Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The Dream Chapter the Third - Misfortunes Come Upon the Smith Family Parts 3 and 4

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The Dream Chapter the Third - Misfortunes Come Upon the Smith Family Parts 3 and 4 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section six of The Dream, a Novel. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: The Dream, a Novel by H. G. Wells. Chapter the
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  Speaker 1: third Misfortunes come upon the Smith family Parts three and four.
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  Speaker 1: Part three. But this hour of success was almost the
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  Speaker 1: only bright interlude in a steady drift to catastrophe. In
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  Speaker 1: a little while, I gathered from a conversation between my
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  Speaker 1: mother and my father that we were behind with the
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  Speaker 1: rent that was a quarterly payment we paid to the
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  Speaker 1: enterprising individual who owned our house. I know all that
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  Speaker 1: sounds odd to you, but that is the way things
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  Speaker 1: were done. If we got behind with our rent, the
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  Speaker 1: owner would turn us out, But where asked firefly out
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  Speaker 1: of the house, and we weren't allowed to stay in
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  Speaker 1: the street. But it is impossible for me to explain
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  Speaker 1: everything of that sort in detail. We were behind with
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  Speaker 1: the rent, and catastrophe impended, and then my sister Fanny
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  Speaker 1: ran away from us. In no other respect, said Sarnak.
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  Speaker 1: Is it so difficult to get realities over to you
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  Speaker 1: and make you understand how I thought? And felt in
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  Speaker 1: that other life than in matters of sex. Nowadays, sex
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  Speaker 1: is so simple. Here we are free and frank men
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  Speaker 1: and women. We are trained so subtly that we scarcely know.
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  Speaker 1: We are trained not to be stupidly competitive, to control
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  Speaker 1: jealous impulses, to live generously, to honor the young. Love
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  Speaker 1: is the link and flower of our choicest friendships. We
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  Speaker 1: take love by the way as we take our food
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  Speaker 1: and our holidays. The main thing in our lives is
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  Speaker 1: our creative work. But in that dark, tormented world in
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  Speaker 1: which I passed my dream life, all the business of
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  Speaker 1: love was covered over and netted in by restraints and
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  Speaker 1: put in fetters that fretted and tortured. I will tell
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  Speaker 1: you at last how I was killed. Now I want
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  Speaker 1: to convey to you something of the reality of this
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  Speaker 1: affair of Fanny. Even in this world, said Sarnak, My
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  Speaker 1: sister Fanny would have been a conspicuously lovely girl. Her
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  Speaker 1: eyes could be as blue as heaven, or darken with
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  Speaker 1: anger or excitement so that they seemed black. Her hair
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  Speaker 1: had a brave sweep in it always. Her smile made
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  Speaker 1: you ready to do anything for her. Her laughter made
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  Speaker 1: the world clean and brightly clear about her, even when
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  Speaker 1: it was touched with scorn, and she was ignorant. I
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  Speaker 1: can hardly describe her ignorance. It was Fanny first made
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  Speaker 1: me feel that ignorance was shameful. I have told you
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  Speaker 1: the sort of school we had, and of our religious teachers.
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  Speaker 1: When I was nine or ten and Fanny was fifteen.
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  Speaker 1: She was already scolding me for fumbling with the pronunciation
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  Speaker 1: of words, and particularly with the dropping of the aspirit Harry.
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  Speaker 1: She said, if you call me Fanny again, it's war
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  Speaker 1: and pinching. My name's Fanny and yours is Harry. And
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  Speaker 1: don't you forget it. It's not English we talk in
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  Speaker 1: this place, it's mud. Something had stung her. She had
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  Speaker 1: been talking with someone with a better accent, and she
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  Speaker 1: had been humiliated. I think that someone may have mocked her,
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  Speaker 1: some chance acquaintance. It must have been some ill bred
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  Speaker 1: superior boy upon the Cliffstone promenade. But Fanny was setting
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  Speaker 1: out now to talk good English and make me do
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  Speaker 1: the same, with a fury all her own. If only
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  Speaker 1: I could talk French, she said, there's France in sight
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  Speaker 1: over there, all its lighthouses winking at us, and all
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  Speaker 1: we've got to say is parlay vus phronsie and grin
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  Speaker 1: as if it was a joke. She brought home a
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  Speaker 1: sixpenny book which professed but failed to teach her French.
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  Speaker 1: She was reading voraciously, greedily to know. She read endless novels.
