Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Tono-Bungay Book 2 Chapter 4 - Parts 10-11

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Tono-Bungay Book 2 Chapter 4 - Parts 10-11 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book, second chapter, fourth parts ten and eleven of Tono Bungay.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William tom Coe. Ton
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  Speaker 1: O Bungay by H. G. Wells, Book, second Chapter, fourth
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  Speaker 1: parts ten and eleven. Ten. So I parted from Marian
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  Speaker 1: at an extremity of perturbation and regret, and went as
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  Speaker 1: I had promised and arranged to Effie, who was waiting
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  Speaker 1: for me in apartments near Orpington. I remember her upon
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  Speaker 1: the station platform, a bright, flitting figure, looking along the
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  Speaker 1: train for me and our walk over the fields in
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  Speaker 1: the twilight. I had expected an immense sense of relief,
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  Speaker 1: where at last distresses of separation were over. But now
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  Speaker 1: I found I was beyond measure, wretched and perplexed, full
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  Speaker 1: of the profoundest persuasion of irreparable error. The dusk and
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  Speaker 1: somber Marian were so alike, her sorrow seemed to be
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  Speaker 1: all about me. I had to hold myself to my
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  Speaker 1: own plans, to remember that I must keep faith with Effie,
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  Speaker 1: with Effie who had made no terms exacted, no guarantees,
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  Speaker 1: but flung herself into my hands. We went across the
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  Speaker 1: evening fields in silence, towards the sky of deepening gold
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  Speaker 1: and purple. And Effie was close beside me, always very close,
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  Speaker 1: glancing up ever and again at my face. Certainly she
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  Speaker 1: knew I grieved for Marian, that ours was now no
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  Speaker 1: joyful reunion. But she showed no resentment and no jealousy. Extraordinarily,
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  Speaker 1: she did not compete against Marian. Never once in all
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  Speaker 1: our time together did she say an adverse word of Marian.
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  Speaker 1: She said herself presently to spell the shadow that brooded
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  Speaker 1: over me. With the same instinctive skill that some women
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  Speaker 1: will show with the trouble of a child, she made
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  Speaker 1: herself my glad and pretty slave and handmaid. She forced
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  Speaker 1: me at last to rejoice in her. Yet at the
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  Speaker 1: back of it all, Marian remained stupid and tearful, and
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  Speaker 1: infinitely distressful, so that I was almost intolerably unhappy for her,
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  Speaker 1: For her and the dead body of my married love.
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  Speaker 1: It is all, as I tell it, now, unaccountable to me.
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  Speaker 1: I go back into these remote parts, these rarely visited
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  Speaker 1: uplands and lonely tares of memory, and it seems to
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  Speaker 1: me still a strange country. I have thought I might
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  Speaker 1: be going to some sensuous paradise with effie, but desire
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  Speaker 1: which fills the universe before its satisfaction vanishes utterly, like
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  Speaker 1: the going of daylight. With achievement, all the facts and
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  Speaker 1: forms of life remained darkly and cold. It was an
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  Speaker 1: upland land of melancholy questionings, a region from which I
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  Speaker 1: saw all the world at new angles and in new aspects.
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  Speaker 1: I had outflanked passion and romance. I had come into
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  Speaker 1: a condition of vast perplexities for the first time in
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  Speaker 1: my life, at least so it seems to me now.
