Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The Dream Chapter the Fourth - The Widow Smith Moves to London Parts 3 and 4
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Section nine of The Dream, a novel. This is a
- 0:03Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All Librivo's recordings are in the public domain.
- 0:08Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
- 0:13Speaker 1: The Dream a novel by H. G. Wells. Chapter the fourth,
- 0:18Speaker 1: The Widow Smith goes to London, Parts three and four.
- 0:22Speaker 1: Part three. If my dream was a dream, said Sarnak,
- 0:28Speaker 1: it was a most circumstantial dream. I could tell you
- 0:31Speaker 1: a hundred details about Jennie to London and how he
- 0:34Speaker 1: disposed of the pole belongings that had furnished a home
- 0:36Speaker 1: in Cherry Gardens. Every detail would expose some odd and
- 0:40Speaker 1: illuminating difference between the ideas of those ancient days in
- 0:43Speaker 1: our own ideas. Brother Ernest was helpful, masterful, and irascible.
- 0:49Speaker 1: He got a week's holiday from his employer to help
- 0:51Speaker 1: mother to settle up things. And among other things that
- 0:54Speaker 1: was settled up, I believe my mother persuaded him and
- 0:57Speaker 1: my uncle to shake hands. But I do not know
- 1:00Speaker 1: the particulars of that great scene. I did not see it.
- 1:04Speaker 1: It was merely mentioned in my hearing during the train
- 1:07Speaker 1: journey to London. I would like to tell you also
- 1:10Speaker 1: the man who came round to buy most of our furniture,
- 1:13Speaker 1: including that red and black Sofi described to you, and
- 1:16Speaker 1: how he and my brother had a loud and heated
- 1:18Speaker 1: argument about some damage to one of its legs, and
- 1:21Speaker 1: how mister Crosby produced a bill that my mother understood
- 1:24Speaker 1: he had forgiven us on account of Fanny long ago.
- 1:27Speaker 1: There was also some point about something called tenant's fixtures
- 1:30Speaker 1: that led my brother and the landlord, mister Bulstrode, to
- 1:33Speaker 1: the verge of violence. And mister Bulstrode, the landlord, brought
- 1:37Speaker 1: accusations of damage done to the fabric of the house
- 1:40Speaker 1: that were false, and he made extravagant claims for compensation
- 1:44Speaker 1: based thereon, and had to be rebutted with warmth. There
- 1:48Speaker 1: was also trouble over cutting apostle of our goods to
- 1:50Speaker 1: the railway station, and when we got to the terminus
- 1:53Speaker 1: of Victoria in London, it was necessary I gathered that
- 1:57Speaker 1: Ernest should offer to fight a railway porter. You have
- 2:00Speaker 1: read of railway porters before we received proper attention. But
- 2:04Speaker 1: I cannot tell you all these curious and typical incidents now,
- 2:07Speaker 1: because at that rate I should never finish my story
- 2:09Speaker 1: before our holidays are over. I must go on now
- 2:13Speaker 1: to tell you of this London, this great city, the
- 2:16Speaker 1: greatest city in the world, in those days to which
- 2:18Speaker 1: we had transferred our fates. All the rest of my story,
- 2:22Speaker 1: except for nearly two years and a half I spent
- 2:24Speaker 1: in the training camp and in France and Germany during
- 2:26Speaker 1: the First World War, is set in the scenery of London.
- 2:30Speaker 1: You know already what a vast congestion of human beings
- 2:33Speaker 1: London was. You know that within a radius of fifteen miles,
- 2:37Speaker 1: a population of seven and a half million people were
- 2:39Speaker 1: gathered together, people born out of due time into a
- 2:42Speaker 1: world unready for them, and borne mostly through the sheer
- 2:45Speaker 1: ignorance of their procreators, gathered together into an area of
- 2:49Speaker 1: not very attractive clay country by an urgent need to
- 2:52Speaker 1: earn a living. And you know the terrible fate that
- 2:55Speaker 1: it last overwhelmed the sinfully crowded accumulation. You have read
- 2:59Speaker 1: of West Dend and slums, and you have seen the
- 3:02Speaker 1: cinema pictures of those days showing crowded streets, crowds gaping
- 3:06Speaker 1: at this queer ceremony, or that a vast traffic of
- 3:09Speaker 1: clumsy automobiles and distressed horses and narrow, unsuitable streets. And
- 3:13Speaker 1: I suppose your general impression is a nightmare of multitudes,
- 3:17Speaker 1: a suffocating realization of jostling, discomfort and uncleanness, and of
- 3:21Speaker 1: an unbearable strain on the eye and ear and attention.
