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

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Speaker 1: Book, first 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 tom Coe. Tono
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Speaker 1: Bungay by H. G. Wells Book, first chapter, second parts
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Speaker 1: one to four chapter the second on my launch into
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Speaker 1: the world and the last I saw of Bladesover When
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Speaker 1: I was thus banished from Bladesover House, as it was
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Speaker 1: then thought for good and all, I was sent by
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Speaker 1: my mother in a vindictive spirit, first to her cousin,
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Speaker 1: Nicodemus Frapp, and then as a fully indentured apprentice to
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Speaker 1: my uncle Ponderevo. I run away from the care of
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Speaker 1: my cousin Nicodemus back to Bladesover House. My cousin, Nicodemus
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Speaker 1: Frapp was a baker in a back street, a slum,
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Speaker 1: rather just off that miserable, narrow, mean high road that
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Speaker 1: threads those exquisite beads Rochester and Chatham. He was, I
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Speaker 1: must admit, a shock to me, much dominated by a young, plump, prolific,
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Speaker 1: malingering wife, a bent, slow moving, unwilling dark man with
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Speaker 1: flour in his hair and eyelashes in the lines of
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Speaker 1: his face and the seams of his coat. I've never
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Speaker 1: had a chance to correct my early impression of him,
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Speaker 1: and he still remains an almost dreadful memory, a sort
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Speaker 1: of caricature of incompetent simplicity, as I remember him. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: he presented the servile tradition perfected. He had no pride
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Speaker 1: in his person. Fine clothes and dressing up wasn't for
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Speaker 1: the likes of him, and so that he got his wife,
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Speaker 1: who was no artist at it, to cut his black
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Speaker 1: hair at irregular intervals and let his nails become disagreeable
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Speaker 1: to the fastidious eye. He had no pride in his business,
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Speaker 1: nor any initiative. His only virtues were not doing certain
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Speaker 1: things and hard work. Your uncle, said my mother. All
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Speaker 1: grown up cousins or uncles by courtesy among the Victorian
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Speaker 1: middle class. Isn't much to look at or talk to.
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Speaker 1: But he's a good hard working man. There was a
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Speaker 1: sort of base honorableness about toil, however needless in that
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Speaker 1: system of inversion. Another point of honor was to rise
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Speaker 1: at or before dawn and then laboriously muddle about it.
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Speaker 1: Was very distinctly impressed on my mind that the good
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Speaker 1: hard working man would have thought it follolish to own
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Speaker 1: a pocket handkerchief. Poor old Frapp, dirty and crushed by
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Speaker 1: product of Bladesover's magnificence, he made no fight against the
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Speaker 1: world at all. He was floundering in small debts that
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Speaker 1: were not so small, but that finally they overwhelmed him.
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Speaker 1: Whenever there was occasion for any exertion. His wife fell
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Speaker 1: back upon pains and her condition. And God sent them
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Speaker 1: many children, most of whom died, and so by their
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Speaker 1: coming and going, gave a double exercise in the virtues
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Speaker 1: of submission. Resignation to God's will was the common device
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Speaker 1: of these people in the face of every duty and
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Speaker 1: every emergency. There were no books in the house. I
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Speaker 1: doubt if either of them had retained the capacity for
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Speaker 1: reading consecutively for more than a minute or so. And
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Speaker 1: it was with amazement that day after day, over and
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Speaker 1: above stale bread, one beheld food, and again more food
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Speaker 1: amidst the litter that held permanent session on the living
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Speaker 1: room table. One may have doubted if either of them
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Speaker 1: felt discomfort in this dusty darkness of existence. If it
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Speaker 1: was not that they did visibly seek consolation. They sought
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Speaker 1: this and found it of a Sunday, not in strong
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Speaker 1: drink and raving, but in imaginary drafts of blood. They
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Speaker 1: met with twenty or thirty other darkened and unclean people,
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Speaker 1: all dressed in dingy colors that would not show the dirt,
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Speaker 1: in a little brick built chapel, equipped with the spavined
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Speaker 1: roarer of a harmonium, And there solaced their minds on
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Speaker 1: the thought that all that was fair and free in life,
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Speaker 1: all that struggled, all that planned and made all pride
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Speaker 1: and beauty and honor, all fine and enjoyable things, were
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Speaker 1: irrevocably damned to everlasting torments. They were the self appointed
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Speaker 1: confidants of God's mockery of his own creation. So at
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Speaker 1: any rate they stick in my mind vaguer and yet
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Speaker 1: hardly less agreeable than this cosmic jest. This coming yah,
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Speaker 1: clever and general, serving out and showing up of the lucky,
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Speaker 1: the bold, and the cheerful, was their own predestination to glory.
