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The Passionate Friends Chapter 4 - The Marriage of the Lady Mary Christian Parts 5-9 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter four, parts five to nine of The Passionate Friends
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  Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells. This LibriVox recording is in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain recording by Peter Eastman, Chapter the fourth, The
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  Speaker 1: Marriage of the Lady Mary Christian five. It was in
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  Speaker 1: the vein of something evasive in Mary's character that she
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  Speaker 1: let me hear first of her engagement to Justin. Through
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  Speaker 1: the times away there in Scotland, she got I suppose,
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  Speaker 1: new perspectives, new ideas. The glow of our immediate passion faded.
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  Speaker 1: The thing must have been drawing in upon her for
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  Speaker 1: some time. Perhaps she had meant to tell me of
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  Speaker 1: it all that night, when she had summoned me to burnmore.
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  Speaker 1: Looking back now, I am the more persuaded that she did.
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  Speaker 1: But the thing came to me in London with the
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  Speaker 1: effect of an immense treachery. Within a day or so
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  Speaker 1: of the newspaper's announcement, she had written me a long
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  Speaker 1: letter answering some argument of mine, and saying nothing whatever
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  Speaker 1: of the people about her. Even then, Justin must have
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  Speaker 1: been asking her to marry him. Her mind must have
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  Speaker 1: been full of that question. Then came a storm of disappointment, humiliation,
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  Speaker 1: and anger. With this realization I can still feel myself
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  Speaker 1: writing and destroying letters to her, letters of satire, of protest.
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  Speaker 1: Oddly enough, I cannot recall the letter that at last
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  Speaker 1: I sent her, but it is eloquent of the weak,
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  Speaker 1: boyishness of my position that I sent it in our
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  Speaker 1: usual furtive manner, accepted every precaution that confessed the impossibility
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  Speaker 1: of our relationship. No, she scribbled back, you do not understand.
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  Speaker 1: I cannot write. I must talk to you. We had
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  Speaker 1: a secret meeting with Beatrice Normandy's connivance. She managed to
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  Speaker 1: get away for the better part of the day, and
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  Speaker 1: we spent a long morning in argument in the botanical
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  Speaker 1: gardens that obvious solitude, And afterwards we lunched upon ham
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  Speaker 1: and ginger beer at a little open air restaurant near
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  Speaker 1: the broad Walk and talked on until nearly four. We
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  Speaker 1: were so young that I think we both felt, beneath
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  Speaker 1: our very real and vivid emotions, a gratifying sense of
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  Speaker 1: romantic resourcefulness. In this prolonged discussion, there is something ridiculously
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  Speaker 1: petty and imitative about youth, something too naively noble and adventurous.
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  Speaker 1: I can never determine if older people are less generous
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  Speaker 1: and imaginative who are merely less absurd. I still recall
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  Speaker 1: the autumnal melancholy of that queer, neglected looking place in
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  Speaker 1: which I had never been before, and which I have
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  Speaker 1: never revisited. A memory of walking along narrow garden paths
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  Speaker 1: beside queer leaf choked artificial channels of water, under yellow
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  Speaker 1: tinted trees, of rustic bridges going nowhere in particular, and
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  Speaker 1: of a kind of brickwork ruined castle greatly decayed and
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  Speaker 1: ivy grown, in which we sat for a long time,
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  Speaker 1: looking out upon a lawn and a wide gravel path
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  Speaker 1: leading to a colossal frontage of conservatory. I must have
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  Speaker 1: been resentful and bitter in the beginning of that talk.
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  Speaker 1: I do not remember that I had any command of
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  Speaker 1: the situation, or did anything but protest throughout that day.
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  Speaker 1: I was too full of the egotism of the young
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  Speaker 1: lover to mark Mary's moods feelings. It was only afterwards
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  Speaker 1: that I came to understand that she was not wilfully
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  Speaker 1: and deliberately following the course that was to separate us,
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  Speaker 1: that she was taking it with hesitations and regrets. Yet
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  Speaker 1: she spoke plainly enough. She spoke with a manifest sincerity
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  Speaker 1: of feeling, And while I had neither the grasp nor
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  Speaker 1: the subtlety to get behind her mind, I perceive now
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  Speaker 1: as I think things out, that Lady Ladislaw had both
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  Speaker 1: watched and acted, had determined her daughter's ideas, sown her
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  Speaker 1: mind with suggestions imposed upon her, a conception of her
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  Speaker 1: situation that now dominated all her thoughts. Dear Stephen, reiterated Mary,
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  Speaker 1: I love you. I do clearly, definitely deliberately love you.