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  Speaker 1: But also she was reading all sorts of books about
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  Speaker 1: the stars, about physiology. In spite of my mother's wild
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  Speaker 1: scoldings at the impropriety of reading a book with pictures
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  Speaker 1: of your insides in it, about foreign countries, her passion
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  Speaker 1: that I should learn was even greater than her own
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  Speaker 1: passion for knowledge. At fourteen, she left school and began
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  Speaker 1: to help earn her living. My mother had wanted her
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  Speaker 1: to go into service, but she had resisted and re
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  Speaker 1: this passionately. While that proposal was still hanging over her,
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  Speaker 1: she went off by herself to Cliffstone and got a
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  Speaker 1: job as assistant bookkeeper in a pork butcher's shop. Before
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  Speaker 1: a year was out, she was bookkeeper, but her mind
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  Speaker 1: was as neat as it was nimble. She earned enough
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  Speaker 1: money to buy books and drawing materials for me, and
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  Speaker 1: to get herself clothes that scandalized all my mother's ideas
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  Speaker 1: of what was becoming. Don't imagine she dressed well, as
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  Speaker 1: we used to say. She experimented boldly, and some of
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  Speaker 1: her experiments were cheap and tawdry. I could lecture to
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  Speaker 1: you for an hour, said Sarnak, of what dress and
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  Speaker 1: the money to buy dresses meant for a woman in
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  Speaker 1: the old world. A large part of my sister's life
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  Speaker 1: was hidden from me. It would have been hidden altogether
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  Speaker 1: but for the shameless tirades of my mother, who seemed
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  Speaker 1: to prefer to have an audience while she goolded Fanny.
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  Speaker 1: I can see now that my mother was bitterly jealous
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  Speaker 1: of Fanny because of her unexhausted youth. But at the
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  Speaker 1: time I was distressed and puzzled at the gross hints
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  Speaker 1: and suggestions that flew over my head. Fanny had a
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  Speaker 1: maddening way of not answering back, or answering only by
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  Speaker 1: some minor correction. It's horrible, mother, she would say, not horrible,
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  Speaker 1: behind her defensive rudenesses unlit, unguided. Poor Fanny was struggling
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  Speaker 1: with the whole riddle of life presented to her with
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  Speaker 1: an urgency no man can fully understand. Nothing in her
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  Speaker 1: upbringing had ever roused her to the passion for real
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  Speaker 1: work in the world. Religion for her had been a
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  Speaker 1: grimace and a threat. The one great reality that had
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  Speaker 1: come through to her thoughts was love. The novels she
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  Speaker 1: read all told of love elusively, marshly, and in impatience.
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  Speaker 1: In her imagination and in her body leapt to these hints.
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  Speaker 1: Love whispered to her in the light and beauty of
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  Speaker 1: things about her, in the moonlight, in the spring breezes.
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  Speaker 1: Fanny could not but know that she was beautiful. But
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  Speaker 1: such morality, as our world had then, was a morality
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  Speaker 1: of abject suppression. Love was disgrace, a leering fraud, a
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  Speaker 1: smutty joke. She was not to speak about it, not
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  Speaker 1: to look towards it, until some good man, the poor
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  Speaker 1: butcher was a widower and seemed likely to be the
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  Speaker 1: good man in her case, came and spoke not of
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  Speaker 1: love indeed, but marriage. He would marry her, and hurry
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  Speaker 1: home with his prize, and tear the wrappings from her loveliness. Clumsily, stupidly,
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  Speaker 1: in a mood of morbidly inflamed desire, Sarnac said, Firefly,
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  Speaker 1: you are horrible. No, said Sarnak, But that world of
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  Speaker 1: the past was horrible. Most of the women your ancestors
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  Speaker 1: suffered such things. And that was only the beginning of
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  Speaker 1: the horror. Then came the birth and desecration of the children.
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  Speaker 1: Think what a delicate, precious and holy thing a child is.
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  Speaker 1: They were begotten abundantly and abnormally, born reluctantly, and dropped
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  Speaker 1: into the squalor and infection of an overcrowded, disordered world.
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  Speaker 1: Bearing a child was not the jolly, wholesome process we
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  Speaker 1: know to day. In that diseased society, it was an illness.
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  Speaker 1: It counted as an illness for nearly every woman which
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  Speaker 1: the man her husband resented grossly, five or six children
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  Speaker 1: in five or six years, and a pretty girl was
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  Speaker 1: a cross, worried wreck of a woman, bereft of any
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  Speaker 1: shred of spirit or beauty. My poor, scolding, worried mother
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  Speaker 1: was not fifty when she died, and one saw one's
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  Speaker 1: exquisite infants grow up to be ill dressed, undernourished, ill
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  Speaker 1: educated children. Think of the agony of shamed love that
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  Speaker 1: lay beneath my poor mother's slaps and scoldings. The world
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  Speaker 1: has forgotten now, the hate and bitterness of disappointed parentage
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  Speaker 1: that was the prospect of the moral life that opened
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  Speaker 1: before my sister Fanny. That was the antistrophe to the
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  Speaker 1: siren song of her imagination. She could not believe this
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  Speaker 1: of life and love. She experimented with love and herself.
