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Tono-Bungay Book 4 Chapter 2 - Parts 1-4 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, fourth chapter, second parts one to four 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, fourth chapter, second parts one
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Speaker 1: to four, Chapter The Second Love among the Wreckage One.
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Speaker 1: When I came back, I found that my share in
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Speaker 1: the escape and death of my uncle had made me,
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Speaker 1: for a time a notorious and even popular character. For
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Speaker 1: two weeks I was kept in London, facing the music,
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Speaker 1: as he would have said, and making things easy for
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Speaker 1: my aunt, and I still marvel at the consideration with
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Speaker 1: which the world treated me. For now it was opened
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Speaker 1: and manifest that I and my uncle were no more
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Speaker 1: than specimens of a modern species of brigand wasting the
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Speaker 1: savings of the public out of the sheer wantonness of enterprise.
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Speaker 1: I think that in a way his death produced a
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Speaker 1: reaction in my favor and my flight, of which some
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Speaker 1: particulars now appeared stuck in the popular imagination. It seemed
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Speaker 1: a more daring and difficult feat than it was, and
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Speaker 1: I couldn't very well write to the papers to sustain
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Speaker 1: my private estimate. There can be little doubt that men
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Speaker 1: infinitely prefer the appearance of dash and enterprise to simple honesty.
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Speaker 1: No one believed I was not an arch plotter in
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Speaker 1: his financing, yet they favored me. I even got permission
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Speaker 1: from the trustee to occupy my chalet for a fortnight
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Speaker 1: while I could up the mass of papers, calculations, notes
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Speaker 1: of work, drawings, and the like that I left in disorder.
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Speaker 1: When I started on that impulsive raid upon the more
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Speaker 1: debt quop heaps, I was there alone. I got work
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Speaker 1: for Cathope with the ilchesters, for whom I now built
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Speaker 1: these destroyers. They wanted him at once, and he was
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Speaker 1: short of money, so I let him go and managed
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Speaker 1: very philosophically by myself. But I found it hard to
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Speaker 1: fix my attention on aeronautics. I had been away from
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Speaker 1: the work for a full half year, and more a
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Speaker 1: half year crowded with intense, disconcerting things. For a time
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Speaker 1: my brain refused these fine problems of balance and adjustment altogether.
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Speaker 1: It wanted to think about my uncle's dropping jaw, my
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Speaker 1: aunt's reluctant tears about dead negroes and pestilential swamps, about
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Speaker 1: the evident realities of cruelty and pain, about life and death. Moreover,
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Speaker 1: it was weary with the frightful pile of figures and
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Speaker 1: documents at the Hardingham, a task to which this ray
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Speaker 1: to Lady Grove was simply an interlude. And there was
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Speaker 1: Beatrice on the second morning, as I sat out upon
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Speaker 1: the verandah, recalling memories and striving in vain to attend
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Speaker 1: to some two sexcinct pencil notes of Gothope's Beatrice rode
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Speaker 1: up suddenly from behind the pavilion and pulled rein and
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Speaker 1: became still Beatrice, a little flushed from riding and sitting
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Speaker 1: on the big black horse. I did not instantly rise.
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Speaker 1: I stared at her, you, I said. She looked at
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Speaker 1: me steadily me, she said, I did not trouble about
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Speaker 1: any civilities. I stood up and asked, pointblank a question
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Speaker 1: that came into my head. Whose horse is that? I said?
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Speaker 1: She looked me in the eyes Carnoby's. She answered, how
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Speaker 1: did you get here? This way? The walls down down
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Speaker 1: already a great bit of it between the plantations, and
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Speaker 1: you rode through and got here by chance? I saw
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Speaker 1: you yesterday, and I rode over to see you. I
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Speaker 1: had now come close to her and stood looking up
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Speaker 1: into her face. I'm a mere vestige, I said. She
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Speaker 1: made no answer, but remained regarding me steadfastly, with a
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Speaker 1: curious air of proprietorship. You know, I'm the living survivor
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Speaker 1: now of the great smash. I'm rolling and dropping down
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Speaker 1: through all the scaffolding of the social system. It's all
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Speaker 1: a chance, whether I roll out free at the bottom
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Speaker 1: or go down a crack into the darkness, out of
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Speaker 1: sight for a year or two. The sun, she remarked, irrelevantly,
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Speaker 1: has burnt you. I'm getting down. She swung herself down
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Speaker 1: into my arms and stood beside me, face to face.
