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In the Days of the Comet Book First Chapter Fourth Section 4-6 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book one, Chapter four, sections four, five, and six of
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  Speaker 1: In the Days of the Comet. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In
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  Speaker 1: the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells, Book one,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter four, sections four, five and six. Section four. I
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  Speaker 1: must be going, I said, with a curiously reinforced desire
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  Speaker 1: to get away out of that room, My dear chap,
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  Speaker 1: he insisted, I can't think of it. Surely there is
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  Speaker 1: nothing to call you away. Then, with an evident desire
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  Speaker 1: to shift the venue of our talk, he asked, you
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  Speaker 1: never told me what you thought of Berbel's Little Book.
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  Speaker 1: I was now beneath my dull display of submission, furiously
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  Speaker 1: angry with him. It occurred to me to ask myself
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  Speaker 1: why I should defer and qualify my opinions to him?
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  Speaker 1: Why should I pretend a feeling of intellectual and social
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  Speaker 1: inferiority toward him? He asked me what I thought of Burble.
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  Speaker 1: I resolved to tell him if necessary, with arrogance, then
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  Speaker 1: perhaps he would release me. I did not sit down again,
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  Speaker 1: but stood by the corner of the fireplace. That was
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  Speaker 1: the little book you lent me last summer. I said,
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  Speaker 1: he reasons closely. Uh, he said, and indicated the arm
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  Speaker 1: chair with a flat hand, and beamed persuasively. I remained standing.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't think much of his reasoning powers. I said
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  Speaker 1: he was one of the cleverest bishops London ever had.
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  Speaker 1: That may be, but he was dodging about in a
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  Speaker 1: jolly feeble case, said, I you mean that he's wrong.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think he proves his case. I don't think
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  Speaker 1: Christianity is true. He knows himself for the pretender he is.
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  Speaker 1: His reasonings wrought. Mister Gabatus went, I think a shade
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  Speaker 1: paler than his wont and propitiation vanished from his manner.
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  Speaker 1: His eyes and mouth were round, his face seemed to
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  Speaker 1: get round. His eyebrows curved at my remarks, I'm sorry
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  Speaker 1: you think that, he said, at last, with a catch
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  Speaker 1: in his breath, he did not repeat his suggestion that
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  Speaker 1: I should sit. He made a step or two toward
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  Speaker 1: the window and turned. I suppose you will admit, he began,
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  Speaker 1: with a faintly irritating note of intellectual condescension. I will
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  Speaker 1: not tell you of his arguments or mine. You will find,
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  Speaker 1: if you care to look for them, in out of
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  Speaker 1: the way corners of our book museums, the shriveled, cheap publications,
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  Speaker 1: the publications of the Rationalist Press Association, for example, on
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  Speaker 1: which my arguments were based. Lying in that curious limbo
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  Speaker 1: with them, mixed up with them and indistinguishable are the
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  Speaker 1: endless replies of orthodoxy, like the mixed dead in some
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  Speaker 1: hard fought trench. All those disputes of our fathers, and
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  Speaker 1: they were sometimes furious disputes, have gone now beyond the
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  Speaker 1: range of comprehension. You younger people I know, read them
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  Speaker 1: with impatient perplexity. You cannot understand how sane creatures could
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  Speaker 1: imagine they had joined issue at all. In most of
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  Speaker 1: these controversies, all the old methods of systematic thinking, the
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  Speaker 1: queer absurdities of the Aristilian logic, have followed. Magic numbers
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  Speaker 1: and mystical numbers, and the Rumpelstiltskin magic of names. Now
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  Speaker 1: into the blackness of the unthinkable. You can no more
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  Speaker 1: understand our theological passions than you can understand the fancies
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  Speaker 1: that made all ancient people speak of their gods only
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  Speaker 1: by circumlocutions that made savagees pine away and die because
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  Speaker 1: they had been photographed. Or an Elizabethan farmer turned back
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  Speaker 1: from a day's expedition because he had met three crows.
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  Speaker 1: Even I, who have been through it all, recall our controversies.
