Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / In the Days of the Comet Book First Chapter Third Section 7

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In the Days of the Comet Book First Chapter Third Section 7 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book one, chapter three, section seven of In the Days
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  Speaker 1: of the Comet. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
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  Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In the Days
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  Speaker 1: of the Comet by H. G. Wells, Book one, Chapter three,
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  Speaker 1: section seven. It was old missus Verral. I wonder if
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  Speaker 1: I can convey the effect of her to you. She
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  Speaker 1: was a little old lady with extraordinarily flaxen hair. Her
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  Speaker 1: weak aquiline features were pursed up into an assumption of dignity,
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  Speaker 1: and she was richly dressed. I would like to underline
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  Speaker 1: that richly dressed, or have the words printed in florid
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  Speaker 1: Old English or Gothic lettering, no one on earth is
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  Speaker 1: now quite so richly dressed as she was. No one
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  Speaker 1: old or young indulges in so quiet and yet so
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  Speaker 1: profound sumptuosity. But you must not imagine any extravagance of outline,
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  Speaker 1: or any beauty or richness of color. The predominant colors
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  Speaker 1: were black and fur browns, and the effect of richness
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  Speaker 1: was due entirely to the extreme costliness of the material employed.
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  Speaker 1: She affected silk brocades with rich and elaborate patterns, priceless
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  Speaker 1: black lace over creamy or purple satin, intricate trimmings through
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  Speaker 1: which threads and bands of velvet wriggled, and in the
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  Speaker 1: winter rare furs. Her gloves fitted exquisitely, and her ostentatiously
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  Speaker 1: simple chains of fine golden pearls and a great number
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  Speaker 1: of bracelets laced about her little person. One was forced
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  Speaker 1: to feel that the slightest article she wore cost more
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  Speaker 1: than all the wardrobe of a dozen girls. Like neck
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  Speaker 1: her bonnet affected the simplicity that is beyond rubies. Richness.
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  Speaker 1: That is the first quality about this old lady that
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  Speaker 1: I would like to convey to you. And the second
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  Speaker 1: was cleanliness. You felt that old missus Verrall was exquisitely clean.
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  Speaker 1: If you had boiled my poor dear old mother and
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  Speaker 1: soda for a month, you couldn't have gotten her so
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  Speaker 1: clean as Missus Verrall constantly and manifestly was, and pervading
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  Speaker 1: all her presence shown her third great quality, her manifest
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  Speaker 1: confidence in the respectful subordination of the world. She was
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  Speaker 1: pale and a little out of breath that day, but
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  Speaker 1: without any loss of her ultimate confidence and it was
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  Speaker 1: clear to me that she had come to interview Stuart
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  Speaker 1: upon the outbreak of passion that had bridged the gulf
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  Speaker 1: between their families. And here again I find myself writing
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  Speaker 1: in an unknown language. So far as my younger readers
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  Speaker 1: are concerned, you who know only the world that followed
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  Speaker 1: the great change, will find much that I am telling inconceivable.
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  Speaker 1: Upon these points I cannot appeal, as I have appealed
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  Speaker 1: for other confirmations to the old newspapers. These were things
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  Speaker 1: that no one wrote about, because everyone understood, and everyone
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  Speaker 1: had taken up in an attitude. There were in England
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  Speaker 1: and America, and indeed throughout the world two great informal
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  Speaker 1: divisions of human beings, the secure and the insecure. There
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  Speaker 1: was not, and never had been, in either country a nobility.
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  Speaker 1: It was and remains a common error that the British
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  Speaker 1: peers were noble. Neither in law nor custom were their
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  Speaker 1: noble families, and we altogether lacked the edification one found
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  Speaker 1: in Russia, for example, of a poor nobility. A peerage
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  Speaker 1: was an hereditary possession that, like the family land, concerned
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  Speaker 1: only the eldest sons of the house. It radiated no
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  Speaker 1: luster of noblice obligee. The rest of the world were
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  Speaker 1: in law and practice common, and all America was common.
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  Speaker 1: But through the private ownership of land that had resulted
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  Speaker 1: from neglect, the feudal obligations in Britain, and utter want
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  Speaker 1: of political foresight in the Americas, large masses of property
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  Speaker 1: had become artificially stable in the hands of a small minority,
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  Speaker 1: to whom it was necessary to mortgage all new public
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  Speaker 1: and private enterprises, and who were held together not by
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  Speaker 1: any tradition of service and nobility, but by the natural
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  Speaker 1: sympathy of common interests and a common large scale of living.
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  Speaker 1: It was a class without any very definite boundaries. Vigorous individualities,
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  Speaker 1: by methods for the most part violent and questionable, were
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  Speaker 1: constantly thrusting themselves from insecurity to security, and the sonsome
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  Speaker 1: daughters of secure people, by marrying insecurity or by wild
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  Speaker 1: extravagances or flagrant vice, would sink into the life of
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  Speaker 1: anxiety and insufficiency, which was the ordinary life of man.
