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Tono-Bungay Book 4 Chapter 1 - Parts 4-6 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, fourth chapter, first parts four to six 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, first parts four
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Speaker 1: to six. Four. That memory of my uncle at the
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Speaker 1: gate is very clear and full. I am able to
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Speaker 1: recall even the undertow of my thoughts while he was speaking.
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Speaker 1: I remember my pity and affection for him in his misery,
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Speaker 1: growing and stirring within me my realization that at any
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Speaker 1: risk I must help him. But then comes in distinctness
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Speaker 1: again I was beginning to act. I know I persuaded
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Speaker 1: him to put himself in my hands, and began at
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Speaker 1: once to pa and do I think that when we
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Speaker 1: act most we remember least that just in the measure
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Speaker 1: that the impulse of our impressions translates itself into schemes
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Speaker 1: and movements, it ceases to record itself in memories. I
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Speaker 1: know I resolved to get him away at once and
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Speaker 1: to use the Lord Roberts b in effecting that it
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Speaker 1: was clear he was soon to be a hunted man,
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Speaker 1: and it seemed to me already unsafe for him to
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Speaker 1: try the ordinary continental routes in his flight. I had
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Speaker 1: to evolve some scheme, and evolve it rapidly, how we
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Speaker 1: might drop most inconspicuously into the world across the water.
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Speaker 1: My resolved to have one flight at least in my
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Speaker 1: airship fitted with this like hand to glove. It seemed
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Speaker 1: to me we might be able to cross over the
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Speaker 1: water in the night, set our airship adrift, and turn
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Speaker 1: up as pedestrian tourists in Normandy or Brittany, and so
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Speaker 1: get away. That at any rate was my ruling idea.
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Speaker 1: I sent off Cothope with a dummy doat to Woking,
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Speaker 1: because I did not want to implicate him, and took
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Speaker 1: my uncle to the pavilion. I went down to my
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Speaker 1: aunt and made a clean breast of the situation. She
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Speaker 1: became admirably competent. We went into his dressing room and
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Speaker 1: ruthlessly broke his locks. I got a pair of brown boots,
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Speaker 1: a tweed suit and a cap of his and indeed
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Speaker 1: a plausible walking outfit, and a little game bag for
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Speaker 1: his pedestrian gear, and in addition a big motoring overcoat,
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Speaker 1: and a supply of rugs to add to those I
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Speaker 1: had at the pavilion. I also got a flask of brandy,
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Speaker 1: and she made sandwiches. I don't remember any servants appearing,
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Speaker 1: and I forget where she got those sandwiches. Meanwhile, we
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Speaker 1: talked afterwards. I thought, with what a sure confidence we
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Speaker 1: talked to each other. What's he done? She said? Do
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Speaker 1: you mind knowing no conscience left? Thank god, I think forgery.
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Speaker 1: There was just a little pause. Can you carry this bundle,
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Speaker 1: she asked, I lifted it. No woman ever has respected
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Speaker 1: the law. Ever, she said, it's too silly, the things
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Speaker 1: that let you do and then pulls you up like
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Speaker 1: a mad nurse minding a child. She carried some rugs
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Speaker 1: for me through the shrubbery in the darkling. They'll think
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Speaker 1: we're going mooning, she said, jerking her head at the household.
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Speaker 1: I wonder what they make of us criminals. An immense
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Speaker 1: droning note came as if in answer to that. It
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Speaker 1: startled us both for a moment. The deers. She said,
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Speaker 1: it's the gong for dinner. But I wish I could
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Speaker 1: help little teddy George. It's awful to think of him
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Speaker 1: there with hot eyes, red and dry, and I know
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Speaker 1: the sight of me makes him feel sore things, I said, George,
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Speaker 1: if I could have seen, I'd have let him have
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Speaker 1: an omnibus full of scrimers. I cut him up. He
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Speaker 1: never thought I meant it before. I'll help all I can. Anyhow,
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Speaker 1: I turned at something in her voice and got a
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Speaker 1: moonlight gleam of tears upon her face. Could she have helped,
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Speaker 1: she asked abruptly. She that woman, My god, I cried, helped.
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Speaker 1: Those things don't help. Tell me again what I ought
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Speaker 1: to do, she said, after a silence. I went over
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Speaker 1: the plans I had made for communicating, and the things
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Speaker 1: I thought she might do. I had given her the
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Speaker 1: address of a solicitor she might put some trust in.