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  Speaker 1: Haven't I told you that? Haven't I made that plain
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  Speaker 1: to you? But you are going to marry justin Stephen?
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  Speaker 1: Dear can I possibly marry you? Can? I? Why not?
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  Speaker 1: Why not make the adventure of life with me? Dare?
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  Speaker 1: She looked down on me. She was sitting upon a
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  Speaker 1: parapet of the brickwork, and I was below her. She
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  Speaker 1: seemed to be weighing possibilities. Why not, I cried even now?
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  Speaker 1: Why not run away with me? Throw our two lives together,
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  Speaker 1: do as lovers have dared to do since the beginning
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  Speaker 1: of things. Let us go somewhere together. But Stephen, she asked, softly,
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  Speaker 1: where anywhere? She spoke as an elder might do to
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  Speaker 1: a child. No, tell me where exactly where would it be?
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  Speaker 1: Where should we go? How should we live? Tell me,
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  Speaker 1: make me see it, Stephen, You are too cruel to me, Mary,
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  Speaker 1: I said, how can I, on the spur of the
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  Speaker 1: moment arrange? But tyr, suppose it were somewhere very grimy
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  Speaker 1: and narrow, something like some of those back streets I
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  Speaker 1: came through to get here. Suppose it was some dreadful place,
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  Speaker 1: and you had no money, and we were both worried
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  Speaker 1: and miserable. One gets ill in such places. If I
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  Speaker 1: loved you, Stephen, I mean, if you and I, if
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  Speaker 1: you and I were to be together, I should want
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  Speaker 1: it to be in sunshine. I should want it to
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  Speaker 1: be among beautiful forests and mountains, somewhere very beautiful. Why not,
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  Speaker 1: because today I know there are no such places in
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  Speaker 1: the world for us, Stephen. They are dreams. For three
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  Speaker 1: years now, I said, I have dreamed such dreams. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: I cried out, stung by my own words. But this
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  Speaker 1: is cowardice. Why should we submit to this old world?
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  Speaker 1: Why should we give up the things you have dreamed
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  Speaker 1: as well as I. You said once to hear my
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  Speaker 1: voice calling at the morning, Let us take each other, Mary, Now, now,
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  Speaker 1: let us take each other. And I still remember my
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  Speaker 1: impotent phrase afterwards, count the cost if I were a queen,
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  Speaker 1: said Mary. But you see I am not a queen.
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  Speaker 1: So we talked in fragments and snatches of argument, and
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  Speaker 1: all she said made me see more clearly the large
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  Speaker 1: hopelessness of my desire. At least I urged to not
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  Speaker 1: marry justin now, give me a chance. Give me three years, Mary,
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  Speaker 1: three short years to work to do something. She knew
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  Speaker 1: so clearly now the quality of her own intentions. Dear Stephen,
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  Speaker 1: She explained, if I were to come away with you
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  Speaker 1: and marry you in just a little time, I should
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  Speaker 1: cease to be your lover. I should be your squaw.
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  Speaker 1: I should have to share your worries and make your
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  Speaker 1: coffee and disappoint you, disappoint you and fail you in
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  Speaker 1: a hundred ways. Think should I be any good as
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  Speaker 1: a squaw? How can one love when one knows the
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  Speaker 1: coffee isn't what it should be, and one is giving
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  Speaker 1: one's lover indigestion. And I don't want to be your squaw.
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  Speaker 1: I don't want that at all. It isn't how I
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  Speaker 1: feel for you. I don't want to be your servant.
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  Speaker 1: And your possession. But you will be Justin's squaw. You
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  Speaker 1: are going to marry him. That is all different, Stephanage
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  Speaker 1: between him and meither be space, air, dignity, endless servants.
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  Speaker 1: But I choked you. He he will make love to you. Mary.
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  Speaker 1: You don't understand, Stephen, he will make love to you. Mary, Mary,
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  Speaker 1: don't you understand these things? We've never talked of them.
