Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The Passionate Friends Chapter 6 - Lady Mary Justin Parts 6-10

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The Passionate Friends Chapter 6 - Lady Mary Justin Parts 6-10 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter six, Part six to ten 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 sixth, Lady Mary,
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Speaker 1: justin six. I have a vivid vignette in my memory
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Speaker 1: of my return to my father's house, down through the
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Speaker 1: pine woods and by the winding path across the deep
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Speaker 1: valley that separated our two ridges. I was thinking of Mary,
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Speaker 1: and nothing but Mary in all the world, and of
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Speaker 1: the friendly sweetness of her eyes and the clean, strong
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Speaker 1: sharpness of her voice. That sweet white figure of Rachel
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Speaker 1: that had been creeping to an ascendency in my imagination
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Speaker 1: was moonlight to her sunrise. I knew it was Mary
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Speaker 1: I loved and had always. I wanted passionately to be
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Speaker 1: as she desired. The friends she demanded, that intimate brother
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Speaker 1: and confederate. But all my heart cried out for her,
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Speaker 1: cried out for her altogether. I would be her friend,
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Speaker 1: I repeated to myself. I would be her friend. I
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Speaker 1: would talk to her often, plan with her, work with her.
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Speaker 1: I could put my meanings into her life, and she
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Speaker 1: should throw her beauty over mine. I began already to
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Speaker 1: dream of the talk of tomorrow's meeting. Seven. And now
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Speaker 1: let me go on to tell at once the thing
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Speaker 1: that changed life for both of us altogether, that turned
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Speaker 1: us out of the courses that seemed set for us.
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Speaker 1: Are spacious, successful and divergent ways. She to the tragedy
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Speaker 1: of her death, and I from all the prospects of
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Speaker 1: the public career that lay before me, to the work
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Speaker 1: that now toilsomely, inadequately and blunderingly enough I do. It
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Speaker 1: was to pierce and slash away the appearances of life.
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Speaker 1: For me. It was to open my way to infinite
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Speaker 1: disillusionment and unsuspected truths. Within a few weeks of our
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Speaker 1: second meeting, Mary and I were passionately in love with
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Speaker 1: one another. We had indeed become lovers. The arrested attractions
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Speaker 1: of our former love released again, drew us inevitably to
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Speaker 1: that we tried to seem outwardly only friends. With this
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Speaker 1: hot glow between us, our tormented secret was half discovered
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Speaker 1: and half betrayed itself. There followed a tragicomedy of hesitations
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Speaker 1: and disunited struggle. Within four months, the crisis of our
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Speaker 1: two lives was past. It is not within my purpose
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Speaker 1: to tell you my son, of the particular events, the
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Speaker 1: particular comings and goings, the chance words, the chance meetings,
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Speaker 1: the fatal momentary misunderstandings that occurred between us. I want
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Speaker 1: to tell of something more general than that. This misadventure
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Speaker 1: is in our strain. It is our inheritance. It is
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Speaker 1: a possibility, in the inheritance of all honest and emotional
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Speaker 1: men and women. There are no doubt people altogether cynical
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Speaker 1: and adventurous, to whom these passions and desires are at
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Speaker 1: once controllable and permissible indulgences without any radiation of consequences,
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Speaker 1: a secret and detachable part of life. And there may
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Speaker 1: be people of conviction so strong and simple that these
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Speaker 1: disturbances are eliminated. But we strattons are of equality, neither
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Speaker 1: so low nor so high. We stoop and rise. We
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Speaker 1: are not convinced about our standards, And for many generations
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Speaker 1: to come, with us, and with such people as the Christians,
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Speaker 1: and indeed with most of our sort of people, we
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Speaker 1: shall be equally desirous of free and intimate friendship, and
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Speaker 1: prone to blaze into passion and disaster at that proximity.
