Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The Passionate Friends Chapter 7 - Beginning Again Parts 1-4

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The Passionate Friends Chapter 7 - Beginning Again Parts 1-4 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter seven, parts one to four 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 seventh, beginning
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  Speaker 1: again one. In operas and romances, one goes from such
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  Speaker 1: a parting in a splendid dignity of gloom. But I
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  Speaker 1: am no hero, and I went down the big staircase
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  Speaker 1: of Tarville's house the empty shock of an abandoned desire.
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  Speaker 1: I was acutely ashamed of my recent tears. In the
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  Speaker 1: center of the hall was a marble figure swathed about
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  Speaker 1: with yellow muslin. On account of the flies, I said,
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  Speaker 1: breaking our silence. My words were far too unexpected for
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  Speaker 1: Tarville to understand. The flies, I repeated, with an air
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  Speaker 1: of explanation. You're sure she'll be all right, I said, abruptly.
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  Speaker 1: You've done the best thing you can for her. I
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  Speaker 1: suppose I have I have to go. And then I
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  Speaker 1: saw ahead of me a world full of the tiresome
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  Speaker 1: need of decisions and arrangements, and empty of all interest.
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  Speaker 1: Where the devil am I to go? Tarvrille, I can't
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  Speaker 1: even get out of things altogether. And then, with a
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  Speaker 1: fresh realization of painful difficulties ahead. I have to tell
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  Speaker 1: this to my father. I've got to explain, and he
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  Speaker 1: thought he expected. Tarvville opened the half of the heavy
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  Speaker 1: front door for me. Hesitated and came down the broad
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  Speaker 1: steps into the chilly, gray street and a few yards
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  Speaker 1: along the pavement with me. He wanted to say something
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  Speaker 1: that he found difficult to say. When at last he
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  Speaker 1: did find words, they were quite ridiculous in substance, and
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  Speaker 1: yet at the time I took them as gravely as
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  Speaker 1: he intended them. It's no good quoting Marcus Aurelius, said
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  Speaker 1: Tarfril to a chap with his finger in the crack
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  Speaker 1: of a door. I suppose it isn't, I said. One
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  Speaker 1: doesn't want to be a flatulent ass. Of course, said Tarfrill.
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  Speaker 1: Still he resumed with an air of plunging. It will
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  Speaker 1: sound just rought to you now, Stratton. But after all
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  Speaker 1: it comes to this. Behind us is a situation with
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  Speaker 1: half a dozen particular persons out here, I mean here
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  Speaker 1: round the world. Before you've done with them, there's a
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  Speaker 1: thousand million people, men and women. Oh what does that
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  Speaker 1: matter to me? Said I Everything, said Tarfril, At least
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  Speaker 1: it ought to. He stopped and held out his hand.
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  Speaker 1: Good Bye, Stratton, good luck to you. Good bye. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: I said good bye. I turned away from him. The
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  Speaker 1: image of Mary crying as a child cries, suddenly blinded
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  Speaker 1: me and blotted out the world. Two. I want to
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  Speaker 1: give you as clearly as I can some impression of
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  Speaker 1: the mental states that followed this passion and this collapse.
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  Speaker 1: It seems to me one of the most extraordinary aspects
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  Speaker 1: of all that literature of speculative attack which is called psychology,
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  Speaker 1: that there is no name and no description at all
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  Speaker 1: of most of the mental states that make up life. Psychology,
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  Speaker 1: like sociology, is still largely in the scholastic stage. It
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  Speaker 1: is ignorant and intellectual, a happy refuge for the lazy
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  Speaker 1: industry of pedants. Instead of experience and accurate description and analysis,
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  Speaker 1: it begins with the rash assumption of elements and starts
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  Speaker 1: out upon ridiculous syntheses. Who with a sick soul would
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  Speaker 1: dream of going to a psychologist now Here I was,
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  Speaker 1: with a mind sore and inflamed. I did not clearly
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  Speaker 1: understand what had happened to me. I had blundered, offended,
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  Speaker 1: entangled myself, and I had no more conception than a
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  Speaker 1: beast in a bog what it was had got me
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  Speaker 1: or the method or even the need of escape. The
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  Speaker 1: desires and passionate excitements, the anger and stress and strain
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  Speaker 1: and its suspicion of the last few months had worn
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  Speaker 1: deep grooves in my brain, channels without end or issue,
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  Speaker 1: out of which it seemed impossible to keep my thoughts.