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  Speaker 1: You will bear him children, no, she said, But no,
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  Speaker 1: he promises, Stephen. I am to own myself. But he
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  Speaker 1: marries you. Yes, because he he admires me. He cannot
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  Speaker 1: live without me. He loves my company. He loves to
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  Speaker 1: be seen with me. He wants me with him, to
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  Speaker 1: enjoy all the things he has. Can't you understand, Stephen?
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  Speaker 1: But do you mean our eyes met? She said? I swear,
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  Speaker 1: but he hopes. I don't care. He has promised. I
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  Speaker 1: have his promise. I shall be free, Oh, I shall
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  Speaker 1: be free. Free. He is a different man from you, Stephen.
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  Speaker 1: He isn't so fierce, he isn't so greedy. But it
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  Speaker 1: parts us only from impossible things. It parts us, It
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  Speaker 1: does not even part us. Stephenage. We shall see one another,
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  Speaker 1: we shall talk to one another. I shall lose you,
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  Speaker 1: I shall keep you. But I do you expect me
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  Speaker 1: to be content with this? I will make you content. Oh, Stephen, dear,
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  Speaker 1: can't there be love? Love without this clutching, this gripping,
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  Speaker 1: this carrying off? You will be carried altogether out of
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  Speaker 1: my world. If I thought that Stephen, indeed, I would
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  Speaker 1: not marry him. But I insisted we should be parted,
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  Speaker 1: and parted in the end forever. And there I was
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  Speaker 1: the wiser of the two. I knew the insatiable urgency
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  Speaker 1: within myself. I knew that if I continued to meet Mary,
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  Speaker 1: I should continue to desire her until I possessed her altogether.
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  Speaker 1: Six I cannot reproduce with any greater exactness than this.
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  Speaker 1: The quality and gist of our day long conversation between
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  Speaker 1: us was a deep affection and instinctive attraction, and our
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  Speaker 1: mental temperaments and our fundamental ideas were profoundly incompatible. We
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  Speaker 1: were both still very young in quality. We had scarcely
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  Speaker 1: begun to think ourselves out. We were greatly swayed by
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  Speaker 1: the suggestion of our circumstances. Complex, incoherent and formless emotions
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  Speaker 1: confused our minds. But I see now that in us
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  Speaker 1: there struggled vast creative forces, forces that, through a long future,
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  Speaker 1: informs us, yet undreamt of must needs mold the destiny
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  Speaker 1: of our race. Far more than Mary, I was accepting
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  Speaker 1: the conventions of our time. It seemed to me not
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  Speaker 1: merely reasonable, but necessary that because she loved me, she
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  Speaker 1: should place her life in my youthful and inexpert keeping,
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  Speaker 1: share my struggles and the real hardships they would have
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  Speaker 1: meant for her, devote herself to my happiness, bear me children,
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  Speaker 1: be my inspiration in imaginative moments, my squaw, helper, and
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  Speaker 1: possession through the whole twenty four hours of every day,
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  Speaker 1: and incidentally, somehow rear whatever family we happened to produce.
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  Speaker 1: And I was still amazed, in the depths of my
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  Speaker 1: being that she did not reciprocate this simple and comprehensive intention.
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  Speaker 1: I was ready enough, I thought, for equivalent sacrifices. I
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  Speaker 1: was prepared to give my whole life, subordinate all my ambitions,
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  Speaker 1: to the effort to maintain our home, if only I
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  Speaker 1: could have her, have her for my own. I was
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  Speaker 1: ready to pledge every hour I had still to live
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  Speaker 1: to that service. It seemed mere perversity to me then
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  Speaker 1: that she should turn even such vows as that against me.
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  Speaker 1: But I don't want it, Stephanage, she said, I don't
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  Speaker 1: want it. I want you to go on to the
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  Speaker 1: service of the empire. I want to see you do
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  Speaker 1: great things, do all the things we've talked about and
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  Speaker 1: ridden about. Don't you see how much better that is
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  Speaker 1: for you and for me, and for the world and
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  Speaker 1: our lives. I don't want you to become a horrible
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  Speaker 1: little specialist in feeding and keeping me. Then then wait
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  Speaker 1: for me, I cried, But I want to live myself.