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Speaker 1: Where's Kathape, she asked, gone. Her eyes flitted to the
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Speaker 1: pavilion and back to me. We stood close together, extraordinarily
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Speaker 1: intimate and extraordinarily apart. I've never seen this cottage of yours,
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Speaker 1: she said, and I want to. She flung the bridle
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Speaker 1: of her horse around the veranda post and I helped
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Speaker 1: her tie it. Did you get what you went for
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Speaker 1: to Africa, she asked, No, I said, I lost my ship,
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Speaker 1: and that lost everything. Everything. She walked before me into
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Speaker 1: the living room of the chalet, and I saw that
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Speaker 1: she gripped her riding whip very tightly in her hand.
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Speaker 1: She looked about her for a moment, and then at me.
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Speaker 1: It's comfortable, she remarked. Our eyes met in a conversation
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Speaker 1: very different than the one upon our lips. A somber
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Speaker 1: glow surrounded us, drew us together, an unwonted shyness kept
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Speaker 1: us apart. She roused herself, after an instant's pause, to
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Speaker 1: examine my furniture. You have chintz curtains. I thought men
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Speaker 1: were too freckless to have curtains without a woman. But
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Speaker 1: of course your aunt did that. And a couch and
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Speaker 1: a brass fender. And is that a pianola? That is
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Speaker 1: your desk? I thought men's desks were always untidy and
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Speaker 1: covered with dust and tobacco ash. She flitted to my
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Speaker 1: color prints and my little case of books. Then she
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Speaker 1: went to the pianola. I watched her intently. Does this
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Speaker 1: thing play? She said what I asked, Does this thing play?
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Speaker 1: I roused myself from my preoccupation, like a musical gorilla
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Speaker 1: with fingers all of one length and a sort of
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Speaker 1: soul it's all the world of music to me. What
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Speaker 1: did you play Beethoven when I want to clear up
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Speaker 1: my head while I'm working? He is how one would
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Speaker 1: always like to work. Sometimes Chopin and those others, but Beethoven,
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Speaker 1: Beethoven mainly. Yes, silence again between us, she spoke with
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Speaker 1: an effort, play me something. She turned from me and
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Speaker 1: explored the rack of music. Rolls became interest and took
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Speaker 1: a piece the first part of the Kreutzer Sonata. Hesitated No,
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Speaker 1: she said that. She gave me Brahms Second Concerto, Opus
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Speaker 1: fifty eight, and curled up on the sofa, watching me
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Speaker 1: as I set myself slowly to play, I say, she said,
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Speaker 1: when I had done, that's fine. I didn't know those
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Speaker 1: things could play like that. I'm all astir. She came
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Speaker 1: and stood over me, looking at me. I'm going to
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Speaker 1: have a concert, she said abruptly, and laughed uneasily, and
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Speaker 1: hovered at the pigeon holes. Now, now what shall I have?
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Speaker 1: She chose more of Brahms than we came to the
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Speaker 1: Kreutzer Sonata. It is queer how Tolstoy has loaded that
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Speaker 1: with suggestions, debouched it made it a scandalous and intimate symbol.
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Speaker 1: When I had played the first part of that, she
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Speaker 1: came up to the pianola and hesitated over me. I
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Speaker 1: sat stiffly, waiting. Suddenly she seized my downcast head and
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Speaker 1: kissed my hair. She caught out my face between her
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Speaker 1: hands and kissed my lips. I put my arms about her,
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Speaker 1: and we kissed together. I sprang to my feet and
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Speaker 1: clasped her. Beatrice, I said, Beatrice, my dear. She whispered,
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Speaker 1: nearly breathless, with her arms about me, Oh, my dear. Two. Love,
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Speaker 1: like everything else in this immense process of social disorganization
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Speaker 1: in which we live, is a thing adrift, a fruitless thing,
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Speaker 1: broken away from its connections. I tell of this love
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Speaker 1: affair here because of its irrelevance, because it is so
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Speaker 1: remarkable that it should mean nothing and be nothing except itself.