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Speaker 1: There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins.
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Speaker 1: So they sang, I hear the drone, and weeze of
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Speaker 1: that hymn. Now I hated them with a bitter, uncharitable
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Speaker 1: condemnation of boyhood, and a twinge of that hate comes
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Speaker 1: back to me as I write the words, the sounds,
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Speaker 1: and then the scene return these obscure, undignified people. A
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Speaker 1: fat woman with asthma, an old Welsh milk cellar with
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Speaker 1: a tumor on his bald head, who was the intellectual
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Speaker 1: leader of the sect. A huge voiced haberdasher with a
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Speaker 1: big black beard, A white faced, extraordinarily pregnant woman his wife,
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Speaker 1: a bespeckled rate collector with a bent back. I hear
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Speaker 1: the talk about souls, the strange, battered old phrases that
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Speaker 1: were coined ages ago in the seaports of the sun,
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Speaker 1: dry levant of balm of Gilead, and manna in the
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Speaker 1: desert of gourds. They give shade and water in a
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Speaker 1: thirsty land. I recall again the way in which, at
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Speaker 1: the conclusion of the service the the talk remained pious
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Speaker 1: in form but became medical in substance, And how the
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Speaker 1: women got together for obstetric whisperings. I, as a boy,
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Speaker 1: did not matter, and might overhear if bladesover is my
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Speaker 1: key for the explanation of England. I think my invincible
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Speaker 1: persuasion that I understand Russia was engendered by the circle
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Speaker 1: of Uncle Frapp. I slept in a dingy sheeted bed
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Speaker 1: with the two elder survivors of frap Fecundity, and spent
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Speaker 1: my week days in helping in the laborious disorder of
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Speaker 1: the shop and bakehouse, in incidental deliveries of bread and
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Speaker 1: so forth, and in parrying the probings of my uncle
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Speaker 1: into my relations with the blood, and his confidential explanations
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Speaker 1: that ten shillings a week, which was what my mother
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Speaker 1: paid him, was not enough to cover my accommodation. He
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Speaker 1: was very anxious to keep that, but also he wanted more.
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Speaker 1: There were neither books, nor any seat nor corner in
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Speaker 1: that house where reading was possible. No newspaper ever brought
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Speaker 1: the clash of worldly things into its heavenward seclusion. Horror
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Speaker 1: of it all grew in me daily, and whenever I could,
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Speaker 1: I escaped into the streets and tramped about Chatham. The
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Speaker 1: news shops appealed to me. Particularly one saw there smudgy
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Speaker 1: illustrated sheets, the police news in particular, in which vilely
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Speaker 1: drawn pictures brought home to the dullest intelligence and interminable
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Speaker 1: succession of squalid crimes. Women murdered and put into boxes,
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Speaker 1: buried under floors, old men bludgeoned at midnight by robbers,
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Speaker 1: people thrust suddenly out of trains, happy lovers, shot, vitrioled
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Speaker 1: and so forth by rivals. I got my first glimpse
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Speaker 1: of the life of pleasure in foully drawn pictures of
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Speaker 1: police raids on this and that. Interspersed with these sheets
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Speaker 1: were others in which Sloper, the urban John Bull had
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Speaker 1: his fling with gin bottle and Obi's umbrella. Or the
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Speaker 1: kindly empty faces of the royal family appeared and reappeared
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Speaker 1: visiting this opening, that getting married, getting offspring, lying in state,
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Speaker 1: doing everything but anything, a wonderful good meaning impenetrable race apart.
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Speaker 1: I have never revisited Chatham. The impression it has left
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Speaker 1: on my mind is one of squalid compression, unlit by
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Speaker 1: any gleam of a maturer charity. All its effects arranged
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Speaker 1: themselves as antithetical to the Bladesover effects. They confirmed and
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Speaker 1: intensified all that Bladesover suggested. Bladesover declared itself to be
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Speaker 1: the land to be essentially England. I have already told
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Speaker 1: how its airy spaciousness, its wide dignity, seemed to thrust village,
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Speaker 1: church and vicarage into corners into a secondary and conditional significance.