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  Speaker 1: In this retrospect, I looked at my existence as a whole,
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  Speaker 1: since this was nothing. What was I doing? What was
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  Speaker 1: I for? I was going to and fro about Tono Bungay,
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  Speaker 1: the business I had taken up to secure Marian and
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  Speaker 1: which held me now in spite of our intimate separation,
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  Speaker 1: and snatching odd week ends and nights for Orpington, And
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  Speaker 1: all the while I struggled with these obstinate interrogations, I
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  Speaker 1: used to fall into musing in the trains. I became
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  Speaker 1: even a little inaccurate and forgetful about business things. I
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  Speaker 1: have the clearest memory of myself sitting thoughtful in the
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  Speaker 1: evening sunlight on a grassy hill side that looked towards
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  Speaker 1: oaks and commanded a wide sweep of country, and that
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  Speaker 1: I was thinking out my destiny. I could almost write
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  Speaker 1: my thoughts down now, I believe as they came to
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  Speaker 1: me that afternoon Effie, restless, little cocky, that she was
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  Speaker 1: rustled and struggled in a hedgerow below, gathering flowers, discovering
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  Speaker 1: flowers she had never seen before. I had, I remember
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  Speaker 1: a letter from Marian in my pocket. I had even
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  Speaker 1: made some tentatives for return, for a reconciliation. Heaven knows
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  Speaker 1: now how I had put it. But her cold, ill
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  Speaker 1: written letter repelled me. I perceived I could never face
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  Speaker 1: that old, inconclusive, dullness of life again, that stagnant disappointment
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  Speaker 1: that anyhow was impossible. But what was possible. I could
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  Speaker 1: see no way of honor or fine living before me
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  Speaker 1: at all. What am I to do with life? That
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  Speaker 1: was the question that besieged me. I wondered if all
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  Speaker 1: the world was even as I urged to this by
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  Speaker 1: one motive and to that by another, creatures of chance
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  Speaker 1: and impulse and unmeaning traditions. Had I indeed to abide
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  Speaker 1: by what I had said and done and chosen. Was
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  Speaker 1: there nothing for me in honor but to provide for Effie,
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  Speaker 1: go back penitent to Marian and keep to my trade
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  Speaker 1: in rubbish, or find some fresh one, and so work
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  Speaker 1: out the residue of my days. I didn't accept that
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  Speaker 1: for a moment. But what else was I to do?
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  Speaker 1: I wondered, if my case was the case of many men,
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  Speaker 1: whether in former ages, too, men had been so guideless,
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  Speaker 1: so uncharted, so haphazard in their journey into life. In
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  Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, in the old Catholic days, one went
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  Speaker 1: to a priest, and he said, with all the finality
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  Speaker 1: of natural law, this you are, and this you must do.
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  Speaker 1: I wondered whether, even in the Middle Ages I should
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  Speaker 1: have accepted that ruling without question. I remember too, very distinctly,
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  Speaker 1: howef he came and sat beside me on a little
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  Speaker 1: box that was before the casement window of our room.
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  Speaker 1: Gloomkins said she. I smiled and remained head on hand,
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  Speaker 1: looking out of the window forgetful of her. Did you
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  Speaker 1: love your wife so well? She whispered softly, oh, I cried,
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  Speaker 1: recalled again. I don't know. I don't understand these things.
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  Speaker 1: Life is a thing that hurts my dear. It hurts
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  Speaker 1: without logic or reason. I've blundered. I didn't understand anyhow.
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  Speaker 1: There is no need to go hurting you, is there?
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  Speaker 1: And I turned about and drew her to me and
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  Speaker 1: kissed her ear. Yes, I had a very bad time.
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  Speaker 1: I still recall I suffered. I suppose from a sort
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  Speaker 1: of aennui of the imagination. I found myself without an
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  Speaker 1: object to hold my will together. I sought. I read
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  Speaker 1: restlessly and excursively. I tried eward and got no help
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  Speaker 1: from him. As I regarded all now, in this retrospect,
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  Speaker 1: it seems to me as if in those days of
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  Speaker 1: discussed and abandoned aims, I discovered myself for the first time.
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  Speaker 1: Before that I had seen only the world and things
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  Speaker 1: in it, had sought themself forgetful of all but my impulse.