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Speaker 1: But you must act for yourself, I insisted roughly. I said,
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Speaker 1: it's a scramble. You must get what you can for us,
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Speaker 1: and follow as you can. She nodded. She came right
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Speaker 1: up to the pavilion and hovered for a time, shyly,
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Speaker 1: and then went away. I found my uncle in my
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Speaker 1: sitting room, in an arm chair, with his feet upon
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Speaker 1: the fender of the gas stove which he had, And
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Speaker 1: now he was feebly drunken with my whisky, and very
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Speaker 1: weary in body and spirit, and inclined to be cowardly.
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Speaker 1: I left my drops, he said, he changed his clothes
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Speaker 1: slowly and unwillingly. I had to bully him. I had
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Speaker 1: almost to shove him to the airship and tuck him
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Speaker 1: up upon its wicker flat single handed. I made but
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Speaker 1: a clumsy start. We scraped along the roof of the
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Speaker 1: shed and bent a van of the propeller, and for
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Speaker 1: a time I hung underneath without his offering a hand
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Speaker 1: to help me to clamber up. If it hadn't been
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Speaker 1: for a sort of anchoring trolley device of cothopes, a
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Speaker 1: sort of slip anchor running on a rail, we should
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Speaker 1: never have got clear at all. Five The incidents of
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Speaker 1: our flight in Lord Roberts B do not arrange themselves
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Speaker 1: in any consecutive order. To think of that adventure is
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Speaker 1: like dipping haphazard into an album of views. One is
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Speaker 1: reminded first of this, and then of that we were
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Speaker 1: both lying down on a horizontal plate of basket work,
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Speaker 1: for Lord Roberts B. Had none of the elegant accommodation
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Speaker 1: of a balloon. I lay forward and my uncle behind
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Speaker 1: me in such a position that he could see hardly
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Speaker 1: anything of our flight. We were protected from rolling over
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Speaker 1: simply by netting between the steel stays. It was impossible
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Speaker 1: for us to stand up at all. We had either
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Speaker 1: to lie or crawl on all fours over the basket
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Speaker 1: work amidships were lockers made of Watson's all light material,
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Speaker 1: and between those it was that I had put my
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Speaker 1: uncle wrapped in rugs. I wore sealskin, motoring boots and gloves,
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Speaker 1: and a motoring fur coat over my tweeds, and I
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Speaker 1: controlled the engine by Bowden wires and levers forward. The
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Speaker 1: early part of that night's experience was made up of warmth,
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Speaker 1: a moonlit Surrey and Sussex landscape, and of a rapid
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Speaker 1: and successful flight, ascending and swooping, and then as scent
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Speaker 1: again southward. I could not watch the clouds because the
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Speaker 1: airship overhung me. I could not see the stars, nor
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Speaker 1: gage the meteorological happening, but it was fairly clear to
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Speaker 1: me that a wind shifting between north and northeast was
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Speaker 1: gathering strength. And after I had satisfied myself by a
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Speaker 1: series of entirely successful expansions and contractions of the real
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Speaker 1: air worthiness of Lord Robert's b I stopped the engine
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Speaker 1: to save my petrol, and that the monster drift, checking
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Speaker 1: its progress by the dim landscape below. My uncle lay
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Speaker 1: quite still behind me, saying little and staring in front
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Speaker 1: of him, and I was left my own thoughts and sensations.
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Speaker 1: My thoughts, whatever they were, have long since faded out
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Speaker 1: of memory, and my sensations have merged into one continuous
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Speaker 1: memory of a countryside lying as it seemed under snow,
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Speaker 1: with square patches of dimness, white phantoms of roads, rents
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Speaker 1: and pools of belvety blackness, and lamp jeweled houses. I
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Speaker 1: remember a train boring its way like a hastening caterpillar
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Speaker 1: of fire across the landscape, and how distinctly I heard
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Speaker 1: its clatter. Every town and street was buttoned with street lamps.
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Speaker 1: I came quite close to the South Downs near Lewis,
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Speaker 1: and all the lights were out in the houses, and
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Speaker 1: the people gone to bed. We left the land a
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Speaker 1: little to the east of Brighton, and by that time
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Speaker 1: Brighton was well abed, and the brightly lit sea front deserted.