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Speaker 1: Here one gathered the corollary of that, since the whole
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Speaker 1: wide country of Kent was made up of contiguous bladesovers
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Speaker 1: and for the gentlefolk, the surplus of population, all who
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Speaker 1: were not good tenants nor good laborers. Church of England,
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Speaker 1: submissive and respectful, were necessarily thrust together, jostled out of sight,
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Speaker 1: to fester as they might, in this place that had
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Speaker 1: the colors and even the smells of a well packed
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Speaker 1: dust bin. They should be grateful even for that, that,
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Speaker 1: one felt was a theory of it all. And I
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Speaker 1: loafed about this wilderness of crowded inginess with young, receptive,
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Speaker 1: wide open eyes, and through the blessings or curse of
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Speaker 1: some fairy godmother of mine, asking and asking again. But
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Speaker 1: after all why? I wandered up through Rochester once and
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Speaker 1: had a glimpse of the stour valley above the town,
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Speaker 1: all horrible with cement works and foully smoking chimneys and
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Speaker 1: rows of workmen's cottages. Minute ugly, uncomfortable, and grimy. So
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Speaker 1: I had my first intimation of how industrialism might live
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Speaker 1: in a landlord's land. I spent some hours too in
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Speaker 1: the streets that give upon the river, drawn by the
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Speaker 1: spell of the sea. But I saw barges and ships
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Speaker 1: stripped of magic, and mostly devoted to cement, ice, timber,
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Speaker 1: and coal. The sailors looked to me gross and slovenly men,
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Speaker 1: and the shipping struck me as clumsy, ugly, old and dirty.
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Speaker 1: I discovered that most sails don't fit the ships that
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Speaker 1: hoist them, and that there may be as pitiful and
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Speaker 1: squalid a display of poverty with a vessel as with
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Speaker 1: a man. When I saw colliers unloading, watched the workers
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Speaker 1: in the hold filling up silly little sacks, and the
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Speaker 1: succession of blackened, half naked men that ran to and
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Speaker 1: fro with these along a plank over a thirty foot
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Speaker 1: drop into filth and mud. I was first seized with
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Speaker 1: admiration of their courage and toughness. And then, but after all, why,
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Speaker 1: and the stupid ugliness of all this waste of muscle
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Speaker 1: and endurance came home to me, among other things that
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Speaker 1: obviously wasted and deteriorated the coal, and I had imagined
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Speaker 1: great things of the sea. Well, anyhow, for a time
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Speaker 1: that vocation was stilled. But such impressions came into my leisure,
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Speaker 1: and of that I had no excess. Most of my
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Speaker 1: time was spent doing things for Uncle Frapp, and my
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Speaker 1: evenings and nights perforce in the company of the two
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Speaker 1: eldest of my cousins. He was errand boy at an
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Speaker 1: oil shop, and fervently pious, and of him I saw
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Speaker 1: nothing until the evening, except at meals. The other was
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Speaker 1: enjoying the Midsummer holidays without any great elation. A singularly
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Speaker 1: thin and abject, stunted creature he was, whose chief lifeliness
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Speaker 1: was to pretend to be a monkey, and who I
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Speaker 1: am now convinced had some secret disease that drained his
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Speaker 1: vitality away. If I met him now, I should think
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Speaker 1: him a pitiful little creature and be extremely sorry for him.
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Speaker 1: That I felt only a wondering aversion. He sniffed horribly,
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Speaker 1: he was tired out by a couple of miles of loafing.
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Speaker 1: He never started any conversation, and he seemed to prefer
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Speaker 1: his own company to mine. His mother poor woman said
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Speaker 1: he was the thoughtful one. Serious trouble came suddenly out
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Speaker 1: of a conversation we held in bed one night. Some
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Speaker 1: particularly pious phrase of my elder cousins irritated me extremely,
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Speaker 1: and I have vowed outright my entire disbelief in the
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Speaker 1: whole scheme of revealed religion. I had never said a
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Speaker 1: word about my doubts to any one before, except to Ewart,
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Speaker 1: who had first evolved them. I had never settled my
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Speaker 1: doubts until at this moment when I spoke. But it
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Speaker 1: came to me then that the whole scheme of salvation
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Speaker 1: of the FRAPs was not simply doubtful, but impossible. I
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Speaker 1: fired this discovery out into the darkness with the greatest promptitude.