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Speaker 1: This is one of the essential riddles in the adaptation
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Speaker 1: of such human beings as ourselves, to that greater civilized
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Speaker 1: state of which I dream. It is the gist of
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Speaker 1: my story. It is one of the two essential riddles
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Speaker 1: that confront our kind. The servitude of sex and the
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Speaker 1: servitude of labour are the twin conditions upon which human
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Speaker 1: in society rests today, the two limitations upon its progress
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Speaker 1: towards a greater social order, to that greater community, those
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Speaker 1: uplands of light and happy freedom, towards which that being
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Speaker 1: who was my father yesterday, who thinks in myself to day,
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Speaker 1: and who will be you tomorrow and your sons after you,
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Speaker 1: by his very nature, urges and must continue to urge
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Speaker 1: the life of mankind. The story of myself and Mary
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Speaker 1: is a mere incident in that gigantic, scarce conscious effort
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Speaker 1: to get clear of toils and confusions and encumbrances and
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Speaker 1: have our way with life. We are like little figures,
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Speaker 1: dots ascended upon a vast hillside. I take up our
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Speaker 1: intimacy for an instant and hold it under a lens
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Speaker 1: for you. I become more than myself then, and stands
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Speaker 1: for innumerable women. It happened yesterday, and it is just
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Speaker 1: a part of that same history that made Edmund Stratton
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Speaker 1: of the Hayes a lope with Charlotte Anstruther and get
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Speaker 1: himself run through the body at Haddington two hundred years ago,
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Speaker 1: which drove the laid law Christians to Virginia in forty five,
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Speaker 1: gave Stratton Street to the money lenders when George the
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Speaker 1: fourth was regent, and broke the heart of Margaret Stratton
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Speaker 1: in the days when Charles the First was king. With
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Speaker 1: our individual variations and under changed conditions, the old desires
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Speaker 1: and impulses stirred us, The old antagonisms confronted us. The
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Speaker 1: old difficulties and slows and impassable places baffled us. There
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Speaker 1: are times when I think of my history, among all
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Speaker 1: those widespread, repeated histories, until it seems to me that
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Speaker 1: the human lover is like like a creature who struggles
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Speaker 1: forever through a thicket without an end. There are no
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Speaker 1: universal laws of affection and desire, but it is manifestly
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Speaker 1: true that for most of us, free talk, intimate association,
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Speaker 1: and any real fellowship between men and women turns with
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Speaker 1: an extreme readiness to love. And that being so, it
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Speaker 1: follows that under existing conditions, the unrestricted meeting and companionship
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Speaker 1: of men and women in society is a monstrous sham,
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Speaker 1: a merely dangerous pretense of encounters. The safe reality beneath
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Speaker 1: those liberal appearances is that a woman must be content
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Speaker 1: with the easy friendship of other women and of one
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Speaker 1: man only, letting a superficial friendship towards all other men
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Speaker 1: veil impassable abysses of separation. And a man must, in
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Speaker 1: the same way, have one sole woman intimate to all
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Speaker 1: other women. He must be a little blind, a little deaf,
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Speaker 1: politely inattentive. He must respect the transparent, intangible tacit perda
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Speaker 1: about them. Respect it, but never allude to it. To me,
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Speaker 1: that is an intolerable state of affairs, but it is reality.
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Speaker 1: If you live in the spirit of any other understanding,
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Speaker 1: you will court social disaster. I suppose it is a
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Speaker 1: particularly intolerable state of affairs to us strattons, because it
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Speaker 1: is in our nature to want things to seem what
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Speaker 1: they are. That translucent yet impassable perda outrages our veracity,
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Speaker 1: and it is plain to me that our social order
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Speaker 1: cannot stand and is not so, the tensions it creates,
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Speaker 1: the convention that passions and emotions are absent when they
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Speaker 1: are palpably present, broke down between Mary and myself, as
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Speaker 1: it breaks down in a thousand other cases, as it
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Speaker 1: breaks down everywhere. Our social life is honeycombed and rotten,
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Speaker 1: with secret, hidden relationships. The rigid, the obtuse, and the
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Speaker 1: unscrupulously cunning escape the honest passion, sooner or later flares
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Speaker 1: out and destroys. Here is a difficulty that no bullying
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Speaker 1: imposition of arbitrary rules on the one hand, nor any
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Speaker 1: reckless abandonment of law on the other, can solve. Humanity
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Speaker 1: has yet to find its method in sexual things. It
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Speaker 1: has to discover the use and the limitation of jealousy.
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Speaker 1: And before it can even begin to attempt to find
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Speaker 1: it has to cease its present timid, secret groping in
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Speaker 1: shame and darkness, and turn on the light of knowledge.
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Speaker 1: None of us knows much, and most of us do
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Speaker 1: not even know what is known. Eight. The house is
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Speaker 1: very quiet today. It is your mother's birthday, and you
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Speaker 1: three children have gone with her and Mademoiselle Patin into
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Speaker 1: the forest to celebrate the occasion. Presently I shall join you.
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Speaker 1: The sunlit garden with its tall dreaming lilies against the
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Speaker 1: trellised vines upon the wall. The cedars, and the grassy
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Speaker 1: space about the sundial have that distinguished stillness, that definite,
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Speaker 1: palpable and almost outlined emptiness, which is, so to speak,
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Speaker 1: your negative presence. It is like a sheet of sunlit
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Speaker 1: colored pape out of which your figures have been cut.
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Speaker 1: There is a commotion of birds in the jasmine, and
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Speaker 1: your barker reclines with an infinite tranquility, a masterless dog
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Speaker 1: upon the lawn. I take up this riding again. After
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Speaker 1: an interval of some weeks. I have been in Paris,
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Speaker 1: attending the Sabotage Conference and dealing with his intricate puzzles
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Speaker 1: of justice and discipline, and the secret sources of contentment
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Speaker 1: that have to be solved if sabotage is ever to
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Speaker 1: vanish from labor struggles. Again, I think a few points
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Speaker 1: have been made clearer in that curious riddle of reconciliations.
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Speaker 1: Now I resume this story. I turn over the sheets
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Speaker 1: that were ridden and finished before my departure, and come
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Speaker 1: to the notes for what is to follow. Perhaps my
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Speaker 1: days of work in Paris have carried my mind beyond
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Speaker 1: the point at which I left the narrative. I sit,
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Speaker 1: as it were, among a pile of memories that are
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Speaker 1: now all disordered and mixed up together, their proper sequences
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Speaker 1: and connections lost. I cannot trace the phases through which
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Speaker 1: our mutual passion rode up through the restrained and dignified
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Speaker 1: intentions of our friendship, but I know that presently we
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Speaker 1: were in a white heat of desire. There must have
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Speaker 1: been passages that I now altogether forget, moments of tense transition.
