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In the Days of the Comet Book Third Chapter Third Section 2-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book three, Chapter three, Sections two and three are in
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  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet. 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. In
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  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells, Book three,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter three, Sections two and three. I remember that first
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  Speaker 1: Beltane Festival as the most terribly lonely night in my life.
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  Speaker 1: It stands in my mind in fragments, fragments of intense feeling,
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  Speaker 1: with forgotten gaps between. I recall very distinctly being upon
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  Speaker 1: the great staircase of Lochester House, though I don't remember
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  Speaker 1: getting there from the room in which my mother lay,
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  Speaker 1: and how upon the landing I met Anna ascending. As
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  Speaker 1: I came down. She had but just her of my return,
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  Speaker 1: and she was hurrying upstairs to me. She stopped, and
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  Speaker 1: so did I, and we stood and clasped hands, and
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  Speaker 1: she scrutinized my face in the way women sometimes do.
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  Speaker 1: So we remained for a second or so. I could
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  Speaker 1: say nothing to her at all, but I could feel
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  Speaker 1: the wave of her emotion. I halted, answered the earnest
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  Speaker 1: pressure of her hand, relinquished it and after a queer
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  Speaker 1: second of hesitation, went on down, returning to my own preoccupations.
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  Speaker 1: It did not occur to me at all, then to
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  Speaker 1: ask myself what she might be thinking or feeling. I
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  Speaker 1: remember the corridor full of mellow evening light, and how
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  Speaker 1: I went mechanically some paces toward the dining room. Then
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  Speaker 1: at the sight of the little tables and the gusty
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  Speaker 1: outburst of talking voices as some one in front of
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  Speaker 1: me swung the door open, and two I remembered that
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  Speaker 1: I did not want to eat. After that come an
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  Speaker 1: impression of myself walking across the open grass in front
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  Speaker 1: of the house, and the purpose I had of getting
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  Speaker 1: alone upon the moors, and how somebody passing me said
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  Speaker 1: something about a hat. I had come out without my hat.
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  Speaker 1: A fragment of thought has linked itself with an effect
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  Speaker 1: of long shadows upon turf golden with the light of
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  Speaker 1: the sinking sun. The world was singularly empty, I thought,
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  Speaker 1: without either Nettie or my mother, there wasn't any sense
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  Speaker 1: in it any more. Nettie was already back in my mind.
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  Speaker 1: Then then I am out on the moors. I avoided
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  Speaker 1: the crests where the bonfires were being piled and sought
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  Speaker 1: the lonely places. I remember very clearly sitting on a
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  Speaker 1: gate beyond the park, in a fold, just below the
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  Speaker 1: crest that hid Beacon Hill bonfire and its crowd. I
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  Speaker 1: was looking at and admiring the sunset. The golden earth
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  Speaker 1: and sky seemed like a little bubble that floated in
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  Speaker 1: the globe of human futility. Then in the twilight I
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  Speaker 1: walked along an unknown, bat haunted road between high hedges.
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  Speaker 1: I did not sleep under a roof that night, but
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  Speaker 1: I hungered and ate. I ate near midnight at a
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  Speaker 1: little inn over toward Birmingham and miles away from my home. Instinctively,
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  Speaker 1: I had avoided the crests where the bonfire crowds gathered.
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  Speaker 1: But here there were many people, and I had to
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  Speaker 1: share a table with a man who had some useless
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  Speaker 1: mortgage deeds to burn. I talked to him about them,
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  Speaker 1: but my soul stood at a great distance behind my lips.
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  Speaker 1: Soon each hill top bore a little tulip shaped flame flower.
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  Speaker 1: Little black figures clustered round and dotted the base of
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  Speaker 1: its petals. And as for the rest of the multitude abroad,
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  Speaker 1: the kindly night swallowed them up by leaving the roads
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  Speaker 1: in clear paths and wandering in the fields, I contrived
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  Speaker 1: to keep alone, though the confused noise of voices and
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  Speaker 1: the roaring and crackling of great fires was always near me.
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  Speaker 1: I wandered into a lonely meadow, and presently in a
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  Speaker 1: hollow of deep shadows, I lay down to stare at
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  Speaker 1: the stars. I lay hidden in the darkness, and ever
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  Speaker 1: and again the soft and uproar of the beltane fires
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  Speaker 1: that were burning up the serf follies of a vanished age,
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  Speaker 1: and the shouting of the people passing through the fires
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  Speaker 1: and praying to be delivered from the prison of themselves
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  Speaker 1: reached my ears, and I thought of my mother, and
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  Speaker 1: then of my new loneliness, and the hunger of my
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  Speaker 1: heart for Nettie. I thought of many things that night,
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  Speaker 1: but chiefly of the overflowing personal love and tenderness that
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  Speaker 1: had come to me in the wake of the change
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  Speaker 1: of the greater need, the unsatisfied need in which I
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  Speaker 1: stood for this one person who could fulfill all my desires.
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  Speaker 1: So long as my mother had lived, she had, in
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  Speaker 1: a measure held my heart, given me a food These
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  Speaker 1: emotions could live upon, and mitigated that emptiness of spirit.
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  Speaker 1: But now suddenly that one possible comfort had left me.
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  Speaker 1: There had been many at the season of the change
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  Speaker 1: who had thought that this great enlargement of mankind would
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  Speaker 1: abolish personal love, but indeed it had only made it finer, fuller,
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  Speaker 1: more vitally necessary. They had thought that, seeing men now
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  Speaker 1: were all full of joyful passion to make and do,
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  Speaker 1: and glad and loving, and of willing service to all
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  Speaker 1: their fellows, there would be no need of the one intimate,
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  Speaker 1: trusting communion that had been the finest thing the former life.