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  Speaker 1: I don't want to wait. I want a great house.
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  Speaker 1: I want a great position. I want space and freedom.
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  Speaker 1: I want to have clothes and be as splendid as
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  Speaker 1: your career is going to be. I want to be
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  Speaker 1: a great and shining lady in your life. I can't
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  Speaker 1: always live as I do now, dependent on my mother,
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  Speaker 1: world about by her movements, living in her light. Why
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  Speaker 1: should I be just a hard up vestal virgin. Stephen,
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  Speaker 1: in your honor, you will not be able to marry
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  Speaker 1: me for years and years and years unless you neglect
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  Speaker 1: your work, unless you throw away everything that is worth
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  Speaker 1: having between us in order just to get me but
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  Speaker 1: I want you, Mary, I cried, drumming at the little
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  Speaker 1: green table with my fist. I want you. I want
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  Speaker 1: nothing else in all the world unless it has to
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  Speaker 1: do with you. You've got me as much as anyone
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  Speaker 1: will ever have me. You'll always have me always. I
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  Speaker 1: will write to you, talk to you, watch you. Why
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  Speaker 1: are you so greedy, Stephen? Why are you so ignoble?
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  Speaker 1: If I were to come now and marry you, it
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't help you. It would turn you into a wife keeper,
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  Speaker 1: into the sort of uninteresting, preoccupied man. Whence he's running
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  Speaker 1: after and gloating over the woman he's bought at the
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  Speaker 1: price of his money and his dignity and everything. It's
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  Speaker 1: not proper for a man to live so for a
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  Speaker 1: woman and her children. It's dwarfish, it's enslaving, it's it's indecent, Stephen.
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  Speaker 1: I'd hate you so seven. We parted at last at
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  Speaker 1: a cab rank near a bridge over the canal at
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  Speaker 1: the western end of Park Village. I remember that I
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  Speaker 1: made a last appeal to her as we walked towards it,
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  Speaker 1: and that we loitered on the bridge, careless of who
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  Speaker 1: might see us there. In a final conflict of our wills,
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  Speaker 1: before it is too late. Mary, dear, I said. She
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  Speaker 1: shook her head, her white lips pressed together. But after
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  Speaker 1: the things that have happened that night the moonlight, it's
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  Speaker 1: not fair, she said, for you to talk of that,
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  Speaker 1: it isn't fair. But Mary, this is parting, This indeed
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  Speaker 1: is parting. She answered, Never a word. Then at least
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  Speaker 1: talk to me again for one time more afterwards, she said. Afterwards,
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  Speaker 1: I will talk to you. Don't make things too hard
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  Speaker 1: for me, Stephen. If I could, I would make this impossible.
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  Speaker 1: It's it's hateful. She turned to the curb, and for
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  Speaker 1: a second or so we stood there without speaking. Then
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  Speaker 1: I beckoned to a hansom. She told me Beatrice Normandy's address.
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  Speaker 1: I helped her into the cab. Good Bye, I said,
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  Speaker 1: with a weak affectation of an every day separation, And
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  Speaker 1: I turned to the cabman with her instructions. Then again
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  Speaker 1: we looked at one another. The cabman waited, all right, sir,
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  Speaker 1: he asked, Go ahead, I said, and lifted my hat
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  Speaker 1: to the little white face within. I watched the cab
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  Speaker 1: until it vanished round the curve of the road. Then
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  Speaker 1: I turned about to a world that had become very
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  Speaker 1: large and empty and meaningless. Eight I struggled feebly to
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  Speaker 1: arrest the course of events. I wrote Mary some violent
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  Speaker 1: and bitter letters. I treated her as though she alone
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  Speaker 1: were responsible for my life and hers. I said she
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  Speaker 1: had diverted my energies, betrayed me, ruined my life. I
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  Speaker 1: hinted she was cold blooded, mercenary, shameless. Some day you,
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  Speaker 1: with that quick temper of yours and your power of expression,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: will understand that impulse to write, to pour out a
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  Speaker 1: passionately unjust interpretation of some nearly entire tolerable situation. And
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  Speaker 1: it is not the least of all the things I
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  Speaker 1: owe to Mary that she understood my passion and forgave
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  Speaker 1: those letters and forgot them. I tried twice to go
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  Speaker 1: and see her. But I do not think I need
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  Speaker 1: tell you, little son, of these self inflicted humiliations and degradations.