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Speaker 1: My abrupt denials certainly scared my cousin amazingly. At first
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Speaker 1: they could not understand what I was saying, and when
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Speaker 1: they did, I fully believed they expected an instant answer
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Speaker 1: in thunderbolts and flames. They gave me more room in
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Speaker 1: the bed forthwith, and then the elder sat up and
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Speaker 1: expressed his sense of my awfulness. I was already a
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Speaker 1: little frightened at my temerity, but when he asked me
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Speaker 1: categorically to unsay what I had said. What could I
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Speaker 1: do but confirm my repudiation. There's no hell, I said,
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Speaker 1: and no eternal punishment. No God would be such a
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Speaker 1: fool as that. My elder cousin cried aloud in horror,
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Speaker 1: and the younger lay scared but listening. Then you mean,
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Speaker 1: said my elder cousin, when at last he could bring
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Speaker 1: himself to argue, you might do just as you liked,
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Speaker 1: if you were cad enough, said I. Our little voices
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Speaker 1: went on interminably, and at one stage my cousin got
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Speaker 1: out of bed and made his brother do likewise, and
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Speaker 1: knelt in the night dimness and prayed at me that
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Speaker 1: I found trying. But I held out valiantly forgive him,
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Speaker 1: said my cousin. He knows not what he saith. Oh,
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Speaker 1: you can pray if you like, I said, But if
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Speaker 1: you're going to cheek me in your prayers, I draw
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Speaker 1: the line. The last I remember of that great discussion
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Speaker 1: was my cousin deploring the fact that he should ever
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Speaker 1: sleep in the same bed with an infidel. The next
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Speaker 1: day he astonished me by telling the whole business to
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Speaker 1: his father. This was quite outside all my codes. Uncle
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Speaker 1: Nicodemus sprang it upon me at the midday meal. You've
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Speaker 1: been say in queer things, George, he said, abruptly, you
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Speaker 1: better mind what you're saying. What did he say? Father, said,
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Speaker 1: missus frapp things I couldn't repeat, said he? What things?
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Speaker 1: I said? Hotly? Ask him, said my uncle, pointing with
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Speaker 1: his knife to his informant, and making me realize the
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Speaker 1: nature of my offense. My aunt looked at the witness
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Speaker 1: not she framed a question. Wus, said my uncle, blasphemy.
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Speaker 1: My aunt couldn't touch another mouthful. I was already a
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Speaker 1: little troubled at my conscience by my daring, and now
15:39
Speaker 1: I began to feel the black enormity of the course
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Speaker 1: upon which I had embarked. I was only talking, sense
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Speaker 1: I said. I had a still more dreadful moment when
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Speaker 1: presently I met my cousin in the brick alley behind
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Speaker 1: the yard that led back to his grocer's shop. You sneak,
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Speaker 1: I said, and smacked his face hard forthwith now, then
16:03
Speaker 1: said I. He started back, astonished and alarmed. His eyes
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Speaker 1: met mine, and I saw a sudden gleam of resolution.
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Speaker 1: He turned his other cheek to me in it, he said,
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Speaker 1: in it, I'll forgive you. I felt I had never
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Speaker 1: encountered a more detestable way of evading a licking. I
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Speaker 1: shoved him against the wall and left him there forgiving me,
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Speaker 1: and went back into the house. You'd better not speak
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Speaker 1: to your cousins, George, said my aunt, till you're in
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Speaker 1: a better state of mind. I became an outcast forthwith.
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Speaker 1: At supper that night, a gloomy silence was broken by
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Speaker 1: my cousin saying, e it me for telling you, And
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Speaker 1: I turned the other cheek mover. He's got the evil
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Speaker 1: one behind him now, a ridin' on his back, said
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Speaker 1: my aunt, to the grave discomfort of the eldest girl
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Speaker 1: who sat beside me. After supper, my uncle, in a
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Speaker 1: few ill chosen words, prayed me to repent before I slept.
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Speaker 1: Suppose you was took in your sleep, George, he said,
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Speaker 1: where'd you be? Then you'd just think of that me boy.
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Speaker 1: By this time I was thoroughly miserable and frightened, and
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Speaker 1: this suggestion unnerved me dreadfully. But I kept up an
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Speaker 1: impenitent front to wake an all, said Uncle Nicodemus, in
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Speaker 1: gentler tones. You don't want to wake an ell George
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Speaker 1: burnin and screamin for ever do you You wouldn't like that.
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Speaker 1: He tried very hard to get me to just have
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Speaker 1: a look at the bake house fire before I retired.