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  Speaker 1: I had done dishonorable things, told lies, abused the confidence
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  Speaker 1: of a friend. I kept wrestling with these intolerable facts.
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  Speaker 1: If some momentary distraction released me for a time back,
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  Speaker 1: I would fall presently before I knew what was happening,
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  Speaker 1: and find myself scheming once more to reverse the accomplished
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  Speaker 1: or eloquently restating things already intolerably over discussed in my mind.
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  Speaker 1: Justifying the unjustifiable or avenging defeat. I would dream again
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  Speaker 1: and again of some tremendous appeal to Mary, some violent
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  Speaker 1: return and attack upon the situation. One very great factor
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  Speaker 1: in my mental and moral distress was the uncertain values
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  Speaker 1: of nearly every aspect of the case. There is an
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  Speaker 1: invincible sense of wild rightness about passionate love that no
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  Speaker 1: reasoning and no training will ever altogether repudiate. I had
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  Speaker 1: a persuasion that out of that I would presently extract
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  Speaker 1: a magic to excuse my deceits and treacheries and assuage
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  Speaker 1: my smarting shame. And round these deep central preoccupations were
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  Speaker 1: others of acute exasperation and hatred towards secondary people. There
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  Speaker 1: had been interventions, judgments upon insufficient evidence, comments and often
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  Speaker 1: quite justifiable comments that had filled me with an extraordinary
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  Speaker 1: savagery of resentment. I had a persuasion, illogical but invincible,
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  Speaker 1: that I was still entitled to all the respect due
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  Speaker 1: to a man of unblemished honor. I clung fiercely to
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  Speaker 1: the idea that to do dishonorable things isn't necessarily to
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  Speaker 1: be dishonorable. This state of mind I am describing is
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  Speaker 1: I am convinced the state of every man who has
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  Speaker 1: involved himself in any affair, at once questionable and passionate.
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  Speaker 1: He seems free, but he is not free. He is
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  Speaker 1: the slave of the relentless paradox of his position. And
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  Speaker 1: we were, all of us, more or less in deep
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  Speaker 1: grooves we had made for ourselves. Philip Guy Justin, the
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  Speaker 1: friends involved, and all in the measure of our grooves,
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  Speaker 1: incapable of tolerance or sympathetic realization. Even when we slept,
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  Speaker 1: the clenched fists of the attitudes we had assumed gave
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  Speaker 1: a direction to our dreams. You see, the same string
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  Speaker 1: of events that had produced all this system of intense
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  Speaker 1: preoccupations had also severed me from the possible resumption of
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  Speaker 1: those wider interests out of which our intrigue had taken me.
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  Speaker 1: I had had to leave England and all the political
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  Speaker 1: beginnings I had been planning, and to return to those
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  Speaker 1: projects now, those now impossible projects, was to fall back
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  Speaker 1: promptly into hopeless exasperation. And then the longing, The longing
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  Speaker 1: that is like a physical pain, that hunger of the
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  Speaker 1: heart for someone intolerably dear, the desire for a voice,
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  Speaker 1: the arrested habit of phrasing one's thoughts for a hearer
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  Speaker 1: who will listen in peace no more from that lonely distress.
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  Speaker 1: Even rage, even the concoction of insult and conflict, was
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  Speaker 1: a refuge from that pitiless travail of emptiness. I was
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  Speaker 1: ready to turn desperately to any offer of excitement and
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  Speaker 1: distraction from all those things I was to escape at last, unhelped.
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  Speaker 1: But I want you to understand particularly these phases through
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  Speaker 1: which I passed. It falls to many, and it may
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  Speaker 1: fall to you to pass through such a period of
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  Speaker 1: darkness and malign obsession, make the groove only a little deeper,
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  Speaker 1: a little more unclimbable, make the temperament a little less sanguine.