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Speaker 1: I am more and more convinced that our swiftest, intensest
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Speaker 1: mental changes leave far less vivid memories than impressions one
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Speaker 1: receives when one is comparatively passive. And of this phase
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Speaker 1: in my life, of which I am now telling, I
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Speaker 1: have clear memories of a time when we talked like
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Speaker 1: brother and sister, or like angels, if you will, and
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Speaker 1: hard upon that came a time when we were planning,
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Speaker 1: in all our moments together, how and when and where
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Speaker 1: we might meet in secret and meet again. Things drift
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Speaker 1: with a fantom like uncertainty into my mind and pass again.
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Speaker 1: Those fierce motives of our transition have lost now all
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Speaker 1: stable form and feature. But I believe there was a
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Speaker 1: curious tormenting urgency in our jealousy of those others, of
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Speaker 1: Justin on my part and of Rachel on hers. At first,
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Speaker 1: we had talked quite freely about Rachel, had discussed my
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Speaker 1: conceivable marriage with her. We had indeed a little forced
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Speaker 1: that topic, as if to reassure ourselves of the honesty
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Speaker 1: of our new footing. But the force that urged us
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Speaker 1: nearer pervaded all our being. It was hard enough to
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Speaker 1: be barred apart, to snatch back our hands from touching,
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Speaker 1: to avoid each other's eyes to her, hurry a little
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Speaker 1: out of the dusk towards the lit house and its
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Speaker 1: protecting servants. But the constant presence and suggestion of those
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Speaker 1: others from whom there were no bars, or towards whom
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Speaker 1: bars could be abolished at a look at an impulse,
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Speaker 1: exacerbated that hardship, roused a fierce, insatiable spirit of revolt
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Speaker 1: within us. At times we grew angry with each other's formalism,
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Speaker 1: came near to quarreling. I associate these moods with the
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Speaker 1: golden stillnesses of a prolonged and sultry autumn, and with
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Speaker 1: slowly falling leaves. I will not tell you how that
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Speaker 1: step was taken. It matters very little to my story,
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Speaker 1: nor will I tell which one of us it was
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Speaker 1: first broke the barriers down nine. But I do want
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Speaker 1: to tell you certain things. I want to tell you
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Speaker 1: them because they are things that affect you closely. There
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Speaker 1: was almost from the first a difference between Mary and
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Speaker 1: myself in this that I wanted to be public about
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Speaker 1: our love. I wanted to be open and defiant, and
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Speaker 1: she hesitated. She wanted to be secret. She wanted to
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Speaker 1: keep me. I sometimes think that she was moved to
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Speaker 1: become my mistress because she wanted to keep me. But
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Speaker 1: she also wanted to keep everything else in her life,
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Speaker 1: her position, her ample freedoms and wealth and dignity. Our
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Speaker 1: love was to be a secret cavern and Demien's cave.
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Speaker 1: I was ready enough to do what I could to
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Speaker 1: please her, and for a time I served that secrecy lied, pretended,
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Speaker 1: agreed to false addresses, assumed names, and tangled myself in
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Speaker 1: a network of furtive proceedings. These are things that poison
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Speaker 1: and consume honest love. You will learn soon enough, as
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Speaker 1: you grow to be a man, that beneath the respectable
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Speaker 1: assumptions of our social life, there is an endless, intricate
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Speaker 1: world of subterfuge and hidden and perverted passion. For all
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Speaker 1: passion that wears a mask is perversion, and that thousands
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Speaker 1: of people of our sort are hiding and shamming about
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Speaker 1: their desires, their gratifications, their true relationships. I do not
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Speaker 1: mean the open offenders, for they are mostly honest and
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Speaker 1: gallant people, but the men and women who sin in
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Speaker 1: the shadows, the people who are not clean and scandalous,
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Speaker 1: but immoral and respectable. This underworld is not for us.
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Speaker 1: I wish that I, who have looked into it, could
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Speaker 1: in some way inoculate you now against the repetition of
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Speaker 1: my misadventure. We Strattons are daylight men. And if I
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Speaker 1: work now for widened facilities of divorce, for an organized
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Speaker 1: freedom and independence of women, and greater breadth of toleration,
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Speaker 1: it is because I know in my own person the degradations,
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Speaker 1: the falsity, the bitterness that can lurk beneath the inflexible
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Speaker 1: pretensions of the established code to day. And I want
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Speaker 1: to tell you too of something altogether unforeseen that happened
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Speaker 1: to us. And that was this, that from the day
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Speaker 1: that passion carried us and we became in the narrower
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Speaker 1: sense of the word lovers. All the wider interests we
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Speaker 1: had in common, our political intentions are impersonal schemes began
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Speaker 1: to pass out of our intercourse. Our situation closed upon
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Speaker 1: us like a trap and hid the sky. Something more
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Speaker 1: intense had our attention by the feet, and we used
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Speaker 1: our wings no more. I do not think that we
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Speaker 1: even had the real happiness and beauty and delight of
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Speaker 1: one another, because I tell you there is no light
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Speaker 1: upon kiss or embrace that is not done with pride.
