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The Dream Chapter the Eighth - The Epilogue · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section twenty four of The Dream, a Novel. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: The Dream a Novel by H. G. Wells. Chapter the
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  Speaker 1: eighth the epilogue, Section one. The guest Master poked the
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  Speaker 1: sinking fire into a last effort. So am i, he said,
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  Speaker 1: And then, with profound conviction, that tale is true? But
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  Speaker 1: how could it be true? Asked Willow. I should be
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  Speaker 1: readier to believe it true if Sarnac had not brought
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  Speaker 1: in sun Ray, as Hetty said radiant. It was very
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  Speaker 1: dream like the way Hetty grew more and more like
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  Speaker 1: his dear lady, and at last dissolved altogether into her.
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  Speaker 1: But if Smith was a sort of anticipation of Sarnac,
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  Speaker 1: said Starlight, then it was natural for him to choose
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  Speaker 1: as his love a sort of anticipation of sun Ray.
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  Speaker 1: But are there any other anticipations in the story, asked Willow,
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  Speaker 1: Did you recognize any other people who are intimate with
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  Speaker 1: you both? Is there a Fanny in this world? Is
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  Speaker 1: there a Matilda Good? Or brother? Ernest was Sarnac's mother,
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  Speaker 1: like Martha Smith. That tale, said the guest master, Stoutly,
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  Speaker 1: was no dream. It was a memory floating up out
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  Speaker 1: of the deep darkness of forgotten things into a kindred brain.
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  Speaker 1: Sarnac thought, what is a personality but a memory. If
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  Speaker 1: the memory of Harry Mortimer Smith is in my brain,
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  Speaker 1: then I am Smith. I feel as sure that I
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  Speaker 1: was Smith two thousand years ago as that I was
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  Speaker 1: Sarnak this morning. Sometimes before this, in my dreams, I
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  Speaker 1: have had a feeling that I lived again forgotten lives.
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  Speaker 1: Have none of you felt that I dreamt the other day,
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  Speaker 1: said Radiant, that I was a panther that haunted a
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  Speaker 1: village of huts in which lived naked children and some
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  Speaker 1: very toothsome dogs, And how I was hunted for three
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  Speaker 1: years and shot at five times before I was killed.
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  Speaker 1: I can remember how I killed an old woman gathering
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  Speaker 1: sticks and hid part of her body under the roots
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  Speaker 1: of a tree to finish it on the morrow. It
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  Speaker 1: was a very vivid dream, and as I dreamt it,
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  Speaker 1: it was by no means horrible. But it was not
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  Speaker 1: a clear and continuous dream like yours. A panther's mind
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  Speaker 1: is not clear and continuous, but passes from flashes of
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  Speaker 1: interest to interludes of apathy and utter forgetfulness. When children
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  Speaker 1: have dreams of terror, of being in the wild with
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  Speaker 1: prowling beasts, of long pursuits and hair breadth escapes, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: it is the memory of some dead creature that lives
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  Speaker 1: again in them asks starlight. What do we know of
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  Speaker 1: the stuff of memory that lies on the other side
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  Speaker 1: of matter? What do we know of the relations of
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  Speaker 1: consciousness to matter and energy? For four thousand years men
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  Speaker 1: have speculated about these things, and we know no more
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  Speaker 1: today than they did in Athens, when Plato taught and
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  Speaker 1: Aristotle studied. Science increases and the power of man grows,
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  Speaker 1: but only inside the limits of life's conditions. We may
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  Speaker 1: conquer space and time, but we shall never conquer the
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  Speaker 1: mystery of what we are and why we can be?
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  Speaker 1: Matter that feel in wills, My brother and I have
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  Speaker 1: much to do with animals, And more and more do
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  Speaker 1: I perceive that what they are I am. They are
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  Speaker 1: instruments with twenty strings, while we have ten thousand. But
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  Speaker 1: they are instruments like ourselves. What plays upon them plays
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  Speaker 1: upon us, and what kills them kills us. Life and
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  Speaker 1: death alike are within the crystal sphere that limits us forever.