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Speaker 1: It glows in my memory like some bright, casual flower
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Speaker 1: starting up amidst the debris of a catastrophe. For nearly
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Speaker 1: a fortnight we two met and made love together once more.
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Speaker 1: This mighty passion. Then, our fameless civilization, as fettered and
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Speaker 1: maimed and sterilized and debased, gripped me and filled me
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Speaker 1: with passionate delights and solemn joys that were, all, you know,
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Speaker 1: futile and purposeless. Once more I had the persuasion this matters.
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Speaker 1: Nothing else matters so much as this. We were both
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Speaker 1: infinitely grave in such happiness as we had. I do
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Speaker 1: not remember any laughter at all between us twelve days.
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Speaker 1: It lasted from that encounter in my chalet until our parting,
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Speaker 1: except at the end. There were days of supreme summer,
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Speaker 1: and there was a waxing moon. We met recklessly day
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Speaker 1: by day. We were so intent upon each other at first,
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Speaker 1: so intent upon expressing ourselves to each other and getting
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Speaker 1: at each other, that we troubled very little about the
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Speaker 1: appearance of our relationship. We met almost openly. We talked
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Speaker 1: of ten thousand things and of ourselves. We loved, we
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Speaker 1: made love. There is no prose of mine that can
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Speaker 1: tell of ours transfigured. The facts are nothing. Everything we touched,
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Speaker 1: the meanest things became glorious. How can I render bare
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Speaker 1: tenderness and delight and mutual possession. I sit here at
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Speaker 1: my desk thinking of untellable things. I have come to
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Speaker 1: know so much of love that I know now what
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Speaker 1: love might be. We loved, scarred and stained. We parted
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Speaker 1: basely and inevitably, but at least I met love. I
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Speaker 1: remember as we sat in a Canadian canoe, in a
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Speaker 1: reedy bush masked shallow we had discovered, operating out of
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Speaker 1: that pine shaded walking canal. How she fell talking of
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Speaker 1: the things that happened to her before she met me again.
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Speaker 1: She told me things, and they so joined and welded
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Speaker 1: together other things that lay disconnected in my memory that
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Speaker 1: it seemed to me I had always known what she
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Speaker 1: told me, And yet indeed I had not known nor
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Speaker 1: suspected it, save perhaps for a luminous transitory suspicion. Ever,
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Speaker 1: and again she made me see how life had shaped her.
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Speaker 1: She told me of her girlhood after I had known her.
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Speaker 1: We were poor and pretending and managing. We hacked about
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Speaker 1: on visits and things. I ought to have married. The
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Speaker 1: chances I had weren't particularly good chances. I didn't like em.
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Speaker 1: She paused. Then Carnaby came along. I remained quite still.
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Speaker 1: She spoke now with downcast eyes and one finger just
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Speaker 1: touching the water. One gets bored, bored beyond redemption, one
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Speaker 1: does about to these huge, expensive houses. I suppose the
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Speaker 1: scale's immense. One makes oneself useful to the other women
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Speaker 1: and agreeable to the men. One has to dress, one
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Speaker 1: has food, and exercise and leisure. It's the leisure and
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Speaker 1: the space and the blank opportunity it seems a sin
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Speaker 1: not to fill. Carnaby isn't like the other men. He's bigger.
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Speaker 1: They go about making love. Everybody's making love. I did,
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Speaker 1: and I don't do things by halves. She stopped. You knew,
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Speaker 1: she asked, looking up quite steadily. I nodded. Since when
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Speaker 1: those last days, it doesn't seem to matter, really, I
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Speaker 1: was a little surprised. She looked at me quietly. Kathope knew,
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Speaker 1: she said, by instinct. I could feel it. I suppose
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Speaker 1: I began once this would have mattered immensely. Now nothing matters,
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Speaker 1: she said, completing me. I felt I had to tell you.
