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The Dream Chapter the Seventh - Love And Death Parts 1 to 4 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Section twenty one of The Dream, a Novel. This is
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Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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Speaker 1: Recording by Tess Hoak. The Dream, a Novel by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: Chapter the seventh, Love and Death, Part one to four,
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Speaker 1: Part one. In the two years that followed, I learned
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Speaker 1: to love and trust my stiff spirited wife more and more.
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Speaker 1: She was very brave in a conscious and deliberate way,
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Speaker 1: very clear headed, very honest. I saw her fight, and
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Speaker 1: it was not an easy fight to bring our son
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Speaker 1: into the world. And that sort of crisis was a
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Speaker 1: seal between man and women in those days, even as
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Speaker 1: it is to day. If she never got to any
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Speaker 1: just intuitions about my thoughts and feelings, I did presently
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Speaker 1: arrive at a fairly clear sense of hers. I could
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Speaker 1: feel for her ambitions and humiliations. She worked hard to
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Speaker 1: make our home bright and efficient. She had a taste
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Speaker 1: for sound and solid things and temperate harmonies. In that
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Speaker 1: old world, encumbered with possessions and with an extreme household autonomy,
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Speaker 1: servants were a very important matter, indeed, and she managed
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Speaker 1: ours with just that measured kindliness and just that avoidance
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Speaker 1: of intimacy that was needed by the social traditions of
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Speaker 1: the time. She had always been intelligently interested in the
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Speaker 1: internal politics of Thunderstone House, and she showed the keenest
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Speaker 1: desire for my success there. I'll see you a director
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Speaker 1: before ten years, she said. And I worked very hard, indeed,
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Speaker 1: and not merely for ambition's sake. I really understood and
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Speaker 1: believed in the educational importance of that great Lovenly business.
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Speaker 1: Newberry came to recognize in me a respect to his
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Speaker 1: own ideas. He would consult me about new schemes and
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Speaker 1: the modifications of old procedure. He relied on me more
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Speaker 1: and more, and talked with me more and more frequently.
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Speaker 1: And it is a queer thing to recall that, by
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Speaker 1: a sort of convention between us, we never mentioned or
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Speaker 1: alluded to my sister Fanny in any of our discussions.
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Speaker 1: I changed a good deal during my first two and
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Speaker 1: a half years of married life. I matured and heartened.
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Speaker 1: I became a man of the world. I was put
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Speaker 1: up for and elected a member of a good club,
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Speaker 1: and developed my gift for talk. I met a widening
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Speaker 1: variety of people, and some of them were quite distinguished people,
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Speaker 1: and I found they did not overawe me. I possessed
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Speaker 1: a gift for caustic commentary that gained me some reputation
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Speaker 1: as a wit, and I felt a growing interest in
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Speaker 1: the showy and sterile game of party politics. My ambitions grew.
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Speaker 1: I was acting, I was self satisfied. I had largely
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Speaker 1: forgotten my intense sexual humiliation. But I was not a
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Speaker 1: very happy man. My life was like a handsome, well
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Speaker 1: appointed room with a north light. The bowls were full
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Speaker 1: of cut flowers, but the sunlight never came. In Part two,
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Speaker 1: for two years and a half I saw nothing of Hetty,
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Speaker 1: And it was not my fault that I ever saw
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Speaker 1: her again. I did everything I could to eradicate her
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Speaker 1: from my existence. I destroyed her photographs and every little
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Speaker 1: vestige of her that might distress me by its memories.
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Speaker 1: If I caught myself in a reverie in which she figured,
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Speaker 1: I forced my attention to other things. Sometimes, when I
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Speaker 1: made a new success, I had a flash of desire
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Speaker 1: that she should witness it. Ugly, I agree, but is
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Speaker 1: it not what we still are? Except for civilization? She
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Speaker 1: came back sometimes in dreams, but they were angersoach dreams,
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Speaker 1: and I cultivated my pride and love for Milly with
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Speaker 1: increasing prosperity. Milly's skill in dressing herself developed. She became
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Speaker 1: a very handsome, effective woman. She gave herself to me
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Speaker 1: with a smiling sense of temperate and acceptable giving. In
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Speaker 1: those days, we had not learn to analyze our motives.