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Speaker 1: I do not know why it should be so, But
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Speaker 1: people of our race and quality are a little ashamed
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Speaker 1: of mere gratification in love. Always we seem, in my
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Speaker 1: memory to have been whispering with flushed cheeks and discussing
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Speaker 1: interminably situation. Had something betrayed us? Might something betray was
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Speaker 1: this or that sufficiently cunning? Had we perhaps left a
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Speaker 1: footmark or failed to burn a note? Is the second
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Speaker 1: footman who was detailed as my valet, even now pausing,
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Speaker 1: astonished in the brushing of my clothes, with our crumpled
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Speaker 1: secret in his hand. Between myself and the clear vision
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Speaker 1: of this world about me, this infernal network of precautions
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Speaker 1: spread like a veil, and it was not only a
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Speaker 1: matter of concealments, but of positive deceptions. The figure of
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Speaker 1: Justine comes back to me. It is a curious thing that,
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Speaker 1: in spite of our bitter antagonism and the savage jealousy
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Speaker 1: we were to feel for one another, there has always been,
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Speaker 1: and there remains now in my thought of him, a
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Speaker 1: certain liking, a regret had our opposition, a quality of friendliness.
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Speaker 1: His broad face, which the common impression and the caricaturist
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Speaker 1: make so powerful and eagle like, is really not a
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Speaker 1: brutal or heavy face at all. It is, no doubt aquiline,
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Speaker 1: after the fashion of an eagle owl, the mouth and
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Speaker 1: chin broad, and the eyes very far apart. But there
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Speaker 1: is a minute puckering of the brows, which combines with
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Speaker 1: that queer streak of brown discoloration that runs across his
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Speaker 1: cheek and into the white of his eyes, to give
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Speaker 1: something faintly plaintive and pitiful to his expression, an effect
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Speaker 1: enhanced by the dark softness of his eyes. They are
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Speaker 1: gentle eyes. It is absurd to suppose them the eyes
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Speaker 1: of a violently forceful man, And indeed they do not
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Speaker 1: be lie justin. It is not by vehemence or pressure
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Speaker 1: that his wealth and power have been attained. It is
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Speaker 1: by the sheer, detailed abundance of his mind. In that queer,
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Speaker 1: big brain of his, there is something of the calculating boy,
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Speaker 1: and not a little of the chest champion. He has
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Speaker 1: a kind of financial gift. He must be rich and
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Speaker 1: grows richer. What else is there for him to do?
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Speaker 1: How many times have I not tried to glance carelessly
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Speaker 1: at his face and scrutinize that look in his eyes,
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Speaker 1: and ask myself was that his usual look? Or was
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Speaker 1: it lit by an instinctive jealousy? Did he perhaps begin
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Speaker 1: to suspect I had become a persistent visitor in the house.
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Speaker 1: He might well be jealous of such minor favors as
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Speaker 1: she showed me. For with him, she talked but little
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Speaker 1: and shared no thoughts. His manner with her was tinctured
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Speaker 1: by an habituated despair. They were extraordinarily polite and friendly
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Speaker 1: with one another. I tried a hundred sophistications of my
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Speaker 1: treachery to him. I assured myself that a modern woman
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Speaker 1: is mistress and owner of herself, no chattel, and so forth.
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Speaker 1: But he did not think so, and neither she nor
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Speaker 1: I were behaving as though we thought so. In innumerable
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Speaker 1: little things, we were doing our best, pacitly to reassure him.
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Speaker 1: And so you see me shaking hands with this man,
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Speaker 1: affecting an interest in his topics and affairs, staying in
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Speaker 1: his house, eating his food, and drinking his wine, that
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Speaker 1: I might be the nearer to his wife. It is
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Speaker 1: not the first time that has been done in the world.
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Speaker 1: There are esoteric codes to justify all I did. I
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Speaker 1: perceive there are types of men to whom such relationships
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Speaker 1: are attractive by the very reason of their illicit excitement.
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Speaker 1: But we strattons, our honest people. There is no secret
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Speaker 1: of passion in our blood. This is no game for us.
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Speaker 1: Never you risk the playing of a little son big son,
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Speaker 1: as you will be when you read the story. Perhaps,
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Speaker 1: but I hope indeed not. This may reach you too
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Speaker 1: late to be a warning come to you in mid situation.
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Speaker 1: Go through with it, then, inheritor of mine, and keep
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Speaker 1: as clean as you can, follow the warped honor that
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Speaker 1: is still left to you. And if you can come
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Speaker 1: out of the tangle. It is not only justin haunts
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Speaker 1: the memories of that thirdive time. But Rachel Moore, I
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Speaker 1: see her still as she was then, a straight, white
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Speaker 1: dressed girl with big brown eyes that regarded me now
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Speaker 1: with perplexity, now with a faint dismay. I still went
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Speaker 1: over to see her, and my manner had changed. I
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Speaker 1: had nothing to say to her now, and every thing
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Speaker 1: to hide. Everything between us hung arrested, and nothing could
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Speaker 1: occur to make an end. I told Mary I must
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Speaker 1: cease my visits to the Moors. I tried to make
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Speaker 1: her feel my own sense of an accumulating cruelty to Rachel.
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Speaker 1: But it explains away so much, she said, if you
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Speaker 1: stop going there, every one will talk, everything will swing
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Speaker 1: round and point here. Rachel. I protested, no, She said,
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Speaker 1: overbearing me, you must keep on going to Riding Hanger.