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Speaker 1: I wanted you to understand why I didn't marry you.
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Speaker 1: With both hands. I have loved you, she paused, have
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Speaker 1: loved you ever since the day I kissed you in
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Speaker 1: the bracken. Only I forgot. And suddenly she dropped her
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Speaker 1: face upon her hands and sobbed passionately. I forgot, I forgot,
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Speaker 1: she cried, and became still. I dabbled my paddle in
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Speaker 1: the water. Look here, I said, forget again. Here am
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Speaker 1: I a ruined man? Marry me? She shook her head
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Speaker 1: without looking up. We were still for a long time.
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Speaker 1: Marry me, I whispered. She looked up, twined back a
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Speaker 1: wisp of hair, and answered this passionately. I wish I
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Speaker 1: could anyhow we have had this time. It has been
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Speaker 1: a fine time. Has it been for you? Also? I
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Speaker 1: haven't nudged you all I had to give. It's a
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Speaker 1: poor gift except for what it means and might have been.
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Speaker 1: But we are near the end of it now, Why,
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Speaker 1: I asked, marry me? Why should we two? You think,
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Speaker 1: she said, I could take courage and come to you
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Speaker 1: and be your everyday wife while you work and are poor.
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Speaker 1: Why not, said I? She looked at me gravely with
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Speaker 1: extended finger. Do you really think that of me? Haven't
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Speaker 1: you seen me? All? I hesitated. Never once have I
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Speaker 1: really meant marrying you, she insisted, never once. I fell
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Speaker 1: in love with you from the first, But when you
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Speaker 1: seemed a successful man, I told myself I wouldn't. I
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Speaker 1: was love sick for you, and you were so stupid.
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Speaker 1: I came near it then, but I knew I wasn't
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Speaker 1: good enough. What could I have been to you? A
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Speaker 1: woman with bad habits and bad associations? A woman smirched?
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Speaker 1: And what would I do for you or be to you?
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Speaker 1: If I wasn't good enough to be a rich man's wife?
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Speaker 1: I am certainly not good enough to be a poor
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Speaker 1: one's Forgive me for talking sense to you now, but
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Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you this Somehow. She stopped at
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Speaker 1: my gesture. I sat up, and the canoe rocked with
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Speaker 1: my movement. I don't care, I said, I want to
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Speaker 1: marry you and make you my wife. No, she said,
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Speaker 1: don't spoil things. That is impossible. Impossible. Think I can't
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Speaker 1: do my own hair? Do you mean you will get
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Speaker 1: me a maid? Good God, I cried, disconcerted, beyond measure.
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Speaker 1: Won't you learn to do your own hair for me?
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Speaker 1: Do you mean to say you can love a man?
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Speaker 1: She flung out her hands at me. Don't spoil it,
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Speaker 1: she cried. I have given you all I have. I
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Speaker 1: have given you all I can. If I could do it,
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Speaker 1: if I was good enough to do it, I would.
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Speaker 1: But I am a woman spoilt and ruined, dear, and
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Speaker 1: you are a ruined man. When we are making love,
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Speaker 1: we're lovers. But think of the gulf between us, in
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Speaker 1: habits and ways of thought, in will and training. When
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Speaker 1: we are not making love, think of it, and don't
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Speaker 1: think of it. Don't think of it. Yet. We have
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Speaker 1: snatched some hours. We still may have some hours. She
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Speaker 1: suddenly knelt forward towards me with a glowing darkness in
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Speaker 1: her eyes. Who cares if it upsets? She cried, If
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Speaker 1: you say another word, I will kiss you and go
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Speaker 1: to the bottom clutching you. I'm not afraid of that.
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Speaker 1: I'm not a bit afraid of that. I'll die with you.
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Speaker 1: Choose a death, and I'll die with you readily. Do
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Speaker 1: listen to me. I love you, I shall always love you.
