any difficulty, and was at the
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Speaker 1: door in the wall with ten minutes to spare. I
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Speaker 1: lit a cigar and fell to walking up and down.
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Speaker 1: This queer flavor of intrigue, this nocturnal garden door business,
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Speaker 1: had taken me by surprise and changed my mental attitudes.
18:13
Speaker 1: I was startled out of my egotistical pose and thinking
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Speaker 1: intently of Beatrice, of that elfin quality in her that
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Speaker 1: always pleased me, that always took me by surprise, that
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Speaker 1: it made her, for example, to instantly conceive this meeting.
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Speaker 1: She came within a minute of midnight. The door opened softly,
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Speaker 1: and she appeared, a short gray figure in a motor
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Speaker 1: coat of sheepskin, bareheaded to the cold drizzle. She flitted
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Speaker 1: up to me, and her eyes were shadows in her
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Speaker 1: dusky face. Why are you going to West Africa? She asked?
18:50
Speaker 1: At once business crisis, I have to go. You're not going,
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Speaker 1: You're coming back three or four months, I said, at most,
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Speaker 1: then it's nothing to do with me. Nothing I said,
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Speaker 1: why should it have? Oh, that's all right. One never
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Speaker 1: knows what people think or what people fancy. She took
19:13
Speaker 1: me by the arm. Let's go for a walk, she said.
19:17
Speaker 1: I looked about me at darkness and rain. That's all right,
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Speaker 1: she laughed. We can go along the lane and into
19:24
Speaker 1: the old walking road. Do you mind? Of course you don't,
19:28
Speaker 1: my head. It doesn't matter. One never meets anybody. How
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Speaker 1: do you know I've wandered like this before? Of course?
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Speaker 1: Did you think? She nodded her head back at her home.
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Speaker 1: That's all No, By jove, I cried, it's manifest, it isn't.
19:47
Speaker 1: She took my arm and turned me down the lane.
19:50
Speaker 1: Night's my time, she said. By my side. There's a
19:53
Speaker 1: touch of the werewolf in my blood. One never knows
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Speaker 1: in these old families, I've wondered often. Here we are, anyhow,
20:01
Speaker 1: alone in the world, just darkness and cold and a
20:05
Speaker 1: sky of clouds and wet, and we together. I like
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Speaker 1: the wet on my face and hair. Don't you When
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Speaker 1: do you sail? I told her tomorrow? Oh, well, there's
20:20
Speaker 1: no tomorrow now, you and I. She stopped and confronted me.
20:25
Speaker 1: You don't say a word except to answer. No, I said,
20:30
Speaker 1: last time, you did all the talking like a fool.
20:34
Speaker 1: Now we looked at each other's two dim faces. You're
20:38
Speaker 1: glad to be here. I'm glad. I'm beginning to be
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Speaker 1: It's more than glad. She put her hands on my
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Speaker 1: shoulders and drew me down to kiss her. Ah, she said,
20:50
Speaker 1: And for a moment or so we just clung to
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Speaker 1: one another, that's all, she said, releasing herself. What bundles
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Speaker 1: of clothes we are tonight? I felt we should kiss
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Speaker 1: some day again always. The last time was ages ago,
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Speaker 1: among the fern stalks, among the bracken, you remember, and
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Speaker 1: your lips were cold. We're mine, the same lips, after
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Speaker 1: so long, after so much. And now let's trudge through
21:19
Speaker 1: this blotted out world together for a time. Yes, let
21:23
Speaker 1: me take your arm, just trudge see, hold tight to
21:27
Speaker 1: me because I know the way. And don't talk. Don't
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Speaker 1: talk unless you want to talk. Let me tell you
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Speaker 1: things you see, dear, the whole world is blotted out.
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Speaker 1: It's dead and gone, and we're in this place, this dark,
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Speaker 1: wild place. We're dead or all the world is dead. No,
21:49
Speaker 1: we're dead. No one can see us. We're shadows. We've
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Speaker 1: got out of our positions, out of our bodies, and together.
21:58
Speaker 1: That's the good thing of it together. But that's why
22:02
Speaker 1: the world can't see us, and why we hardly see
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Speaker 1: the world. Sh Is it all right? It's all right,
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Speaker 1: I said. We stumbled along for a time in a
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Speaker 1: close silence. We passed a dim lit rain veiled window.
