Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Men Like Gods Book 1 Chapter 1 - Mr Barnstaple Takes a Holiday

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Men Like Gods Book 1 Chapter 1 - Mr Barnstaple Takes a Holiday · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Men Like Gods, a novel by H. G. Wells. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. This is a recording by Brian Powell,
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  Speaker 1: Portland organ Men Like Gods a novel by H. G.
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  Speaker 1: Wells to Florence lamont In, whose home at Inglewood this
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  Speaker 1: story was christened Book the First, The Irruption of the
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  Speaker 1: Earthlings Men Like Gods. Chapter the first, Mister Barnstable takes
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  Speaker 1: a holiday. Mister Barnstable found himself in urgent need of
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  Speaker 1: a holiday, and he had no one to go with,
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  Speaker 1: and nowhere to go. He was overworked, and he was
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  Speaker 1: tired of home. He was a man of strong natural affections.
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  Speaker 1: He loved his family extremely, so that he knew it
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  Speaker 1: by heart, and when he was in these jaded moods,
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  Speaker 1: it bored him acutely. His three sons, who were all
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  Speaker 1: growing up, seemed to get leggier and larger every day.
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  Speaker 1: They sat down in the chairs he was just going
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  Speaker 1: to sit down in. They played him off his own pianola.
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  Speaker 1: They filled the house with horse vast laughter at jokes
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  Speaker 1: that one couldn't demand to be told. They cut in
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  Speaker 1: on the elderly harmless flirtations that had hitherto been one
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  Speaker 1: of his chief consolations. In this veil, they beat him
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  Speaker 1: at tennis. They fought playfully on the landings, and fell
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  Speaker 1: down stairs by twos and threes with an enormous racket.
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  Speaker 1: Their hats were everywhere. They were late for breakfast. They
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  Speaker 1: went to bed every night in a storm of uproar,
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  Speaker 1: ha ha, ha bump, and their mothers seemed to like it.
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  Speaker 1: They all cost money with a cheerful disregard of the
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  Speaker 1: fact that everything had gone up except mister Barnstable's earning power.
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  Speaker 1: And when he said a few plain truths about mister
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  Speaker 1: Lloyd George at meal times, or made the slightest attempt
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  Speaker 1: to raise the tone of the table talk above the
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  Speaker 1: level of the silliest persiflage, their attention wandered ostentatiously. At
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  Speaker 1: any rate, it seemed ostentatiously. He wanted badly to get
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  Speaker 1: away from his family to some place where he could
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  Speaker 1: think of its various members with quiet pride and affection,
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  Speaker 1: and otherwise not be disturbed by them. And also he
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  Speaker 1: wanted to get away for a time from mister Peeve.
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  Speaker 1: The very streets were becoming a torment to him. He
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  Speaker 1: wanted never to see a newspaper or a newspaper placard again.
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  Speaker 1: He was obsessed by apprehensions of some sort of financial
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  Speaker 1: and economic smash that would make the Great War seem
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  Speaker 1: a mere incidental catastrophe. This was because he was sub
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  Speaker 1: editor and general factotum of The Liberal, that well known
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  Speaker 1: organ of the more depressing aspects of advanced thought, and
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  Speaker 1: the unvarying pessimism of mister Peeve, his chief, was infecting
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  Speaker 1: him more and more. Formerly had been possible to put
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  Speaker 1: up a sort of resistance to mister Peeve by joking
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  Speaker 1: furtively about his gloom with the other members of the staff.
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  Speaker 1: But now there were no other members of the staff.