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Speaker 1: You must, you must. For a long time I had
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Speaker 1: said nothing to Mary of the burthen these pretenses were.
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Speaker 1: To me. It had seemed a monstrous ingratitude to find
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Speaker 1: the slightest flaw in the passionate love and intimacy she
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Speaker 1: had given me. But at last the divergence of our
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Speaker 1: purposes became manifest to us both. A time came when
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Speaker 1: we perceived it clearly and discussed it openly. I have
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Speaker 1: still a vivid recollection of a golden October day when
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Speaker 1: we had met at the edge of the plantation that
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Speaker 1: overlooks Bear's Hill. She had come through the gardens into
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Speaker 1: the pine wood, and I had jumped the rusty banked
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Speaker 1: stream that runs down the Bear's Hill valley and clamored
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Speaker 1: the barbed wire fence. I came up the steep bank
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Speaker 1: and threw a fringe of firs to where she stood
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Speaker 1: in the shade. I kissed her hand and discovered mine
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Speaker 1: had been torn open by one of the thorns of
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Speaker 1: the wire and was dripping blood. Mind my dress, she said,
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Speaker 1: and we laughed as we kissed, with my arm held
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Speaker 1: aloof We sat down side by side upon the warm
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Speaker 1: pine needles that carpeted the sand, and she made a
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Speaker 1: mothering fuss about my petty wound and bounded in my handkerchief.
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Speaker 1: We looked together across the steep gorge, at the blue
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Speaker 1: ridge of trees beyond any one. She said might have
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Speaker 1: seen us this minute. I never thought, I said, and
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Speaker 1: moved a foot away from her. It's too late if
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Speaker 1: they have, said, she pulling me back to her over
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Speaker 1: beyond there that must be hindhead someone with a telescope.
26:40
Speaker 1: That's less credible, I said, And it occurred to me
26:45
Speaker 1: that the gray stretch of downland beyond must be the
26:48
Speaker 1: ridge to the west of Riding Hanger. I wish, I said,
26:54
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. I wish I could come and go
26:58
Speaker 1: and fear nobody and spent long hours with you. Oh
27:02
Speaker 1: at our ease now, she said, we spend short hours.
27:09
Speaker 1: I wonder if I would like. It's no good, Stephen,
27:13
Speaker 1: letting ourselves think of things that can't be. Here. We
27:17
Speaker 1: are kiss that hand, my lover, there just between wrist
27:21
Speaker 1: and thumb, the little hollow, yes, exactly there. But thoughts
27:29
Speaker 1: had been set going in my mind. Why, I said, presently,
27:35
Speaker 1: should you always speak of things that can't be? Why
27:39
Speaker 1: should we take all this as if it were all
27:41
Speaker 1: that there could be? I want long hours. I want
27:46
Speaker 1: you to shine all the day through on my life. Now, Dear,
27:51
Speaker 1: it's as if the sun was shone ever and again
27:54
Speaker 1: and then put back behind an eclipse. I come to
27:58
Speaker 1: you half blinded. I go away unsatisfied. All the world
28:03
Speaker 1: is dark in between, and little phantom ewes float over it.
28:10
Speaker 1: She rested her cheek on her hand and looked at
28:13
Speaker 1: me gravely. You are hard to satisfy, brother Hart, she said.
28:20
Speaker 1: I live in snatches of brightness, and all the rest
28:23
Speaker 1: of life is waiting and thinking and waiting. What else
28:29
Speaker 1: is there? Haven't we the brightness? I want you, I said,
28:35
Speaker 1: I want you altogether. After so much, I want the more, Mary.
28:43
Speaker 1: I want you to come away with me. No, listen
28:47
Speaker 1: this life. Don't think I'm not full of the beauty,
28:50
Speaker 1: the happiness, the wonder. But it's a suspense. It doesn't
28:54
Speaker 1: go on. It's just a dawn, dear, a splendid dawn,
28:59
Speaker 1: a glow of color and brightness and freshness and hope,
29:03
Speaker 1: and no sun rises. I want the day. Everything else
29:08
Speaker 1: has stopped with me and stopped with you. I do
29:12
Speaker 1: nothing with my politics now. I pretend I have no
29:16
Speaker 1: plans in life except plans for meeting you and meeting
29:20
Speaker 1: you again. I want to go on. I want to
29:24
Speaker 1: go on with you and take up work and the
29:27
Speaker 1: world again, you beside me. I want you to come
29:32
Speaker 1: out of all this life, out of all this immense,
29:35
Speaker 1: wealthy emptiness of yours. Stop, she said, and listen to me, Stephen.
29:43
Speaker 1: She paused with her lips pressed together, her brows a
29:47
Speaker 1: little knit. I won't, she said slowly. I am going
29:52
Speaker 1: on like this. I and you are going to be lovers,
29:57
Speaker 1: just as we are lovers now seek lovers. And I
30:02
Speaker 1: am going to help you in all your projects. Hold
30:05
Speaker 1: your party together, for you will have a party. My
30:09
Speaker 1: house shall be at center. But justin he takes no
30:14
Speaker 1: interest in politics. He will do what pleases me. I
30:21
Speaker 1: took some time before I answered. You don't understand how
30:26
Speaker 1: men feel, I said. She waited for what else I
30:32
Speaker 1: had to say. I lay prone and gathered together, and
30:37
Speaker 1: shaped and reshaped a little heap of pine needles. You see,
30:43
Speaker 1: I can't do it. I want you. She gripped a
30:50
Speaker 1: handful of my hair and tugged hard between each word.
