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The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth Book 2 Chapter 2 - The Brat Gigantic · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book two, Chapter two of the Food of the Gods
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Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth. This is a LibriVox recording.
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Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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Speaker 1: by Alexei Tolander, Davis, California. The Food of the Gods
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Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells,
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Speaker 1: Book two, Chapter two. The Brat gigantic one. The giant
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Speaker 1: child was ugly. The vicar would insist he always had
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Speaker 1: been ugly, as all excessive things must be. The Vicar's
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Speaker 1: views had carried him out of sight of just judgment
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Speaker 1: in this matter. The child was much objected to snap shots,
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Speaker 1: even in that rustic retirement, and their net testimony is
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Speaker 1: against the vicar, testifying that the young monster was at
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Speaker 1: first almost pretty, with a copious curl of hair reaching
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Speaker 1: to his brow, on a great readiness to smile. Usually
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Speaker 1: cattles who are slightly built stand smiling behind the baby perspective,
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Speaker 1: emphasizing his relative smallness. After the second year, the the
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Speaker 1: good looks of the child became more subtle and more contestable.
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Speaker 1: He began to grow as his unfortunate grandfather would no
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Speaker 1: doubt have put it rank. He lost color and developed
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Speaker 1: an increasing effect of being somehow albeit colossal, yet slight.
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Speaker 1: He was vastly delicate. His eyes and something about his
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Speaker 1: face grew finer, grew, as people say, interesting, His hair
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Speaker 1: after one cutting, began to tangle into a mat. It's
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Speaker 1: the degenerate strain coming out in him, said the parish doctor,
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Speaker 1: marking these things. But just how far he was right
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Speaker 1: in that, and just how far the youngster's lapse from
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Speaker 1: ideal healthfulness was the result of living entirely in a
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Speaker 1: whitewashed barn upon Lady Wondershoot's sense of charity tempered by justice,
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Speaker 1: is open to question. The photographs of him that present
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Speaker 1: him from three to six show him developing into a
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Speaker 1: round eyed, flaxen haired youngster with a truncated nose and
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Speaker 1: a friendly stare. There are looks about his lips that
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Speaker 1: never very promote promise of a smile that all the
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Speaker 1: photographs of the early giant children display. In summer, he
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Speaker 1: wears loose garments of ticking tact together with string. There
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Speaker 1: is usually one of those straw baskets upon its head
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Speaker 1: that workman use for their tools, and he's barefooted. In
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Speaker 1: one picture, he grins broadly and holds a bitten melon
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Speaker 1: in his hand. The winter pictures are less numerous and satisfactory.
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Speaker 1: He wears huge sabots, no doubt of Beechwood's, and as
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Speaker 1: fragments of the inscription John Stickle's hippin show sacks for socks,
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Speaker 1: and his trousers and jacket are unmistakably cut from the
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Speaker 1: remains of a gayly patterned carpet. Underneath that there were
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Speaker 1: rude swathings of flannel, five or six yards of flannel,
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Speaker 1: or tied comforter fashion about his neck. The thing on
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Speaker 1: his head is probably another sack. He stares, sometimes smiling,
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Speaker 1: sometimes a little ruefully at the camera. Even when he
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Speaker 1: was only five years old. One sees that half whimsical
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Speaker 1: wrinkling over his soft brown eyes that characterized his face.
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Speaker 1: He was from the first the vicar always declared a
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Speaker 1: terrible nuisance about the village. He seems to have had
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Speaker 1: a proportionate impulse to play, much curiosity and sociability. In addition,
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Speaker 1: there was a certain craving within him. I grieved to say,
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Speaker 1: for more to eat in spite of what Missus Greenfield
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Speaker 1: called an excessively generous allowance of food from Lady Wander.
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Speaker 1: Shoot laid what the doctor preceived at once was the
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Speaker 1: criminal appetite he carries out only too completely lead one
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Speaker 1: to Shoot's worst experiences of the lower classes, that, in
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Speaker 1: spite of an allowance of nourishment, inorderately beyond what is
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Speaker 1: known to be the maxim necessity even of an adult
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Speaker 1: human being, the creature was found to steel, and what
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Speaker 1: he stole he ate with an illigant voracity. His great
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Speaker 1: hand would come over garden walls, he would cover the
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Speaker 1: very bread in the baker's carts. Cheeses went for Marlowe's
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Speaker 1: store loft, and never a pig trough was safe from him.