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  Speaker 1: They had all been retrenched by mister Peeve in a
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  Speaker 1: mood of financial despondency. Practically now nobody wrote regularly for
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  Speaker 1: The Liberal except mister Barnstable and mister Peeve. So mister
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  Speaker 1: Peeve had it all his own way. With mister Barnstable,
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  Speaker 1: he would sit hunched up in the editorial chair with
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  Speaker 1: his hands deep in his trouser pockets, taking a gloomy
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  Speaker 1: view of everything, sometimes for two hours together. Mister Barnstable's
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  Speaker 1: natural tendency was towards a modest hopefulness and a belief
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  Speaker 1: in progress. But mister Peeve held very strongly that a
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  Speaker 1: belief in progress was at least six years out of date,
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  Speaker 1: and that the brightest hope that remained to liberalism was
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  Speaker 1: for a good day of judgment. Soon, and having finished
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  Speaker 1: the copy of what the Staff when there was a
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  Speaker 1: staff used to call his weekly interogest, mister Peeve would
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  Speaker 1: depart and leave mister Barnstable to get the rest of
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  Speaker 1: the paper together for the next week. Even in ordinary times,
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  Speaker 1: mister Peeve would have been hard enough to live with.
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  Speaker 1: But the times not ordinary. They were full of disagreeable
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  Speaker 1: occurrences that made his melancholy anticipations all too plausible. The
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  Speaker 1: Great Coal Lockout had been going on for a month
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  Speaker 1: and seemed to foreshadow the commercial ruin of England. Every
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  Speaker 1: morning brought intelligence of fresh outrages from Ireland, unforgivable and
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  Speaker 1: unforgettable outrages. A prolonged drought threatened the harvests of the world.
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  Speaker 1: The League of Nations of which mister Barnstable had hoped
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  Speaker 1: enormous things in the great days of President Wilson was
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  Speaker 1: a melancholy and self satisfied futility. Everywhere, there was conflict
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  Speaker 1: everywhere on reason seven ace of the world seemed to
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  Speaker 1: be sinking down towards chronic disorder and social dissolution. Even
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  Speaker 1: without mister Peeve, it would have been difficult enough to
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  Speaker 1: have made headway against the facts. Mister Barnstable was indeed
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  Speaker 1: ceasing to secrete hope, and for such types as he,
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  Speaker 1: hope is the essential solvent without which there is no
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  Speaker 1: digesting life. His hope had always been in liberalism and
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  Speaker 1: generous liberal effort. But he was beg beginning to think
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  Speaker 1: that liberalism would never do anything more forever than sit
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  Speaker 1: hunched up with its hands in its pockets, grumbling and
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  Speaker 1: peeving at the activities of baser but more energetic men,
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  Speaker 1: whose scrambling activities would inevitably wreck the world night and day.
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  Speaker 1: Now mister Barnstable was worrying about the world at large,
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  Speaker 1: by night even more than by day, for sleep was
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  Speaker 1: leaving him, and he was haunted by a dreadful craving
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  Speaker 1: to bring out a number of the liberal of his
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  Speaker 1: very own to alter it all. After mister Peeve had
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  Speaker 1: gone away to cut out all the dyspeptic stuff, the
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  Speaker 1: miserable empty girding at this wrong and that, the gloating
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  Speaker 1: on cruel and unhappy things, the exaggeration of the simple
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  Speaker 1: natural human misdeeds of mister Lloyd George, the appeals to
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  Speaker 1: Lord Gray, Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Lansdowne, the Pope Queen Anne,
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  Speaker 1: or the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. It varied from week to
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  Speaker 1: week to rise and give voice inform to the young
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  Speaker 1: aspirations of a world reborn, and instead to fill the
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  Speaker 1: number with you topia, to say to the amazed readers
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  Speaker 1: of the Liberal, here are the things that have to
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  Speaker 1: be done. Here are the things we are going to do.
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  Speaker 1: What a blow it would be for mister Peeve at
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  Speaker 1: his Sunday breakfast, for once too astonished to secrete abnormally,
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  Speaker 1: he might even digest that meal. But this was the
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  Speaker 1: most foolish of dreaming. There were the three young Barnstables
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  Speaker 1: at home, and their need for a decent start in life.