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Speaker 1: The silly world, she said, The silly world. It eats
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Speaker 1: and sleeps. If the wet didn't patter so from the trees,
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Speaker 1: we'd hear it snoring. It's dreaming such stupid things, stupid judgments.
22:31
Speaker 1: It doesn't know we are passing. We two, free of it,
22:35
Speaker 1: clear of it, you and I. We pressed against each other, reassuringly.
22:41
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're dead, she whispered, I'm glad we're dead.
22:45
Speaker 1: I was tired of it, dear. I was so tired
22:48
Speaker 1: of it, dear, and so entangled. She stopped abruptly. We
22:53
Speaker 1: splashed through a string of puddles. I began to remember
22:56
Speaker 1: things I had meant to say. Look here, I cried.
23:00
Speaker 1: I want to help you beyond measure. You are entangled.
23:03
Speaker 1: What is the trouble? I asked you to marry me.
23:06
Speaker 1: You said you would, But there's something My thoughts sounded
23:11
Speaker 1: clumsy as I said them. Is it something about my position?
23:16
Speaker 1: Or is it something perhaps about some other man? There
23:20
Speaker 1: was an immense, assenting silence. You've puzzled me so at first,
23:26
Speaker 1: I mean quite early, I thought you meant to make
23:29
Speaker 1: me marry you. I did. And then to night, she said,
23:35
Speaker 1: after a long pause, I can't explain. No, I can't explain.
23:41
Speaker 1: I love you, but explanations to night, my dear. Here
23:46
Speaker 1: we are in the world alone, and the world doesn't matter.
23:51
Speaker 1: Nothing matters here. I am in the cold with you
23:55
Speaker 1: and my bed away there, deserted. I tell you, I
23:59
Speaker 1: will tell you in things enable me to tell you,
24:01
Speaker 1: and soon enough they will. But tonight I won't. I won't.
24:08
Speaker 1: She left my side and went in front of me.
24:10
Speaker 1: She turned upon me. Look here, she said, I insist
24:14
Speaker 1: upon your being dead. Do you understand I'm not joking.
24:18
Speaker 1: Tonight you and I are out of life. It's our
24:22
Speaker 1: time together. There may be other times, but this we
24:26
Speaker 1: won't spoil. We're in hades, if you like, where there's
24:30
Speaker 1: nothing to hide and nothing to tell, no bodies, even
24:35
Speaker 1: no bothers. We loved each other down there and were
24:39
Speaker 1: kept apart. But now it doesn't matter. It's over. If
24:43
Speaker 1: you won't agree to that, I will go home, I wanted.
24:48
Speaker 1: I began. I know, oh, my dear, if you'd only understand,
24:53
Speaker 1: I understand, if you'd only not care and love me tonight,
24:59
Speaker 1: I do love, I said, Then love me, she answered,
25:04
Speaker 1: and leave all the things that bother you love me
25:07
Speaker 1: here I am. But no, she said, Well have your way.
25:14
Speaker 1: So she carried her point, and we wandered into the
25:17
Speaker 1: night together, and Beatrice talked to me of love. I'd
25:21
Speaker 1: never heard a woman before, in all my life who
25:23
Speaker 1: could talk of love, who could lay bare and develop
25:27
Speaker 1: and touch with imagination all that mass of fine emotion.
25:31
Speaker 1: Every woman, it may be, hides. She had read of love,
25:35
Speaker 1: She had thought of love a thousand sweet lyrics that
25:38
Speaker 1: sounded through her brain and left fine fragments in her memory.
25:43
Speaker 1: She poured it out, all of it, shamelessly, skillfully. For me.
25:48
Speaker 1: I cannot give any sense of that talk. I cannot
25:51
Speaker 1: even tell how much of the delight of it was
25:53
Speaker 1: the magic of her voice, the glow of her near presence.
25:57
Speaker 1: And always we walked, swathed warmly through a chilly air,
26:02
Speaker 1: along dim, interminable, greasy roads, with never a soul abroad,
26:07
Speaker 1: It seemed to us, never a beast in the fields.