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Speaker 1: It might move you, he said. I was awake longest
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Speaker 1: that night. My cousin slept the sleep of faith on
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Speaker 1: either side of me. I decided I would whisper my
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Speaker 1: prayers and stopped midway because I was ashamed, and perhaps
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Speaker 1: also because I had an idea. One didn't square God
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Speaker 1: like that. No, I said, with a sudden confidence, damn
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Speaker 1: me if you're coward enough. But you're not. No, you
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Speaker 1: couldn't be. I woke my cousins up with emphatic digs
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Speaker 1: and told them as much triumphantly, and went very peacefully
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Speaker 1: to sleep, With my act of faith accomplished. I slept
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Speaker 1: not only through that night, but for all my night
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Speaker 1: since then. So far as any fear of divine injustice goes,
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Speaker 1: I sleep soundly, and shall I know to the end
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Speaker 1: of things. That declaration was an epoch in my spiritual
18:38
Speaker 1: life two. But I didn't expect to have the whole
18:44
Speaker 1: meeting on Sunday turned on to me. It was it
18:48
Speaker 1: all comes back to me, that convergence of attention. Even
18:52
Speaker 1: the faint, leathery smell of its atmosphere returns, and the
18:56
Speaker 1: coarse feel of my aunt's black dress beside me in
18:59
Speaker 1: contact with my and I see again the old Welsh
19:03
Speaker 1: milkman wrestling with me. They all wrestled with me by
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Speaker 1: prayer or exhortation, and I was holding out stoutly, though
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Speaker 1: convinced now by the contagion of their universal conviction that
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Speaker 1: by doing so, I was certainly and hopelessly damned. I
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Speaker 1: felt that they were right, that God was probably like them,
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Speaker 1: and that on the whole it didn't matter. And to
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Speaker 1: simplify the business thoroughly, I had declared I didn't believe
19:30
Speaker 1: anything at all. They confuted me by texts from scripture,
19:35
Speaker 1: which I now perceive was an illegitimate method of reply.
19:39
Speaker 1: When I got home, still impenitent and eternally lost and
19:43
Speaker 1: secretly very lonely and miserable and alarmed, Uncle Nicodemus docked
19:48
Speaker 1: my Sunday pudding. One person only spoke to me like
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Speaker 1: a human being on that day of wrath, and that
19:55
Speaker 1: was the younger Frapp. He came up to me in
19:58
Speaker 1: the afternoon, while I was confined upstairs with a Bible
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Speaker 1: and my own thoughts. Ello he said, and fretted about.
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Speaker 1: Do you mean to say there isn't no one? He said,
20:11
Speaker 1: funking the word no one, no one watching yer always?
20:18
Speaker 1: Why should there be? I asked, You can't help, thoughts,
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Speaker 1: said my cousin anyhow you mean? He stopped hovering. I
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Speaker 1: s'pose I oughtn't to be talking to you. He hesitated
20:31
Speaker 1: and flitted away with a guilty back glance over his shoulder.
20:36
Speaker 1: The following week made life quite intolerable for me. These
20:40
Speaker 1: people forced me at last into an atheism that terrified me.
20:44
Speaker 1: When I learnt that next Sunday the wrestling was to
20:47
Speaker 1: be resumed, my courage failed me altogether. I happened upon
20:52
Speaker 1: a map of Kent in a stationer's window on Saturday,
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Speaker 1: and that set me thinking of one form of release.
20:58
Speaker 1: I studied it intently for half an hour perhaps on
21:02
Speaker 1: Saturday night, got a route list of villages well fixed
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Speaker 1: in my memory, and got up and started for bladesover
21:08
Speaker 1: about five on Sunday morning, while my two bed mats
21:12
Speaker 1: were still fast asleep. Three I remember something, but not
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Speaker 1: so much of it as I should like to recall
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Speaker 1: of my long tramp to Bladesover House. The distance from
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Speaker 1: Chatham is almost exactly seventeen miles, and it took me
21:27
Speaker 1: until nearly one. It was very interesting, and I do
21:31
Speaker 1: not think I was very fatigued, though I got rather
21:34
Speaker 1: pinched by one boot. The morning must have been very clear,
21:39
Speaker 1: because I remember that near Itchinstow Hall, I looked back
21:43
Speaker 1: and saw the estuary of the Thames, that river that
21:46
Speaker 1: has since played so large a part in my life.
21:49
Speaker 1: But at the time I did not know it was
21:51
Speaker 1: the Thames. I thought this great expanse of mud flats
21:55
Speaker 1: and water was the sea which I had never yet seen.
21:58
Speaker 1: Nearly upon it stood ships, sailing ships, and a steamer
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Speaker 1: or so going up to London or down out into
22:06
Speaker 1: the great seas of the world. I stood for a
22:09
Speaker 1: long time, watching these and thinking whether, after all I
22:13
Speaker 1: should not have done better to have run away to sea.