- 3:25Speaker 1: The history we learn in our childhood enfals is that lesson.
- 3:28Speaker 1: But though the facts are just as we are thought
- 3:30Speaker 1: they are, I do not recall anything like the distress
- 3:33Speaker 1: at London you would suppose me to have felt. And
- 3:36Speaker 1: I do remember vividly the sense of adventure, the intellectual excitement,
- 3:41Speaker 1: and the discovery of beauty I experienced in going there.
- 3:45Speaker 1: You must remember that in this strange dream of mine,
- 3:48Speaker 1: I had forgotten all our present standards. I accepted squalor
- 3:52Speaker 1: and confusion as being in the nature of things, and
- 3:55Speaker 1: the aspect of the city's greatness. The wonder of this
- 3:58Speaker 1: limitless place, in a certain check, changing and effervescent beauty
- 4:02Speaker 1: rise out of a sea of struggle and limitation, as
- 4:04Speaker 1: forgetfully as a silver birch rises out of the swamp
- 4:07Speaker 1: that bears it. The part of London in which we
- 4:09Speaker 1: took our abode was called Pimlico. It bordered upon the River,
- 4:13Speaker 1: and once there had been a wharf there to which
- 4:15Speaker 1: ships came across the Atlantic from America. This word Pimlico
- 4:20Speaker 1: had come with other trade in these ships. In my time,
- 4:23Speaker 1: it was the last word left alive for the language
- 4:25Speaker 1: of the Algonquin read Indians, who had otherwise altogether vanished
- 4:29Speaker 1: from the earth. The Pimlico wharf had gone, the American
- 4:33Speaker 1: trade was forgotten, and Pimlico was now a great wilderness
- 4:37Speaker 1: of streets of dingy gray houses in which people lived
- 4:39Speaker 1: and let lodgings. These houses had never been designed for
- 4:43Speaker 1: the occupation of lodges. They were faced with a lime
- 4:46Speaker 1: plaster called stucco, which made a sort of pretense of
- 4:49Speaker 1: being stone. Each one had a sunken underground floor originally
- 4:53Speaker 1: intended for servants, a door with a portico, and several
- 4:57Speaker 1: floors above, which were reached by a staircase. Beside each
- 5:01Speaker 1: portico was a railed pit that admitted light to the
- 5:04Speaker 1: front underground room as you walked along these Pimlico streets.
- 5:08Speaker 1: These porticoes were seated in long perspectives, and each portico
- 5:12Speaker 1: of that endless series represented ten or a dozen misdirected,
- 5:16Speaker 1: incomplete and rather unclean inhabitants infected mentally and morally. Over
- 5:22Speaker 1: the gray and dingy architecture rested a mist or a
- 5:25Speaker 1: fog Rarely was there a precious outbreak of sunlight here
- 5:29Speaker 1: and there down the vista. A grocer's boy or a
- 5:31Speaker 1: green grocer's boyer, a fishhawker would be handing in food
- 5:35Speaker 1: over the railings to the subterranean members of a household.
- 5:38Speaker 1: Or a cat there was a multitude of cats would
- 5:41Speaker 1: be peeping out of the railings, alert for danger of
- 5:44Speaker 1: a passing dog. There would be a few pedestrians, a
- 5:47Speaker 1: passing cab asso, and perhaps in the morning, a dust
- 5:50Speaker 1: cut collecting refuse filth set out for the winds to
- 5:54Speaker 1: play with in boxes and tin receptacles at the pavement's edge,
- 5:57Speaker 1: or a man in a uniform cleaning the streets with
- 6:00Speaker 1: the house. It seems to you that it must have
- 6:03Speaker 1: been the most depressing of spectacles. It wasn't, though I
- 6:06Speaker 1: doubt if I can make clear to you that it wasn't.