26:11
Speaker 1: Why do people love each other? I said, why not?
26:16
Speaker 1: But why do I love you? Why is your voice
26:20
Speaker 1: better than any voice, your face sweeter than any face?
26:25
Speaker 1: And why do I love you? She asked? Not only
26:28
Speaker 1: what is fine in you? But what isn't? Why do
26:32
Speaker 1: I love your dulness, your arrogance, For I do to night.
26:37
Speaker 1: I love the very rain drops on the fur of
26:39
Speaker 1: your coat. So we talked, and at last, very wet,
26:44
Speaker 1: still glowing, but a little tired, we parted at the
26:47
Speaker 1: garden door. We had been wandering for two hours in
26:50
Speaker 1: our strange, irrational community of happiness, and all the world
26:54
Speaker 1: about us, and particularly Lady Osprey and her household, had
26:59
Speaker 1: been asleep and dreaming of anything rather than Beatrice. In
27:03
Speaker 1: the night and rain, she stood in the doorway, a
27:07
Speaker 1: muffled figure with eyes that glowed. Come back, she whispered.
27:12
Speaker 1: I shall wait for you. She hesitated. She touched the
27:16
Speaker 1: lapel of my coat. I love you now, she said,
27:21
Speaker 1: and lifted her face to mine. I held her to
27:24
Speaker 1: me and was a tremble from top to tow O God,
27:28
Speaker 1: I cried, and I must go. She slipped from my
27:33
Speaker 1: arms and paused, regarding me. For an instant, the world
27:37
Speaker 1: seemed full of fantastic possibilities. Yes, go, she said, and
27:43
Speaker 1: vanished and slammed the door upon me, leaving me alone
27:47
Speaker 1: like a man new fallen from fairyland in the black
27:50
Speaker 1: darkness of the night. Three. That expedition to Mordette Island
27:57
Speaker 1: stands apart from all the rest of my life, detached,
28:00
Speaker 1: a piece by itself, with an atmosphere of its own.
28:04
Speaker 1: It would, I suppose, make a book by itself. It
28:08
Speaker 1: has made a fairly voluminous official report, But so far
28:12
Speaker 1: as this novel of mind goes, it is merely an episode,
28:16
Speaker 1: a contributory experience, and I mean to keep it at that.
28:21
Speaker 1: Vile weather, an impatient fretting against unbearable slowness and delay,
28:26
Speaker 1: sea sickness, general discomfort, and humiliating self revelation are the
28:32
Speaker 1: master values of these memories. I was sick all through
28:36
Speaker 1: the journey out. I don't know why. It was the
28:39
Speaker 1: only time I was ever sea sick, and I have
28:42
Speaker 1: seen some pretty bad weather since I became a boat builder.
28:46
Speaker 1: But that phantom smell of potatoes was peculiarly vile to me.
28:50
Speaker 1: Coming back on the brig. We were all ill, every
28:53
Speaker 1: one of us, so soon as we got to sea poisoned,
28:57
Speaker 1: I firmly believe, by quop on the way out. Most
29:01
Speaker 1: of the others recovered in a few days. But the
29:03
Speaker 1: stuffiness below, the coarse food, the cramped, dirty accommodation, kept me,
29:09
Speaker 1: if not actually seasick, in a state of acute physical
29:12
Speaker 1: wretchedness the whole time. The ship abounded in cockroaches and
29:17
Speaker 1: more intimate vermin. I was cold all the time until
29:21
Speaker 1: after we passed Cape Verde and I became steamily hot.
29:25
Speaker 1: I had been too preoccupied with Beatrice and my keen
29:28
Speaker 1: desire to get the maud Merry under way at once
29:32
Speaker 1: to consider a proper wardrobe for myself, and in particular
29:36
Speaker 1: I lacked a coat. Heavens how I lacked that coat.