30:55
Speaker 1: Haven't you got me? She asked between her teeth. What
31:00
Speaker 1: more could you have? I want you? Openly. She folded
31:08
Speaker 1: her arms beneath her No, she said. For a little while,
31:15
Speaker 1: neither of us spoke. It's the trouble of the deceit,
31:21
Speaker 1: she asked. It's the deceit. We can stop all that,
31:28
Speaker 1: she said. I looked up at her face inquiringly. By
31:34
Speaker 1: having no more to hide, she said with her eyes
31:38
Speaker 1: full of tears. If it's nothing to you, it's everything
31:44
Speaker 1: to me, I said, it's overwhelming me. Oh Mary, heart
31:49
Speaker 1: of my life, My dear, come out of this, Come
31:52
Speaker 1: with me, Come and be my wife, make a clean
31:56
Speaker 1: thing of it, Let me take you away, and then
31:59
Speaker 1: let me marry you. I know it's asking you to
32:03
Speaker 1: come to a sort of poverty. But Mary's blue eyes
32:09
Speaker 1: were alight with anger. Isn't it a clean thing now? Stephen?
32:14
Speaker 1: She was crying, Do you mean that you and I
32:17
Speaker 1: aren't clean? Now? Will you never understand? Oh? Clean? I answered,
32:24
Speaker 1: clean as even the garden. But can we keep clean?
32:28
Speaker 1: Won't the shadow of our falsehood's darker? That all come
32:32
Speaker 1: out of it while we are still clean? Come with me,
32:36
Speaker 1: justin will divorce you. We can stay abroad and marry
32:40
Speaker 1: and come back. Mary was kneeling up now with her
32:46
Speaker 1: hands upon her knees. Come back to what, she cried
32:50
Speaker 1: Parliament after that, you boy, you sentimentalist, you you duffer.
32:57
Speaker 1: Do you think I'd let you do it for your
32:59
Speaker 1: own sake? Even? Do you think I want you spoiled?
33:04
Speaker 1: We should come back to mope outside of things. We
33:07
Speaker 1: should come back to fret our lives out I won't
33:11
Speaker 1: do it, Stephen, I won't do it. And this, if
33:14
Speaker 1: you like, break our hearts and throw them away and
33:18
Speaker 1: go on without them, But to turn all our lives
33:20
Speaker 1: into a scandal, to give ourselves over to the mean
33:24
Speaker 1: and the malicious, a prey to old women, and you
33:27
Speaker 1: damned out of everything, a man partly forgiven, a man
33:32
Speaker 1: who went wrong for a woman. No. She sprang lightly
33:38
Speaker 1: to her feet and stood over me as I knelt
33:40
Speaker 1: before her. And I came here to be made love
33:44
Speaker 1: to Stephen. I came here to be loved, And you
33:47
Speaker 1: talk that nonsense. You remind me of everything wretched. She
33:54
Speaker 1: lifted up her hands and then struck down with them
33:57
Speaker 1: a gesture of infinite impatience. Her face as she bent
34:02
Speaker 1: to me was alive with a friendly anger, her eyes
34:06
Speaker 1: suddenly dark, You duffer, she repeated. Ten. Discovery followed hard
34:16
Speaker 1: upon that meeting. I had come over to Marden's with
34:20
Speaker 1: some book as a pretext. The man had told me
34:24
Speaker 1: that Lady Mary awaited me in her blue parlor, and
34:27
Speaker 1: I went unannounced through the long gallery to find her.
34:32
Speaker 1: The door stood a little ajar. I opened it softly
34:35
Speaker 1: so that she did not hear me, and saw her
34:38
Speaker 1: seated at her writing desk, with her back to me
34:41
Speaker 1: and her cheek and eyebrow just touched by the sunlight
34:44
Speaker 1: from the open terrace window. She was writing a note.
34:49
Speaker 1: I put my hand about her shoulder and bent to
34:52
Speaker 1: kiss her as she turned. Then as she came round
34:56
Speaker 1: to me, she started was for a moment rigid, then
35:00
Speaker 1: rushed me from her and rose very slowly to her feet.
35:05
Speaker 1: I turned to the window and became as rigid facing Justin.
35:11
Speaker 1: He was standing on the terrace staring at us with
35:14
Speaker 1: a face that looked stupid and inexpressive and very white.
35:21
Speaker 1: The sky behind him, appropriately enough, was full of the tattered,
35:25
Speaker 1: inky onset of a thunder storm. So we remained for
35:30
Speaker 1: a lengthy second, perhaps a trite tableau Vivanne. We too
35:35
Speaker 1: seemed to hang helplessly upon Justin, and he was the
35:38
Speaker 1: first of us to move. He made a queer, incomplete
35:44
Speaker 1: gesture with one hand, as if he wanted to undo
35:47
Speaker 1: the top button of his waistcoat, and then thought better
35:50
Speaker 1: of it. He came very slowly into the room. When
35:55
Speaker 1: he spoke, his voice had neither rage nor denunciation in it.