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Speaker 1: Some farmer walking over his fields as swedes, would find
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Speaker 1: the great spore of his feet and the evidence of
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Speaker 1: his nibbling hunger. A root picked here, a root picked there,
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Speaker 1: and the holes with childish cunning heavily erased. He ate
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Speaker 1: a swede as one devours a radish. He would stand
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Speaker 1: and eat apples from a tree if no one was about,
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Speaker 1: as normal children eat BlackBerry, small bush in one way
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Speaker 1: at any rate. This shortness of provisions was good for
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Speaker 1: the piece of cheesing eyebright. For many years he ate
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Speaker 1: up every grain, very nearly of the food of the
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Speaker 1: gods that was given him. Indisputably, the child was troublesome
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Speaker 1: and out of place. He was always about. The Vicar
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Speaker 1: used to say he could not go to school. He
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Speaker 1: could not go to church by virtue of the obvious
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Speaker 1: limitations of its cubical content. Though with some attempt to
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Speaker 1: satisfy the spirit of that most foolish and destructed law.
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Speaker 1: I have quote the vicar the Elementary Education Act of
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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy by getting to sit outside the open window
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Speaker 1: while instruction was going on within. But his presence there
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Speaker 1: destroyed the discipline of the other children. They were always
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Speaker 1: popping up and peering at him, and every time he
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Speaker 1: spoke they laughed together. His voice was so odd, so
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Speaker 1: they let him stay away. Nor did they persist in
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Speaker 1: pressing him to come to church, for his vast proportions
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Speaker 1: were of little help to devotion. Yet there they might
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Speaker 1: have had an easier task. There are good reasons for
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Speaker 1: guessing there were the germs of religious feelings somewhere in
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Speaker 1: the big carcass. The music perhaps drew him. He was
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Speaker 1: often in the churchyard on a Sunday morning, picking his
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Speaker 1: waist softly among the graves, after the congregation had gone in,
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Speaker 1: and he would set the whole service out beside the porch,
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Speaker 1: listening as one listens outside a hive of bees. At
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Speaker 1: first he showed a certain want of tact. The people
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Speaker 1: inside would hear his great feet crunch resus lessly round
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Speaker 1: their place of worship, or become aware of his dim
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Speaker 1: face peering in through the stained glass, half curious, half envious,
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Speaker 1: And at times some simple hymn would catch him unawares,
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Speaker 1: and he would howl lugubriously in a gigantic attempt at unison.
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Speaker 1: Whereupon little Sloppet, who was an organ blower and verger
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Speaker 1: and beetle and sexton and bell ringer on Sundays, besides
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Speaker 1: being postman and chimney sweep all the week, would go
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Speaker 1: out very briskly and valiantly and send him mournfully away.
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Speaker 1: Slop it. I am glad to say, I felt it.
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Speaker 1: It is more thoughtful moments. At any rate. It was
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Speaker 1: like sending a dog home when you start out for
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Speaker 1: a walk, he told me. But the intellectual moral training
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Speaker 1: of young cattles, though fragmentary was explicit from the first
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Speaker 1: vicar mother in all the world, combined to make it
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Speaker 1: clear to him that his giant strength was not for use.
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Speaker 1: It was a misfortune that he had to make the
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Speaker 1: best of. He had to mind what was told him,
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Speaker 1: do what would set him. Be careful, never to break anything,
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Speaker 1: nor hurt anything. Particularly, he must not go treading on things,
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Speaker 1: or jostling against things, or jumping about. He had to
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Speaker 1: salute the gentle folks respectful, and be grateful for the
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Speaker 1: food and clothing they spared him out of their riches.
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Speaker 1: And he learned all these things submissively, being but nature,
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Speaker 1: and have it a teachable creature, and only by food
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Speaker 1: an accident gigantic for Lady wanted to shoot. In these
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Speaker 1: early days, he displayed the profoundness awe. She found she
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Speaker 1: could talk to him best when she was in short
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Speaker 1: skirts and had her dog whip, and she dycirculated with that,
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Speaker 1: and was always as little contemptuous and shrill. But sometimes
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Speaker 1: the Vicar played master a minute middle aged, rather breathless
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Speaker 1: David felting a childish goliath with reproof and reproach and
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Speaker 1: dictatorial command. The monster was now so big that it
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Speaker 1: seems it was impossible for anyone to remember he was,
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Speaker 1: after all, only a child of seven, with all a
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Speaker 1: child's desire for notice and amusement and fresh experience, with
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Speaker 1: all child's craving for response, attention and affection, and all
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Speaker 1: a child's capacity for dependence and unrestricted dulness and misery.
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Speaker 1: The vicar, walking down the village road some sunlit morning
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Speaker 1: would encounter an ungainly eighteen feet of the inexplicable, as
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Speaker 1: fantastic and unpleasant to him, as new, some new form
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Speaker 1: of descent, as it padded fitfully along with craning neck, seeking,
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Speaker 1: always seeking the two primary needs of childhood, something to
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Speaker 1: eat and something with which to play. There would come
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Speaker 1: a look of furtive respect into the creature's eyes, and
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Speaker 1: an attempt touch the matted forelock. In a limited way.