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  Speaker 1: Now I find myself grouped with a system of appetites
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  Speaker 1: and satisfactions, with much work to do and no desire,
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  Speaker 1: it seemed left in me. There were moments when I
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  Speaker 1: thought of suicide. At times, my life appeared before me
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  Speaker 1: in bleak, relentless light, a series of ignorances, crude blunderings, degradation,
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  Speaker 1: and cruelty. I had what the old theologians call a
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  Speaker 1: conviction of sin. I sought salvation that perhaps in the
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  Speaker 1: formula a methodist preacher would recognize. But salvation nevertheless. Men
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  Speaker 1: find their salvation nowadays in many ways. Names and forms
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  Speaker 1: don't I think matter very much. The real need is
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  Speaker 1: something that we can hold, and that holds one. I
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  Speaker 1: have known a man find that determining factor in a
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  Speaker 1: dry plate factory, and another in writing a history of
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  Speaker 1: the manner. So long as it holds one, it does
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  Speaker 1: not matter. Many men and women nowadays take up some
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  Speaker 1: concrete aspect of socialism or social reform. But socialism for
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  Speaker 1: me has always been a little bit too human, too
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  Speaker 1: set about with personalities and foolishness. It isn't my line.
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  Speaker 1: I don't like things so human. I don't think I'm
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  Speaker 1: blind to the fun, the surprises, the jolly, little coarsenesses
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  Speaker 1: and insufficiency of life, to the humor of it, as
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  Speaker 1: people say, and to adventure. But that isn't the root
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  Speaker 1: of the matter with me. There's no humor in my blood.
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  Speaker 1: I'm in earnest, in Warp and Wolf, I stumble and flounder.
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  Speaker 1: But I know that over all these merry, immediate things,
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  Speaker 1: there are other things that are great and serene, very high,
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  Speaker 1: beautiful things. The reality. I haven't got it, but it's there. Nevertheless,
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  Speaker 1: I'm a spiritual gutter snipe in love with unimaginable goddesses.
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  Speaker 1: I've never seen the goddesses, nor ever shall. But it
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  Speaker 1: takes all the fun out of the mud, and at
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  Speaker 1: times I fear it takes all the kindliness too. But
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  Speaker 1: I'm talking of things I can't expect the reader to understand,
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  Speaker 1: because I don't half understand them myself. There is something
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  Speaker 1: linked things for me, a sunset or so, a mood
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  Speaker 1: or so, the high air. Something there was in Marian's
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  Speaker 1: form and color, something I find and lose in Montaigne's pictures.
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  Speaker 1: Something in the lines of these boats I make. You
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  Speaker 1: should see X two, my last and best. I can't
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  Speaker 1: explain myself. I perceive perhaps it all comes to this,
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  Speaker 1: that I I am a hard and morally limited cad
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  Speaker 1: with a mind beyond my merits. Naturally, I resist that
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  Speaker 1: as a complete solution. Anyhow, I had a sense of
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  Speaker 1: inexorable need of distress and insufficiency that was unendurable, and
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  Speaker 1: for a time this aeronautical engineering allayed it. In the
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  Speaker 1: end of this particular crisis of which I tell so badly,
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  Speaker 1: I idealized science. I decided that in power and knowledge
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  Speaker 1: lay the salvation of my life, the secret that would
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  Speaker 1: fill my need. That to these things I would give myself.
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  Speaker 1: I emerged at last, like a man who has been
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  Speaker 1: diving in darkness, clutching at a new resolve for which
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  Speaker 1: he had groped desperately and long. I came into the
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  Speaker 1: Inner Office suddenly one day, and must have been just
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  Speaker 1: before the time of Marian's suit for a restitution, and
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  Speaker 1: sat down before my uncle. Look here, I said, I'm
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  Speaker 1: sick of this hullo, he answered, and put some papers aside.
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  Speaker 1: What's up, George, Things are wrong, as how my life.
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  Speaker 1: I said. It's a mess, an infinite mess. She's been
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  Speaker 1: a stupid girl, George, he said, I partly understand, but
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  Speaker 1: you're quit of her now practically, and there's just as
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  Speaker 1: good fish in the sea. Oh it's not that I cried.