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  Speaker 1: She was, my mother said, a bold bad girl. She began,
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  Speaker 1: I know, with furtive kissings and huggings in the twilight,
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  Speaker 1: with boy schoolfellows, with clerks and errand boys. Some gleam
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  Speaker 1: of nastiness came into these adventures of the dusk and
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  Speaker 1: made her recoil. At any rate, she became prim and
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  Speaker 1: aloof to cherry gardens, but only because she was drawn
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  Speaker 1: to the bands and lights and prosperity of Cliffstone. That
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  Speaker 1: was when she began to read and correct her accent.
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  Speaker 1: You have heard of our old social stratifications. She wanted
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  Speaker 1: to be like a lady. She wanted to meet a gentleman.
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  Speaker 1: She imagined there were gentlemen who were really gentle, generous,
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  Speaker 1: wise and delightful. And she imagined that some of the
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  Speaker 1: men she saw on the cliff promenade at Cliffstone were gentlemen.
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  Speaker 1: She began to dress herself. As I have told. There
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  Speaker 1: were scores of such girls in every town in Europe,
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  Speaker 1: said Sarnak, turning their backs on their dreadful homes in
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  Speaker 1: a sort of desperate hope. When you hear about the
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  Speaker 1: moral code of the old world, Sarnac went on, you
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  Speaker 1: are apt to think of it as a rule that
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  Speaker 1: every no one respected, in exactly the same way that
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  Speaker 1: you think everyone believed the professed religions. We have not
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  Speaker 1: so much a moral code now as a moral training,
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  Speaker 1: and our religion involves no strain on reason or instincts,
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  Speaker 1: and so it is difficult for us to understand the
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  Speaker 1: tortuosity and evasions and defiances, and general furtiveness and meanness
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  Speaker 1: of a world in which nobody really understood and believed
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  Speaker 1: the religious creeds, not even the priests, and nobody was
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  Speaker 1: really convinced to the bone of the sweetness and justice
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  Speaker 1: of the moral code. In that distant age, almost everybody
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  Speaker 1: was sexually angry, or uncomfortable or dishonest. The restraints we
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  Speaker 1: had did not so much restrain as provoked people. It
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  Speaker 1: is difficult to imagine it now, not if you read
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  Speaker 1: the old literature, said Sunray. The novels and plays are pathological.
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  Speaker 1: So you have my pretty sister Fanny drawn by impulses
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  Speaker 1: she did not understand, flitting like a moth out of
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  Speaker 1: our dingy home in Cherry Gardens to the lights, bright
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  Speaker 1: lights of hope. They seemed to her about the bandstand
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  Speaker 1: and promenade of Cliffstone, and there staying in the lodging
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  Speaker 1: houses and boarding houses and hotels were limited and thwarted,
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  Speaker 1: people keeping holiday, craving for bright excitements, seeking casual pleasures.
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  Speaker 1: There were wives who had tired of their husbands, and
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  Speaker 1: husbands long weary of their wives. They were separated, people
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  Speaker 1: who could not divorce, and young men who could not
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  Speaker 1: marry because they could not afford to maintain a family.
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  Speaker 1: With their poor hearts full of naughtiness, rebellious suppressions, jealousies, resentments,
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  Speaker 1: And through this crowd, eager, provocative, and defenseless, flitted my
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  Speaker 1: pretty sister Fanny. Part four. On the evening before Fanny
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  Speaker 1: ran away, my father and my uncle sat in the
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  Speaker 1: kitchen by the fire, discoursing of politics and the evils
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  Speaker 1: of life. They had both been keeping up their peckers
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  Speaker 1: very resolutely during the day, and this gave a certain
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  Speaker 1: rambling and recurrent quality to their review. Their voices were hoarse,
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  Speaker 1: and they drawled and were loud and emphatic and impressive.