- 6:09Speaker 1: I know, I went about Pimlico thinking it a rather
- 6:11Speaker 1: fine place and endlessly interesting. I assure you that in
- 6:16Speaker 1: the early morning, and by my poor standards, it had
- 6:19Speaker 1: a sort of gray spaciousness and dignity. But afterwards I
- 6:23Speaker 1: found the thing far better done that London architectural aquatant
- 6:27Speaker 1: in Belgravia and roundabout regions park. I must admit that
- 6:31Speaker 1: I tended to drift after those roads and squares of
- 6:33Speaker 1: lodging houses, either into the streets where there were shops
- 6:36Speaker 1: and street cars, or southward to the embankment along the Thames.
- 6:40Speaker 1: It was the shops and glares that drew me first
- 6:43Speaker 1: as the lights began to fail. And strange as it
- 6:46Speaker 1: may seem to you, my memories of such times are
- 6:49Speaker 1: rich with beauty. We feeble children of that swarming age
- 6:53Speaker 1: had I think, an almost morbid gregariousness. We found a
- 6:57Speaker 1: subtle pleasure and reassurance in crowds, and real disagreeableness in
- 7:01Speaker 1: being alone. And my impressions of London's strange interest and
- 7:05Speaker 1: charm are, I confess, very often crowded impressions of a kindness.
- 7:10Speaker 1: World no longer produces, or impressions to which a crowded
- 7:13Speaker 1: foreground or background was essential, But they were beautiful. For example,
- 7:19Speaker 1: there was a great railway station, a terminus within perhaps
- 7:23Speaker 1: half a mile of us. There was a great disorderly
- 7:26Speaker 1: yard in front of the station in which Hackney automobiles
- 7:28Speaker 1: and omnibuses assembled and departed and arrived in the late
- 7:32Speaker 1: twilight of an autumn day. This yard had a mass
- 7:35Speaker 1: of shifting black shadows and gleams and lamps across which
- 7:38Speaker 1: streamed an incessant succession of bolbing black heads people on
- 7:43Speaker 1: foot hurrying to catch the trains. As they flitted by
- 7:46Speaker 1: the lights, one saw their faces gleam and vanish again.
- 7:50Speaker 1: Above this foreground rose the huge brown gray shapes of
- 7:53Speaker 1: the station buildings, in the facade of a big hotel,
- 7:56Speaker 1: reflecting flares below, and pierced here and there by a
- 7:59Speaker 1: lit window. Then very sharply came the sky line, and
- 8:02Speaker 1: a sky still blue and luminous, tranquil and aloof and
- 8:07Speaker 1: the innumerable sounds of people and vehicles wove into a deep,
- 8:10Speaker 1: wonderful and continually varying drone. Even to my boyish mind,
- 8:15Speaker 1: there was an irrational conviction of unity and purpose in
- 8:18Speaker 1: this spectacle. The streets where there were shops were also
- 8:21Speaker 1: very wonderful and lovely to meet. Directly, the too lucid
- 8:25Speaker 1: and expository daylight began to fade. The variously colored lights
- 8:29Speaker 1: in the sharp windows, which displayed a great diversity of
- 8:32Speaker 1: goods for sale, splashed the most extraordinary reflections upon the
- 8:36Speaker 1: pavements and doorway, and these were particularly gemlike if there
- 8:40Speaker 1: had been rain or amist to wet the reflecting surfaces.
- 8:44Speaker 1: One of these streets, it was called Lupus Street. Though
- 8:47Speaker 1: why it had the name of an abominable skin disease
- 8:50Speaker 1: that has long since vanished from the earth, I cannot imagine.
- 8:54Speaker 1: Was close to our new home, and I still remember
- 8:56Speaker 1: it as full of romantic effectiveness. By daylight it was
- 8:59Speaker 1: an exceed eadingly sordid street, and late at night empty
- 9:02Speaker 1: and echoing. But in the magic hours of London it
- 9:06Speaker 1: was a bed of black and luminous flowers. The abounding
- 9:09Speaker 1: people became black imps, and through it wallowed the great
- 9:11Speaker 1: shining omnibuses. The ships of the street filled with light
- 9:16Speaker 1: and reflecting lights. There were endless beauties along the river bank.
