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In the Days of the Comet Book First Chapter First Section 4-5 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, first chapter, first sections four and five of In
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Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet. This is a liberyvox recording.
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Speaker 1: All liberyvox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit liberyvox dot org. Recording
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Speaker 1: by Felicity Campbell In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells, Book,
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Speaker 1: first chapter, first sections four and five, Section four.
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Speaker 2: Always with parload, I was chief talker. I can look
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Speaker 2: back upon myself with I believe, and almost perfect detachment.
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Speaker 2: Things have so changed that, indeed now I am another being,
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Speaker 2: scarce anything in common with that boastful, foolish youngster whose
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Speaker 2: troubles I recall. I see him vulgarly theatrical, egotistical, insincere. Indeed,
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Speaker 2: I do not like him, save with that instinctive material
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Speaker 2: sympathy that is the fruit of incessant intimacy. Because he
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Speaker 2: was myself, I may be able to feel and write
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Speaker 2: understandingly about motives that will put him out of sympathy
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Speaker 2: with nearly every reader. But why should I palliate or
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Speaker 2: defend his quality? Always I say I did the talking,
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Speaker 2: and it would have amazed me beyond measure if any
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Speaker 2: one had told me that mine was not the greater intelligence.
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Speaker 2: In these wordy encounters. Parload was a quiet youth, and
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Speaker 2: stiff and restrained in all things. While I had that
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Speaker 2: supreme gift for young men and democracies, the gift of
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Speaker 2: copious expression, Parload I diagnosed in my secret heart as
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Speaker 2: a trifle dull. He posed as pregnant. Quiet, I thought,
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Speaker 2: and was obsessed by the congenial notion of scientific caution.
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Speaker 2: I did not remark that while my hands were cheer
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Speaker 2: useful for gesticulation or holding a pen, Parload's hands could
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Speaker 2: do all sorts of things. And I did not think,
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Speaker 2: therefore that fibers must run from those fingers to something
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Speaker 2: in his brain. Nor though I bragged perpetually of my
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Speaker 2: shorthand of my literature, of my indispensable share in Rawdon's business,
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Speaker 2: did Parload lay stress on the cardness and calculus he
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Speaker 2: mugged in the organized science school. Parload is a famous man, now,
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Speaker 2: a great figure in a great time. His work upon
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Speaker 2: intersecting radiations has broadened the intellectual horizon of mankind for ever,
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Speaker 2: and I, who am at best a hewer of intellectual
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Speaker 2: wood a drawer of living water, can smile and he
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Speaker 2: can smile to think how I patronized and posed and
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Speaker 2: dabbed over him in the darkness of those early days.
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Speaker 2: That night I was shrill and eloquent beyond measure. Rawdon was,
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Speaker 2: of course the harp upon which I went round Rawdon,
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Speaker 2: and the Rawdonesque employer, and the injustice of wages, slavery,
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Speaker 2: and all the immediate conditions of that industrial blind ailing
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Speaker 2: up which it seemed our lives were thrust. But ever
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Speaker 2: and again I glanced at other things. Nettie was always
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Speaker 2: there in the background of my mind, regarding me enigmatically.
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Speaker 2: It was part of my pose to parload that I
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Speaker 2: had a romantic love affair somewhere away, beyond the sphere
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Speaker 2: of our intercourse, and that note gave a byronic irresonance
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Speaker 2: to many of the nonsensical things I produced for his astonishment.