29:40
Speaker 1: And moreover, I was cooped up with two of the
29:43
Speaker 1: worst boars in Christendom, Pollock and the Captain. Pollock. After
29:49
Speaker 1: conducting his illness in a style better adapted to the
29:52
Speaker 1: capacity of an opera house than a small compartment, suddenly
29:56
Speaker 1: got insupportably well and breezy, and produced a man only
30:00
Speaker 1: pipe in which he smoked a tobacco as blond as himself,
30:04
Speaker 1: and divided his time almost equally between smoking it and
30:08
Speaker 1: trying to clean it. There's only three things you can
30:11
Speaker 1: clean a pipe with, he used to remark, with a
30:14
Speaker 1: twist of paper in hand. The best's a feather, the
30:18
Speaker 1: seconds a straw, and the third's a girl's hairpin. I
30:23
Speaker 1: never seen such a ship. You can't find any of em.
30:27
Speaker 1: Last time I came this way. I did find hairpins anyway,
30:30
Speaker 1: and found him on the floor of the captain's cabin.
30:33
Speaker 1: Regular deposit, eh, feeling better, at which I usually swore, Oh,
30:40
Speaker 1: you'll be all right soon. Don't mind my puffin a bit, eh.
30:44
Speaker 1: He never tired of asking me to have a hand
30:47
Speaker 1: at nap. Good game makes you forget it, and that's
30:51
Speaker 1: half the battle. He would sit, swaying with the rolling
30:54
Speaker 1: of the ship and suck at his pipe of blond
30:57
Speaker 1: tobacco and look with an inexpressible but somnolent blue eye
31:03
Speaker 1: at the captain. By the hour together, Captain's a card,
31:07
Speaker 1: he would say, over and over again. As the outcome
31:10
Speaker 1: of these meditations, He'd liked to know what we're up to.
31:14
Speaker 1: He liked to know. No end that did seem to
31:18
Speaker 1: be the captain's ruling idea. But he also wanted to
31:21
Speaker 1: impress me with the notion that he was a gentleman
31:25
Speaker 1: of good family, and to air a number of views
31:27
Speaker 1: adverse to the English to English literature, to the English Constitution,
31:32
Speaker 1: and the like. He had learnt the sea in the
31:35
Speaker 1: Romanian navy, and English out of a book. He would
31:39
Speaker 1: still at times pronounce the ease at the end of
31:42
Speaker 1: there and here. He was a naturalized Englishman, and he
31:47
Speaker 1: drove me into a reluctant and uncongenial patriotism by his
31:51
Speaker 1: everlasting carping at things English. Pollock would set himself to
31:55
Speaker 1: draw him out. Heaven alone can tell how near I
31:59
Speaker 1: came to murder fifty three days I had outward cooped
32:04
Speaker 1: up with these two and a shy and profoundly depressed
32:07
Speaker 1: mate who read the Bible on Sundays and spent the
32:10
Speaker 1: rest of his leisure in lethargy. Three and fifty days
32:14
Speaker 1: of life cooped up in a perpetual smell and a
32:17
Speaker 1: persistent sick hunger that turned from the sight of food
32:21
Speaker 1: in darkness, cold and wet, and a lightly ballasted ship
32:25
Speaker 1: that rolled and pitched and swayed, and all the time
32:28
Speaker 1: the sands in the hour glass of my uncle's fortunes
32:31
Speaker 1: were streaming out. Misery I missed at all. I remember
32:36
Speaker 1: only one thing brightly, one morning of sunshine in the
32:39
Speaker 1: Bay of Biscay, and a vision of frothing waves, sapphire green,
32:44
Speaker 1: a bird following our wake, and our masts rolling about
32:48
Speaker 1: the sky. Then wind and rain close in on us again.
32:54
Speaker 1: You must not imagine they were ordinary days. Days, I
32:58
Speaker 1: mean of an average length. There were not so much
33:01
Speaker 1: days as long, damp slabs of time that stretched each
33:05
Speaker 1: one to the horizon. And much of that length was night.
33:09
Speaker 1: One parade of the staggering deck in a borrowed southwestern
33:13
Speaker 1: hour after hour in the chilly, windy, splashing and spitting darkness.