22:17
Speaker 1: The nearer I drew to Bladesover, the more doubtful I
22:20
Speaker 1: grew of the duality of my reception, and the more
22:23
Speaker 1: I regretted that alternative. I suppose it was the dirty
22:27
Speaker 1: clumsiness of the shipping I had seen nearly that put
22:31
Speaker 1: me out of mind of that, I took a short
22:34
Speaker 1: cut through the warren across the corner of the main
22:36
Speaker 1: park to intercept the people from the church. I wanted
22:40
Speaker 1: to avoid meeting any one before I met my mother,
22:43
Speaker 1: and so I went to a place where the path
22:45
Speaker 1: passed between banks, and without exactly hiding, stood up among
22:49
Speaker 1: the bushes. This place, among other advantages, eliminated any chance
22:54
Speaker 1: of seeing Lady Drew, who would drive round by the
22:57
Speaker 1: carriage road. Standing up up to waylay in this fashion,
23:02
Speaker 1: I had a queer feeling of brigandige, as though I
23:05
Speaker 1: was some intrusive sort of bandit among these orderly things.
23:10
Speaker 1: It is the first time I remember having that all
23:13
Speaker 1: law feeling distinctly, a feeling that has played a large
23:16
Speaker 1: part in my subsequent life. I felt there existed no
23:20
Speaker 1: place for me that I had to drive myself in. Presently,
23:25
Speaker 1: down the hill, the servants appeared, straggling by twos and threes,
23:30
Speaker 1: First some of the garden people and the butler's wife
23:33
Speaker 1: with them, then the two laundry maids, odd inseparable old creatures,
23:39
Speaker 1: then the first footman talking to the butler's little girl,
23:42
Speaker 1: and at last walking grave and breathless beside Old Anne
23:46
Speaker 1: and Miss Fayson, the black figure of my mother. My
23:51
Speaker 1: boyish mind suggested the adoption of a playful form of appearance.
23:55
Speaker 1: Coo oie, mother said, I coming out against the sky.
23:59
Speaker 1: Coo e. My mother looked up, went very white, and
24:04
Speaker 1: put her hand to her bosom. I suppose there was
24:07
Speaker 1: a fearful fuss about me, and of course I was
24:10
Speaker 1: quite unable to explain my reappearance. But I held out stoutly.
24:15
Speaker 1: I won't go back to Chatham. I'll drown myself first.
24:20
Speaker 1: The next day, my mother carried me off to Wimblehurst,
24:23
Speaker 1: took me fiercely and aggressively to an uncle I had
24:26
Speaker 1: never heard of before. Near though the place was to us,
24:30
Speaker 1: she gave me no word as to what was to happen,
24:32
Speaker 1: and I was too subdued by her manifest wrath and
24:36
Speaker 1: humiliation at my last misdemeanor to demand information. I don't
24:41
Speaker 1: for one moment think Lady Drew was nice about me.
24:45
Speaker 1: The finality of my banishment was endorsed and underlined and
24:49
Speaker 1: stamped home. I wished very much now that I had
24:53
Speaker 1: run away to see in spite of the coal dust
24:56
Speaker 1: and squalor, Rochester had revealed to me, perhaps overseas one
25:01
Speaker 1: came to different lands. Four. I do not remember much
25:07
Speaker 1: of my journey to Wimblehurst with my mother, except the
25:10
Speaker 1: image of her as sitting bolt upright, as rather disdaining
25:13
Speaker 1: the third class carriage in which we traveled, and how
25:17
Speaker 1: she looked away from me out of the window when
25:19
Speaker 1: she spoke of my uncle. I have not seen your uncle,
25:23
Speaker 1: she said, since he was a boy. She added grudgingly,
25:27
Speaker 1: then he was supposed to be clever. She took little
25:31
Speaker 1: interest in such qualities as cleverness. He married about three
25:36
Speaker 1: years ago and set up for himself in Wimblehurst. So
25:39
Speaker 1: I suppose she had some money, she mused, on scenes
25:43
Speaker 1: she had long dismissed from her mind. Teddy, she said,
25:47
Speaker 1: at last, in the tone of one who has been
25:49
Speaker 1: feeling in the dark and fines. He was called teddy
25:53
Speaker 1: about your age? Now he must be twenty six or seven.
25:58
Speaker 1: I thought of my uncle as teddy directly I saw him.
26:01
Speaker 1: There was something in his personal appearance that, in the
26:04
Speaker 1: light of that memory, phrased itself at once as teddiness,
26:08
Speaker 1: a certain tididity to describe it in, and other terms
26:12
Speaker 1: as more difficult. It is nimbleness. Without grace and alertness,
26:17
Speaker 1: without intelligence. He whisked out of his shop upon the pavement,
26:21
Speaker 1: a short figure in gray and wearing gray carpet slippers.