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Speaker 2: I will not wear you with too detailed an account
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Speaker 2: of the talk of a foolish youth who was also
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Speaker 2: distressed and unhappy, and whose voice was balm for the
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Speaker 2: humiliations that smarted in his eyes. Indeed, now, in many particulars,
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Speaker 2: I cannot disentangle this harangue of which I tell from
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Speaker 2: many of the things I may have said in other
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Speaker 2: talks to Parload. For example, I forget if it was then,
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Speaker 2: or before or afterwards that, as it were, by accident,
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Speaker 2: I let out what might be taken as an admission
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Speaker 2: that I was addicted to drugs. You shouldn't do that,
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Speaker 2: said Parload. Suddenly. It won't do to poison your brains
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Speaker 2: with that. My brains, my eloquence were to be very
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Speaker 2: important assets to our party in the coming revolution. But
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Speaker 2: one thing does clearly belong to this particular conversation I
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Speaker 2: am recalling. When I started out, it was quite settled
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Speaker 2: in the back of my mind that I must not
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Speaker 2: leave Rawdon's. I simply wanted to abuse my employer to parload,
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Speaker 2: But I talked myself quite out of touch with all
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Speaker 2: the cogent reasons there were for sticking to my place,
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Speaker 2: and I got home that night irrevocably committed to a spirit,
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Speaker 2: not to say, a defiant policy with my employer. I
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Speaker 2: can't stand Rawdon's much longer, I said to Parload. By
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Speaker 2: way of a flourish. There's hard times coming, said Parload,
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Speaker 2: next winter sooner. The Americans have been over producing, and
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Speaker 2: they mean to dump. The iron trade is going to
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Speaker 2: have convulsions. I don't care. Pot banks are steady with
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Speaker 2: a corner in boorax. No, I've heard what have you heard?
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Speaker 2: Off a secrets? But it's no secret. There is trouble
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Speaker 2: coming to Potter's. There's been borrowing in speculation. The masters
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Speaker 2: don't stick to one business as they used to do.
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Speaker 2: I can tell that much half the valley may be
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Speaker 2: playing before two months are out. Parload delivered himself of
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Speaker 2: this unusually long speech in his most pithy and weighty manner.
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Speaker 2: Playing was our local euphemism for a time when there
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Speaker 2: was no work and no money for a man, a
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Speaker 2: time of stagnation and dreary, hungry loafing day after day.
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Speaker 2: Such interludes seemed in those days a necessary consequence of
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Speaker 2: industrial organization. You had better stick to Rawdon's, said Parload.
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Speaker 2: Oh said I affecting a noble disgust. There'll be trouble,
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Speaker 2: said Parload, who cares, said I let there be troubled.
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Speaker 2: The more the better. This system has got to end
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Speaker 2: sooner or later. These capitalists, with their speculation and corners
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Speaker 2: and trusts, make things go from bad to worse. Why
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Speaker 2: should a cower in Rawden's office like a frightened dog,
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Speaker 2: while Hunger walks the streets. Hunger is the master revolutionary.
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Speaker 2: When he comes, we ought to turn out and salute
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Speaker 2: him anyway, I'm going to do so. Now that's all
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Speaker 2: very well, began Parload. I'm tired of it, I said,
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Speaker 2: I want to come to Grips with all these rawdons.
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Speaker 2: I think perhaps if I was hungry and savage, I
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Speaker 2: could talk to hungry men. There's your mother, said Parload
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Speaker 2: in his slow judicial way. That was a difficulty. I
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Speaker 2: got over it by a rhetorical turn. Why should one
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Speaker 2: sacrifice the future of the world, Why should one even
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Speaker 2: sacrifice one's own future because one's mother is totally destitute
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Speaker 2: of imagination? End of section four, Section five. It was
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Speaker 2: late when I parted from Parload and came back to
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Speaker 2: my own home. Our house stood in a highly respectable
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Speaker 2: little square near the Clayton Parish Church. Mister gabbattas the
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Speaker 2: curate of all work, lodged on our ground floor, and
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Speaker 2: upstairs there was an old lady, miss Holroyd, who painted
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Speaker 2: flowers on china and maintained her blind sister in an
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Speaker 2: adjacent room. My mother and I lived in the basement
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Speaker 2: and slept in the attics. The front of the house
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Speaker 2: was veiled by a Virginian creeper that defied the Clayton
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Speaker 2: air and clustered in untidy dependent masses over the wooden porch.
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Speaker 2: As I came up the steps, I had a glimpse
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Speaker 2: of mister Gapitas printing photographs by candlelight in his room.