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Speaker 1: The vicar had an imagination. At any rate, there remains
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Speaker 1: of one, and with young cattles it took the line
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Speaker 1: of developing the huge possibilities of personal injury. Such vast
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Speaker 1: muscle must possess. Suppose a sudden madness, suppose a mere
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Speaker 1: lapse in disrespect. However, the truly brave man is not
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Speaker 1: the man who does not feel fear, but the man
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Speaker 1: who overcomes it every time and always. The Vicar got
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Speaker 1: his imagination under and he used to always address young
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Speaker 1: Cattles stoutly in a good clear service tenor being a
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Speaker 1: good boy Albert Edward, and the young giant, edging close
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Speaker 1: to the wall and blushing deeply, would answer, yes, sir,
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Speaker 1: trying mind you do, said the Vicar, and would go
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Speaker 1: past him with at most a slight acceleration of his breathing,
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Speaker 1: And out of respect for his manhood, he made it
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Speaker 1: a rule, whatever he might fancy, never to look back
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Speaker 1: at the danger when once it was passed in a
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Speaker 1: fitful manner. The Vicar would give young Cattles private to
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Speaker 1: which he never taught the monster to read. It was
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Speaker 1: not needed. But he taught on the more important points
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Speaker 1: of the Catechism, his duty to his neighbor, for example,
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Speaker 1: and of that deity who would punish Cattles with extreme
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Speaker 1: vindictedness if ever he ventured to disobey the Vicar and
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Speaker 1: lady wanted to shoot. The lessons would go on in
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Speaker 1: the Vicar's yard, and passers by would hear that great, cranky,
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Speaker 1: childish voice journeying out the essential teachings of the established
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Speaker 1: church to honor, and obeyed the King, and all over
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Speaker 1: put authority under him. To submit myself tall my governors,
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Speaker 1: teaches spurs, or shall pastors aunt masters, to order myself
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Speaker 1: lowly and reverently tall my betters. Presently became evident that
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Speaker 1: the effect of the growing giant on unaccustomed horses was
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Speaker 1: like that of a camel. And he was told to
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Speaker 1: keep off the high road, not only near the shrubbery,
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Speaker 1: where the oafish smile over the wall had exasperated her
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Speaker 1: ladyship extremely, but altogether. That law he never completely obeyed,
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Speaker 1: because of the vast interests the high road had for him,
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Speaker 1: but turned what had been his constant resort into a
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Speaker 1: store and pleasure. He was limited at last, almost entirely
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Speaker 1: to old pasture in the Downs. I did not know
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Speaker 1: what he would have done if it had not been
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Speaker 1: for the Downs. There there were spaces where he might
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Speaker 1: wander for miles, and over these spaces he wandered. He
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Speaker 1: would pick branches from trees and make insane vast nosegays there,
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Speaker 1: until he was forbidden, take up sheep and put them
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Speaker 1: in neat rows, from which they immediately wandered. At this
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Speaker 1: he invariably laughed very heartily until he was forbidden, dig
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Speaker 1: away the turf great wanton holes. Until he was forbidden,
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Speaker 1: He would wander over the downs as far as the
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Speaker 1: hill about Wreckstone, but note further, because there he came
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Speaker 1: upon cultivated land, and the people by reason of his
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Speaker 1: depredations upon their root crops, and inspired moreover by a
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Speaker 1: sort of hostile timidity, his big, unkempt appearance frequently evoked,
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Speaker 1: always came out against him with yapping dogs to drive
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Speaker 1: him away. They would threaten him and lash it in
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Speaker 1: with cartwhips. I have heard that they would sometimes fire
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Speaker 1: him with shotguns. And in the other direction he raged
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Speaker 1: within sight of Hickleyborough. From above Thursley Hangar, he could
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Speaker 1: get a glimpse of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway,
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Speaker 1: but loud fields and a suspicious hamlet prevented his nearer axis.
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Speaker 1: And after a time they came boards, great boards with
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Speaker 1: red letters that borrowed him in every direction. He could
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Speaker 1: not read what the letters said out of bounds, but
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Speaker 1: then a little while he understood. He was often be
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Speaker 1: seen in those days by the railway passengers sitting chin
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Speaker 1: on knees, perched up on the down hard by the
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Speaker 1: Thursty chalk pits, where afterwards he was set working. The
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Speaker 1: train seemed to inspire a dim emotion of friendliness in him,
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Speaker 1: and sometimes he would wave an enormous hand at it,
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Speaker 1: and sometimes give it a rustic, incoherent re hail. Big
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Speaker 1: appearing passengers would say, one of these boom children, they say, sir,
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Speaker 1: quite unable to do anything for itself, little better than
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Speaker 1: an idiot, in fact, and a great burden on the locality. Parents,
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Speaker 1: quite poor, and told lives on the charity the local gentry.