33:18
Speaker 1: Or sat in the cabin board and ill and looked
33:22
Speaker 1: at the faces of those inseparable companions. By the help
33:25
Speaker 1: of a lamp that gave smell rather than light, then
33:30
Speaker 1: one would see going up, up, up, and then sinking
33:34
Speaker 1: down down down pollock extinct, pipe in mouth, humorously observant,
33:41
Speaker 1: bringing his mind slowly to the seventy seventh decision that
33:44
Speaker 1: the captain was a card. While the words flowed from
33:48
Speaker 1: the latter in a nimble, incessant good dis England. Eat
33:53
Speaker 1: is not a country aristocratic. No Eat is a glorified bourgeoisie.
33:59
Speaker 1: Eat is plutocratic. In England. There is no aristocracy since
34:05
Speaker 1: de Wars of Roses. In the rest of Europe east
34:08
Speaker 1: of the Latins. Yes, in England, no EAT is all
34:14
Speaker 1: middle class. You're a England. Everything you look at middle class, respectable,
34:21
Speaker 1: everything good, Eat ease, you say, shocking, Madame Grendy. Eat
34:27
Speaker 1: is all limited and computing and self seeking. That is
34:31
Speaker 1: why your art is so limited. You're affixtion your philosophin
34:36
Speaker 1: while you are also inartistic You want nothing but profit.
34:40
Speaker 1: What will pay? What would you he had all those
34:45
Speaker 1: violent adjunctive speech. We Western Europeans have abandoned. Shruggings of
34:50
Speaker 1: the shoulders, waving of the arms, thrusting out of the face,
34:54
Speaker 1: wonderful grimaces, and twiddlings of the hands under your nose
34:58
Speaker 1: until you wanted to hit them away. Day after day
35:02
Speaker 1: it went on, and I had to keep any anger
35:04
Speaker 1: to myself, to reserve myself for the time ahead when
35:08
Speaker 1: it would be necessary to see. The quap was got
35:10
Speaker 1: aboard and stowed knee deep in this man's astonishment. I
35:15
Speaker 1: knew he would make a thousand objections to all we
35:17
Speaker 1: had before us. He talked like a drugged man. It
35:21
Speaker 1: ran glibly over his tongue, and all the time one
35:25
Speaker 1: could see his seamanship fretting him. He was gnawed by responsibility,
35:30
Speaker 1: perpetually uneasy about the ship's position, perpetually imagining dangers. If
35:36
Speaker 1: a sea hit us exceptionally hard, he'd be out of
35:39
Speaker 1: the cabin in an instant, making an outcry of inquiries.
35:43
Speaker 1: And he was pursued by a dread of the hold
35:46
Speaker 1: of ballast, shifting, of insidious, wicked leaks. As we drew
35:51
Speaker 1: near the African coast, his fear of rocks and shoals
35:54
Speaker 1: became infectious. I do not know this coast, he used
35:59
Speaker 1: to say, I come a hera, because Gordon Nasmyth was
36:02
Speaker 1: coming too. Then he does not come fortunes of war,
36:08
Speaker 1: I said, and tried to think in vain of any motive.
36:12
Speaker 1: But sheer haphazard could have guided Gordon Nasmyth in the
36:15
Speaker 1: choice of these two men. I think perhaps Gordon Nasmyth
36:19
Speaker 1: had the artistic temperament and wanted contrasts, and also that
36:24
Speaker 1: the captain helped him to express his own malignant anti britishism.
36:29
Speaker 1: He was indeed an exceptionally inefficient captain. On the whole.
36:33
Speaker 1: I was glad I had come even at the eleventh
36:35
Speaker 1: hour to see to things. The Captain, by the bye,
36:39
Speaker 1: did at last, out of sheer nervousness, get aground at
36:43
Speaker 1: the end of Mordette's Island. But we got off in
36:46
Speaker 1: an hour or so with a swell and a little
36:49
Speaker 1: hard work in the boat. I suspected the mate of
36:53
Speaker 1: his opinion of the captain long before he expressed it.
36:57
Speaker 1: He was, I say, a taciturn man. One day speech
37:01
Speaker 1: broke through him. He had been sitting at the table
37:05
Speaker 1: with his arm folded on it, musing drearily pipe and mouth,
37:09
Speaker 1: and the voice of the captain drifted down from above.
37:13
Speaker 1: The Mate lifted his heavy eyes to me and regarded
37:16
Speaker 1: me for a moment. Then he began to heave with
37:19
Speaker 1: the beginnings of speech. He disembarrassed himself of his pipe.