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Speaker 1: It's because I love you that I won't go down
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Speaker 1: to become a dirty, familiar thing with you amidst the grime.
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Speaker 1: I've given all I can, I've had all I can
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Speaker 1: tell me, And she crept nearer. Have I been like
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Speaker 1: the dusk to you? Like the warm dusk? Is there magic? Still?
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Speaker 1: Listen to the ripple of water from your paddle, look
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Speaker 1: at the warm evening lights in the sky. Who cares
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Speaker 1: if the canoe upsets come nearer to me. Oh, my love,
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Speaker 1: come near. So she drew me to her, and our
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Speaker 1: lips met. Three. I asked her to marry me once again.
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Speaker 1: It was our last morning together, and we had met
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Speaker 1: very early about sunrise, knowing that we were to part.
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Speaker 1: No sun shone that day. The sky was overcast, the
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Speaker 1: morning chilly and lit by a clear, cold, spiritless light.
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Speaker 1: A heavy dampness in the air verged close on rain.
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Speaker 1: When I think of that morning, it is always the
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Speaker 1: quality of graying ashes wet with rain. Beatrice too had changed,
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Speaker 1: The spring had gone out of her movement. It came
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Speaker 1: to me for the first time that some day she
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Speaker 1: might grow old. She had become one flesh with the
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Speaker 1: rest of common humanity. The softness had gone from her
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Speaker 1: voice and manner, The dusky magic of her presence had gone.
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Speaker 1: I saw these things of perfect clearness, and they made
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Speaker 1: me sorry for them and for her. But they altered
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Speaker 1: my love, not a whit abated it nothing. And when
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Speaker 1: we had talked awkwardly for half a dozen sentences, I
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Speaker 1: came dully to my point, and now I cried, will
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Speaker 1: you marry me? No, she said, I shall keep to
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Speaker 1: my life. Here, I asked her to marry me in
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Speaker 1: a year's time. She shook her head. This world is
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Speaker 1: a soft world, I said, in spite of my present disasters,
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Speaker 1: I know now how to do things. If I had
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Speaker 1: you to work for in a year, I could be
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Speaker 1: a prosperous man. No, she said, I will put it brutally.
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Speaker 1: I shall go back to Carnaby. But I did not
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Speaker 1: feel angry. I had no sort of jealousy, no wounded pride,
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Speaker 1: no sense of injury. I had only a sense of
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Speaker 1: gray desolation, of hopeless cross purposes. Look here, she said,
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Speaker 1: I have been awake all night, and every night. I
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Speaker 1: have been thinking of this every moment when we have
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Speaker 1: not been together. I am not answering you on an impulse.
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Speaker 1: I love you. I love you. I'll say that over
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Speaker 1: ten thousand times. But here we are the rest of
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Speaker 1: life together. I said it wouldn't be together. Now we
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Speaker 1: are together. Now we have been together. We are full
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Speaker 1: of memories. I do not feel I can even forget
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Speaker 1: a single one, nor I and I want to close
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Speaker 1: it and leave it at that. You see, dear, what
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Speaker 1: else is there to do? She turned her white face
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Speaker 1: to me. All I know of love, all I have
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Speaker 1: ever dreamt or learnt of love. I have packed into
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Speaker 1: these days for you. You think we might live together
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Speaker 1: and go unloving. No, for you, I will have no
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Speaker 1: vain repetitions. You have had the best and all of me.
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Speaker 1: Would you have us after this? Meet again in London
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Speaker 1: or Paris or somewhere scuffle to some wretched dressmakers, meet
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Speaker 1: the cabinet particular. No, I said, I want you to
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Speaker 1: marry me. I want you to play the game of
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Speaker 1: life with me, as an honest woman should come and
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Speaker 1: live with me, be my wife and squaw bear me children.
20:15
Speaker 1: I looked at her white drawn face, and it seemed
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Speaker 1: to me I might carry her. Yet I spluttered for words.
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Speaker 1: My god, Beatrice, I cried, But this is cowardice and folly.