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Speaker 1: Everyone would stare intelligently at that distant, squatting, monstrous figure
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Speaker 1: for a space good thing that was put a stop to.
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Speaker 1: Some spacious thinking mind would suggest, nice to have a
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Speaker 1: few thousand of them on the raids, eh. And usually
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Speaker 1: there were some one wise enough to tell this philosopher,
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Speaker 1: you're about right there, sir. In hearty tones. Two. He
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Speaker 1: had his bad days. There was, for example, that trouble
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Speaker 1: with the river. He made little boats out of whole
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Speaker 1: newspapers and art he learnt by watching the spender boy,
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Speaker 1: and he set them sailing down the stream, great paper
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Speaker 1: cocked hats when they vaniged on the bridge which marks
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Speaker 1: the boundary the strictly private grounds about Ibright House. He
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Speaker 1: would give a great shout and would run round and
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Speaker 1: across Tormat's new field. Lord, how Tormat's pigs did scamper
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Speaker 1: to be sure and turn their good fat into lean muscle,
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Speaker 1: And so to meet his boats by the ford right
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Speaker 1: across the nearer lawns. These paper boats of he's used
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Speaker 1: to go right in front of Eyebright House, write under
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Speaker 1: Lady Wandashoot's eyes, disorganizing folded newspaper, a pretty thing. Gathering
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Speaker 1: enterprise for impunity, he began babyish hydraulic engineering. He delved
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Speaker 1: a huge port for his paper fleets, with the old
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Speaker 1: shed door that served him as a spade, and no
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Speaker 1: one chancing to observe his operations. Just then he devised
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Speaker 1: an ingenious canal that incidentally flooded Lady Wondershoot's ice house.
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Speaker 1: And finally he dined the river. He dammed it right
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Speaker 1: across with a few vigorous door falls of earth. He
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Speaker 1: must have worked like an avalanche, and down came a
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Speaker 1: most amazing spate through the shrubbery and washed away Miss
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Speaker 1: Sphinx and her easel, and the most promising watercolored sketch
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Speaker 1: she had ever begun, or at any rate. It washed
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Speaker 1: away her easel and left her wet to the knees
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Speaker 1: in dismally tucked up in flight to the house, and
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Speaker 1: thence the waters rushed through the kitchen garden and sowed
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Speaker 1: by the green door into the lane and down into
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Speaker 1: the river bed again by a short stitch. Meanwhile, the vicar,
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Speaker 1: interrupted in conversation with the black Sniff, was amazed to
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Speaker 1: see distressful stranded fish leaping out of a few residual pools,
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Speaker 1: and heaped green weed in the bed of the stream,
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Speaker 1: where ten minutes before there had been eight feet and
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Speaker 1: more of clear cool water. After that, horrified at his
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Speaker 1: own consequences, young Cattles fled his home for two days
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Speaker 1: and nights. He returned only at the insistent call of hunger,
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Speaker 1: to bear with stoical calm, an amount of violent scolding
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Speaker 1: that was more in proportion to his son eyes that
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Speaker 1: anything else could ever before fall onto his lot in
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Speaker 1: the happy village. Three immediately after that affair, Lady Wanderschoote,
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Speaker 1: casting about for exemplary additions to the abuse and fast
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Speaker 1: things she had inflicted, issued an ew case She issued
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Speaker 1: it first to a butler, and very suddenly so that
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Speaker 1: she made him jump. He was clearing away the breakfast things,
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Speaker 1: and she was staring out of the tall window in
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Speaker 1: the terrace where the fawns would come to be fed.
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Speaker 1: Job it, she said, in her most imperial voice, job it.
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Speaker 1: This thing must work for its living. And she made
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Speaker 1: it quite clear not only to job It, which was easy,
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Speaker 1: but to everyone else in the village, including young candles,
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Speaker 1: that in this matter, as in all things, she meant
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Speaker 1: what she said. Keep him employed, said Lady Wanderschoote. That's
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Speaker 1: the tip for master cattle's. It's the tip I fancy
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Speaker 1: for all humanity, said the vicar. The simple duties, the
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Speaker 1: modest round, seed time and harvest exactly, said Lady Wanderschoote.
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Speaker 1: What I always say, Satan finds some mischief still for
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Speaker 1: idle hands to do at any rate. Among the laboring classes.