35:59
Speaker 1: It was simply conversational. I felt this was going on
36:04
Speaker 1: he said, and then to his wife, with the note
36:07
Speaker 1: of one who remarks dispassionately on a peculiar situation. Yet
36:12
Speaker 1: somehow it seemed wrong and unnatural to think such a
36:15
Speaker 1: thing of you. His face took on something of the
36:20
Speaker 1: vexed look of a child who struggles with a difficult task.
36:24
Speaker 1: Do you mind, he said to me, Will you go?
36:29
Speaker 1: I took a moment for my reply. No, I said,
36:34
Speaker 1: since you know at last there are things to be said. No,
36:39
Speaker 1: said Mary. Suddenly go let me talk to him. No,
36:44
Speaker 1: I said, My place is here beside you. He seemed
36:49
Speaker 1: not to hear me. His eyes were fixed on Mary.
36:54
Speaker 1: He seemed to think he had dismissed me, and that
36:57
Speaker 1: I was no longer there. His mind was not concerned
37:00
Speaker 1: about me, but about her. He spoke as though what
37:05
Speaker 1: he said had been in his mind, and no doubt
37:08
Speaker 1: it had been in his mind for many days. I
37:12
Speaker 1: didn't deserve this, he said to her. I've tried to
37:16
Speaker 1: make your life as you wanted your life. It's astonishing
37:20
Speaker 1: to find I haven't you gave no sign. I suppose
37:25
Speaker 1: I ought to have felt all this happening, but it
37:28
Speaker 1: comes upon me surprisingly. I don't know what I'm to do.
37:34
Speaker 1: He became aware of me again, and you. He said,
37:38
Speaker 1: what am I to do to think that you? Well?
37:41
Speaker 1: I have been treating her like some sacred thing. The
37:46
Speaker 1: color was creeping back into his face. Indignation had come
37:51
Speaker 1: into his voice. The first yellow lights of rising jealousy
37:54
Speaker 1: showed in his eyes. Stephen, I heard Mary say, well,
37:59
Speaker 1: you leave me to talk to my husband. There is
38:04
Speaker 1: only one thing to do. I said, what is the
38:07
Speaker 1: need of talking. We two are lovers, justin I spoke
38:12
Speaker 1: to both of them. We too must go out into
38:16
Speaker 1: the world, Go out now together. This marriage of yours,
38:20
Speaker 1: it's no marriage, no real marriage. I think, I said that.
38:27
Speaker 1: I seem to remember saying that, perhaps with other phrases
38:31
Speaker 1: that I have forgotten. But my memory of what we
38:35
Speaker 1: said and did, which is so photographically clear of these
38:39
Speaker 1: earlier passages that I believe I can answer for every
38:43
Speaker 1: gesture and nearly every word that I have set down,
38:47
Speaker 1: become suddenly turbid. The high tension of our first confrontation
38:53
Speaker 1: was giving place to a flood of emotional impulse. We
38:57
Speaker 1: all became eager to talk, to impose those interpretations and
39:01
Speaker 1: justifications upon our situation. We all three became divided between
39:07
Speaker 1: our partial attention to one another and our urgent necessity
39:12
Speaker 1: to keep hold of our points of view. That I
39:16
Speaker 1: think is the common tragedy of almost all human conflicts,
39:21
Speaker 1: that rapid breakdown from the first cool apprehension of an
39:25
Speaker 1: issue to heat, confusion, and insistence. I do not know
39:31
Speaker 1: if indeed we raised our voices, but my memory has
39:34
Speaker 1: an effect of raised voices. And when at last I
39:38
Speaker 1: went out of the house, it seemed to me that
39:41
Speaker 1: the men servants in the hall were as hushed as
39:43
Speaker 1: beasts before a thunder storm, and all of them quite
39:47
Speaker 1: fully aware of the tremendous catastrophe that had come to Martins.
39:53
Speaker 1: And moreover, as I recalled afterwards with astonishment, I went
39:57
Speaker 1: past them and out into the dry rain, unprotected, and
40:02
Speaker 1: not one of them stirred a serviceable hand. What was it?
40:07
Speaker 1: We said? I have a vivid sense of declaring, not
40:12
Speaker 1: once only, but several times, that Mary and I were
40:16
Speaker 1: husband and wife in the sight of God. I was
40:20
Speaker 1: full of the idea that now she must inevitably be mine.
40:25
Speaker 1: I must have spoken to Justin at times, as if
40:28
Speaker 1: he had come merely to confirm my view of the
40:31
Speaker 1: long dispute there had been between us for a while.
40:35
Speaker 1: My mind resisted his extraordinary attitude that the matter lay
40:39
Speaker 1: between him and Mary, that I was in some way
40:43
Speaker 1: an interloper. It seemed to me there was nothing for
40:47
Speaker 1: it now but that Mary should stand by my side
40:50
Speaker 1: and face justin with the world behind him. I remember
40:55
Speaker 1: my confused sense that presently she and I would have
40:59
Speaker 1: to go straight out of Martin's. And she was wearing
41:02
Speaker 1: a tea gown, easy and open, and the flimsiest of slippers.