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  Speaker 1: To consider and beautiful as a thing was as a dream.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Barnstable had a very unpleasant conviction that he was
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  Speaker 1: not really clever enough to pull such a thing off,
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  Speaker 1: he would make a mess of it. Somehow one might
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  Speaker 1: jump from the frying pan into the fire. The Liberal
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  Speaker 1: was a dreary, discouraging, ungenerous paper, but anyhow that it
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  Speaker 1: was not a base and wicked paper. Still, if there
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  Speaker 1: was to be no such disastrous outbreak, it was imperative
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  Speaker 1: that mister Barnstable should rest from mister Peeve for a time.
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  Speaker 1: Once or twice already had contradicted him. A rowe might
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  Speaker 1: occur any time, and the first step towards resting for
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  Speaker 1: mister p was evidently to see a doctor. So mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable went to a doctor. My nerves are getting out
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  Speaker 1: of control, said mister Barnstable. I feel horribly nursinic. You
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  Speaker 1: are suffering from neurasthenia, said the doctor. I dread my
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  Speaker 1: daily work. You went a holiday. You think I need
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  Speaker 1: a change, as complete a change as you can manage.
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  Speaker 1: Can you recommend any place where I could go? Where
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  Speaker 1: do you want to go? Nowhere? Definite? I thought you
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  Speaker 1: could recommend. Let some place attract you and go there.
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  Speaker 1: Do nothing to force your inclinations at the present time.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Barnstable paid the doctor the sum of one guinea
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  Speaker 1: and armed with these instructions, prepared to break the news
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  Speaker 1: of his illness and his necessary absence to mister Peeve
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  Speaker 1: whenever the occasion seemed ripe for doing so. For a time,
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  Speaker 1: this prospective holiday was merely a fresh edition to mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable's already excessive burthen of worries. To decide to get
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  Speaker 1: away was to find oneself face to face at once
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  Speaker 1: with three apparently insurmountable problems. How to get away whither?
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  Speaker 1: And since mister Barnstable was one of those people who
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  Speaker 1: tire very quickly of their own company, with whom a
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  Speaker 1: sharp gleam of furtive scheming crept into the candid misery
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  Speaker 1: that had recently become mister Barnstable's habitual expression. But then
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  Speaker 1: no one took much notice of mister Barnstable's expressions. One
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  Speaker 1: thing was very clear in his mind. Not a word
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  Speaker 1: of this holiday must be breathed at home. If once
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  Speaker 1: missus Barnstable got wind of it, he knew exactly what
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  Speaker 1: would happen. She would, with an air of competent devotion,
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  Speaker 1: take charge of the entire business. You must have a
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  Speaker 1: good holiday, she would say. She would select some rather
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  Speaker 1: distant and expensive resort in Cornwall or Scotland or Brittany.
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  Speaker 1: She would buy a lot of outfit. She would have, afterthoughts,
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  Speaker 1: to swell the luggage with inconvenient parcels at the last moment,
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  Speaker 1: and she would bring the boys. Probably she would arrange
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  Speaker 1: for one or two groups of acquaintances to come to
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  Speaker 1: the same place to liven things up. If they did,
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  Speaker 1: they were certain to bring the worst sides of their
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  Speaker 1: natures with them and to develop into the most indefatigable
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  Speaker 1: of bores. There would be no conversation, There would be
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  Speaker 1: much unreal laughter, there would be endless games. No, but
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  Speaker 1: how is a man to go away for a holiday
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  Speaker 1: without his wife getting wind of it? Somehow a bag
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  Speaker 1: must be packed and smuggled out of the house. The
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  Speaker 1: most hopeful thing about mister Barnstable's position from mister Barnstable's
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  Speaker 1: point of view, was that he owned a small automobile
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  Speaker 1: of his very own. It was natural that this car
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  Speaker 1: should play a large part in his secret plannings. It
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  Speaker 1: seemed to offer the easiest means of getting away. It
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  Speaker 1: converted the possible answer to wher from a fixed and
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  Speaker 1: definite place into what mathematicians call I believe a locust,
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  Speaker 1: and there was something so companionable about the little beast
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  Speaker 1: that it did, to a slight but quite perceptible extent,
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  Speaker 1: answer the question with whom it was a two seater.