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  Speaker 1: The rest of the population was landless, and except by
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  Speaker 1: working directly or indirectly for the secure, had no legal
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  Speaker 1: right to exist. And such was the shallowness and insufficiency
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  Speaker 1: of our thought, such the stifled egotism of all our
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  Speaker 1: feelings before the last days, that very few, indeed of
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  Speaker 1: the secure, could be found to doubt that this was
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  Speaker 1: the natural and only conceivable order of the world. It
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  Speaker 1: is the life of the insecure under the old order
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  Speaker 1: that I am displaying, and I hope that I am
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  Speaker 1: conveying something of its hopeless bitterness to you. But you
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  Speaker 1: must not imagine that the securer lived lives of paradisical happiness.
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  Speaker 1: The pit of insecurity below them made itself felt, even
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  Speaker 1: though it was not comprehended. Life about them was ugly.
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  Speaker 1: The sight of ugly and mean houses, of ill dressed people,
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  Speaker 1: the vulgar appeals of the dealers in popular commodities were
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  Speaker 1: not to be escaped. There was below the threshold of
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  Speaker 1: their minds an uneasiness. They not only did not think
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  Speaker 1: clearly about social economy, but they displayed an instinctive disinclination
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  Speaker 1: to think. Their security was not so perfect that they
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  Speaker 1: had not a dread of falling toward the pit. They
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  Speaker 1: were always lashing themselves by new ropes. Their cultivation of
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  Speaker 1: connections of interest, their desire to confirm and improve their positions,
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  Speaker 1: was a constant ignoble preoccupation. You must read Thackeray to
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  Speaker 1: get the full flavor of their lives. Then the bacterium
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  Speaker 1: was apt to disregard class distinctions, and they were never
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  Speaker 1: really happy in their servants. Read their surviving books. Each
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  Speaker 1: generation bewails the decay of that fidelity of servants. No
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  Speaker 1: generation ever saw a world that is squalid in one corner,
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  Speaker 1: is squalid altogether, but that they never understood. They believed
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  Speaker 1: that there was not enough of anything to go round.
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  Speaker 1: They believed that this was the intention of God and
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  Speaker 1: an incurable condition of life. And they held passionately and
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  Speaker 1: with a sense of right to their disproportionate share. They
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  Speaker 1: maintained a common intercourse as society of all who were
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  Speaker 1: practically secure, And their choice of that word is exhaustively
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  Speaker 1: eloquent of the quality of their philosophy. If you can
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  Speaker 1: master these alien ideas upon which the old system rested,
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  Speaker 1: just in the same measure, will you understand the horror
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  Speaker 1: these people had for marriages with the insecure. In the
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  Speaker 1: case of their girls and women, it was extraordinarily rare,
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  Speaker 1: and in the case of either sex, it was regarded
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  Speaker 1: as a disastrous social crime. Anything was better than that,
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  Speaker 1: you are probably aware of the hideous fate that was
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  Speaker 1: only too probably the lot during those last dark days
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  Speaker 1: of every girl in the insecure classes who loved and
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  Speaker 1: gave way to the impulse of self abandonment without marriage.
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  Speaker 1: And so you will understand the peculiar situation of Nettie
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  Speaker 1: with young Verral. One or the other had to suffer,
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  Speaker 1: and as they were both in a state of great
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  Speaker 1: emotional exaltation and capable of strange generosities toward each other.
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  Speaker 1: It was an open question, and naturally a source of
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  Speaker 1: great anas anxiety to a mother in missus Verrole's position,
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  Speaker 1: whether the sufferer might not be her son, Whether, as
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  Speaker 1: the outcome of that glowing, irresponsible commerce, Nettie might not
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  Speaker 1: return prospective mistress of checks Hill Towers. The chances were
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  Speaker 1: greatly against that conclusion, But such things did occur. These
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  Speaker 1: laws and customs sound, I know, like a record of
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  Speaker 1: some nasty minded lunatic's inventions. They were invincible facts in
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  Speaker 1: that vanished world into which, by some accident I had
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  Speaker 1: been born. And it was a dream of any better
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  Speaker 1: state of things that was scouted as lunacy. Just think
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  Speaker 1: of it. This girl I loved with all my soul
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  Speaker 1: for whom I was ready to sacrifice my life was
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  Speaker 1: not good enough to marry young Verrall, And I had
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  Speaker 1: only to look at his even handsome, characterless face to
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  Speaker 1: perceive a creature weaker and no better than myself. She
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  Speaker 1: was to be his pleasure until he chose to cast
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  Speaker 1: her aside. And the poison of our social system had
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  Speaker 1: so saturated her nature. His evening dress, his freedom, and
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  Speaker 1: his money had seemed so fine to her, and I
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  Speaker 1: so clothed in squalor, that to that prospect she had consented.
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  Speaker 1: And to resent social conventions that created this situation was
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  Speaker 1: called class envy, and gently born preachers reproached us for
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  Speaker 1: the mildest resentment against an injustice no living man would
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  Speaker 1: now either endure or consent to profit by What was
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  Speaker 1: the sense of saying peace when there was no peace?
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  Speaker 1: If there was one hope in the disorders of that
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  Speaker 1: old world, it lay in revolt and conflict to the death.