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  Speaker 1: It was as if they spoke for the benefit of
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  Speaker 1: unseen listeners. Often they would both be talking together. My
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  Speaker 1: mother was in the scullery washing up the tea things,
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  Speaker 1: and I was sitting at the table near the lamp,
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  Speaker 1: trying to do some homework. My teacher had given me
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  Speaker 1: so far as the distraction of this conversation so close
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  Speaker 1: to me, and occasional appeals to me to mark this
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  Speaker 1: or that would permit. Prue was reading a book called
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  Speaker 1: Ministering Children, to which she was much addicted. Fanny had
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  Speaker 1: been helping my mother until she was told she was
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  Speaker 1: more a hindrance than a help. Then she came and
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  Speaker 1: stood at my side, looking over my shoulder at what
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  Speaker 1: I was doing. What's spoiling trade and ruining the country,
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  Speaker 1: said my uncle is these air strikes, these air strikes,
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  Speaker 1: regular destruction, destruction for the country. Stop everything, said my father.
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  Speaker 1: It stands to reason they did ought to be allowed.
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  Speaker 1: These air miners are paid and paid ansomely, paid handsomely.
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  Speaker 1: They are ansomely. Why I'd be glad of the pay
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  Speaker 1: they get. Glad of it. They as bulldogs. They is pianos, Champagne,
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  Speaker 1: Me and you Smith, me and you, and the middle
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  Speaker 1: classes generally we don't get pianos. We don't get champagne.
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  Speaker 1: Not it ought to be a middle classes union, said
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  Speaker 1: my father. Keep these air workers in their places. They
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  Speaker 1: hold up the country and stop trade. Trade trades awful.
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  Speaker 1: Why people come in now and look at what you got,
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  Speaker 1: and are the price of this and that thing? Twice
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  Speaker 1: they do before they spend a sixpence and the coal
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  Speaker 1: you're expected to sell nowadays. I tell em, if this
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  Speaker 1: air strike comes off, this is about the last coal
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  Speaker 1: you're likely to see, good or bad. Straight out, I
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  Speaker 1: tell em you're not working, Harry, said Fanny, without troubling
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  Speaker 1: to lower her voice. Don't see how you can work
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  Speaker 1: with all this jawing going on. Come out for a walk.
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  Speaker 1: I glanced up at her and rose at once. It
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  Speaker 1: wasn't often Fanny asked me to go for a walk
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  Speaker 1: with her. I put my books away, going out for
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  Speaker 1: a bit of fresh air, mother, said Fanny, taking her
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  Speaker 1: hat down from its peg. No you don't not at
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  Speaker 1: this time, cried my mother from the scullery. Ain't, I said,
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  Speaker 1: Once and for all. It's all right, mother, Harry's going
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  Speaker 1: with me. He'll see no one runs away with me
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  Speaker 1: and ruins me. You've said it once and for all.
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  Speaker 1: Time's enough. My mother made no further objection, but she
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  Speaker 1: flashed a look of infinite hate at my sister. We
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  Speaker 1: went upstairs and out into the street. For a time
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  Speaker 1: we said nothing, but I had a sense that I
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: was going to be told things. I've had about enough
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  Speaker 1: of all this, Fanny began, Presently, what's going to become
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  Speaker 1: of us? Father and uncle have been drinking all day.
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  Speaker 1: You can see they're both more than half screwed, both
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  Speaker 1: of them. It's every day now. It's worse and worse
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  Speaker 1: and worse. Uncle hasn't had a job these ten days.
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  Speaker 1: Father's always with him. The shop's getting filthy. He doesn't
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  Speaker 1: sweep it out now for days together. Uncle seems to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: have lost art, I said, since he heard that Aunt
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Adelaide would have to have that second operation, lost heart.
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  Speaker 1: He never had any heart to lose. My sister. Fanny said,
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  Speaker 1: no more of my uncle by an effort. What a home,
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  Speaker 1: she cried. She paused for a moment. Harry, she said,
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to get out of this soon. I asked
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  Speaker 1: what she meant by that. Never mind what I mean.
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  Speaker 1: I've got a situation, a different sort of situation, Harry.
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  Speaker 1: You you care for me, Harry. Professions of affection are
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  Speaker 1: difficult for boys of thirteen. I'd do anything for you, Fanny,
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  Speaker 1: I said, after a pause. You know I would, and
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  Speaker 1: you wouldn't tell on me? What did you take me for? No? How, no,
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  Speaker 1: how I knew you wouldn't, said Fanny, You're the only
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  Speaker 1: one of the whole crew. I'll be sorry to leave.
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  Speaker 1: I do care for you, Harry, straight I do. I
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  Speaker 1: used to care for mother once, but that's different. She
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: scolded me and screamed at me. Till it's gone, every
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  Speaker 1: bit of it. I can't help it, it's gone. I'll
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  Speaker 1: think of you, Harry often. I realized that Fanny was crying.
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  Speaker 1: Then when I glanced at her, her tears were over
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  Speaker 1: look here, Harry. She said, would you do something for me,
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  Speaker 1: something not so very much, and not tell, not tell afterwards?