41:08
Speaker 1: Any packing, any change of clothing struck me as an
41:11
Speaker 1: incredible anti climax. I had visions of our going forth
41:17
Speaker 1: hand in hand. Outside was the sowing of a coming storm.
41:22
Speaker 1: A chill wind drove a tumult of leaves along the terrace.
41:26
Speaker 1: The door slammed and yawned open again, and then came
41:30
Speaker 1: the rain. Justin I remember, still talking closed the door.
41:36
Speaker 1: I tried to think how I could get to the
41:38
Speaker 1: station five miles away, and then what we could do
41:42
Speaker 1: in London. We should seem rather odd visitors to an
41:46
Speaker 1: hotel without luggage. All this was behind my valiant demand
41:52
Speaker 1: that she should come with me, and come now. And
41:57
Speaker 1: then my mind was lanced by the thin edge of
42:00
Speaker 1: realization that she did not intend to come now, and
42:04
Speaker 1: that Justin was resolved she should not do so. After
42:09
Speaker 1: the first shock of finding herself discovered, she had stood
42:13
Speaker 1: pale but uncowed before her bureau, with her eyes rather
42:17
Speaker 1: on him than on me. Her hands, I think, were
42:20
Speaker 1: behind her upon the edge of the riding flap, and
42:24
Speaker 1: she was a little leaning upon them. She had the watchful,
42:28
Speaker 1: alert expression of one who faces and unanticipated but by
42:32
Speaker 1: no means overwhelming situation. She cast a remark to me,
42:39
Speaker 1: But I do not want to come with you, she said,
42:42
Speaker 1: I have told you I do not want to come
42:44
Speaker 1: with you. All her mind seemed concentrated upon what she
42:49
Speaker 1: should do with Justin. You must send him away, he
42:54
Speaker 1: was saying. It's an abominable thing. It must stop. How
42:57
Speaker 1: can you dream it should go on? But you said
43:01
Speaker 1: yourself when you married me, I should be free, I
43:04
Speaker 1: should own myself. You gave me this house, what to
43:09
Speaker 1: disgrace myself. I was moved to intervene. You must choose
43:15
Speaker 1: between us. Mary, I cried, it is impossible you should
43:19
Speaker 1: stay here. You cannot stay here. She turned upon me,
43:24
Speaker 1: A creature at bay. Why shouldn't I stay here? Why
43:28
Speaker 1: must I choose between two men? I want neither of you.
43:32
Speaker 1: I want myself. I'm not a thing. I'm a human being.
43:37
Speaker 1: I'm not your thing, Justin, nor your Stephen. Yet you
43:41
Speaker 1: want to quarrel over me like two dogs over a bone.
43:45
Speaker 1: I am going to stay here in my house. It's
43:49
Speaker 1: my house. I made it. Every room of it is
43:51
Speaker 1: full of me. Here I am. She stood there, making
43:57
Speaker 1: this magnificently extravagant, her eyes blazing blue, her hair a
44:03
Speaker 1: little disheveled, with a strand across her cheek. Both I
44:09
Speaker 1: and Justin spoke together and then turned in helpless anger
44:13
Speaker 1: upon one another. I remember that with the clumsiest of
44:17
Speaker 1: weak gestures, he bat me be gone from the house,
44:21
Speaker 1: and the eye, with a now rather deflated rhetoric, answered
44:24
Speaker 1: I would go only with Mary at my side. And
44:28
Speaker 1: there she stood less like a desperate rebel against the
44:32
Speaker 1: most fundamental social relations than an indignant princess, and demanded
44:38
Speaker 1: of us and high Heaven, why should I be fought for?
44:41
Speaker 1: Why should I be fought for? And then abruptly she
44:47
Speaker 1: gathered her skirts in her hand and advanced open that door. Stephen,
44:52
Speaker 1: she said, and was gone, with a silken whirl and rustle.
44:56
Speaker 1: From her presence. We were left regarding one another with
45:01
Speaker 1: blank expressions. Her departure had torn the substance out of
45:07
Speaker 1: our dispute for the moment. We found ourselves left with
45:12
Speaker 1: a new situation for which there is as yet no
45:15
Speaker 1: tradition of behavior. We had become actors in that new
45:20
Speaker 1: human comedy that is just beginning in the world, that
45:24
Speaker 1: comedy in which men still dispute the possession and the
45:27
Speaker 1: manner of the possession of woman according to the ancient rules,
45:32
Speaker 1: while they, on their side are determining ever more definitely
45:36
Speaker 1: that they will not be possessed. We had little to
45:40
Speaker 1: say to one another, mere echoes and endorsements of our
45:44
Speaker 1: recent declarations. She must come to me, said I, and
45:50
Speaker 1: he I will safer from that at any cost. That
45:56
Speaker 1: was the gist of our confrontation. And then I turned
45:59
Speaker 1: about and walked along the gallery towards the entrance, with
46:03
Speaker 1: Justin following me slowly. I was full of the wrath
46:08
Speaker 1: of baffled heroics. I turned towards him with something of
46:12
Speaker 1: a gesture. Down the perspective of the white and empty gallery,
46:18
Speaker 1: he appeared small and Perplexed, the panes of the tall
46:22
Speaker 1: French windows were slashed with rain. End of Chapter six,
46:30
Speaker 1: Part six to ten,