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Speaker 1: We were much less observant of ourselves than men and
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Speaker 1: women are to day. I to set my mind upon
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Speaker 1: loving Milly, and I did not realize that the essential
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Speaker 1: thing in loving is a thing beyond our wills. Fanny
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Speaker 1: and Hetty I loved by nature and necessity. But my
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Speaker 1: days were now far too completely apportioned between work and
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Speaker 1: Milly for much companionship with Fanny to survive. And Hetty
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Speaker 1: in my heart was like one of those poor, shriveled
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Speaker 1: corpses of offending monks that walled up in the monasteries
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Speaker 1: during the age of christiendom in Europe, but I found
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Speaker 1: now a curious liveliness in my interest in women in general,
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Speaker 1: and did not ask what these wanderings of attention signified.
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Speaker 1: I was ashamed of them, but I gave way to
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Speaker 1: them even when I was in Milly's company, I would
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Speaker 1: look at other women and find a vague excitement if
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Speaker 1: the intent of my glances was returned, and I began
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Speaker 1: to read novels in a new spirit. Though I did
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Speaker 1: not know why I was taking to novels, I was
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Speaker 1: reading them, I see now for the sake of the
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Speaker 1: women I found in them. I do not know, Sunray,
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Speaker 1: whether you realize how much the novels and plays of
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Speaker 1: those days served to give men and women love phantoms
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Speaker 1: with whom they made imaginative excursions. We successful and respectable
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Speaker 1: ones went about our dignified and satisfied ways, assuaging the
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Speaker 1: thin protests of our starved possibilities with such unsubstantial refreshment.
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Speaker 1: But it was because of that wandering eye for women
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Speaker 1: that I encountered Hetty again. It was in the springtime
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Speaker 1: that I came upon her, either in March or very early,
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Speaker 1: in some public gardens quite near to Chester Terrace. These
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Speaker 1: gardens were not in my direct way from the underground
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Speaker 1: railway station, which took me to and fro between home
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Speaker 1: and business and my house. But I was in no
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Speaker 1: hurry for Milly's tea party and the warmth and sunlight
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Speaker 1: drew me to this place of blossom and budding green.
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Speaker 1: They were what we should call spring gardens nowadays, small
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Speaker 1: but cleverly laid out for display, with an abundant use
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Speaker 1: of daffodil, narcissus, hyacinthe, almond blossom and the like, with
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Speaker 1: hard paths and seats placed to command happy patches of color.
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Speaker 1: On one of these seats, a woman was sitting alone,
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Speaker 1: with her back to me, looking at a patch of silas.
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Speaker 1: I was struck by the loveliness of her careless pose.
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Speaker 1: Such discoveries of the dear beauty that hides in the
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Speaker 1: world would stir me like a challenge and then stab
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Speaker 1: me with pain. She was dressed very poorly and simply,
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Speaker 1: but her dingy clothing was no more than the smoked
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Speaker 1: glass one us to see the brightness of the sun.
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Speaker 1: I slackened my pace as I went past, and glanced
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Speaker 1: back to see her face. And I saw the still
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Speaker 1: face of Hetty, very grave and sorrowful. Hetty no longer
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Speaker 1: a girl, but a woman, looking at the flowers, and
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Speaker 1: quite unheedful of my regard. Something greater than pride or
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Speaker 1: jealousy seized me. Then I went a few steps farther
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Speaker 1: and stopped and turned, as though no other thing was possible.
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Speaker 1: At that she became aware of me. She looked up,
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Speaker 1: doubted and recognized me. She watched me with that motionless
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Speaker 1: face of hers. As I came and sat down beside her,
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Speaker 1: I spoke in a voice of astonishment, on the edge
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Speaker 1: of a storm of emotion, Hetty, I said, I couldn't
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Speaker 1: go past you. She did not answer. Immediately, are you?
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Speaker 1: She began and stopped. I suppose we were bound to
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Speaker 1: meet again, she said, sooner or later. You look as
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Speaker 1: if you had grown Harry. You look well and prosperous.
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Speaker 1: Do you live in this part of London? I asked,
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Speaker 1: campt in town? Just now? She said, we move about.
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Speaker 1: You married Sumner. What did you expect me to do?