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  Speaker 1: And indeed, so far as this was a matter of
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  Speaker 1: advantage and the struggle for existence, they were right. But
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  Speaker 1: so far as it was a matter of the spirit
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  Speaker 1: and the fine perceptions of life, it was altogether wrong.
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  Speaker 1: We had indeed not eliminated personal love. We had but
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  Speaker 1: stripped it of its base wrappings, of its pride, its suspicions,
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  Speaker 1: its mercenary and competitive elements, until at last it stood
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  Speaker 1: up in our minds, stark, shining, and invincible. Through all
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  Speaker 1: the fine, divaricating ways of the new life, it grew
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  Speaker 1: ever more evident there were for every one certain persons,
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  Speaker 1: mysteriously and indescribably in the key of one's self, whose
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  Speaker 1: mere presence gave pleasure, whose mere existence was interest, whose
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  Speaker 1: idiosyncrasy blended with accident to make a completing and predominant harmony.
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  Speaker 1: For their predestined lovers, they were the essential thing in life.
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  Speaker 1: Without them, the fine, brave show of the rejuvenated world
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  Speaker 1: was a caparison steed without a rider, a bowl without
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  Speaker 1: a flower, a theater without a play. And to me
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  Speaker 1: that night of Beltane, it was as clear as white
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  Speaker 1: flames that Nettie and Nettie alone roused those harmonies in me.
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  Speaker 1: And she had gone. I had sent her from me.
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  Speaker 1: I knew not whither she had gone. I had, in
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  Speaker 1: my first virtuous foolishness, cut her out of my life forever.
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  Speaker 1: So I saw it then, and I lay unseen in
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  Speaker 1: the darkness, and called upon Nettie and wept for her.
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  Speaker 1: Lay upon my face and wept for her, while the
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  Speaker 1: glad people went to and fro and the smoke stream
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  Speaker 1: thick across the distant stars, and the red reflections, the shadows,
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  Speaker 1: and the fluctuating glares danced over the face of the world. No,
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  Speaker 1: the change had freed us from our baser passions, indeed
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  Speaker 1: from habitual and mechanical cancupiscence, and mean issues and coarse imaginings.
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  Speaker 1: But from the passions of love it had not freed us.
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  Speaker 1: It had but brought the Lord of life Eros to
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  Speaker 1: his own. All through the long sorrow of that night, I,
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  Speaker 1: who had rejected him, confessed his sway with tears and
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  Speaker 1: inappeasable regrets. I cannot give the remotest guess of when
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  Speaker 1: I rose up, nor of my tortuous wanderings in the
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  Speaker 1: valleys between the midnight fires, nor how I evaded the
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  Speaker 1: laughing and rejoicing multitudes who went streaming home between three
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  Speaker 1: and four to resume their lives, swept and garnished, stripped
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  Speaker 1: and clean. But at dawn, when the ashes of the
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  Speaker 1: world's gladness were ceasing to glow, it was a bleak
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  Speaker 1: dawn that made me shiver in my thin summer Close
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  Speaker 1: I came across a field to a little cups full
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  Speaker 1: of dim blue hyacinths. A queer sense of familiarity arrested
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  Speaker 1: my steps, and I stood puzzled. Then I was moved
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  Speaker 1: to go a dozen paces from the path, and at
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  Speaker 1: once a singularly misshapen tree hitched itself into a notch
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  Speaker 1: in my memory. This was the place here I had stood. There,
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  Speaker 1: I had placed my old kite and shot with my revolver,
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  Speaker 1: learning to use it against the day when I should
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  Speaker 1: encounter veroll. Kite and revolver had gone now, and all
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  Speaker 1: my hut and narrow past its last vestiges had shriveled
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  Speaker 1: and vanished in the whirling gusts of the Beltane fires.
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  Speaker 1: And so I walked through a world of gray ashes,
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  Speaker 1: at last back to the Great House in which the dead,
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  Speaker 1: deserted image of my dear lost mother lay Section three.
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  Speaker 1: I came back to Lowchester House very tired, very wretched,
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  Speaker 1: Exhausted by my fruitless longing for Nettie. I had no
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  Speaker 1: thoughts of what lay before me. A miserable attraction drew
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  Speaker 1: me into the Great House to look again on the
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  Speaker 1: stillness that had been my mother's face. And as I
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  Speaker 1: came into that room, Anna, who had been sitting by
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  Speaker 1: the open window, rose to meet me. She had the
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  Speaker 1: air of one who waits. She too was pale with
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  Speaker 1: watching all night. She had watched between the dead within
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  Speaker 1: and the Beltane fires abroad, and longed for my coming.
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  Speaker 1: I stood mute between her and the bedside Willie. She whispered,
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  Speaker 1: and eyes body seemed incarnate pity. An unseen presence drew
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  Speaker 1: us together. My mother's face became resolute, commanding. I turned
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  Speaker 1: to Anna, as a child may turn to its nurse.
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  Speaker 1: I put my hands about her strong shoulders. She folded
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  Speaker 1: me to her, and my heart gave way. I buried
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  Speaker 1: my face in her breast and clung to her weakly,
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  Speaker 1: and burst into a passion of weeping. She held me
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  Speaker 1: with hungry arms. She whispered to me. There there as
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  Speaker 1: one whisper's comfort to a child. Suddenly she was kissing me.
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  Speaker 1: She kissed me with a hungry intensity of passion, on
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  Speaker 1: my cheeks, on my lips. She kissed me on my lips,
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  Speaker 1: with lips that were salt with tears, and I returned
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  Speaker 1: her kisses. Then abruptly we desisted and stood apart, looking
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  Speaker 1: at one another. In the book three, Chapter three, Sections
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  Speaker 1: two and three,