26:25
Speaker 1: One had a sense of a young, fattish face behind
26:28
Speaker 1: gilt glasses, wiry hair that stuck up and forward over
26:32
Speaker 1: the forehead, an irregular nose that had its aquiline moments,
26:36
Speaker 1: and that the body betrayed an equatorial laxity, an incipient
26:41
Speaker 1: bow window. As the image goes, he jerked out of
26:45
Speaker 1: the shop, came to a stand on the pavement outside,
26:48
Speaker 1: regarded something in the window with infinite appreciation, stroked his chin,
26:53
Speaker 1: and as abruptly shot sideways into the door again, charging
26:57
Speaker 1: through it, as it were, behind an extended the hand.
27:02
Speaker 1: That must be him, said my mother, catching at her breath.
27:06
Speaker 1: We came past the window, whose contents I was presently
27:09
Speaker 1: to know by heart, a very ordinary chemist's window, except
27:13
Speaker 1: that there was a frictional electrical machine, an air pump,
27:17
Speaker 1: and two or three tripods and retorts replacing the customary blue,
27:22
Speaker 1: yellow and red bottles. Above there was a plaster of
27:25
Speaker 1: Paris horse to indicate veterinary medicines. Among these breakables and
27:31
Speaker 1: below were scent packets and diffusers, and sponges, and soda
27:36
Speaker 1: water siphons, and such like things. Only in the middle
27:40
Speaker 1: there was a rubricated card, very neatly painted by hand,
27:44
Speaker 1: with these words by Ponderevo's cough linctus. Now, now why
27:54
Speaker 1: twopence cheaper than in winter you store apples? Why not
27:58
Speaker 1: the medicine you are bound to need? In which appeal
28:02
Speaker 1: I was to recognize presently my uncle's distinctive note. My
28:06
Speaker 1: uncle's face appeared above a cart of infant's comforters in
28:09
Speaker 1: the glass panel of the door. I perceived his eyes
28:12
Speaker 1: were brown, and that his glasses creased his nose. It
28:16
Speaker 1: was manifest he did not know us from adam. A
28:19
Speaker 1: stair of scrutiny allowed an expression of commercial deference to
28:22
Speaker 1: appear in front of it, and my uncle flung open
28:25
Speaker 1: the door. You don't know me, panted my mother. My
28:31
Speaker 1: uncle would not own He did not, but his curiosity
28:34
Speaker 1: was manifest. My mother sat down on one of the
28:37
Speaker 1: little chairs before the soap and patent medicine piled counter,
28:41
Speaker 1: and her lips opened and closed a glass of water.
28:45
Speaker 1: Madam said, my uncle waved his hand in a sort
28:48
Speaker 1: of curve and shot away my mother drank the water
28:51
Speaker 1: and spoke. That boy, she said, takes after his father.
28:57
Speaker 1: He grows more like him every day, and so I
28:59
Speaker 1: have brought him to you, his father, Madam George. For
29:06
Speaker 1: a moment, the chemist was still at a loss. He
29:09
Speaker 1: stood behind the counter with the glass my mother had
29:11
Speaker 1: returned to him in his hand. Then comprehension grew. By gosh,
29:17
Speaker 1: he said, Lord. He cried, His glasses fell off. He disappeared,
29:22
Speaker 1: replacing them behind a pile of boxed up bottles of
29:25
Speaker 1: blood mixture eleven thousand virgins. I heard him cry. The
29:30
Speaker 1: glass was banged down oriental gums. He shot away out
29:35
Speaker 1: of the shop through some masked door. One heard his
29:39
Speaker 1: voice sousan sozan. Then he reappeared with an extended hand.
29:45
Speaker 1: Well how are you, he said, I was never so
29:48
Speaker 1: surprised in my life. Fancy you. He shook my mother's
29:54
Speaker 1: impassive hand, and then mine, very warmly, holding his glasses
29:58
Speaker 1: on with his left forefinger. Come right in, he cried,
30:02
Speaker 1: come right in, better late than never. He led the
30:05
Speaker 1: way into the parlor behind the shop. After bladesover that
30:10
Speaker 1: apartment struck me as stuffy and patty, but it was
30:14
Speaker 1: very comfortable. In comparison with the Frapp living room. It
30:17
Speaker 1: had a faint, disintegrating smell of meals about it, and
30:21
Speaker 1: my most immediate impression was of the remarkable fact that
30:24
Speaker 1: something was hung about, or wrapped round or draped over everything.