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  Speaker 1: And suicide stares you in the face. And things worse
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  Speaker 1: than suicide, that suicide of self respect, which turns men
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  Speaker 1: to drugs and inflammatory vices, and the utmost outrageous defiance
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  Speaker 1: of the dreaming, noble self that has been so despitefully
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  Speaker 1: used into these same inky pools. I have dipped my
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  Speaker 1: feet where other men have drowned. I understand why they drown.
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  Speaker 1: And my taste of misdeed and resentment has given me
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  Speaker 1: just an inkling of what men must feel who go
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  Speaker 1: to prison. I know what it is to quarrel with
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  Speaker 1: the world. Three. My first plan when I went abroad
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  Speaker 1: was to change my Harbury French, which was pour stuff
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  Speaker 1: and pedantic, into a more colloquial article, and then go
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  Speaker 1: into Germany to do the same thing with my German,
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  Speaker 1: and then perhaps to remain in Germany studying German social
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  Speaker 1: conditions and the quality of the German Army. It seemed
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  Speaker 1: to me that when the term of my exile was over,
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  Speaker 1: I might return to England and re enter the army.
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  Speaker 1: But all these were very anemic plans, conceived by a
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  Speaker 1: tired mind, and I set about carrying them out in
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  Speaker 1: a mood of slack lassitude. I got to Paris, and
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  Speaker 1: in Paris I threw them all overboard and went to Switzerland.
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  Speaker 1: I remember very clearly how I reached Paris. I arrived
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  Speaker 1: about sunset. I suppose that Saint Lazare or the gard
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  Speaker 1: Nor sent my luggage to the little hotel in the
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  Speaker 1: Rue d'Antin where I had taken rooms, and, dreading their loneliness,
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  Speaker 1: decided to go direct to a restaurant and dine. I
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  Speaker 1: remember walking out into the streets, just as shops and
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  Speaker 1: windows and street lamps were beginning to light up, and
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  Speaker 1: strolling circuitously through the clear, bright stir of the Parisian
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  Speaker 1: streets to find a dinner at the Cafe de la Pere.
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  Speaker 1: Some day you will know that peculiar, sharp, definite excitement
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  Speaker 1: of Paris. All cities are exciting, and each I think
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  Speaker 1: in a different way. And as I walked down along
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  Speaker 1: some boulevard, towards the center of things. I saw a
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  Speaker 1: woman coming along a side street towards me, A woman
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  Speaker 1: with something in her body and something in her carriage
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  Speaker 1: that reminded me acutely of Mary. Her face was downcast,
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  Speaker 1: and then as we converged, she looked up at me,
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  Speaker 1: not with the meretricious smile of her class, but with
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  Speaker 1: a steadfast, friendly look. Her face seemed to me sane
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  Speaker 1: and strong. I passed and hesitated. An extraordinary impulse took me.
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  Speaker 1: I turned back. I followed this woman across the road
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  Speaker 1: and a little way along the opposite pavement. I remember
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  Speaker 1: I did that, but I do not remember clearly what
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  Speaker 1: was in my mind at the time. I think it
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  Speaker 1: was a vague rush towards the flash of companionship in
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  Speaker 1: her eyes. There I had seemed to see the glimmer
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  Speaker 1: of a refuge from my desolation. Then came amazement and reaction.
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  Speaker 1: I turned about and went on my way and saw
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  Speaker 1: her no more. But afterwards, later I went out into
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  Speaker 1: the streets of Paris, bent upon finding that woman. She
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  Speaker 1: had become a hope, a desire. I looked for her
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  Speaker 1: for what seemed a long time, half an hour perhaps,
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  Speaker 1: or two hours I went along, peering at the women's
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  Speaker 1: faces through the blazing various lights, the pools of shadowy darkness,
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  Speaker 1: the flickering reflections and transient glitter. One of a vast
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  Speaker 1: stream of slow moving, adventurous human beings. I crossed streams
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  Speaker 1: of traffic, paused at luminous kiosks, became aware of dim
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  Speaker 1: rows of faces looking down upon me from above the
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  Speaker 1: shining enamel of the omnibuses. My first intentness upon one person,
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  Speaker 1: so that I disregarded any distracting intervention, gave place, by
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  Speaker 1: insensible degrees, to a more general apprehension of the things
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  Speaker 1: about me. That original woman became as it were diffused.