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I'd do anything, Fanny. It's not so very much. Really.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: There's that little old portmanteau upstairs. I've put some things
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: in it, and there's a little bundle. I've put them
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: under the bed at the back where even prying Prue
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: won't think of looking. And tomorrow when Father's out with
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Uncle like he is now every day, and Mother's getting
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: dinner downstairs, and Prue's pretending to help her and sneaking
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: bits of bread. If you'd bring those down to Cliffstone,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: to Crosbie's side door, they aren't so very heavy. I
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: ain't afraid of your portmanteau, Fanny. I'd carry it more
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: miles than that for you. You. But where's this new
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: situation of yours, Fanny? And why ain't you saying a
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: word about it at home? Suppose I asked you something
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: harder than carrying a portmanteau, Harry, I'd do it, Fanny,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: if I could do it, You know that, Fanny. But
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: if it was just to ask no questions of where
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: I'm going and what I am going to do, it's
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: It's a good situation, Harry. It isn't hard work. She
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: stopped short. I saw her face by the yellow light
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: of a street lamp, and I was astonished to see
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: it radiant with happiness, and yet her eyes were shining
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: with tears. What a fanny it was, who could pass
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  Speaker 1: in a dozen steps from weeping to ecstasy. Oh, I
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  Speaker 1: wish I could tell you all about it, Harry, she said,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you all about it. Don't
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: you worry about me, Harry, or what's going to happen
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  Speaker 1: to me? You help me, and after a bit I'll
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: write to you. I will, indeed, Harry, you aren't going
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: to run away and marry, I asked abruptly. It'd be
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: like you, Fanny, to do that. I won't say I am,
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  Speaker 1: I won't say I'm not. I won't say anything, Harry.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: But I'm as happy as the sunrise, Harry. I could
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: dance and sing if only I can do it, Harry.
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  Speaker 1: There's one thing, Fanny. She stopped dead. You're not going
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  Speaker 1: back on me, Harry. No, I'll do what I've promised, Fanny.
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  Speaker 1: But I had a moral mind. I hesitated. You're not
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: doing anything wrong, Fanny. She shook her head and did
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: not answer. For some moments. The look of ecstasy returned.
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  Speaker 1: I'm doing the rightest thing that ever I did, Harry,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the rightest thing, if only I can do it. And
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  Speaker 1: you are a dear to help me, a perfect dear.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And suddenly she put her arms about me and drew
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: my face to hers and kissed me, and then she
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: pushed me away and dance a step. I love all
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the world tonight, said Fanny. I love all the world's
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: silly old cherry gardens. You thought you'd got me, You
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: thought I'd never get away. She began a sort of
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: chant of escape. Tomorrow's my last day at Crosbie's my
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: very last day, forever and ever. Amen. He'll never come
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: too near me again and breathe down my neck. He'll
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: never put his fat hand on my bare arm and
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: shove his face close to mine while he looks at
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: my cash sheet. When I get to wherever I'm going, Harry,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I'll want to send him a postcard. Goodbye, mister Crosbie. Goodbye,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: dear mister Crosbie, forever and ever. Amen. She made what
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I knew to be her imitation of mister Crosbie's voice.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: You're the sort of girl who ought to marry young
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and have a steady husband older than yourself, My dear
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: did I? And who said you might call me your
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: dear dear mister Crosby twenty five shillings a week and
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: pawings about and being called dear thrown in. I'm wild
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: tonight Harry wild tonight I could laugh and scream, And
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: yet I want to cry, Harry, because I'm leaving you
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: and leaving them all. Though why I care. I don't know.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Poor boozy, old father, poor silly, scolding mother. Someday perhaps
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I may help them, if only I get away. And you.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: You've got to go on learning and improving, Harry, learning, learning, Learn,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and get out of cherry gardens. Never drink, Never let
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: drink cross your lips. Don't smoke, for why should anyone smoke.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Take the top side of life. For it's easier up there. Indeed,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: it's easier work and read, Harry. Learn French so that
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: when I come back to see you, we can both
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: talk together. You're going to learn French. You're going to
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: France farther than France. But not a word, Harry, not
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: a word of it. But I wish I could tell
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: you everything. I can't. I mustn't. I've given my promise.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: I've got to keep faith. All one has to do
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: in the world is to love and keep faith. But
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I wish mother had let me help wash up tonight,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: my last night. She hates me, she'll hate me more.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Yet I wonder if I'll keep awake all night, or
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: cry myself to sleep. Let's race as far as the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Goods Station, Harry, and then walk home. End of Section six.