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Speaker 1: Are you afraid of life? You, of all people? What
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Speaker 1: doesn't matter what has been or what we were? Here
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Speaker 1: we are with the world before us, start clean and
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Speaker 1: new with me. We'll fight it through. I'm not such
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Speaker 1: a simple lover that I'll not tell you plainly when
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Speaker 1: you go wrong and fight our difference out with you.
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Speaker 1: It's the one thing I want, the one thing I
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Speaker 1: need to have you and more of you and more
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Speaker 1: this love making. It's love making it's just a part
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Speaker 1: of us and incident. She shook her head and stopped
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Speaker 1: me abruptly. It's all, she said, all, I protested. I'm
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Speaker 1: wiser than you, wiser beyond words. She turned her eyes
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Speaker 1: to me, and they shone with tears. I wouldn't have
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Speaker 1: you say anything but what you're saying, she said. But
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Speaker 1: it's nonsense, dear, you know it's nonsense as you say it.
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Speaker 1: I tried to keep up the heroic note, but she
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Speaker 1: would not listen to it. It's no good, she cried,
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Speaker 1: almost petulantly. This little world has made us what we are.
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Speaker 1: Don't you see? Don't you see what I am? I
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Speaker 1: can make love. I can make love and be loved prettily. Dear,
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Speaker 1: don't blame me. I haven't given you all I have.
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Speaker 1: If I had anything more, I have gone through it
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Speaker 1: all over and over again, thought it out this morning.
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Speaker 1: My head aches, my eyes ache, the light has gone
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Speaker 1: out of me, and I am a sick and tired woman.
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Speaker 1: But I'm talking wisdom, bitter wisdom. I couldn't be any
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Speaker 1: sort of helper to you, any sort of wife, any
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Speaker 1: sort of mother. I'm spoiled, I'm spoilt by this rich
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Speaker 1: idle way of living until every habit is wrong, every
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Speaker 1: taste wrong, the world is wrong. People can be ruined
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Speaker 1: by wealth just as much as by poverty. Do you
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Speaker 1: think I wouldn't face life with you if I could,
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Speaker 1: If I wasn't absolutely certain, I should be down and
22:30
Speaker 1: dragging in the first half mile of the journey here.
22:33
Speaker 1: I am damned, damned, but I won't damn you. You
22:39
Speaker 1: know what I am. You know you are too clear
22:42
Speaker 1: and simple not to know the truth. You try to
22:45
Speaker 1: romance and hector, but you know the truth. I am
22:49
Speaker 1: a little cad, sold and done. I'm my dear. You
22:54
Speaker 1: think I've been misbehaving, but all these days I've been
22:57
Speaker 1: on my best behavior. You don't unders stand, because you're
23:01
Speaker 1: a man. A woman when she's spoiled, is spoiled. She's
23:06
Speaker 1: dirty in grain. She's done. She walked on, weeping. You're
23:13
Speaker 1: a fool to want me, she said. You're a fool
23:15
Speaker 1: to want me for my sake just as much as yours.
23:19
Speaker 1: We've done all we can. It's just romancing. She dashed
23:24
Speaker 1: the tears from her eyes and turned upon me. Don't
23:26
Speaker 1: you understand, she challenged, Don't you know? We faced one
23:31
Speaker 1: another in silence for a moment, Yes, I said, I know.
23:38
Speaker 1: For a long time we spoke, never a word, but
23:41
Speaker 1: walked on together, slowly and sorrowfully, reluctant to turn about
23:46
Speaker 1: towards our parting. When at last we did, she broke
23:49
Speaker 1: silence again. I've had you, she said, Heaven and Hell,
23:54
Speaker 1: I said, can't alter that I've wanted. She went on,
23:59
Speaker 1: I've talked to you in the nights and made up speeches.
24:02
Speaker 1: Now when I want to make them, I'm tongue tied.