37:24
Speaker 1: I cowered with expectation. Speech was coming at last. Before
37:29
Speaker 1: he spoke, he nodded reassuringly once or twice. E he
37:35
Speaker 1: moved his head strangely and mysteriously. But a child might
37:38
Speaker 1: have known. He spoke of the captain EA's a foreigner.
37:43
Speaker 1: He regarded me doubtfully for a time, and at last decided,
37:47
Speaker 1: for the sake of lucidity, to clench the matter. That's
37:51
Speaker 1: what he is. A day ago he nodded like a
37:55
Speaker 1: man who gives a last tap to a nail, and
37:58
Speaker 1: I could see he considered his remark well and truly
38:01
Speaker 1: laid his face, though still resolute, became as tranquil and
38:06
Speaker 1: uneventful as a huge haul after a public meeting has
38:09
Speaker 1: dispersed out of it. And finally he closed and locked
38:13
Speaker 1: it with his pipe. Roumanian jew, isn't he? I said?
38:19
Speaker 1: He nodded darkly, and almost forbiddingly. More would have been
38:24
Speaker 1: too much, the thing was said. But from that time
38:28
Speaker 1: forth I knew I could depend upon him, and that
38:31
Speaker 1: he and I were friends. It happens I never did
38:35
Speaker 1: have to depend upon him, but that does not affect
38:38
Speaker 1: our relationship forward. The crew lived lives very much after
38:44
Speaker 1: the fashion of ours, more crowded, more cramped, and dirty, wetter, steamier,
38:50
Speaker 1: more verminous. The coarse food they had was still not
38:54
Speaker 1: so coarse, but that they did not think they were
38:57
Speaker 1: living like fighting cocks. So far as I could make out,
39:02
Speaker 1: they were all nearly destitute men. Hardly any of them
39:05
Speaker 1: had a proper sea outfit, and what small possessions they
39:08
Speaker 1: had were a source of mutual distrust. And as we
39:12
Speaker 1: pitched and floundered southward, they gamboled and fought, were brutal
39:17
Speaker 1: to one another, argued and wrangled loudly, until we protested
39:22
Speaker 1: at the uproar. There is no romance about the sea
39:25
Speaker 1: in a small sailing ship, as I saw it. The
39:29
Speaker 1: romance is in the mind of the landsman dreamer. These
39:32
Speaker 1: brigs and schooners and brigantines that still stand out from
39:36
Speaker 1: every little port are relics from an age of petty trade,
39:40
Speaker 1: as rotten and obsolescent as a Georgian house that has
39:43
Speaker 1: sunken into a slum. They are indeed just floating fragments
39:48
Speaker 1: of slum, much as icebergs are floating fragments of glacier.
39:52
Speaker 1: The civilized man who has learned to wash, who has
39:55
Speaker 1: developed a sense of physical honor, of cleanly, temperate feeding
39:59
Speaker 1: of time, can endure them no more. They pass, and
40:03
Speaker 1: the clanking, coal wasting steamers will follow them, giving place
40:07
Speaker 1: to cleaner, finer things. But so it was I made
40:12
Speaker 1: my voyage to Africa, and came at last into a
40:15
Speaker 1: world of steamy fogs and a hot smell of vegetable decay,
40:19
Speaker 1: and into sound and sight of surf and distant, intermittent
40:23
Speaker 1: glimpses of the coast. I lived a strange, concentrated life
40:28
Speaker 1: through all that time, such a life as a creature
40:31
Speaker 1: must do that has fallen in a well. All my
40:34
Speaker 1: former ways ceased, all my old vistas became memories. The
40:39
Speaker 1: situation I was saving was very small and distant. Now
40:44
Speaker 1: I felt its urgency no more. Beatrice and Lady Grove,
40:48
Speaker 1: my uncle and the Hardingham, my soaring in the air,
40:52
Speaker 1: and my habitual wide vision of swift, effectual things became
40:56
Speaker 1: as remote as if they were in some world I
41:00
Speaker 1: had left forever. End of book, third chapter, fourth parts
41:07
Speaker 1: one to three. Recording by William tom Coe