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Speaker 1: We bring up our under house housemaids on that principle always,
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Speaker 1: what shall we set to do? That was a little difficult.
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Speaker 1: They thought of many things. Meanwhile, they broke him into
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Speaker 1: labor a bit by using him instead of a horse
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Speaker 1: messenger to carry telegrams and notes. When extra speed was needed,
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Speaker 1: and he also carried luggage and packing cases and things
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Speaker 1: of that sort very conveniently in a big net they
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Speaker 1: found for him. He seemed to like employment, regarding it
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Speaker 1: as a sort of game, and Kinkle Lady want to
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Speaker 1: Shoo's agent, seeing him shift a rockery for her one day,
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Speaker 1: was struck by the brilliant idea of putting him into
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Speaker 1: her chalk quarry at Thursley Hanger, hard by Hickleybrow. The
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Speaker 1: idea was carried out, and it seemed they had settled
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Speaker 1: his problem. He worked in the chalk pit, at first
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Speaker 1: with the zest of a playing child, and afterwards with
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Speaker 1: an effective habit, delving, loading, doing all the haulids of
14:44
Speaker 1: the trucks, running the full ones down the lines towards
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Speaker 1: the siding, and hauling the empty ones up by the
14:49
Speaker 1: wire of a great windlass, working the entire quarry at
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Speaker 1: least single handed. I am told the Kinkle made a
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Speaker 1: very good thing, indeed out of him for Lady One
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Speaker 1: to shoot, consuming as he did scarcely anything but his food,
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Speaker 1: though I never restrain her denunciation of the creature as
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Speaker 1: a gigantic parasite upon her charity. At that time he
15:05
Speaker 1: used to wear a sort of smock of sacking, trousers
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Speaker 1: of patched leather and iron shod savats. Over his head
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Speaker 1: was sometimes a queer thing, a worn out beehive straw chair,
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Speaker 1: it was, but usually he went bareheaded. He'd be moving
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Speaker 1: about the pit with a powerful deliberation, and the vicar
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Speaker 1: on his constitution around would get there about mid day
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Speaker 1: to find him shamefully eating his vast need of food,
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Speaker 1: with his back to all the world. His food was
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Speaker 1: brought to him every day, a mess of grain in
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Speaker 1: the husk in a truck, a small railway truck like
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Speaker 1: one of the trucks he was perpetedly filling with chalk,
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Speaker 1: and this load he used to char in on an
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Speaker 1: old lime kiln and then devour. Sometimes he would mix
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Speaker 1: it with a bag of sugar. Sometimes he would sit
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Speaker 1: licking a lump of such salt as is given to cows,
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Speaker 1: or eating a huge lump of dates, stones and all
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Speaker 1: such as one season London on barrows, but drink. He
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Speaker 1: walked to the riverlet beyond the burn outside of the
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Speaker 1: experimental farm at Hickley Brow and put down his face
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Speaker 1: to the stream. It was from his drinking in that way.
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Speaker 1: After eating that the food of the gods did at
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Speaker 1: last get loose, spreading first of all in huge weeds
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Speaker 1: from the riverside, than in big frogs, bigger trout, and
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Speaker 1: stranding carp at last, in a fantastic exuberance of vegetation
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Speaker 1: all over the little valley. And after a year or
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Speaker 1: so the queer monstrous scrubbed things in the field before
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Speaker 1: the blacksmiths grew so big and developed into such frightful
16:19
Speaker 1: skip jacks and cockchafers motor cockchafers, the boys called them
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Speaker 1: that they drove Lady one to shoot abroad four. But
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Speaker 1: soon the food was to enter upon a new phase
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Speaker 1: of its work in him. In spite of the simple