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  Speaker 1: It was in the family as the Footpath, Coleman's Mustard,
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  Speaker 1: and the Yellowpparel. As these names suggests, it was a low,
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  Speaker 1: open car of clear yellow color. Mister Barnstable used it
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  Speaker 1: to come up to the office from Sydenham because it
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  Speaker 1: did thirty three miles to the gallon and was ever
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  Speaker 1: so much cheaper than a season ticket. It stood up
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  Speaker 1: in the court under the office window. During the day.
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  Speaker 1: At Sydenham, it lived in a shed of which mister
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  Speaker 1: Barnstable carried the only key. So far he had managed
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  Speaker 1: to prevent the boys from either driving it or taking
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  Speaker 1: it to pieces. At times, Missus Barnstable made him drive
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  Speaker 1: her about Sydonym for her shopping, but she did not
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  Speaker 1: really like the little car, because it exposed her to
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  Speaker 1: the elements too much and made her dusty and disheveled.
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  Speaker 1: Both by reason of all that it made possible and
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  Speaker 1: by reason of all that it debarred. The little car
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  Speaker 1: was clearly indicated as the medium for the needed holiday
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  Speaker 1: and mister Barnstall really liked driving it. He drove very badly,
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  Speaker 1: but he drove very carefully, and though it sometimes stopped
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  Speaker 1: and refused to proceed, it did not do or at
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  Speaker 1: any rate, it had not so far done as most
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  Speaker 1: of the things did in mister Barnstable's life, which was
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  Speaker 1: to go due east when he turned the steering wheel west,
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  Speaker 1: so that it gave him an agreeable sense of mastery.
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  Speaker 1: In the end, mister Barnshall made his decisions with great rapidity.
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  Speaker 1: Opportunity suddenly opened in front of him. Thursday was his
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  Speaker 1: day at the printer's, and he came home on Thursday
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  Speaker 1: evening feeling horribly jaded. The weather kept obstinately hot and dry.
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  Speaker 1: It made it none the less distressing that this strout
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  Speaker 1: presaged famine and misery for half the world, and London
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  Speaker 1: was in full season, smart and grinning. If anything, it
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  Speaker 1: was a sillier year than nineteen thirteen, the Great Tangle year, which,
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  Speaker 1: in the light of subsequent events, mister Barnstable had hitherto
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  Speaker 1: regarded as the silliest year in the world's history. The
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  Speaker 1: Star had the usual batch of bad news along the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: margin of the sporting and fashionable intelligence that got the
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: displayed space fighting was going on between the Russians and Poles,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: and also in Ireland, Asia Minor, the India Frontier and
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  Speaker 1: eastern Siberia. There had been three new horrible murders, the
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  Speaker 1: miners were still out and a big engineering strike was threatened.
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  Speaker 1: There had been only standing room in the down train
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  Speaker 1: and had started twenty minutes late. He found a note
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  Speaker 1: from his wife explaining that her cousins at Wimbledon had
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: telegraphed that there was an unexpected chance of seeing the
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: tennis there with Mademoiselle Langland and all the rest of
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  Speaker 1: the champions, and that she had gone over with the boys.
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  Speaker 1: It would not be back until late. It would do
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  Speaker 1: their game no end of good, she said, to see
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  Speaker 1: some really first class tennis, And it was a servant's
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  Speaker 1: social that night. Would he mind being left alone in
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  Speaker 1: the house for once? The servants would put him out
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  Speaker 1: some cold supper before they went. Mister Barnstable read this
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  Speaker 1: note with resignation. While he ate his supper, he ran
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: his eye over a pamphlet a Chinese friend had sent
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: him to show how the Japanese were deliberately breaking up
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  Speaker 1: what was left of the civilization in education of China.