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Speaker 1: Then I lit out the gas chamber to its fullest
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Speaker 1: extent and rose, I like to be high above water.
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Speaker 1: I do not clearly know what happened in the night.
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Speaker 1: I think I must have dozed, and probably my uncle slept.
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Speaker 1: I remember that once or twice I heard him talking
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Speaker 1: in an eager, muffled voice to himself or to an
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Speaker 1: imaginary court. But there can be no doubt the wind
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Speaker 1: changed right round into the east, and that we were
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Speaker 1: carried far down the channel without any suspicion of the
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Speaker 1: immense leeway we were making. I remember the kind of
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Speaker 1: stupid perplexity with which I saw the dawn breaking over
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Speaker 1: a gray waste of water below and realized that something
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Speaker 1: was wrong. I was so stupid that it was only
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Speaker 1: after the sunrise I really noticed the trend of the
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Speaker 1: foam caps below and perceived we were in a severe
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Speaker 1: easterly gale. Even then, instead of heading southeasterly, I set
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Speaker 1: the engine going headed south, and so continued a course
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Speaker 1: that must needs have either just hit Ushant or carry
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Speaker 1: us over the Bay of Biscay. I thought I was
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Speaker 1: east of Cherbourg when I was far to the west,
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Speaker 1: and stopped my engine in that belief, and then set
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Speaker 1: it going again. I did actually sight the coast of
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Speaker 1: Brittany to the southeast in the late afternoon, and that
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Speaker 1: it was woke me up to the gravity of our position.
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Speaker 1: I discovered it by accident in the southeast when I
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Speaker 1: was looking for it in the southwest. I turned about
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Speaker 1: east and faced the wind for some time, and, finding
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Speaker 1: I had no chance in its teeth, went high where
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Speaker 1: it seemed less violent, and tried to make a course southeast.
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Speaker 1: It was only then that I realized what a gale
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Speaker 1: I was in. I had been going westward, and perhaps
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Speaker 1: even in gusts north of west, at a pace of
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Speaker 1: fifty or sixty miles an hour. Then I began what
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Speaker 1: I suppose would be called a fight against the east wind.
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Speaker 1: One calls it a fight, but it was really almost
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Speaker 1: as unlike a fight as plain sowing. The wind tried
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Speaker 1: to drive me westwardly, and I tried to get as
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Speaker 1: much as I could eastwardly, with the wind beating and
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Speaker 1: rocking us irregularly, but by no means unbearably. For about
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Speaker 1: twelve hours, my hope lay in the wind abating and
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Speaker 1: our keeping in the air and eastward of Finish Stare
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Speaker 1: until it did, and the chief danger was the exhaustion
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Speaker 1: of our petrol. It was a long and anxious and
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Speaker 1: almost meditative time. We were fairly warm and only slowly
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Speaker 1: getting hungry. And except that my uncle grumbled a little
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Speaker 1: and produced some philosophical reflections and began to fuss about
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Speaker 1: having a temperature, we talked very little. I was tired
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Speaker 1: and sulky, and chiefly worried about the engine. I had
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Speaker 1: to resist a tendency to crawl back and look at it.
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Speaker 1: I did not care to risk contracting our gas chamber
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Speaker 1: for fear of losing gas. Nothing was less like a fight.
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Speaker 1: I know that in popular magazines and so forth, all
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Speaker 1: such occasions as this are depicted in terms of hysteria.
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Speaker 1: Captains save their ships, engineers complete their bridges. Generals conduct
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Speaker 1: their battles in a state of dancing excitement, foaming recondite
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Speaker 1: technicalities at the lips. I suppose that sort of thing
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Speaker 1: works up the reader, but so far as it professes
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Speaker 1: to represent reality, I am convinced it is all childish nonsense.
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Speaker 1: Schoolboys of fifteen, girls of eighteen, and literary men all
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Speaker 1: their life may have these squealing fits. But my own
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Speaker 1: experience is that most exciting scenes are not exciting, and
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Speaker 1: most of the urgent moments in life are met by
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Speaker 1: steadily headed men. Neither I nor my uncle spent the
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Speaker 1: night in ejaculations, nor in humorous allusions, nor any of
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Speaker 1: these things. We remained lumpish. My uncle stuck in his
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Speaker 1: place and grumbled about his stomach, and occasionally rambled off
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Speaker 1: into expositions of his financial position and denunciations of Neil.