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Speaker 1: instructions of the Vicar, instructions intended to round off the
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Speaker 1: modest natural life befitting a giant peasant in the most
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Speaker 1: complete and final manner, he began to ask questions, to
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Speaker 1: inquire into things to think. As he grew from boyhood
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Speaker 1: aso lescence, it became increasingly evident that his mind had
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Speaker 1: processed of its own, out of the Vicar's control. The
16:50
Speaker 1: Vicar did his best to ignore this distressing phenomenon, but
16:53
Speaker 1: still he could feel it. There The young giant's material
16:56
Speaker 1: for thought lay about him quite involuntarily. With his spacious view,
17:00
Speaker 1: his constant overlooking of things, he must have seen a
17:03
Speaker 1: good deal of human life, And as it grew clearer
17:05
Speaker 1: to him that he, too, save for his cumbsy greatness
17:08
Speaker 1: of it, was also human, he must have come to
17:11
Speaker 1: realize more and more just how much was shot against
17:13
Speaker 1: him by his melancholy distinction. The sociable hum of the school,
17:18
Speaker 1: the mystery of religion that was partaken in such finery,
17:20
Speaker 1: and which exhaled so sweet a strain of melody, that
17:23
Speaker 1: jovial carousing from the inn, the warmly glowing rooms, candlelight
17:28
Speaker 1: and firelet into which he peered out of the darkness,
17:30
Speaker 1: or again, the shouting excitement the vicar of flanneled exercise
17:34
Speaker 1: upon some imperfectly understood issue that set it about the
17:37
Speaker 1: cricket field. All these things must have cried aloud to
17:40
Speaker 1: his companionable heart. It would seem that as his adolescence
17:43
Speaker 1: crept upon him, he began to take a very considerable
17:45
Speaker 1: interest in the proceedings of lovers, in those preferences and pairings,
17:49
Speaker 1: those close intimacies that are so cardinal in life. One Sunday,
17:54
Speaker 1: just about that hour when the stars and the bats
17:56
Speaker 1: and the passions of rural life come out, there chanced
17:58
Speaker 1: to be a young couple kissing each other a bit
18:00
Speaker 1: in love lane, the deep hedge lane that runs out
18:03
Speaker 1: back towards the upper lodge. They were giving their little
18:06
Speaker 1: emotions play as secure in the warm still twilight as
18:09
Speaker 1: any lovers could be. The only conceivable interruption they thought possible,
18:13
Speaker 1: must come pazing visibly up the lane twelve foot hedge
18:16
Speaker 1: towards the silent down seemed to them an absolute guarantee.
18:20
Speaker 1: Then suddenly, incredibly they were lifted and drawn apart. They
18:23
Speaker 1: discovered themselves held up, each with a finger and thumb
18:26
Speaker 1: under the armpits, and with the perplexed brown eyes of
18:29
Speaker 1: young cattles scanting their warm flushed faces. They were naturally
18:32
Speaker 1: dumb with the emotions of their situation. Why do you
18:35
Speaker 1: like doing that? Asked young Cattles, I gathered. The embarrassment
18:39
Speaker 1: continued until the Swain, remembering his manhood, vehemently with loud shouts, threats,
18:43
Speaker 1: and virile blasphembies such as became the occasion, bade young Kettles,
18:47
Speaker 1: under penalties put them down, whereupon young cattles, remembering his manners,
18:51
Speaker 1: did put them down politely and very carefully, and conveniently
18:55
Speaker 1: near for asumption of their embraces, and having hesitated above
18:58
Speaker 1: them for a while, vanished again into the twilight. But
19:01
Speaker 1: I felt precious silly, this swain confided to me. We
19:04
Speaker 1: couldn't oddly look at one another being caught like that
19:06
Speaker 1: kissing we was, you know. And the curious thing is
19:10
Speaker 1: she played it all on to me, said the swain,
19:12
Speaker 1: for lo out something yet rageous, and would oddly speak
19:14
Speaker 1: to me all the way home. The giant was embarking
19:17
Speaker 1: upon investigations. There could be no doubt his mind, it
19:20
Speaker 1: became manifest, was throwing up questions. He put them to
19:23
Speaker 1: few people as yet, but they troubled him. His mother,
19:26
Speaker 1: one Gathers, sometimes came in for cross examination. He used
19:29
Speaker 1: to come into the yard behind his mother's cottage, and
19:32
Speaker 1: after a careful inspection of the ground for hands and chicks,
19:35
Speaker 1: he would sit down slowly with his back against the barn,
19:38
Speaker 1: and a minute the chicks who liked him would be
19:39
Speaker 1: pecking all over him at the mossy chalk mud in
19:42
Speaker 1: the seas of his clothing, and if it was blowing
19:44
Speaker 1: up for wet. Missus Caddell's kitten, who never lost her
19:47
Speaker 1: confidence in him, would assume a sinuous form and start
19:50
Speaker 1: scampering into the cottage, up to the kitchen fender, round out,
19:54
Speaker 1: up his leg, up his body right up to his shoulder,
19:57
Speaker 1: meditated a moment, and then scamped back again, and so on.
20:00
Speaker 1: Sometimes she would stick her claws in his face out
20:02
Speaker 1: of sheer gaiety of heart, but he never dared to
20:04
Speaker 1: touch her because of the uncertain weight of his hand
20:07
Speaker 1: upon a creature so frail. Besides, he rather liked to
20:10
Speaker 1: be tickled, and after a time he would put some
20:12
Speaker 1: clumsy questions to his mother. Mother. He would say, if
20:15
Speaker 1: it's good to work, why doesn't everyone work? His mother
20:18
Speaker 1: would look up at him and answer, it's good for
20:20
Speaker 1: the likes of us. He would meditate why, and going on,
20:24
Speaker 1: answered what's work for? Mother? Why do I cut chalk
20:27
Speaker 1: and new washed clothes day after day while Lady wonder
20:29
Speaker 1: Shoot goes about in her carriage mother and travels off
20:32
Speaker 1: to those beautiful foreign countries. You and I mustn't see mother.