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  Speaker 1: Life cannot penetrate, and death will not penetrate that limitation.
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  Speaker 1: What memories are we cannot tell. If I choose to
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  Speaker 1: believe that they float away like gossamer nets when we die,
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  Speaker 1: and that they float I know not where, and that
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  Speaker 1: they can come back presently into touch with other such
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  Speaker 1: gossamer nets. Who can contradict me. Maybe life, from its
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  Speaker 1: very big has been spinning threads and webs of memories,
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  Speaker 1: not a thing in the past. It may be that
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  Speaker 1: has not left its memories about us. Some day we
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  Speaker 1: may learn to gather in that forgotten gossamer. We may
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  Speaker 1: learn to weave its strands together again, until the whole
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  Speaker 1: past is restored to us and life becomes one. Then
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  Speaker 1: perhaps the crystal sphere will break. And however that may be,
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  Speaker 1: and however these things may be explained, I can well believe,
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  Speaker 1: without any miracles, that Sarnak has touched down to the
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  Speaker 1: real memory of a human life that lived and suffered
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  Speaker 1: two thousand years ago. And I believe that because of
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  Speaker 1: the reality of the story he told, I have felt
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  Speaker 1: all along that whatever interrupting question we choose to ask,
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  Speaker 1: had we asked what buttons he wore on his jacket
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  Speaker 1: are or how deep the gutters were at the pavement edge,
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  Speaker 1: or what was the price he had paid for his cigarettes?
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  Speaker 1: He would have been ready with an answer more exact
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  Speaker 1: and sure than any historian could have given. And I
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  Speaker 1: too believe that said Sonray, I have no memory of
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  Speaker 1: being hetty, but in everything he said and did, even
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  Speaker 1: in his harshest and hardest acts, Smith and Sarnac were
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  Speaker 1: one character. I do not question for a moment that
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  Speaker 1: Sarnac lived that life Section two. But the hardness of
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  Speaker 1: it cried Firefly, the cruelty, the universal heartache. It could
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  Speaker 1: have been only a dream persisted Willow. It is not
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  Speaker 1: the barberism I think of, said Firefly, Not the wars
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  Speaker 1: and diseases, the shortened, crippled lives, the ugly towns, the
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  Speaker 1: narrow countryside, But worse than that, the sorrow of the heart,
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  Speaker 1: the universal unkindness, the universal failed to understand or care
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  Speaker 1: for the thwarted desires and needs of others. As I
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  Speaker 1: think of Sarnac's story, I cannot think of any one
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  Speaker 1: creature in it who was happy as we are happy.
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  Speaker 1: It is all a story of love crossed imaginations Like flies,
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  Speaker 1: that have fallen into gum, things withheld, and things forbidden,
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  Speaker 1: and all for nothing, all for pride and spite. Not
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  Speaker 1: all that world had a giver who gave with both hands.
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  Speaker 1: Poor Milly. Do you think she did not know how
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  Speaker 1: coldly you loved her, Sarnac? Do you think her jealousy
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  Speaker 1: was not born of a certainty and a fear A lifetime,
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  Speaker 1: a whole young man's lifetime, a quarter of a century.