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  Speaker 1: But if you can really grasp the shameful grotesqueness of
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  Speaker 1: the old life, you will begin to appreciate the interpretation
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  Speaker 1: of old missus Verral's appearance that leapt up at once
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  Speaker 1: in my mind she had come to compromise the disaster,
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  Speaker 1: and the Stuarts would compromise. I saw that only too well.
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  Speaker 1: An enormous disgust at the prospect of the eminent encounter
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  Speaker 1: between Stuart and his mistress made me behave in a
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  Speaker 1: violent and irrational way. I wanted to escape, seeing that,
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  Speaker 1: seeing even Stuart's first gesture in that at any cost,
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  Speaker 1: I'm off, said I and turned my back on him
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  Speaker 1: without further farewell. My line of retreat lay by the
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  Speaker 1: old lady, and so I advanced toward her. I saw
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  Speaker 1: her expression change, Her mouth fell a little way open,
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  Speaker 1: her forehead wrinkled, and her eyes grew round. She found
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  Speaker 1: me a queer customer, even at the first sight, and
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  Speaker 1: there was something in the manner of my advance that
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  Speaker 1: took away her breath. She stood at the top of
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  Speaker 1: the three or four steps that descend it to the
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  Speaker 1: level of the hot house floor. She receded a pace
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  Speaker 1: or two with a certain offended dignity at the determination
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  Speaker 1: of my rush. I gave her no sort of salutation. Well,
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  Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, I did give her a
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  Speaker 1: sort of salutation. There is no occasion for me to
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  Speaker 1: begin apologizing now for the thing, I said to her,
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  Speaker 1: I stripped these things before you. If only I can
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  Speaker 1: get them stark enough, you will understand and forgive. I
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  Speaker 1: was filled with a brutal and overpowering desire to insult her,
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  Speaker 1: and so I addressed this poor, little, expensive old woman
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  Speaker 1: in the following terms, converting her by a violent metonymy
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  Speaker 1: into a comprehensive plural. You infernal land thieves, I said,
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  Speaker 1: point blank into her face, have you come to offer
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  Speaker 1: them money? And, without waiting to test her powers of repartee,
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  Speaker 1: I passed rudely beyond her and vanished, striding with my
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  Speaker 1: fist clenched, out of her world again. I have since
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  Speaker 1: tried to imagine how the thing must have looked to her.
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  Speaker 1: So far as her particular universe went, I had not
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  Speaker 1: existed at all, or I had existed only as a
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  Speaker 1: dim black thing, an insignificant speck far away across her park,
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  Speaker 1: an irrelevant, unimportant transit until this moment, when she came
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  Speaker 1: sedately troubled into her own secure gardens and sought for
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  Speaker 1: steward among the greenhouses. Then abruptly I flashed into being
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  Speaker 1: down that green walled, brick floored vista has a black
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  Speaker 1: avised ill clad young man who first stared and then advanced,
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  Speaker 1: scowling toward her. Once in existence, I developed rapidly. I
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  Speaker 1: grew larger in prospective, and became more and more important
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  Speaker 1: and sinister every moment I came up the steps with
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  Speaker 1: inconceivable hostility and disrespect in my bearing, towered over her,
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  Speaker 1: becoming for an instant at least a sort of second
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  Speaker 1: French Revolution, and delivered myself with the intense concentration of
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  Speaker 1: those wicked and incomprehensible words. Just for a second I
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  Speaker 1: threatened annihilation. Happily, that was my climax, And then I
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  Speaker 1: had gone by, and the universe was very much as
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  Speaker 1: it had always been, except for the wild swirl in
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  Speaker 1: it and the faint sense of insecurity my episode left
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  Speaker 1: in its wake. The thing that never entered my head
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  Speaker 1: in those days was that a large portion of the
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  Speaker 1: rich were rich in absolutely good faith. I thought they
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  Speaker 1: saw things exactly as I saw them, and wickedly denied.
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  Speaker 1: But indeed, old missus Verral was no more capable of
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  Speaker 1: doubting the perfection of her family's rights to dominate a
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  Speaker 1: wide countryside than she was of examining the thirty nine
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  Speaker 1: articles or dealing with any of the other of the
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  Speaker 1: adamantine pillars upon which her universe rested in security. No doubt,
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  Speaker 1: I startled and frightened her tremendously, but she could not understand.
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  Speaker 1: None of her sort of people, ever, did seem to
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  Speaker 1: understand such livid flashes of hate. As ever and again
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  Speaker 1: lit the crowded darkness below their feet, the thing leaped
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  Speaker 1: out of the black for a moment and vanished like
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  Speaker 1: a threatening figure by a desolate roadside, lit for a
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  Speaker 1: moment by one's belated carriage lamp, and then swallowed up
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  Speaker 1: by the night. They counted it with nightmares, and did
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  Speaker 1: their best to forget what was evidently as insignificant as
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  Speaker 1: it was disturbing. End of Book one, Chapter three, Section seven.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Richard Kilmer, Reo Medina, Texas,