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Speaker 1: What else was there to do? I've drunk my cup
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Speaker 1: to the dregs, Harry, But you had the child. It died.
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Speaker 1: It died, all right, poor little Mite. And my mother
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Speaker 1: died a year ago. Well you've got Sumner. I've got Sumner.
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Speaker 1: At any time before that meaning I should have exulted
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Speaker 1: over the death of Sumner's child, But in the presence
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Speaker 1: of Hetty's misery, that old hatred would not come back
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Speaker 1: for its gratification. I was looking at her face, which
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Speaker 1: was so familiar and so changed, and it was if
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Speaker 1: I woke up again to love for her after two
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Speaker 1: years and a half of insensibility. What a beaten and
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Speaker 1: unhappy thing she was, she whom I had loved and
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Speaker 1: hated so bitterly. It seems a long way back now
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Speaker 1: to Kent, Harry and mother's farm. She said, you've parted
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Speaker 1: with it, farm and furniture, and mostly it's gone Sumner bets.
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Speaker 1: He's betted most of it away. It's hard, you see,
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Speaker 1: to find a job, but easy to fancy a winner
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Speaker 1: which doesn't win. My father used to do that. I said,
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Speaker 1: I'd like to shoot every race horse in England. I
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Speaker 1: hated selling the farm, She said, I sold the farm
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Speaker 1: and came into this dingy old London. Sumner dragged me
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Speaker 1: here and he's dragging me down. It's not his fault,
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Speaker 1: it's how he's made. But when a spring day comes
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Speaker 1: like this, think of Kent and the winds on the downs,
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Speaker 1: and the blackthorn in the hedges, and the little yellow
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Speaker 1: noses of the primroses, and the first elder leaves coming
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Speaker 1: out until I want to cry and scream. There's no
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Speaker 1: getting out of it here, I am, I've come to
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Speaker 1: look at these flowers here. What's the good? They just
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Speaker 1: hurt me. She stared at the flowers. My God, I said,
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Speaker 1: but this hurts me too. I didn't expect. What did
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Speaker 1: you expect, she asked, and turned that still face of
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Speaker 1: hers to me and silenced me. I don't see that
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Speaker 1: it should hurt you, she said. I brought it on myself.
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Speaker 1: You didn't do it. It happened to me. It was
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Speaker 1: my fault, though, Why God made me love beautiful things
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Speaker 1: and then set a trap for me and made me
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Speaker 1: fool enough to fall into it. Silence fell between us.
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Speaker 1: Meeting you like this, I began, presently makes me see
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Speaker 1: things so differently you see in those days. In some ways,
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Speaker 1: you seem so much stronger than I was. I didn't understand.
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Speaker 1: I see this makes me feel I ought to have
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Speaker 1: taken better care of you, or shown me mercy. I
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Speaker 1: was dirty and shameful, yes all that, But you were merciless, Harry.
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Speaker 1: Men are merciless to women. I did all through. I
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Speaker 1: loved you, Harry, in a way I've always loved you,
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Speaker 1: and I love you now. When I looked up and
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Speaker 1: saw it was you coming back to me. For a minute,
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Speaker 1: you were just like the old Harry. For a moment
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Speaker 1: it was like spring coming real. But it's no good
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Speaker 1: talking like that now, Harry. It's too late, Yes, I agreed,
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Speaker 1: too late. She watched my face through a long pause.
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Speaker 1: I weighed my words. When I spoke up to now,
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Speaker 1: I said, I've never forgiven Now now I see you here,
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Speaker 1: I wish. I wish to God I had forgiven you
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Speaker 1: and made a fight for it with you. We might suppose, Hetty,
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Speaker 1: suppose I had forgiven you, Harry, Dear, she said, softly,
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Speaker 1: you don't want to be seen here making a woman cry.
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Speaker 1: We won't talk of that. Tell me about yourself. I've
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Speaker 1: heard you married again, a beautiful woman. Sumner saw that.
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Speaker 1: I heard of that. Are you happy, Harry. You look prosperous,
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Speaker 1: and everyone isn't prosperous these post war times. That's all
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Speaker 1: so and so, Hetty. I work hard, I've got ambitions.