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  Speaker 1: That's only the part that shows I'm sick. I'm sick
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  Speaker 1: of all this damned rascality, ay ay, said my uncle,
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  Speaker 1: what rascality? Oh you know, I want some stuff, man,
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  Speaker 1: I want something to hold on to. I shall go
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  Speaker 1: amok If I don't get it, I'm a different sort
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  Speaker 1: of beast from you. You float and all this U buncumbe.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like a man floundering in a universe of
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  Speaker 1: soap SuDS, up and downs, east and west. I can't
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  Speaker 1: stand it. I might get my foot on something solid
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  Speaker 1: or I don't know what. I laughed at the consternation
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  Speaker 1: in his face. I mean it, I said. I've been
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  Speaker 1: thinking it over. I've made up my mind. It's no
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  Speaker 1: good arguing. I shall go in for work, real work. No,
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  Speaker 1: this isn't work, It's only laborious cheating. But I've got
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  Speaker 1: an idea. It's an old idea I thought of years ago,
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  Speaker 1: but it came back to me. Look here, why should
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  Speaker 1: I fence about with you? I believe the time has
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  Speaker 1: come for flying to be possible, real flying flying. I
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  Speaker 1: stuck to that, and it helped me through the worst
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  Speaker 1: time in my life. My uncle, after some half hearted
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  Speaker 1: resistance and a talk with my aunt, behaved like the
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  Speaker 1: father of a spoiled son. He fixed up an arrangement
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  Speaker 1: that gave me capital to play with, released me from
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  Speaker 1: too constant a solicitude for the newer business developments. This
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  Speaker 1: was in what I may call the later Mogg's period
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  Speaker 1: of our enterprises. And I went to work at once
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  Speaker 1: with grim intensity. But I will tell of my soaring
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  Speaker 1: and flying machines in the proper place. I've believing the
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  Speaker 1: story of my uncle altogether too long. I wanted merely
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  Speaker 1: to tell how it was I took to this work.
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  Speaker 1: I took to these experiments after I had sought something
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  Speaker 1: that Marian, in some indefinable way, had seemed to promise.
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  Speaker 1: I toiled and forgot myself for a time, and did
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  Speaker 1: many things. Science, too, has been something of an irresponsive
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  Speaker 1: mistress since though I've served her better than I served Marian.
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  Speaker 1: But at the time Science with her order her inhuman distance,
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  Speaker 1: yet steely certainties saved me from despair. Well, I have
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  Speaker 1: still to fly, but incidentally I have invented the lightest
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  Speaker 1: engines in the world. I am trying to tell of
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  Speaker 1: all the things that happened to me. It's hard enough
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  Speaker 1: simply to get it put down in the remotest degree, right,
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  Speaker 1: But this is a novel not a treatise. Don't imagine
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  Speaker 1: that I am coming presently to any sort of solution
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  Speaker 1: of my difficulties here among my drawings and hammerings. Now
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  Speaker 1: I still question, unanswering problems. All my life has been
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  Speaker 1: at bottom, seeking, disbelieving, always dissatisfied, always with the thing
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  Speaker 1: seen and the thing believed, Seeking something in toil, in force,
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  Speaker 1: in danger, something whose name and nature I do not
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  Speaker 1: clearly understand. Something beautiful, worshipful, enduring mine profoundly and fundamentally,
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  Speaker 1: and the utter redemption of myself. I don't know. All
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  Speaker 1: I can tell is that it is something I have
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  Speaker 1: never failed to find. Eleven. But before I finish this
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  Speaker 1: chapter and book altogether and go on with the great
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  Speaker 1: adventure of my uncle's career, I may perhaps tell what
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  Speaker 1: else remains to tell of Marian and Effie, and then
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  Speaker 1: for a time set my private life behind me. For
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  Speaker 1: a time, Marian and I corresponded with some regularity, writing
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  Speaker 1: friendly but rather uninforming letters about small business things. The
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  Speaker 1: clumsy process of divorce completed itself. She left the house
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  Speaker 1: at ealing and went into the country with her aunt
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  Speaker 1: and parents, taking a small farm near Lewis in Sussex.
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  Speaker 1: She put up glass. She put in heat for her
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  Speaker 1: father happy man, and spoke of figs and peaches. The
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  Speaker 1: thing seemed to promise well throughout a spring and summer,
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  Speaker 1: but the Sussex winter after London was too much for
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  Speaker 1: the Ramboats. They got very muddy and dull. Mister Ramboat
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  Speaker 1: killed a cow by improper feeding, and that disheartened them all.