20:36
Speaker 1: She's a lady, said missus Caddle's all, said, young Cattles,
20:39
Speaker 1: and meditated profoundly. If there wasn't gentlefolk to make work
20:43
Speaker 1: for us to do, said Missus Caddles, how should we
20:45
Speaker 1: poor people get a living? This had to be digested, mother,
20:49
Speaker 1: He tried again. If there wasn't any gentle folks, wohendn't
20:51
Speaker 1: this belonged to people like me and you? And if
20:53
Speaker 1: they did Lord's sakes and draft the boy. Missus Cattle
20:57
Speaker 1: would say she had, with the help of a good memory,
20:59
Speaker 1: become quiet, afflored and vigorous individuality since Missus Skinner died,
21:03
Speaker 1: since your poor dear grandma was took. There's no abiding
21:06
Speaker 1: you don't. You ask no questions, and you won't be
21:08
Speaker 1: told no lies. If once I was to start out
21:11
Speaker 1: answering you serious, your father'd have a go and asked
21:14
Speaker 1: some one else for to supper, let alone finishing the washing.
21:18
Speaker 1: All right, mother, he would say, after a wondering stare
21:20
Speaker 1: at her, I didn't mean to worry, and he would
21:22
Speaker 1: go on thinking. Five he was thinking two four years
21:26
Speaker 1: after when the vicar, now no longer ripe but over ripe,
21:29
Speaker 1: saw him for the last time of all, you figured
21:32
Speaker 1: the old gentleman, visibly a little older, now slacker in
21:34
Speaker 1: his girth, a little coarsened, and a little weakened in
21:36
Speaker 1: his thought and speech, with a requivering shakiness in his hand,
21:40
Speaker 1: and a quivering shakiness in his convictions. But his eyes
21:43
Speaker 1: still bright and merry. For all the trouble the food
21:45
Speaker 1: had caused his village and himself, he had been friend
21:48
Speaker 1: at times and disturbed. But was he not alive still?
21:51
Speaker 1: And the same still, and fifteen long years a fair
21:53
Speaker 1: sample of eternity had turned the trouble into use. And
21:56
Speaker 1: want it was a disturbance, I admit, he would say.
21:59
Speaker 1: And things are different, different in many ways. There was
22:01
Speaker 1: a time when a boy could weed, but now a
22:03
Speaker 1: man must go out with axe and crowbar in some places,
22:06
Speaker 1: down by the thickets at least. And it's still a
22:08
Speaker 1: little strange to us old fashioned people. For all of
22:11
Speaker 1: this valley, even what used to be the river bed
22:13
Speaker 1: before they irrigated, to be under wheat as it is
22:16
Speaker 1: this year, twenty five feet high. They used the old
22:19
Speaker 1: fashioned scythe here twenty years ago. And they would bring
22:22
Speaker 1: home the harvest in a wane rejoicing, in a simple,
22:24
Speaker 1: honest tradition, a little simple drunkenness, a little frank love
22:28
Speaker 1: making to conclude, poor dear lady wondershoot. She didn't like
22:31
Speaker 1: those innovations. Very conservative, Poor dear lady a touch of
22:35
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century about her. I always said her language,
22:38
Speaker 1: for example, bluff vigor. She died comparatively poor. These big
22:42
Speaker 1: weeds got into her garden. She was not one of
22:44
Speaker 1: those gardening women, but she liked her garden in order,
22:47
Speaker 1: things rowing where they were planted, and as they were
22:49
Speaker 1: planet under control. The way things carew was unexpected upset
22:53
Speaker 1: her ideas. She didn't like the perpetual invasion of this
22:55
Speaker 1: young monster. At last, she began to fancy he was
22:58
Speaker 1: always gaping at her over her wall. She didn't like
23:00
Speaker 1: his being nearly as high as her house. Jarred with
23:03
Speaker 1: her sense of proportion. Poor dear lady, I hoped she
23:06
Speaker 1: would last my time. It was the big cockchafers we
23:08
Speaker 1: had for a year or so that decided her. They
23:11
Speaker 1: came from the giant larvae, nasty things as big as
23:13
Speaker 1: rats in the valley turf, and the aunts, no doubt,
23:16
Speaker 1: weighed with her. Also, since everything was upset and there
23:19
Speaker 1: was no peace and quietness anywhere now, she said, she
23:22
Speaker 1: thought she might just as well be at Monte Carlo
23:24
Speaker 1: as anywhere else, and she went. She played pretty boldly,
23:27
Speaker 1: I'm told, died in a hotel there, very sad and exile.