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Speaker 1: I'm still a publisher's assistant at the old place, but
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Speaker 1: I'm near to being a director. I'm high up. My wife.
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Speaker 1: She's a dear and great help to me. Somehow, meeting you,
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Speaker 1: my god, Hetty, what a mess we've made of things.
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Speaker 1: It's all very well, but the second time of marrying
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Speaker 1: isn't like the first. You and I. I'm a sort
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Speaker 1: of blood brother to you, and nothing can change it.
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Speaker 1: The wood, that little wood where you can kissed me?
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Speaker 1: Why did we smash it up? Hetty? Why did we
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Speaker 1: do it? Two fools who got so precious a thing?
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Speaker 1: That's all past, But hate is dead between us, that's past. Two.
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Speaker 1: If there was anything I could do for you now,
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Speaker 1: I would do it. A gleam of the old humor came.
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Speaker 1: If you could kill Sumner, she said, and smash the
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Speaker 1: world and destroy the memories of three years. It's no good, Harry.
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Speaker 1: I ought to have kept myself clean and you you
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Speaker 1: might have been gentler with me. I couldn't, Hetty. I
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Speaker 1: knew you couldn't, and I couldn't foresee that my blood
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Speaker 1: would betray me. One evening and here we are, like
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Speaker 1: mating after we are dead. Spring comes now, but it
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Speaker 1: comes for other people. And all these little carcass trumpets
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Speaker 1: like a brass band, it is. They are trumpeting up
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Speaker 1: the next lot of lovers. Better luck to them. We
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Speaker 1: sat still for a time in the background of my mind,
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Speaker 1: Billy and her assembled teacups became evident as a faint urgency.
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Speaker 1: You're late, she'd say. Where are you living? Hetty? I asked,
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Speaker 1: what is your address? She shook her head after a
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Speaker 1: moment's thought better. You shouldn't know, But somehow I might help.
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Speaker 1: We'd only disturb us all. I've got my cup of
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Speaker 1: dirty water to drink. I've got to stand what I'm
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Speaker 1: in for. What could you do to help me? Well,
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Speaker 1: said I. My address, any how, is easy to keep
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Speaker 1: in mind. It's just what it was when we in
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Speaker 1: the days when we lived Thunderstone House. It is some
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Speaker 1: day there might be something. It's good of you. We
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Speaker 1: stood up face to face, and we stood there. A
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Speaker 1: thousand circumstances vanished, and nothing remained but our hurt and
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Speaker 1: injured selves. Goodbye, Hetty, I said, good luck our hands met.
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Speaker 1: Good luck to you, Harry. It's no good, but I'm
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Speaker 1: glad we met like this, and to find you forgive
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Speaker 1: me a little at last Part three. That meeting had
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Speaker 1: a profound effect upon me, banished much aimless reverie from
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Speaker 1: my mind and unlocked the prison in which a whole
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Speaker 1: multitude of forbidden thoughts had been confined. I thought enormously
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Speaker 1: of Hetty. They were vague and impossible thoughts. They came
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Speaker 1: in the night, on the way to business, even during
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Speaker 1: slack moments and business hours, rehearsals of dramatized encounters, explanations,
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Speaker 1: magic turns, the circumstances that suddenly restored our lost world
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Speaker 1: to us. I tried to suppress these cloudy imaginations, but
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Speaker 1: with little avail. They overspread my mental skies in spite
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Speaker 1: of me. I can't tell you how many times I
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Speaker 1: walked through those gardens in Regent's Park. That detour became
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Speaker 1: my normal route from the station to my home, but
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Speaker 1: even go out of my customary way along some side paths,
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Speaker 1: because I had caught a glimpse far off between the
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Speaker 1: tree branches and the flower beds of a solitary woman.
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Speaker 1: But Hetty never came back there. In my brooding over Hetty,
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Speaker 1: a jealousy and hatred of Sumner developed steadily. I do
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Speaker 1: not think I had any desire for Hetty myself, but
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Speaker 1: I wanted intensely to get her away from him. This
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Speaker 1: hostility to Sumner was the ugly undertow of my remorse
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Speaker 1: and reawakened love of Hetty. He was the evil thing
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Speaker 1: that had deprived me of Hetty. I did not reflect
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Speaker 1: for a moment that it was I, with my relentless
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Speaker 1: insistence upon divorce, that had forced her back to him.