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  Speaker 1: Now with something near incredulity faith we can understand today
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  Speaker 1: all men live by faith. But in the old time
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  Speaker 1: everyone confused quite hopelessly faith and a forced incredible belief
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  Speaker 1: in certain pseudo concrete statements. I am inclined to say
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  Speaker 1: that neither believers nor unbelievers have faith. As we understand it.
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  Speaker 1: They had insufficient intellectual power. They could not trust unless
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  Speaker 1: they had something to see and touch and say, like
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  Speaker 1: their barbarous ancestors, who could not make a bargain without
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  Speaker 1: exchange of tokens. If they no longer worshiped stocks and
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  Speaker 1: stones or eked out their needs with pilgrimages and image,
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  Speaker 1: they still held fiercely to audible images, to printed words
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  Speaker 1: and formula. But why revive the echoes of the ancient logomichies.
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  Speaker 1: Suffice it that we lost our tempers very readily in
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  Speaker 1: pursuit of God and truth, and said exquisitely foolish things
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  Speaker 1: on either side and on the whole. From the impartial
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  Speaker 1: perspective of my three and seventy years, I adjudicate that
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  Speaker 1: if my dialectic was bad, that of reverent Gabatus was
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  Speaker 1: altogether worse. Little pink spots came into his cheeks, a
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  Speaker 1: squealing note into his voice. We interrupted each other more
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  Speaker 1: and more rudely. We invented facts and appealed to authorities
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  Speaker 1: whose names I mispronounced, and, finding Gabbetus shy of the
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  Speaker 1: higher criticism and the Germans, I used the names of Karl,
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  Speaker 1: Marx and Angles as Bible exegetes, with no little effect.
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  Speaker 1: A silly wrangle, a preposterous wrangle. You must imagine our
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  Speaker 1: talk becoming louder, with a developing quarrelsome note my mother,
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  Speaker 1: no doubt, hovering on the staircase and listening in alarm
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  Speaker 1: as who should say, my dear, don't offend it, Oh,
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  Speaker 1: don't offend it. Mister Gabatus enjoyed its friendship. Try to
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  Speaker 1: think whatever mister Gabbatus says. Though we still kept in
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  Speaker 1: touch with a pretense of mutual deference, the ethical superiority
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  Speaker 1: of Christianity to all other religions came to the fore.
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  Speaker 1: I know not how we dealt with the matter in bold,
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  Speaker 1: imaginative generalizations. Because of the insufficiency of our historical knowledge,
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  Speaker 1: I was moved to denounce Christianity as the ethic of
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  Speaker 1: slaves and declare myself a disciple of a German writer
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  Speaker 1: of no little vogue in those days named Nietzsche. For
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  Speaker 1: a disciple, I must confess I was particularly ill acquainted
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  Speaker 1: with the work of the Master. Indeed, all I knew
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  Speaker 1: of him had come to me through a two column
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  Speaker 1: article in the Clarion for the previous week. But the
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  Speaker 1: Reverend Gabatus did not read the Clarion. I am, I know,
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  Speaker 1: putting a strain upon your credulity when I tell you that,
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  Speaker 1: I now have little doubt that the Reverend Gabatus was
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  Speaker 1: absolutely ignorant even of the name of Nietzsche, although the
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  Speaker 1: writer presented a separate and distinct attitude of attack upon
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  Speaker 1: the faith that was in the reverend gentleman's keeping. I'm
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  Speaker 1: a disciple of Nitscha, said I, with an air of
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  Speaker 1: extensive explanation. He shied away so awkwardly at the name
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  Speaker 1: that I repeated it at once. But do you know
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  Speaker 1: what Nischa says? I pressed him viciously he has certainly
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  Speaker 1: been adequately answered, said he still trying to carry it off.