30:29
Speaker 1: There was bright pattered muslin round the gas bracket in
30:32
Speaker 1: the middle of the room, round the mirror, over the mantel,
30:36
Speaker 1: stuffed with ball fringe, along the mantel, and casing in
30:39
Speaker 1: the fireplace. I first saw ball fringe here, and even
30:43
Speaker 1: the lamp on the little bureau wore a shade like
30:45
Speaker 1: a large muslin hat. The tablecloth had ball fringe, and
30:49
Speaker 1: so had the window curtains, and the carpet was a
30:52
Speaker 1: bed of roses. There were little cupboards on eath side
30:56
Speaker 1: of the fireplace, and in the recesses ill made shell
31:00
Speaker 1: packed with books and enriched with pink American cloth. There
31:05
Speaker 1: was a dictionary lying face downward on the table, and
31:08
Speaker 1: the open bureau was littered with foolscap paper and the
31:12
Speaker 1: evidence of recently abandoned toil. My eye caught the Ponderevo
31:17
Speaker 1: patent flat a machine you can live in, written in
31:21
Speaker 1: large firm letters. My uncle opened a little door like
31:25
Speaker 1: a cupboard door in the corner of this room, and
31:27
Speaker 1: revealed the narrowest twist of staircase I had ever set
31:31
Speaker 1: eyes upon. Susan. He bawled again, wa'n'ty someone to see
31:37
Speaker 1: you surprisin. There came an inaudible reply, and a sudden
31:43
Speaker 1: loud bump over our heads, as of some article of
31:46
Speaker 1: domestic utility pettishly flung aside. Then the cautious steps of
31:51
Speaker 1: some one descending the twist, and then my aunt appeared
31:54
Speaker 1: in the doorway with her hand upon the jam. It's aunt, Ponderevo, cried,
32:00
Speaker 1: my uncle Georgie's wife, and she's brought over her son.
32:04
Speaker 1: His eye roamed about the room. He darted to the
32:07
Speaker 1: bureau with a sudden impulse and turned the sheet about
32:10
Speaker 1: the patent flat face down. Then he waved his glasses
32:13
Speaker 1: at us. You know, Susan, my elder brother George. I
32:18
Speaker 1: told you about him lots of times. He fretted across
32:22
Speaker 1: the hearth rug and took up a position there, replaced
32:25
Speaker 1: his glasses and coughed. My aunt. Susan seemed to be
32:29
Speaker 1: taking it in. She was then rather a pretty slender
32:33
Speaker 1: woman of twenty three or four. I suppose, and I
32:36
Speaker 1: remember being struck by the blueness of her eyes and
32:39
Speaker 1: the clear freshness of her complexion. She had little features,
32:44
Speaker 1: a button nose, a pretty chin, and a long, graceful
32:48
Speaker 1: neck that stuck out of her pale blue cotton morning dress.
32:52
Speaker 1: There was a look of half assumed perplexity on her face,
32:55
Speaker 1: a little quizzical wrinkle of the brow that suggested a
32:58
Speaker 1: faintly amused attempt to follow my uncle's mental operations, a
33:03
Speaker 1: vain attempt, and a certain hopelessness that had, in succession
33:06
Speaker 1: become habitual. She seemed to be saying, Oh Lord, what's
33:11
Speaker 1: he giving me this time? And as I came to
33:15
Speaker 1: know her better, I detected, as a complication of her
33:18
Speaker 1: effort of apprehension, a subsidiary riddle to what's he giving me?
33:24
Speaker 1: And that was to borrow a phrase from my school book,
33:27
Speaker 1: language is it keeps? She looked at my mother and
33:31
Speaker 1: me and back to her husband again. You know, he said, George. Well,
33:38
Speaker 1: she said to my mother, descending the last three steps
33:41
Speaker 1: of the staircase and holding out her hand. You're welcome,
33:46
Speaker 1: though it's a surprise. I can't ask you to have anything.
33:50
Speaker 1: I'm afraid for there isn't anything in the house, She smiled,
33:54
Speaker 1: and looked at her husband banteringly, unless he makes up
33:57
Speaker 1: something with his old chemicals, which he's quite equal to doing.
34:02
Speaker 1: My mother shook hands stiffly and told me to kiss
34:06
Speaker 1: my aunt. Well, it's all sit down, said my uncle, suddenly,
34:11
Speaker 1: whistling through his clenched teeth and briskly rubbing his hands together.
34:16
Speaker 1: He put up a chair for my mother, raised the
34:18
Speaker 1: blind of the little window, lowered it again, and returned
34:22
Speaker 1: to his hearth rug. I'm sure, he said, as one
34:25
Speaker 1: who decides, I'm very glad to see you. End of book,
34:32
Speaker 1: first chapter, second parts one to four. Recording by William
34:38
Speaker 1: tom Coe