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  Speaker 1: An angry man is none the less a pitiful man,
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  Speaker 1: because he is injurious. The hope that had held together
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  Speaker 1: all the project of my life was gone, and all
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: my thoughts and emotions lay scattered in confusion. You see,
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  Speaker 1: my little son, there are two sorts of love. We
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: use one name for very different things. The love that
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: a father bears his children, that a mother feels that
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: comes sometimes a strange brightness and tenderness that is half pain,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: at the revelation of some touching aspect of one long
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: known to one, at the sight of a wife bent
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: with fatigue and unsuspicious of one's presence, at the wretchedness
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  Speaker 1: and perplexity of some wrongdoing brother, or at an old
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: servant's unanticipated tears. That is love, like the love God
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  Speaker 1: must bear us. That is the love we must spread
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  Speaker 1: from those of our marrow until it reaches out to
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  Speaker 1: all mankind, that will some day reach out to all mankind.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: But the love of a young man for a woman
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: takes this quality only in rare moments of illumination and
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  Speaker 1: complete assurance. My love for Mary was a demand. It
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: was a wanton claim. I scored the more deeply against
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: her for every moment of happiness she gave me. I
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: see now that as I emerged from the first objection
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: of my admiration and began to feel assured of her affection,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I meant nothing by her but to possess her. I
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: did not want her to be happy as I want
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  Speaker 1: you to be happy, even at the price of my life.
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  Speaker 1: I wanted her. I wanted her as barbarians want a
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: hunted enemy, alive or dead. It was a flaming jealousy
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  Speaker 1: to have her mine. That granted, then I was prepared
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  Speaker 1: for all devotions. This is how men love women, almost
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: as exclusively and fiercely I think do women love men?
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And the deepest question before humanity is just how far
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: this jealous greed may be subdued to a more generous passion.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: The fierce jealousy of men for women and women for
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: men is the very heart of all our social jealousies,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the underlying tension of this crowded, mond modern life that
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: has grown out of the ampler, simpler, ancient life of man.
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  Speaker 1: That is why we compete against one another so bitterly,
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  Speaker 1: refuse association and generous co operations, keep the struggle for
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: existence hard and bitter, hamper and subordinate the women, as they,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: in their turn, would if they could, hamper and subordinate
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the man. Because each must thoroughly have his own and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I knew my own heart too well to have any
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  Speaker 1: faith in Justine and his word. He was taking what
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  Speaker 1: he could, and his mind would never rest until some
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  Speaker 1: day he had all. I had seen him only once,
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  Speaker 1: but the heavy and resolute profile above his bent back
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  Speaker 1: and slender shoulders stuck in my memory. If he was
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  Speaker 1: cruel to Mary I told her, or broke his least
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  Speaker 1: promise to her, I should kill him. Nine. My distress
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  Speaker 1: grew rather than diminished in the days immediately before her marriage,
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  Speaker 1: and that day itself stands out by itself in my memory,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: a day of wandering and passionate unrest. My imagination tormented
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: me with thoughts of Justin as a perpetual privileged wooer. Well, well,
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  Speaker 1: I will not tell you, I will not write the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: ugly mockeries my imagination conjured up. I was constantly on
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  Speaker 1: the verge of talking and cursing aloud to myself, or
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: striking aimlessly at nothing with clenched fists. I was too
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: stupid to leave London, too disturbed for work or any
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: distraction of my mind. I wandered about the streets of
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: London all day. In the morning, I came near going
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  Speaker 1: to the church and making some preposterous interruptions, And I
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: remember discovering three or four carriages adorned with white favors,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and a little waiting crowd outside that extinguisher spired place
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: at the top of Regent Street, and wondering for a
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: moment or so at their common preoccupation, and then understanding,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: of course another marriage of all devilish institutions. What was
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I to do with my life now? What was to
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: become of my life? I can still recall the sense
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: of blank, unanswerableness with which these questions dominated my mind,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and associated with it is an effect of myself as
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: a small human being, singular and a part wandering through
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a number of London landscapes. At one time I was
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: in a great gray, smoke rimmed autumnal space of park,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: much cut up by ra and worn by cricket pitches,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: far away from any idea of the Thames, and in
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the distance over the tops of trees, I discovered perplexingly
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the clustering masts and spars of ships. I have never