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  Speaker 1: Who by? I rapped out hotly tell me that, and
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  Speaker 1: became mercilessly expectant. Section five. A happy accident relieved mister
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  Speaker 1: Gabatus from the embarrassment of that challenge and carried me
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  Speaker 1: another step along my course of personal disaster. It came
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  Speaker 1: on the heels of my question in the form of
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  Speaker 1: a clatter of horses without and the gride and cessation
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  Speaker 1: of wheels. I glimpsed the straw hated coachman and a
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  Speaker 1: pair of grays. It seemed an incredibly magnificent carriage for Clayton, Ah,
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  Speaker 1: said the rever Gabatus, going to the window. Why it's
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  Speaker 1: old Missus Verral. It's old Missus Verral. Really, what can
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  Speaker 1: she want with me? He turned to me, and the
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  Speaker 1: flush of controversy had passed, and his face shone like
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  Speaker 1: the sun. It was not every day I perceived that
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  Speaker 1: Missus Verrall came to see him. I get so many interruptions,
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  Speaker 1: he said, almost grinning. You must excuse me a minute.
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  Speaker 1: Then then I'll tell you about that fellow. But don't go.
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  Speaker 1: I pray you don't go. I can assure you most interesting.
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  Speaker 1: He went out of the room, waving vague prohibitory gestures.
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  Speaker 1: I must go, I cried after him, No, no, no,
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  Speaker 1: in the passage, I've got your answer, I think it was,
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  Speaker 1: he added, and quite mistaken. And I saw him running
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  Speaker 1: down the steps to talk to the old lady. I swore.
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  Speaker 1: I made three steps to the window, and this brought
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  Speaker 1: me within a yard of that cursed drawer. I glanced
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  Speaker 1: at it, and then at that old woman who was
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  Speaker 1: so absolutely powerful, and instantly her son and Nettie's face
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  Speaker 1: were flaming in my brain. The stewards had no doubt,
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  Speaker 1: already accepted accomplished facts, and I too, What was I
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  Speaker 1: doing here? What was I doing here? While judgment escaped me,
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  Speaker 1: I woke up. I was injected with energy. I took
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  Speaker 1: one reassuring look at the curate's obsequious back at the
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  Speaker 1: old lady's projected nose and quivering hand, and then, with swift,
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  Speaker 1: clean movements, I had the little drawer open, four sovereigns
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  Speaker 1: in my pocket, and the drawer shut again, then again
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  Speaker 1: at the window. They were still talking. That was all right,
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  Speaker 1: he might not look in that drawer for hours. I
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  Speaker 1: glanced at his clock, twenty minutes still before the Birmingham train.
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  Speaker 1: Timed to buy a pair of boots and get away.
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  Speaker 1: But how was I to get to the station? I
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  Speaker 1: went out boldly into the passage and took my hat
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  Speaker 1: and stick walked past him. Yes, that was all right.
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  Speaker 1: He could not argue with me while so important a
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  Speaker 1: person engaged him. I came boldly down the steps. I
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  Speaker 1: want a list made, mister Gabetus, of all the really
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  Speaker 1: deserving cases. Old missus Verral was saying. It is curious,
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  Speaker 1: but it did not occur to me that here was
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  Speaker 1: a mother whose son I was going to kill. I
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  Speaker 1: did not see her in that aspect at all. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: I was possessed by the realization of the blazing imbecility
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  Speaker 1: of a social system that gave this palsied old woman
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  Speaker 1: the power to give or withhold the urgent necessities of
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  Speaker 1: life from hundreds of her fellow creatures, just according to
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  Speaker 1: her poor foolish old fancies of dessert. We could make
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  Speaker 1: a provisional list of that sort, he was saying, and
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  Speaker 1: glanced round with a preoccupied expression at me. I must go,
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  Speaker 1: I said, at his flash of inquiry, and added, I'll
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  Speaker 1: be back in twenty minutes and went on my way.
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  Speaker 1: He turned again to his patroness, as though he forgot
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  Speaker 1: me on the instant. Perhaps, after all, he was not sorry.
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  Speaker 1: I felt extraordinarily cool and capable, exhilarated. If anything by
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  Speaker 1: this prompt effectual theft, after all, my great determination would
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  Speaker 1: achieve itself. I was no longer oppressed by a sense
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  Speaker 1: of obstacles. I felt I could grasp accidents and turn
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  Speaker 1: them to my advantage. I would go now down Hacker
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  Speaker 1: Street to the little shoemaker's, get a sound, good pair
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  Speaker 1: of boots ten minutes, and then to the railway station
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  Speaker 1: five minutes more, and off. I felt as efficient and
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  Speaker 1: non moral as if I were niches overman already come.