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  Speaker 1: It was only as he was sitting and smoking a
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  Speaker 1: pipe in his little back garden after supper that he
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: realized all that being left alone in the house meant
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  Speaker 1: for him. Then suddenly he became very active. He rang
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  Speaker 1: up mister Peeve, told him of the doctor's verdict, explained
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  Speaker 1: that the affairs of the Liberal were just then in
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  Speaker 1: a particularly leaevable state, and got his holiday. Then he
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: went to his bedroom and packed up a hasty selection
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  Speaker 1: of things to take with him in an old gladstone
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  Speaker 1: bag that was not likely to be immediately missed, and
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: put this in the dickie of his car, after which
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: he spent some time upon a letter, which he addressed
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to his wife and put away very carefully in his
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: breast pocket. Then he locked up the car shed and
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: composed himself in a deck chair in the garden with
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  Speaker 1: his pipe and a nice thoughtful book on the bankruptcy
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: of Europe, so as to look and feel as innocent
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: as possible before his family came home. When his wife returned,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: he told her casually that he believed he was suffering
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  Speaker 1: from neurasthenia, and that he had ranged to run up
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  Speaker 1: to London on the morrow and consult a doctor in
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: the matter. Missus Barnstable wanted to choose him a doctor,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: but he got out of that by saying that he
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: had to consider Peeve in the matter, and that Peeve
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: was very strongly set on the man he had already
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: in fact consulted, And when Missus Barnstable said that she
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: believed they all wanted a good holiday, he just grunted
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: in a non committal manner. In this way, mister Barnstable
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: was able to get right away from his house with
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: all the necessary luggage for some weeks holiday without arousing
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: any insurmountable opposition. He started next morning londonward. The traffic
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: on the way was gay and plentiful, but by no
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: means troublesome, and the yellow Parel was running so sweetly
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: that she might almost have been named the Golden Hope
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: in Camberwell. He turned into the Camberwell New Road and
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: made his way to the post office at the top
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: of Vauxhall Bridge Road. There he drew up. He was scared,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: but elated by what he was doing. He went into
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the post office and sent his wife a telegram. Doctor Pagan,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: he wrote, says solitude and rest urgently needed. So im
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: going off Lake District recuperate, have got bag and things,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: expecting this letter follows. Then he came outside and fumbled
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: in his pocket and produced and posted the letter he
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: had written so carefully over night. It was deliberately scrawled
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: to suggest neurthenia at an acute phase. Doctor Pagan, it explained,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: had ordered an immediate holiday and suggested that mister Barnstable
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: should wander north. It would be better to cut off
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: all letters for a few days or even a week
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: or so. He would not trouble to write unless something
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: went wrong. No news would be good news. Rest assured
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: all would be well. As soon as he had a
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: certain address for letters, he would wire it, but only
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: very urgent things were to be sent on. After this,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: he resumed his seat in his car with such a
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: sense of freedom as he had never felt since his
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: first holidays from his first school. He made for the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Great North Road, but at the traffic jam at Hyde
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Park Corner, he allowed the policeman to turn him down
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: towards Knight's Bridge, and afterwards, at the corner where the
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Bath Road forks away from the Oxford Road, an obstructive
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: van put him into the former, but it did not
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: matter very much anyway led elsewhere, and he could work
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: northward later. The day was one of those days of
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: gay sunshine that were characteristic of the great drought of
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one. It was not in the least sultry. Indeed,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: there was a freshness about it that blended with mister
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Barnstable's mood to convince him that there were quite agreeable
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: adventures before him. Hope had already returned to him. He
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: knew he was on the way out of things, though
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: as yet he had not the slightest suspicion how completely
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  Speaker 1: out of things the way was going to take him.