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  Speaker 1: I began to look at the men and women sitting
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  Speaker 1: at the little tables, behind the panes of the cafes,
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  Speaker 1: and even on the terraces, for the weather was still
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  Speaker 1: dry and open. I scrutinized the faces I passed, faces,
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  Speaker 1: for the most part animated by a sort of shallow eagerness.
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  Speaker 1: Many were ugly, many vile, with an intense vulgarity, but
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  Speaker 1: some in that throng were pretty, some almost gracious. There
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  Speaker 1: was something pathetic and appealing for me in this great
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  Speaker 1: sweeping together of people into a little light, into a
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  Speaker 1: weak community of desire for joy and eventfulness. There came
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  Speaker 1: to me a sense of tolerance, of fellowship, of participation
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  Speaker 1: from an outer darkness, of unhappiness, or at least of joylessness.
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  Speaker 1: They had all come hither as I had come. I
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  Speaker 1: was like a creature that slips back again towards some
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  Speaker 1: deep waters, out of which long since it came into
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  Speaker 1: the light and air. It was as if old forgotten things,
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  Speaker 1: prenatal experiences, some magic of ancestral memories urged me to
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  Speaker 1: mingle again with this unsatisfied passion for life about me.
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  Speaker 1: Then suddenly a wave of feeling between self, disgust, and
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  Speaker 1: fear poured over me. This vortex was drawing me into
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  Speaker 1: deep and unknown things. I hailed a passing fiacra, went
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  Speaker 1: straight to my little hotel, settled my account with the proprietor,
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  Speaker 1: and caught a night train for Switzerland. All night long,
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  Speaker 1: my head ached, and I lay awake, swaying and jolting,
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  Speaker 1: and listening to the rhythms of the wheels. Paris clean
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  Speaker 1: forgotten so soon as it was left, and my thoughts
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  Speaker 1: Sir Clin continually about Justin and Philip and Mary, and
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  Speaker 1: the things I might have said and done. Four one
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  Speaker 1: day late in February, I found myself in Vivay. I
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  Speaker 1: had come down with the break up of the weather
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  Speaker 1: from Muntana, where I had met some Oxford men I
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  Speaker 1: knew and had learnt to ski. I had made a
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  Speaker 1: few of those vague acquaintances one makes in a winter
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  Speaker 1: sport hotel. But now all these people were going back
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  Speaker 1: to England, and I was thrown back upon myself once more.
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  Speaker 1: I was dull and angry and unhappy, still full of
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  Speaker 1: self reproaches and dreary indignations. And then, very much as
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  Speaker 1: the sky will sometimes break surprisingly through storm clouds, there
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  Speaker 1: began in me a new series of moods. They came
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  Speaker 1: to me by surprise. One clear, bright afternoon, I sat
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  Speaker 1: upon the wall that runs along under the Limes by
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  Speaker 1: the lake shore, envying all these people who were going
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  Speaker 1: back to England and work and usefulness. I thought of myself,
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  Speaker 1: of my career, spoilt, my honor, tarnished, my character, tested
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  Speaker 1: and found wanting. So far as English politics went, my
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  Speaker 1: prospects had closed forever. Even after three years it was
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  Speaker 1: improbable that I should be considered by the party managers again.
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  Speaker 1: And besides, it seemed to me I was a man
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  Speaker 1: crippled my other self, the mate and confirmation of my
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  Speaker 1: mind had gone from me. I was no more than
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  Speaker 1: a mutilated man. My life was a thing condemned. I
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  Speaker 1: had joined the ranks of loafing morally limping English exiles.