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  Speaker 1: It did not occur to me that the curate's clock
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  Speaker 1: might have a considerable margin of error. Section six. I
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  Speaker 1: missed the train. Partly that was because the curate's clock
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  Speaker 1: was slow, and partly it was due to the commercial
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  Speaker 1: obstinacy of the shoemaker, who would try on another pair
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  Speaker 1: after I had declared my time was up. I bought
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  Speaker 1: the final pair, however, gave him a wrong address for
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  Speaker 1: the return of the old ones, and only ceased to
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  Speaker 1: feel like the nichesean over man when I saw the
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  Speaker 1: train running out of the station. Even then I did
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  Speaker 1: not lose my head. It occurred to me almost at
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  Speaker 1: once that in the event of a prompt pursuit, there
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  Speaker 1: would be a great advantage in not taking a train
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  Speaker 1: from Clayton, That indeed, to have done so would have
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  Speaker 1: been an error from which only luck had saved me.
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  Speaker 1: As it was, I had already been very indiscreet in
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  Speaker 1: my inquiries about Shamptonbury. For once on the scent, the
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  Speaker 1: clerk could not fail to remember me. Now the chances
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  Speaker 1: were against his coming into the case. I did not
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  Speaker 1: go into the station. Therefore at all, I made no
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  Speaker 1: demonstration of having missed the train, but walked quietly past
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  Speaker 1: down the road, crossed the iron foot bridge, and took
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  Speaker 1: the way back circuitously by White's Brickfields and the allotments
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  Speaker 1: to the way over Clayton Crest to two Milestone, where
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  Speaker 1: I calculated I should have an ample margin for the
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  Speaker 1: six thirteen train. I was not very greatly excited or alarmed. Then,
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  Speaker 1: suppose I reasoned that by some accident the curate goes
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  Speaker 1: to the drawer at once, will he be certain to
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  Speaker 1: miss four out of ten or eleven sovereigns. If he does,
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  Speaker 1: will he at once think I have taken them? If
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  Speaker 1: he does, will he act at once or wait for
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  Speaker 1: my return? If he acts at once, will he talk
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  Speaker 1: to my mother or call in the police? Then there
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  Speaker 1: are a dozen roads and even railways out of the
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  Speaker 1: Clayton region. How is he to know which I have taken?
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  Speaker 1: Suppose he goes straight at once to the right station.
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  Speaker 1: They will not remember my departure for the simple reason
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  Speaker 1: that I didn't depart, but they may remember about Shamptonbury.
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  Speaker 1: It was unlikely. I resolved not to go directly to
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  Speaker 1: Shamptonbury from Birmingham, but to go THENCE to Monkshampton, THENCE
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  Speaker 1: to Wyvern, and then come down on Shamptonbury from the north.
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  Speaker 1: That might involve a night at some intermediate stopping place,
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  Speaker 1: but it would effectually conceal me from any but the
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  Speaker 1: most persistent pursuit. And this was not a case of
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  Speaker 1: murder yet, but only the theft of four sovereigns. I
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  Speaker 1: had argued away all anxiety before I reached Clayton Crest.
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  Speaker 1: At the crest, I looked back what a world it was,
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  Speaker 1: And suddenly it came to me that I was looking
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  Speaker 1: at this world for the last time. If I overtook
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  Speaker 1: the fugitives and succeeded, I should die with them or hang.
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  Speaker 1: I stopped and looked back more attentively at that wide,
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  Speaker 1: ugly valley. It was my native valley, and I was
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  Speaker 1: going out of it. I thought never to return. And
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  Speaker 1: yet in that last prospect the group of towns that
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  Speaker 1: had borne me and dwarfed and crippled and made me seemed,
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  Speaker 1: in some indefinable manner strange. I was perhaps more used
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  Speaker 1: to seeing it from this comprehensive viewpoint, when it was
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  Speaker 1: veil and softened by night. Now it came out in
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  Speaker 1: all its week day reek under a clear afternoon sun.