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: seen that place since then. The Angel at Islington is
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: absurdly mixed up with the distresses of this day. I
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: attempted some great detour thence, and found myself with a
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: dumb irritation returning to the place from another direction. I remember, too,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: a wide street over which passes a thundering railway bridge,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: borne upon colossal rounded pillars of iron, and carrying in
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: white and blue some big advertisement. I think of the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Daily Telegraph. Near there, I thought a crowd was gathered
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: about the victim of some accident, and thrusting myself among
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: the people, with a vague idea of help, discovered a
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: man selling a remedy for corns. And somewhere about this
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: north region I discovered I was faint with hunger, and
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: got some bread and cheese and beer in a gaudily
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: decorated saloon bar with a sanded floor. I resisted a
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: monstrous impulse to stay in that place and drink myself
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: into inactivity and stupefaction with beer. Then, for a long
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: time I sat upon an iron seat near some flower
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: beds in a kind of garden that had the headstones
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: of graves arranged in a row against a yellow brick wall.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: The place was flooded with the amber sunshine of a
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: September afternoon. I shared the seat with a nursemaid in
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: charge of a perambulator, and several scuffling, uneasy children, And
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I kept repeating to myself, by now it is all over,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: The thing is done. My sense of the enormity of
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: London increased with the twilight and began to prevail a
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: little against my intense personal wretched. I remember wastes of
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: building enterprise, interminable vistas of wide dark streets with passing trams,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: and here and there at strategic corners coruscating groups of shops,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: and somewhere I came along and narrow street suddenly upon
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the distant prospect of a great, monstrous, absurd place on
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: a steep hill, against the last brightness of the evening sky,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: a burlesque block of building with huge truncated pyramids at
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: either corner that I have since learned was the Alexandra Palace.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: It was so queer and bulky that it arrested and
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: held my attention, struck on my memory with an almost
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: streamlike quality, so that years afterwards I went to Muswell
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Hill to see if indeed there really was such a
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: place on earth, or whether I had had a waking
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: nightmare during my wanderings. I wandered far that night, very far.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Some girl accosted me, a thin faced, ruined child, younger
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: by a year or so than myself. I remembered how
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: I talked to her foolish rambling talk. If you loved
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: a man and he was poor, you'd wait, I said,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: you'd stick to him. You'd not leave him just to
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: get married to a richer man. We prowled talking for
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: a time, and sat upon a seat somewhere near the
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Regent's Park Canal. I rather think I planned to rescue
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: her from a fallen life, but somehow we dropped that topic.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I know she kissed me. I have a queer impression
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: that it came into my head to marry her. I
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: put all my loose money in her hands at last,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: and went away extraordinarily comforted by her, I know not how,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: leaving her no doubt, wondering greatly. I did not go
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: to bed that night at all, nor to the office
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: next morning. I never showed myself in the office again. Instead,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I went straight down to my father and told him
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I wanted to go to the war forthwith. I had
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: an indistinct memory of a promise I had made Merry
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: to stay in England, but I felt it was altogether
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: unendurable that I should ever meet her again. My father
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: sat at table over the remains of his lunch and
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: regarded me with astonishment. With the beginnings of protest. I
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: want to get away, I said, and to my own
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: amazement and shame, I burst into tears. My boy, he gasped,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: astonished and terrified. You've you've not done some foolish thing. No,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I said, already wiping the tears from my face. Nothing
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: but I I want to go away. You shall do
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: as you please, he said, and sat for a moment,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: regarding his only son with unfathomable eyes. Then he got
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: up with the manner altogether, matter of fact, came half
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: way round the table and mixed me a whiskey and soda.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: It won't be much of a war, I'm told, he said,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: with the siphon in his hands, breaking a silence. I
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: sometimes wish I had seen a bit of soldiering, and
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: this seems to be an almost unavoidable war. Now, at
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: any rate, it's unavoidable. Drink this and have a biscuit.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: He turned to the mantel shelf and filled his pipe
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: with his broad back to me. Yes, he said, you
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: you'll be interested in the war. I hope, I hope
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: you'll have a good time there. End of Chapter four