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Speaker 1: And all this dreaming and brooding and feudal planning, and
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Speaker 1: all this body of desire for something more to happen
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Speaker 1: between Hetty and myself went on without my breathing a
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Speaker 1: word of it to any living soul. It was on
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Speaker 1: my conscience that it was disloyal to Milly, and I
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Speaker 1: even made a half hearted attempt to tell Milly that
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Speaker 1: I had met Hetty and been shocked at her poverty
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Speaker 1: and unhappiness. I wanted to bring her into my own
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Speaker 1: state of mind and have her feel as I did.
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Speaker 1: I threw out a remark one day we had gone
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Speaker 1: to Hampstead Heath for a walk one afternoon, that I
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Speaker 1: had once walked along that ridge by the round pond
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Speaker 1: with Hetty during my last leave. I wonder how she
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Speaker 1: is living now, I said. Milly did not answer immediately,
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Speaker 1: and when I looked at her, her face was flushed
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Speaker 1: and hard. I hoped you had forgotten her, she said
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Speaker 1: in a suffocated voice. This brought it back to me.
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Speaker 1: I tried never to think of her. You don't know
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Speaker 1: what that woman meant to me. The humiliation was not
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Speaker 1: only for myself, she added, it was for you. She
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Speaker 1: said no more, but it was manifest how terribly the
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Speaker 1: mere name of Hetty had disturbed her. Poor little things,
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Speaker 1: cried Firefly, how insanely jealous you all were. And I
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Speaker 1: did not go to Fanny and tell her about Hetty.
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Speaker 1: For a time, I had misrepresented Hetty to her as
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Speaker 1: a figure of common to privity, and I found it
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Speaker 1: difficult to put that right. Nowadays I did not see
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Speaker 1: so much of Fanny as I had formerly done. She
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Speaker 1: was living halfway across London from me. Her relations with
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Speaker 1: Newberry were now much more public than they had been.
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Speaker 1: She developed a circle of acquaintances who cared for her.
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Speaker 1: But this publicity made Millie Moore stiff toward her, because
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Speaker 1: she feared that a scandal would be made about Fanny.
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Speaker 1: In relation to my position in the firm of Crane
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Speaker 1: and Newberry near Pangborn. Newberry had taken a bungalow, and
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Speaker 1: there Fanny would spend whole weeks at a time, quite
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Speaker 1: out of our range. But presently the situation developed which
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Speaker 1: sent me posthaste to Fanny for help and advice Part four. Suddenly,
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Speaker 1: in July, when I was beginning to think I should
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Speaker 1: never hear from her again, Hetty appealed to me for help.
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Speaker 1: When I meet her one evening, she asked by the
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Speaker 1: fountain in the park near the Zological gardens, and then
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Speaker 1: we could get chairs and she would tell me what
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Speaker 1: she had in mind. She did not want me to
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Speaker 1: write her a letter. Sumner had become very jealous of her,
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Speaker 1: and so would I put an advertisement in the Daily
19:12
Speaker 1: Express with the letters A, B, C, D and giving
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Speaker 1: the hour and date, and made an appointment for the
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Speaker 1: earliest possible evening. Instead of the despondent and spiritless Hetty
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Speaker 1: I had met in the spring, I found a Hetty
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Speaker 1: high strung and excited. I want some place where we
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Speaker 1: shan't be seen, she said. As I came out to her,
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Speaker 1: she took my arm to turn me about and led
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Speaker 1: the way towards the two green chairs standing apart a
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Speaker 1: little way from the vein walk that here traversed the park.
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Speaker 1: I noted that she was still wearing the same shabby
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Speaker 1: dress she had had on our previous encounter. Her manner
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Speaker 1: with me was quite different from the manner of our
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Speaker 1: former meeting. There was something familiar and confident about her,
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Speaker 1: as though in between she had met me in imagination
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Speaker 1: a multitude of time. Times is no doubt she had
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Speaker 1: You meant all you said, Harry when we talked before
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Speaker 1: she began everything. You will help me if you can
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Speaker 1: everything I can suppose I asked you for some money. Naturally,
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Speaker 1: I want to get away from Sumner. I have a
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Speaker 1: chance I could do it. Tell me about it, Hetty.