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  Speaker 1: I looked up. The sun was setting. A warm glow
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  Speaker 1: fell upon the dissolving mountains of Savoy, and upon the
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  Speaker 1: shining mirror of the lake. The luminous, tranquil breath of
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  Speaker 1: it caught me and held me. I am done for
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  Speaker 1: the light upon the lake and upon the mountains, the
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  Speaker 1: downward swoop of a bird over the water, and something
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  Speaker 1: in my heart gave me the lie What nonsense? I said,
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  Speaker 1: and felt as if some dark cloud that had overshadowed
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  Speaker 1: me had been thrust back. I stared across at Savoy,
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  Speaker 1: as though the land had spoken. Why should I let
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  Speaker 1: all my life be ruled by the blunders and adventures
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  Speaker 1: of one short year of adventure? Why should I become
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  Speaker 1: the votary of a train of consequences? What had I
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  Speaker 1: been dreaming of all this time? Over there were gigantic
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  Speaker 1: uplands I had never seen, and trodden, and beyond were
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  Speaker 1: great plains and cities, and beyond that the sea, and
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  Speaker 1: so on, great spaces and multi tudinous things all round
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  Speaker 1: about the world. What did the things I had done,
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  Speaker 1: the things I had failed to do, the hopes crushed
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  Speaker 1: out of me, the tears and the anger matter to that?
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  Speaker 1: And in some amazing way, this thought so took possession
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  Speaker 1: of me that the question seemed also to carry with
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  Speaker 1: it the still more startling collateral What then, did they
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  Speaker 1: matter to me? Come out of yourself? Said the mountains,
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  Speaker 1: and all the beauty of the world. Whatever you have
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  Speaker 1: done or suffered, is nothing to the inexhaustible offer life
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  Speaker 1: makes you. We are you just as much as the
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  Speaker 1: past is you. It was as though I had forgotten
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  Speaker 1: and now remembered how infinitely multitudinous life can be. It
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  Speaker 1: was as if Tarvril's neglected words to me had sprouted
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  Speaker 1: in the obscurity of my mind and or in fruit.
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  Speaker 1: I cannot explain how that mood came. I am doing
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  Speaker 1: my best to describe it, and it is not easy
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  Speaker 1: even to describe, And I fear that to you who
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  Speaker 1: will have had I hope no experience of such shadows
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  Speaker 1: as I had passed through. It is impossible to convey
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  Speaker 1: its immense elation. I remember once I came in a
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  Speaker 1: boat out of the caves of Han after two hours
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  Speaker 1: in the darkness, and there was the common daylight that
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  Speaker 1: is nothing wonderful at all, and its brightness ahead there
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  Speaker 1: seemed like trumpets and cheering, like waving flags, and like
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  Speaker 1: the sunrise. And so it was with this mood of
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  Speaker 1: my release. There is a phrase of Peter E. Noy's,
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  Speaker 1: that queer echo of Emerson, whom people are always rediscovering
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  Speaker 1: and forgetting again, a phrase that sticks in my mind.
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  Speaker 1: Every living soul is heir to an empire and has
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  Speaker 1: fallen into a pit. It's an image wonderfully apt to
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  Speaker 1: describe my change of mental attitude and render the contrast
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  Speaker 1: between those intensely passionate personal entanglements that had held me
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  Speaker 1: tight and that wide state of life that spreads about us,
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  Speaker 1: all open to all of us in just the measure
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  Speaker 1: that we can scramble out of our individual selves to
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  Speaker 1: a more general self. I seemed to be hanging there
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  Speaker 1: at the brim of my stale and painful den, staring
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  Speaker 1: at the unthought of greatness of the world with an
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  Speaker 1: unhoped for wind out of heaven blowing upon my face.
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  Speaker 1: I suppose the intention of the phrase finding salvation, as
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  Speaker 1: religious people use it is very much this experience. If
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  Speaker 1: it is not the same thing, it is something very
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  Speaker 1: closely akin. It is as if some one were scrambling
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  Speaker 1: out of a pit into a largeness, a largeness that
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  Speaker 1: is attainable by every man, just in the measure that
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  Speaker 1: he realizes it is there. I leave these fine discriminations
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  Speaker 1: to the theologian. I know that I went back to
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  Speaker 1: my hotel in Favais with my mind healed, with my
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  Speaker 1: will restored to me, and my ideas running together into plans.
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  Speaker 1: And I know that I had come out that day
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  Speaker 1: a broken and apathetic man. End of Chapter seven, parts
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  Speaker 1: one to four.