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Speaker 2: It was the chief delight of his little life to
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Speaker 2: spend his holiday abroad in the company of a queer
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Speaker 2: little snapshot camera, and to return with a great multitude
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Speaker 2: of foggy and sinister negatives that he had made in
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Speaker 2: beautiful and interesting places. These the camera company would develop
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Speaker 2: for him on advantageous terms, and he would spend his
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Speaker 2: evenings the year through in printing from them, in order
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Speaker 2: to inflict copies upon his undeserving friends. There was a
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Speaker 2: long frameful office work in the Clayton National School, for example,
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Speaker 2: inscribed in old English lettering Italian travel pictures by the
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Speaker 2: Reverend E. B. Gabbattas for this it seemed he lived
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Speaker 2: and traveled and had his being. It was his only
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Speaker 2: real joy. By his shaded light, I could see his
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Speaker 2: sharp little nose, his little pale eyes behind his glasses
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Speaker 2: his mouth pursed up with the endeavor of his employment.
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Speaker 2: Hiling Liar, I muttered, for was not he also part
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Speaker 2: of the system, part of the scheme of robbery that
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Speaker 2: made wages serfs of parload and me, though his share
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Speaker 2: in the proceedings were certainly small, Hiling Liar said, I
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Speaker 2: standing in the darkness outside, even his faint glow of
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Speaker 2: traveled culture. My mother let me in. She looked at
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Speaker 2: me mutely, because she knew there was something wrong, and
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Speaker 2: that it was no use for her to ask. What
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Speaker 2: good night? Mommy, said I and kissed her a little roughly,
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Speaker 2: and litton took my candle and went off at once
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Speaker 2: up the staircase to bed, not looking back at her.
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Speaker 2: I have kept some supper for you, dear don't want
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Speaker 2: any supper, but dearie, good night mother. And I went
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Speaker 2: up and slammed my door upon her, blew out my candle,
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Speaker 2: and lay down at once upon my bed. Lay there
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Speaker 2: a long time before I got up to undress. There
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Speaker 2: were times when that dumb beseeching of my mother's face
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Speaker 2: irritated me unspeakably. It did so that night I felt
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Speaker 2: I had to struggle against it, that I could not
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Speaker 2: exist if I gave way to its pleadings, and it
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Speaker 2: hurt me and divided me to resist it almost beyond endurance.
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Speaker 2: It was clear to me that I had to think
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Speaker 2: out for myself religious problems, social problems, questions of conduct,
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Speaker 2: questions of expediency. That her poor, dear simple beliefs could
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Speaker 2: not help me at all, And she did not understand
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Speaker 2: hers was the accepted religion. Her only social ideas were
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Speaker 2: blind submissions to the accepted order, to laws, to doctors,
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Speaker 2: to clergymen, lawyers, masters, and all respectable persons in authority
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Speaker 2: over us. And with her. To believe was to fear.
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Speaker 2: She knew from a thousand little signs, though still at
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Speaker 2: times I went to church with her that I was
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Speaker 2: passing out of touch of all these things that ruled
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Speaker 2: her life, into some terrible unknown From things I said,
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Speaker 2: she could infer such clumsy concealments as I made. She
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Speaker 2: felt my socialism, felt my spirit in revolt against the
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Speaker 2: accepted order, felt the impotent resentments that filled me with
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Speaker 2: bitterness against all she held sacred. Yet you know it
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Speaker 2: was not her dear gods she sought to defend so
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Speaker 2: much as me. She seemed always to be wanting to
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Speaker 2: say to me, dear, I know it's hard, but revolt
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Speaker 2: is harder. Don't make war in it dead, don't don't
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Speaker 2: do anything to offend it. I'm sure it will hurt
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Speaker 2: you if you do. It will hurt you if you do.
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Speaker 2: She had been called into submission, as so many women
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Speaker 2: of that time had been, by the sheer brutality of
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Speaker 2: the accepted thing. The existing order dominated her into a
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Speaker 2: worship of abject observances. It had been her aged her,
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Speaker 2: robbed her of eyesight, so that at fifty five she
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Speaker 2: peered through cheap spectacles at my face and saw it
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Speaker 2: only dimly. Filled her with a habit of anxiety, made
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Speaker 2: her hands her poor, dear hands. Not in the whole
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Speaker 2: world now could you find a wordman with hands so grimy,
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Speaker 2: so needle worn, so misshapen by toil, so chapped and coarsened,
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Speaker 2: so evily entreated. At any rate, there is this. I
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Speaker 2: can say for myself that my bitterness against the world
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Speaker 2: and fortune was for her sake as well as for
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Speaker 2: my own. Yet that night I pushed by her harshly,
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Speaker 2: I answered her curtly, left her concerned and perplexed in
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Speaker 2: the passage, and slammed my door upon her, And for
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Speaker 2: a long time I lay raging at the hardship and
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Speaker 2: evil of life, at the contempt of Rawdon and the
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Speaker 2: loveless coolness of Nettie's letter, at my weakness and insignificance,
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Speaker 2: at the things I found intolerable, and the things I
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Speaker 2: could not mend. Over and over went my poor little brain,
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Speaker 2: tired out and unable to stop on my treadmill of troubles, Nettie, Rawdon,
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Speaker 2: my mother, gabbitus Nettie. Suddenly I came upon emotional exhaustion.