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Speaker 1: All I can do I will. Things have changed, Harry.
20:27
Speaker 1: Since that day we met. I got into a sort
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Speaker 1: of despairing state. I took whatever came. Seeing you changed me.
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Speaker 1: I don't know why it did. Perhaps I was going
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Speaker 1: to change anyhow, but I can't stand being with Sumner
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Speaker 1: any longer. There's a chance now I shall want a
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Speaker 1: lot of money, sixty or seventy pounds. I thought that's
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Speaker 1: quite possible, Hetty, if you can wait a week or
20:51
Speaker 1: so ten days. Say you see, I have a friend,
20:55
Speaker 1: a girl who married a Canadian. She stayed here to
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Speaker 1: have her child when he went home, and now she
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Speaker 1: goes out to him. She's been ill. She's not very strong.
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Speaker 1: She doesn't want to face the voyage alone. It would
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Speaker 1: be easy for me to get out there with her
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Speaker 1: as her cousin and companion if I had an outfit.
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Speaker 1: We've discussed it all. She knows someone who could manage
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Speaker 1: about a passport for me and my Maidenny. That's a scheme.
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Speaker 1: I could have my outfit sent to her place. I
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Speaker 1: could slip away. You'd take another name, begin again over there. Yes,
21:32
Speaker 1: I sat considering this project. It pleased me. There need
21:36
Speaker 1: be no trouble about the money. I said. I can't
21:39
Speaker 1: go on living with Sumner. You never saw him. You
21:43
Speaker 1: don't know what he's like. I've heard he was good looking,
21:47
Speaker 1: don't I know that face flushed and weak. He's a
21:50
Speaker 1: liar and a cheat. He has a conceit. He can
21:53
Speaker 1: best every one, and he's begun drinking. God knows why
21:57
Speaker 1: I married him. It seems the natural things somehow, since
22:00
Speaker 1: you had to forced me, the child had to have
22:03
Speaker 1: a father. But he discussed me, Harry, he discussed me.
22:08
Speaker 1: I can't go on. I can't endure it. You can't
22:11
Speaker 1: imagine it in those little lodgings in the hot weather,
22:15
Speaker 1: to keep a modlin drunken man away from one. If
22:19
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen this way out, something worse might have happened.
22:23
Speaker 1: Can't you come away from him? At once? I asked,
22:26
Speaker 1: why should you ever go back to him? No, I
22:30
Speaker 1: must get clear away or there will be mischief, and
22:32
Speaker 1: you mustn't be in it. He'd think of you at
22:35
Speaker 1: once if he had a hint it was you. That's
22:38
Speaker 1: what you have to do about the money and everything,
22:40
Speaker 1: letters or anything. Get it to me without your being
22:43
Speaker 1: mixed up with it. He must get me money, not checks.
22:47
Speaker 1: We mustn't be seen to meet even about here. It's risky.
22:51
Speaker 1: He's got into a gang. He's been getting deeper and
22:54
Speaker 1: deeper into a rotten set. They blackmail the bookies. They
22:58
Speaker 1: go about with revolvers, pass on things to one another.
23:03
Speaker 1: It grew out of betting and had They call it
23:05
Speaker 1: getting a bit of their own back. If they spot
23:07
Speaker 1: you in it, they'll come for you. Trench warfare in London.
23:12
Speaker 1: I'll risk it. You needn't risk anything. If we are discreet.
23:17
Speaker 1: There was some one I could see who'd hand things on.
23:20
Speaker 1: I thought at once of my sister Fanny. That would
23:23
Speaker 1: be safe, said Hetty, As safe as could be, and
23:27
Speaker 1: I'd love to see her again. I loved her when
23:30
Speaker 1: I met her. But all this is awful good of you, Harry.
23:33
Speaker 1: I don't deserve a moment's kindness. Nonsense. I pushed you
23:38
Speaker 1: into the dirt, Hetty. I jumped into it, fell into it.
23:43
Speaker 1: It's nothing, very much, Hetty, to give you a hand
23:45
Speaker 1: to get out of it again. End of section twenty one.