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  Speaker 1: That may account a little for its unfamiliarity. And perhaps too,
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  Speaker 1: there was something in the emotions through which I had
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  Speaker 1: been passing for a week and more to intensify my insight,
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  Speaker 1: to enable me to pierce the unusual, to question the accepted.
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  Speaker 1: But it came to me then, I am sure for
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  Speaker 1: the first time, how promiscuous, how higgly, piggly, was the
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  Speaker 1: whole of that jumble of mines and homes, coleries and
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  Speaker 1: pot banks, railway yards, canals, schools, forges and blast, furnaces, churches, chapels, allotment, hovels,
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  Speaker 1: a vast, irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents, in which
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  Speaker 1: men lived as happy as frogs and a dust bin.
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  Speaker 1: Each thing jostled and damaged the other things about it,
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  Speaker 1: each thing ignored the other things about it. The smoke
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  Speaker 1: of a furnace defiled the pop bank clay, the clatter
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  Speaker 1: of the railway deafened the worshipers in church. The public
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  Speaker 1: house thrust corruption at the school doors. The dismal homes
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  Speaker 1: squeezed miserably amidst the monstrosities of industrialism, with an effect
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  Speaker 1: of groping imbecility. Humanity choked amidst its products, and all
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  Speaker 1: its energy went in increasing its disorder, like a blind
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  Speaker 1: stricken thing that struggles and sinks in a morass. I
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  Speaker 1: did not think these things clearly that afternoon. Much less
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  Speaker 1: did I ask how I, with my murderous purpose, stood
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  Speaker 1: to them all. I write down that realization of disorder
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  Speaker 1: and suffocation here and now, as though I had thought it,
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  Speaker 1: But indeed then I only felt it, felt it transitorially
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  Speaker 1: as I looked back and then stood with a thing
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  Speaker 1: escaping from my mind. I should never see that country
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  Speaker 1: sign again. I came back to that. At any rate,
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  Speaker 1: I wasn't sorry. The chances wore I should die in
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  Speaker 1: sweet air, under a clean sky. From distant swathingly came
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  Speaker 1: a little sound, the minute undulation of a remote crowd,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: then rapidly three shots that held me perplexed for a space. Well, anyhow,
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  Speaker 1: I was leaving it all. Thank god, I was leaving
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: it all. Then, as I turned to go on, I
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: thought of my mother. It seemed an evil world in
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: which to leave one's mother. My thoughts focused upon her,
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  Speaker 1: very vividly for a moment. Down there under that afternoon light,
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  Speaker 1: she was going to and fro, unaware as yet that
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: she had lost me, bent and poking about in the
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: darkening underground kitchen, perhaps carrying a lamp into the scullery
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  Speaker 1: to trim, or sitting patiently staring into the fire waiting
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  Speaker 1: tea for me. A great pity for her, a great
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: remote horse at the blacker troubles that lowered over her
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  Speaker 1: innocent head. Came to me, Why after all was I
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: doing this thing? Why I stopped again dead, with the
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  Speaker 1: hill crest rising between me and home. I had more
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: than half a mind to return to her. Then I
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: thought of the Curate's sovereigns. If he has missed them already,
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  Speaker 1: what should I return to? And even if I returned,
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  Speaker 1: how could I put them back? And one of the
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: night after I renounced my revenge, what of the time
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: when young Varraal came back and Nettie. No, the thing
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  Speaker 1: had to be done. But at least I might have
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: kissed my mother before I came away, left her some
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: message reassured her at least for a little while. All
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  Speaker 1: night she would listen and wait for me. Should I
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: send her a telegram from two miles Stone? It was
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  Speaker 1: no good. Now too late, Too late to do that
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  Speaker 1: would be to tell the course I had an to
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  Speaker 1: bring pursuit upon me, swift and sure. If pursuit there
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  Speaker 1: was to be no, my mother must suffer. I went
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  Speaker 1: on grimly towards to Milestone. But now, as if some
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  Speaker 1: greater will than mine directed my footsteps thither, I reached
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  Speaker 1: Birmingham before darkness came, and just caught the last train
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  Speaker 1: for Monkshampton, where I had planned to pass the night.
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  Speaker 1: End of Book one, Chapter four, Sections four, five and six.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Richard Kilmer Real Medena Texas