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Speaker 1: He certainly struck out one or two good phrases for Neil.
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Speaker 1: And I crawled about at rare intervals in a vague
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Speaker 1: sort of way, and grunted, and our basket work creaked continually,
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Speaker 1: and the wind on our quarter made a sort of
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Speaker 1: ruffled flapping in the wall of the gas chamber for
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Speaker 1: all our wraps. We got frightfully cold. As the night
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Speaker 1: wore on, I must have dozed, and it was still
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Speaker 1: dark when I realized with a start that we we
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Speaker 1: were nearly due south of and a long way from
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Speaker 1: a regularly flashing lighthouse standing out before the glow of
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Speaker 1: some great town. And then that the thing that had
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Speaker 1: awakened me was the cessation of our engine, and that
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Speaker 1: we were driving back to the west. Then, indeed, for
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Speaker 1: a time I felt the grim thrill of life. I
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Speaker 1: crawled forward to the cords of the release valves made
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Speaker 1: my uncle crawl forward too and let out the gas,
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Speaker 1: until we were falling down through the air like a
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Speaker 1: clumsy glider, towards the vague grayness that was land. Something
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Speaker 1: must have intervened here that I have forgotten. I saw
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Speaker 1: the lights of Bordeaux when it was quite dark, a
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Speaker 1: nebulous haze against black of that, I am reasonably sure.
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Speaker 1: But certainly our fall took place in the cold, uncertain
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Speaker 1: light of early dawn. I am at least equally sure
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Speaker 1: of that. And Mimizan, near where we dropped, is fifty
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Speaker 1: miles from Bordeaux, whose harbor lights I must have seen.
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Speaker 1: I remember coming down at last with a curious indifference,
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Speaker 1: and actually rousing myself to steer. But the actual coming
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Speaker 1: to earth was exciting enough. I remember our prolonged, dragging landfall,
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Speaker 1: and the difficulty I had to get clear, and how
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Speaker 1: a gust of wind caught Lord Robert's b as my
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Speaker 1: uncle stumbled away from the ropes and litter, and dropped
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Speaker 1: me heavily and threw me on to my knees. Then
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Speaker 1: came the realization that the monster was almost consciously disentangling
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Speaker 1: itself for escape, and then the light leap of its rebound,
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Speaker 1: the rope slipped out of reach of my hand. I
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Speaker 1: remember running knee deep in a salt pool in hopeless
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Speaker 1: pursuit of the airship as it dragged and rose seaward.
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Speaker 1: And how only after it had escaped my uttermost effort
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Speaker 1: to recapture it, did I realize that this was quite
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Speaker 1: the best thing that could have happened. It drove swiftly
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Speaker 1: over the sandy dunes, lifting and falling, and was hidden
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Speaker 1: by a clump of wind bitten trees. Then it reappeared
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Speaker 1: much further off and still receding. It soared for a
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Speaker 1: time and sank slowly. And after that I saw it
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Speaker 1: no more. I suppose it fell into the sea and
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Speaker 1: got wetted with salt water and heavy, and so became
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Speaker 1: deflated and sank. It was never found, and there was
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Speaker 1: never a report of anyone seeing it after it escaped
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Speaker 1: from me. Six. But if I find it hard to
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Speaker 1: tell the story of our long flight through the air overseas,
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Speaker 1: at least that dawn in France stands cold and clear
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Speaker 1: and full. I see again, almost as if I saw
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Speaker 1: once more with my bodily eyes, the ridges of sand
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Speaker 1: rising behind the ridges of sand, gray and cold and
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Speaker 1: black browed with an insufficient grass. I feel again the clear,
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Speaker 1: cold chill of dawn, and hear the distant barking of
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Speaker 1: a dog. I find myself asking again what shall we
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Speaker 1: do now, and trying to scheme, with brain tired beyond measure.
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Speaker 1: At first my uncle occupied my attention. He was shivering
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Speaker 1: a good deal, and it was all I could do
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Speaker 1: to resist my desire to get him into a comfortable
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Speaker 1: bed at once. But I wanted to appear plausibly in
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Speaker 1: this part of the world. I felt it would not
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Speaker 1: do to turn up anywhere at dawn and rest. It
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Speaker 1: would be altogether too conspicuous. We must rest until the
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Speaker 1: day was well advanced, and then appear as road stained pedestrians.