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  Speaker 1: And this poor Harry Smith never once met a happy soul,
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  Speaker 1: and came only once within sight of happiness. And he
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  Speaker 1: was just one of sco and hundreds of millions. They
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  Speaker 1: went heavily and clumsily and painfully, oppressing and obstructing each
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  Speaker 1: other from the cradle to the grave. This was too
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  Speaker 1: much for the guest master, who almost wailed aloud. But
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  Speaker 1: surely there was happiness. Surely there were moods, in phases
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  Speaker 1: of happiness, in gleams and flashes, said Sarnak. But I
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  Speaker 1: verily believe that what firefly says is true. In all
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  Speaker 1: my world there were no happy lives, not even children lives,
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  Speaker 1: I said, not parts of lives. Children would laugh and
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  Speaker 1: dance for a while if they were born in hell
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  Speaker 1: and out of that darkness, said radiant. In twenty short centuries,
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  Speaker 1: our race has come to the light and tolerance, the
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  Speaker 1: sweet freedoms and charities of our lives today. Which is
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  Speaker 1: no sort of comfort to me, said firefly, when I
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  Speaker 1: think of the lives that have been. Unless this is
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  Speaker 1: the solution. The guest master cried that everyone is presently
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  Speaker 1: to dream back the lives that have gone, unless the
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  Speaker 1: poor memory ghosts of all those sad lives that have
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  Speaker 1: been are to be brought into the consolation of our happiness. Here,
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  Speaker 1: poor souls, for your comfort is the land of heart's desire.
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  Speaker 1: In all your hopes come true. Here you live again
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  Speaker 1: in your ampler selves. Here lovers are not parted for loving,
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  Speaker 1: and your loves are not your torment. Now I see
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  Speaker 1: why men must be immortal, for otherwise the story of
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  Speaker 1: man's martyrdom is too pitiful to tell. Many good men
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  Speaker 1: there were like me, jolly men with a certain plunkness,
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  Speaker 1: men with an excellent taste for wine and cookery, who
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  Speaker 1: loved men almost as much as they loved the food
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  Speaker 1: and drink that made men. And they cannot do the
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  Speaker 1: jolly work I do, and make comfort and happiness every
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  Speaker 1: day for fresh couples of holiday friends. Surely, presently I
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  Speaker 1: shall find the memories of the poor license innkeeper I
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  Speaker 1: was in those ancient days, the poor overruled, ill paid
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  Speaker 1: publican handing out bad stuff in wrath and shame. I
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  Speaker 1: shall find all his troubles welling up again in me,
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  Speaker 1: consoled in this good inn. If it was I who
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  Speaker 1: suffered in those days, I am content. But if it
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  Speaker 1: was some other good fellow who died and never came
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  Speaker 1: to this, then there is no justice in the heart
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  Speaker 1: of God. So I swear by immortality now and henceforth,
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  Speaker 1: not for greed of the future, but in the name
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  Speaker 1: of the wasted dead. Look the guest master. Continue. Morning comes,
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  Speaker 1: and the cracks at the edge of the door curtain
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  Speaker 1: grow brighter than the light within. Go all of you
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  Speaker 1: and watch the mountain glow. I will mix you a
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  Speaker 1: warm bowl of drink, and then we will sleep for
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  Speaker 1: an hour or so, before you breakfast and go your way.
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  Speaker 1: Section three. It was a life, said Sarnak, And it
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  Speaker 1: was a dream, a dream within this life. And this
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  Speaker 1: life too is a dream, dreams within dreams, dreams containing dreams,
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  Speaker 1: until we come at last, maybe to the dreamer of
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  Speaker 1: all dreams, the being who is all beings. Nothing is
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  Speaker 1: too wonderful for life, and nothing is too beautiful. He
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  Speaker 1: got up and thrust back the great curtain of the
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  Speaker 1: guest house room. All night we have been talking and
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  Speaker 1: living in the dark ages of confusion, and now the
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  Speaker 1: sunrise is close at hand. He went out upon the
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  Speaker 1: portico of the guest house and stood still, surveying the
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  Speaker 1: great mountains that rose out of cloud and haze, dark
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  Speaker 1: blue and mysterious in their recesses, and soaring up at
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  Speaker 1: last into the flush of dawn. He stood quite still.
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  Speaker 1: In all the world seemed still, except that far away
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  Speaker 1: and far below, a mist of sounds, beneath the mountain mists,
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  Speaker 1: a confusion of birds was singing. End of Section twenty four.
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  Speaker 1: End of the Dream, a novel by H. G. Wells,