24:05
Speaker 1: But to me, it's just as if the moments we
24:07
Speaker 1: have had lasted forever. Moods and states come and go
24:12
Speaker 1: to day. My light is out to this day. I
24:16
Speaker 1: cannot determine whether she said, or whether I imagine she
24:19
Speaker 1: said chloral. Perhaps a half conscious diagnosis flashed it on
24:24
Speaker 1: my brain. Perhaps I am the victim of some perverse,
24:27
Speaker 1: imaginative freak of memory, some hinted possibility that scratched and
24:32
Speaker 1: seared there. The word stands in my memory as if
24:36
Speaker 1: it were written in fire. We came to the door
24:39
Speaker 1: of Lady Osprey's garden at last, and it was beginning
24:43
Speaker 1: to drizzle. She held out her hands and I took
24:46
Speaker 1: them Yours she said, in a weary, unimpassioned voice, all
24:51
Speaker 1: that I had, such as it was, will you forget? Never?
24:56
Speaker 1: I answered, never a touch or a word? No, you will,
25:03
Speaker 1: she said. We looked at one another in silence, and
25:07
Speaker 1: her face full of fatigue and misery. What could I do?
25:11
Speaker 1: What was there to do? I wish, I said, and stopped.
25:16
Speaker 1: Good bye. Four That should have been the last I
25:22
Speaker 1: saw of her, But indeed I was destined to see
25:25
Speaker 1: her once again. Two days after I was at Lady Grove,
25:29
Speaker 1: I forget altogether upon what errand, And as I walked
25:32
Speaker 1: back to the station, believing her to be gone away,
25:35
Speaker 1: she came upon me. And she was riding with Carnaby,
25:39
Speaker 1: just as I had seen them first. The encounter jumped
25:42
Speaker 1: upon us unprepared. She rode by, her eyes dark in
25:46
Speaker 1: her white face, and scarcely noticed me. She winced and
25:50
Speaker 1: grew stiff at the sight of me and bowed her head.
25:53
Speaker 1: But Carnaby, because he thought I was a broken and
25:56
Speaker 1: discomfited man, saluted me with an easy friendliness and shouted
26:00
Speaker 1: some genial commonplace to me. They passed out of sight
26:05
Speaker 1: and left me by the roadside. And then, indeed I
26:09
Speaker 1: tasted the ultimate bitterness of life. For the first time,
26:13
Speaker 1: I felt utter futility, and was wrung by emotion that
26:17
Speaker 1: begot no action, by shame and pity beyond words. I
26:22
Speaker 1: had parted from her dully, and I had seen my
26:24
Speaker 1: uncle break and die with dry eyes and a steady mind.
26:29
Speaker 1: But this chance sight of my lost Beatrice brought me
26:32
Speaker 1: to tears. My face was wrung, and tears came pouring
26:36
Speaker 1: down my cheeks. All the magic she had for me
26:39
Speaker 1: had changed to wild sorrow. Oh God, I cried, this
26:44
Speaker 1: is too much, and turned my face after her, and
26:47
Speaker 1: made appealing gestures to the beech trees, and cursed at fate.
26:51
Speaker 1: I wanted to do preposterous things, to pursue her, to
26:55
Speaker 1: save her, to turn life back so that she might
26:58
Speaker 1: begin again. I wonder what would have happened had I
27:01
Speaker 1: overtaken them in pursuit. Breathless, with running, uttering incoherent words, weeping, expostulatory,
27:09
Speaker 1: I came near to doing that. There was nothing in
27:13
Speaker 1: earth or Heaven to respect my curses or weeping. In
27:16
Speaker 1: the midst of it, a man who had been trimming
27:19
Speaker 1: the opposite hedge appeared and stared at me abruptly, ridiculously
27:24
Speaker 1: I dissembled before him and went on and caught my train.
27:29
Speaker 1: With the pain I felt then, I have felt a
27:31
Speaker 1: hundred times. It is with me as I write. It
27:34
Speaker 1: haunts this book. I see, that is what haunts this book,
27:39
Speaker 1: from end to end. End of book, fourth chapter, second
27:46
Speaker 1: Parts one to four. Recording by William Tomkoe