23:31
Speaker 1: Not not what one considers meet a natural leader of
23:34
Speaker 1: our English people, uprooted so I Yet, after all harped
23:38
Speaker 1: the vicar, it comes to very little a nuisance. Of course,
23:40
Speaker 1: children cannot run about so freely as they used to do,
23:43
Speaker 1: what with ant bites and so forth. Perhaps it's all
23:46
Speaker 1: as well. There used to be talk as though this
23:48
Speaker 1: stuff would revolutionize everything. But there is something that defies
23:52
Speaker 1: all these forces of the new. I don't know, of course,
23:54
Speaker 1: I'm not one of your modern philosophers explain everything with
23:57
Speaker 1: ether and Adams evolution rubbish like that. What I mean
24:01
Speaker 1: is something the ologies don't include, matter of reason, not understanding,
24:05
Speaker 1: ripe wisdom, human nature, air, ray of perenneous Call it
24:09
Speaker 1: what you will. And so at last it came to
24:11
Speaker 1: the last time the vicar had no intimation of what
24:14
Speaker 1: lay so close upon him. He did his customary walk
24:17
Speaker 1: over by farthing down, as he had done it for
24:19
Speaker 1: more than a score of years, and so the little
24:22
Speaker 1: place whence he would catch young cattles, he did the
24:25
Speaker 1: rise over by the chalk pit crest a little puffily.
24:28
Speaker 1: He had long since lost the muscular Christian stride of
24:30
Speaker 1: early days. But Cattles was not at his work. And
24:33
Speaker 1: then as he skirted the thick out of giant bracken
24:35
Speaker 1: that was beginning to obscure and overshadow the hangar, he
24:38
Speaker 1: came upon the monster's huge form, seated on the hill,
24:41
Speaker 1: brooding as it were upon the world. Cattle's knees were
24:44
Speaker 1: drawn up, his cheek was on his hand, his head
24:47
Speaker 1: a little slant. He sat with his shoulder towards the vicar,
24:50
Speaker 1: so that those perplexed eyes could not be seen. He
24:53
Speaker 1: must have been thinking very intently. At any rate, he
24:55
Speaker 1: was sitting very still. He never turned round. He never
24:58
Speaker 1: knew that the vicar, who had played so larger part
25:00
Speaker 1: in shaping his life, looked dead at him. For the
25:03
Speaker 1: very last of innumerable time, did not know even that
25:05
Speaker 1: he was there. So it is so many pardons happened.
25:09
Speaker 1: The Vicar was struck at the time by the fact that,
25:11
Speaker 1: after all, no one on earth had the slightest idea
25:14
Speaker 1: of what this great monster thought about when he saw
25:16
Speaker 1: fit to rest from his labors. But he was too
25:19
Speaker 1: indolent to follow up that new thene that day it
25:22
Speaker 1: fell back from its suggestions into his older grooves of
25:24
Speaker 1: thought are pyrheus. He whispered, walking slowly homeward by a
25:28
Speaker 1: path that no longer ran straight athwart the turf after
25:31
Speaker 1: its former fashion, but wound secuitously to avoid new sprung
25:35
Speaker 1: tusks of giant grass. No, nothing is changed, dimensions are nothing,
25:40
Speaker 1: the simple round the common way. And that night, quite
25:43
Speaker 1: painlessly and all unknowing, he himself went the common Way
25:47
Speaker 1: out of this mystery of change he had spent his
25:49
Speaker 1: life in denying. They buried him in the churchyard of
25:52
Speaker 1: Cheesing eyebright, near the largest yew, and the modest tombstone
25:56
Speaker 1: bearing his evertath. It ended with ut in principio nunk
26:00
Speaker 1: st et Semper was almost immediately hidden from the eye
26:03
Speaker 1: of man by a spread of giant, gray tasseled grass,
26:07
Speaker 1: too stout for scythe their sheep that came sweeping like
26:10
Speaker 1: a fog over the village, out of the germinating moisture
26:12
Speaker 1: of the valley meadows in which the food of the
26:15
Speaker 1: gods had been working. End of Book two, Chapter two.
26:21
Speaker 1: End of Book two of the Food of the Gods
26:24
Speaker 1: and how it came to Earth. Recording by alexeat Lander Davis, California,
26:30
Speaker 1: w w W dot alexeytealander dot com