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Speaker 1: Seeking a meal. I gave him most of what was
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Speaker 1: left of the biscuits, emptied our flasks, and advised him
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Speaker 1: to sleep. But at first it was too cold, albeit
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Speaker 1: I wrapped the big fur rug around him. I was
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Speaker 1: struck now by the flushed weariness of his face and
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Speaker 1: the look of age the gray stubble on its unshaped
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Speaker 1: chin gave him. He sat crumpled up, shivering and coughing,
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Speaker 1: munching reluctantly, but drinking eagerly, and when a little a
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Speaker 1: dreadfully pitiful figure to me. But we had to go
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Speaker 1: through with it. There was no way out for us. Presently,
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Speaker 1: the sun rose over the pines, and the sand grew
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Speaker 1: rapidly warm. My uncle had done eating and sat with
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Speaker 1: his wrists resting on his knees, the most hopeless looking
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Speaker 1: of lost souls. I'm ill, he said, I'm damnably ill.
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Speaker 1: I can feel it in my skin. Then it was
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Speaker 1: horrible to me, he cried. I ought to be in bed.
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Speaker 1: I ought to be in bed instead of flying about.
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Speaker 1: And suddenly he burst into tears. I stood up. Go
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Speaker 1: to sleep, man, I said, and took the rug from
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Speaker 1: him and spread it out and rolled him up in it.
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Speaker 1: It's all very well, he protested. I'm not young enough.
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Speaker 1: Lift up your head, I interrupted, and put his knapsack
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Speaker 1: under it. They'll catch us here just as much as
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Speaker 1: in an inn, he grumbled, and then lay still. Presently.
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Speaker 1: After a long time, I perceived he was asleep. His
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Speaker 1: breath came with peculiar weezings, and every now and again
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Speaker 1: he would cough. I was very stiff and tired myself,
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Speaker 1: and perhaps I dozed. I don't remember. I remember only
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Speaker 1: sitting as it seemed nigh interminably beside him, too weary
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Speaker 1: even to think. In that sandy desolation, no one came
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Speaker 1: near us, no creature, not even a dog. I roused
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Speaker 1: myself at last, feeling that it was vain to seek
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Speaker 1: to seem other than abnormal, And with an effort that
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Speaker 1: was like lifting a sky of lead, we made our
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Speaker 1: way through the wearisome sand to a farmhouse. There I
18:46
Speaker 1: feigned even a more insufficient French than I possessed naturally,
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Speaker 1: and let it appear that we were pedestrians from beer
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Speaker 1: Ritz who had lost our way along the shore and
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Speaker 1: got benighted. This explained us pretty well, I thought. He
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Speaker 1: got most heartening coffee and a cart to a little
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Speaker 1: roadside station. My uncle grew more and more manifestly ill
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Speaker 1: with every stage of our journey. I got him to Bayonne,
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Speaker 1: where he refused at first to eat and was afterwards
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Speaker 1: very sick, And then took him, shivering and collapsed, up
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Speaker 1: a little branch line to a frontier place called Luzon Guerre.
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Speaker 1: We found one homely inn with two small bedrooms, kept
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Speaker 1: by a kindly basque woman. I got him to bed,
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Speaker 1: and that night shared his room, And after an hour
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Speaker 1: or so of sleep, he woke up in a raging
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Speaker 1: fever and with a wandering mind, cursing Neil and repeating long,
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Speaker 1: inaccurate lists of figures. He was manifestly a case for
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Speaker 1: a doctor, and in the morning we got one in.
19:49
Speaker 1: He was a young man from Montpellier, just beginning to practice,
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Speaker 1: and very mysterious and technical, and modern and unhelpful. He
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Speaker 1: spoke of cold and exposure, and la grippe and pneumonia.
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Speaker 1: He gave many explicit and difficult directions. I perceived it
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Speaker 1: devolved upon me to organize nursing and a sick room.
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Speaker 1: I installed the religius in the second bedroom of the inn,
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Speaker 1: and took a room for myself in the inn of
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Speaker 1: Porte de Lauzan, a quarter of a mile away. End
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Speaker 1: of book, fourth chapter, first parts four to six. Recording
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Speaker 1: by William tom Coe