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  Speaker 1: A twelvemonth saw the enterprise and difficulties. I had to
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  Speaker 1: help her out of this, and then they returned to London,
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  Speaker 1: and she went into partnership with smithy at Streetha and
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  Speaker 1: ran a business that was intimated on the firm stationary
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  Speaker 1: as robes. The parents and aunt were stowed away in
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  Speaker 1: a cottage somewhere after that. The letters became infrequent, but
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  Speaker 1: in one I remember a PostScript that had a little
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  Speaker 1: stab of our old intimacy. Poor old Miggles is dead
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  Speaker 1: nearly eight years slipped by. I grew up. I grew
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  Speaker 1: inexperience in capacity until I was fully a man, but
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  Speaker 1: with many new interests, living on a larger scale in
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  Speaker 1: a wider world than I could have dreamt of in
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  Speaker 1: my Marian days. Her letters became rare and insignificant. At
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  Speaker 1: last came a gap of silence that made me curious.
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  Speaker 1: For eighteen months or more I had nothing from Marian
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  Speaker 1: save her quarterly receipts through the bank. Then I damned
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  Speaker 1: at Smithy and wrote a card to Marian. Dear Marian,
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  Speaker 1: I said, how goes it? She astonished me tremendously by
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  Speaker 1: telling me she had married again a mister Watchorn, a
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  Speaker 1: leading agent in the paper pattern trade. But she still
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  Speaker 1: wrote on the Ponderevo and Smith Rob's notepaper from the
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  Speaker 1: Ponderevo and Smith address, and that, except for a little
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  Speaker 1: difference of opinion about the continuance of alimony, which gave
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  Speaker 1: me some passages of anger, and the use of my
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  Speaker 1: name by the firm, which also annoyed me, is the
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  Speaker 1: end of Marian's history for me, And she vanishes out
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  Speaker 1: of this story. I do not know where she is
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  Speaker 1: or what she is doing. I do not know whether
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  Speaker 1: she is alive or dead. It seems to me utterly
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  Speaker 1: grotesque that two people who have stood so close to
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  Speaker 1: one another as she and I should be so separated.
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  Speaker 1: But so it is between us. Effie too, I have
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  Speaker 1: parted from, though I still see her at times. Between us,
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  Speaker 1: there was never any intention of marriage, nor intimacy of soul.
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  Speaker 1: She had a sudden, fierce, hot blooded passion for me,
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  Speaker 1: and I for her. But I was not her first
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  Speaker 1: lover nor her last. She was in another world. For Marian,
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  Speaker 1: she had a queer, delightful nature. I've no memory of
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  Speaker 1: ever seeing her sullen or malicious. She was. Indeed, she
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  Speaker 1: was magnificently eupeptic. That I think was a central secret
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  Speaker 1: of her agreeableness, and moreover, that she was infinitely kind hearted.
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  Speaker 1: I helped her at last into an opening she coveted,
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  Speaker 1: and she amazed me by a sudden display of business capacity.
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  Speaker 1: She has now a typewriting bureau in Riffle's Inn, and
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  Speaker 1: she runs it with a brisk vigor and considerable success.
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  Speaker 1: Albeit a certain plumpness has overtaken her, and she still
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  Speaker 1: loves her kind. She married a year or so ago,
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  Speaker 1: a boy half her age, a wretch of a poet,
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  Speaker 1: a wretched poet and given to drugs, a thing with lank,
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  Speaker 1: fair hair, always getting into his blue eyes and limp legs.
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  Speaker 1: She did it, she said, because he needed nursing. But
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  Speaker 1: enough of this disaster of my marriage and of my
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  Speaker 1: early love affairs. I have told all that is needed
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  Speaker 1: for my picture to explain how I came to take
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  Speaker 1: up aeroplane experiments and engineering science. Let me get back
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  Speaker 1: to my essential story, to Tono Bungay and my uncle's promotions,
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  Speaker 1: and to the vision of the world. These things have
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  Speaker 1: given me. End of book, second chapter, fourth parts ten
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  Speaker 1: and eleven. Recording by William tom Coe