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Speaker 2: Some clock was striking midnight. After all, I was young.
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Speaker 2: I had these quick transitions, I remember quite distinctly. I
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Speaker 2: stood up abruptly and dressed very quickly in the dark,
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Speaker 2: and had hardly touched my pillow again before I was asleep.
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Speaker 2: But how my mother slept that night I do not know.
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Speaker 2: Oddly enough, I do not blame myself for behaving like
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Speaker 2: this to my mother, though my conscience blames me acutely
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Speaker 2: for my arrogance to parload. I regret my behavior to
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Speaker 2: my mother before the days of the change. It is
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Speaker 2: a scar among my memories that will always be a
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Speaker 2: little painful to the end. Of my days. But I
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Speaker 2: do not see how something of the sort was to
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Speaker 2: be escaped under those former conditions. In that time of
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Speaker 2: muddle and obscurity, people were overtaken by needs and toil
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Speaker 2: and hot passions before they had the chance of even
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Speaker 2: a year or so of clear thinking. They settled down
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Speaker 2: to an intense and strenuous application to some partial but
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Speaker 2: immediate duty, and the growth of thought ceased in them.
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Speaker 2: They set and hardened into narrow ways. Few women remained
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Speaker 2: capable of a new idea after five and twenty, few
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Speaker 2: men after thirty one or two. Discontent with the thing
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Speaker 2: that existed was regarded as a moral It was certainly
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Speaker 2: an annoyance, and the only protest against it, the only
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Speaker 2: effort against that universal tendency in all human institutions to
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Speaker 2: thicken and clog, to work loosely and badly, to rust
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Speaker 2: and weaken towards catastrophes, came from the young, the crude,
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Speaker 2: unmerciful young. It seemed in those days to thoughtful men,
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Speaker 2: the harsh law of being that either we must submit
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Speaker 2: to our elders and be stifled or disregarded them, disobey them,
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Speaker 2: thrust them aside, and make our little step of progress
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Speaker 2: before we too ossified and became obstructive in our turn.
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Speaker 2: My pushing past my mother, my irresponsive departure to my
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Speaker 2: own silent meditations, was on our perceive a figure of
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Speaker 2: the whole hard relationship between parents and sun. In those days,
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Speaker 2: there appeared no other way that perpetually recurring tragedy was.
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Speaker 2: It seemed part of the very nature of the progress
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Speaker 2: of the world. We did not think then that minds
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Speaker 2: might grow ripe without growing rigid, or children honor their
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Speaker 2: parents and still think for themselves. We were angry and
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Speaker 2: hasty because we stifled in the darkness, in a poisoned
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Speaker 2: and phstiated air. That deliberate animation of the intelligence which
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Speaker 2: is now the universal quality, that with consideration, that judgment,
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Speaker 2: with confident enterprise, which shine through all our world, were
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Speaker 2: things disintegrated and unknown in the corrupting atmosphere of our
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Speaker 2: former state. So the first facicle ended, I put it
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Speaker 2: aside and looked for the second. Well, said the man
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Speaker 2: who wrote, this is fiction, it's my story. But you,
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Speaker 2: amidst this beauty, you are not this ill conditioned, squalidly
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Speaker 2: bred lad of whom I had been reading. He smiled.
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Speaker 2: There intervenes a certain change, He said, have I not
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Speaker 2: hinted it? That? I hesitated upon a question, then saw
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Speaker 2: the second fascicle at hand and picked it up. End
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Speaker 2: of section five. Recording by Felicitycampbell, Book one for me
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Speaker 2: dot com, Pulmonary New Zealand,