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  Speaker 1: It would be quite a little adventure presently to stop
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  Speaker 1: at an inn and get some lunch, and if he
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  Speaker 1: felt lonely as he went on, he would give somebody
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a lift and talk. It would be quite easy to
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: give people lifts, because so long as his back was
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: generally towards Sydenham and the Liberal Office, it did not
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: matter at all. Now in which direction he went a
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: little way out of Slough, he was passed by an
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: enormous gray touring car. It made him start and swerve.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: It came up alongside him, without a sound, and though
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: according to his only very slightly inaccurate speedometer, he was
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: doing a good twenty seven miles an hour. It had
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: passed him in a moment. Its occupants, he noted, were
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: three gentlemen and a lady. They were all sitting up
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: and looking backward, as though they were interested in something
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: that was following them. They went by too quickly for
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: him to note more than that the lady was radiantly
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: lovely in an immediate and indisputable way, and the gentleman
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: nearest to him had a peculiarly elfin yet elderly face.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Before he could recover from the a claw this passage
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: a car with the voice of a prehistoric sory and
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: warned him that he was again being overtaken. This was
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: how mister Barnstable liked being passed by negotiation. He slowed down,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: abandoned any claim to the crown of the road, and
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: made encouraging gestures with his hand. A large, smooth, swift
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: limousine availed itself of his permission to use the thirty
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: odd feet or so of road to the right of him.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: It was carrying a fair load of luggage, but except
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: for a young gentleman with an eyeglass, who was sitting
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: beside the driver. He saw nothing of its passengers. It
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: swept round a corner ahead in the wake of the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: touring car. Now, even a mechanical footpath does not like
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: being passed in this lordly fashion. On a bright morning
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: on the open road, mister Barnstable's accelerator went down and
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: he came round that corner a good ten miles per hour,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: faster than his usual cautious practice. He found the road
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: quite clear ahead of him. Indeed, he found the road
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: much too clear ahead of him. It stretched straight in
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: front of him for perhaps a third of a mile.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: On the left were a low, well trimmed hedge, scattered trees,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: level fields, some small cottages lying back, remote poplars, and
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: a distant view of Windsor Castle. On the right were
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: level fields, a small inn, and a background of low
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: wooded hills. A conspicuous feature in this tranquil landscape was
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the bored advertisement of a riverside motel at Maidenhead. Before
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: him was a sort of heat flicker in the air,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: and two or three little dust worlds spinning along the road.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: And there was not a sign of the great touring car,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: and not a sign of the limousine. It took mister
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Barnstable the better part of two seconds to realize the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: full astonishment of this fact. Neither to the right nor
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: left was there any possible side road down which either
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: car could have vanished. And if they had already got
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: round the further bend, then they must be traveling at
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the rate of two or three hundred miles per hour.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: It was mister Barnstable's excellent custom. Whenever he was in
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: doubt to slow down, he slowed down. Now he went
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: on at a pace of perhaps fifteen miles an hour,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: staring open mouthed about the empty landscape for some clew
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: to this mysterious disappearance. Curiously enough, he had no feeling
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: that he himself was in any sort of danger. Then
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: his car seemed to strike something and skidd it. It
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: skidded round so violently that for a moment or so
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: mister Barnstable lost his head. He could do not remember
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: what ought to be done when a car skids. He
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: recalled something vaguely about steering in the direction which the
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: car is skidding, but he could not make out in
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the excitement of the moment, in what direction the car
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: was skidding. Afterwards, he remembered that at this point he
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: heard a sound. It was exactly the same sound, coming
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: as the climax of an accumulating pressure, sharp, like the
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: snapping of a lute string, which one hears at the
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: end or beginning of insensibility under anesthetics. He had seemed
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: to twist round towards the hedge on the right. But
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: now he found the road ahead of him again. He
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: touched his accelerator and then slowed down and stopped. He
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: stopped in the profoundest astonishment. This was an entirely different
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: road from the one he had been upon half a
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: minute before. The hedges had changed, the trees had altered,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: windsor castle had vanished, and a small compensation, the big
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: limousine was inside again. It was standing by the roadside,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: about two hundred yards away. End of chapter one. This
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: was a recording by Bryan Powell, Portland, Oregon, September twenty nineteen,