- 9:20Speaker 1: The river was a tidal one held in control by
- 9:23Speaker 1: a stone embankment, and the roadway along the embankment was
- 9:26Speaker 1: planted at the footway edge with plane trees and lit
- 9:29Speaker 1: by large electric lights on tall standards. These plains were
- 9:32Speaker 1: among the few trees that could flourish in the murky
- 9:35Speaker 1: London air. But they were unsuitable trees to have in
- 9:38Speaker 1: a crowded city because they gave off minute specules that
- 9:41Speaker 1: irritated people's threats. That, however, I did not nail. What
- 9:45Speaker 1: I did now was the shadows of the leaves on
- 9:47Speaker 1: the pavements, thrown by the electric glares, made the most
- 9:50Speaker 1: beautiful patternings I had ever seen. I would walk along
- 9:54Speaker 1: the warm night rejoicing in them, more, particularly if now
- 9:57Speaker 1: and then a light breeze set them dancing in quiver.
- 10:00Speaker 1: One could walk from Pimlico along this Thames embankment for
- 10:03Speaker 1: some miles towards the east, one passed little black jetties
- 10:07Speaker 1: with dangling oil lamps. There was a traffic of barges
- 10:10Speaker 1: and steamers on the river, altogether mysterious and romantic to me.
- 10:14Speaker 1: The frontages of the houses varied incessantly, and ever and
- 10:18Speaker 1: again were cleft by crowded roadways that brought a shining
- 10:21Speaker 1: and twinkling traffic up to the bridges. Across the river
- 10:24Speaker 1: was a coming and going of trains along a railway viaduct.
- 10:28Speaker 1: It contributed a restless motif of clanks and concussion to
- 10:31Speaker 1: the general drone of London and the Engines sent puffs
- 10:34Speaker 1: of fire, lit steam, and sudden furnace glows into the night.
- 10:38Speaker 1: One came along this embankment to the great buildings at
- 10:40Speaker 1: Westminster by day, a pile of imitation Gothic, dominated by
- 10:45Speaker 1: a tall clock tower with an illuminated dial, A pile
- 10:48Speaker 1: which assumed a blue dignity with the twilight and became
- 10:51Speaker 1: a notable portent, standing at attention a forest of spears
- 10:55Speaker 1: in the night. This was the Parliament House, and in
- 10:59Speaker 1: its chamber as a former king, an ignoble nobility, and
- 11:03Speaker 1: a fraudulently elected gathering of lawyers, financiers and adventurers took
- 11:07Speaker 1: upon themselves amidst the general mental obscurity of those days,
- 11:12Speaker 1: a semblance of wisdom and empire. As one went on
- 11:16Speaker 1: beyond Westminster, along the embankment came the great gray brown
- 11:19Speaker 1: palaces and houses, set behind green gardens, a railway bridge,
- 11:24Speaker 1: and then two huge hotels standing high and far back,
- 11:28Speaker 1: bulging with lit windows. There was some sort of pit
- 11:31Speaker 1: or waste beneath them, I forget what, very black, so
- 11:34Speaker 1: that at once they loomed over one and seemed magically remote.
- 11:38Speaker 1: There was an Egyptian obelisk here for all the European
- 11:41Speaker 1: capitals of my time, being as honest as magpies and
- 11:45Speaker 1: as original as monkeys, had adorned themselves with obelisks stolen
- 11:49Speaker 1: from Egypt. And farther along the way was the best
- 11:52Speaker 1: and noblest building in London, Saint Paul's Cathedral. It was
- 11:56Speaker 1: invisible by night, but it was exceedingly serene and beauty
- 12:00Speaker 1: on a clear, blue, windy day. And some of the
- 12:02Speaker 1: bridges were very lovely, with gracious arches of smutty graystone,
- 12:07Speaker 1: though some were so clumsy that only night could redeem them.
- 12:10Speaker 1: As I talk, I remember, said Sarnak, before employment robbed
- 12:15Speaker 1: me of my days. I pushed my boyish explorations far
- 12:18Speaker 1: and wide, wandering all day, and often going without any meal,
- 12:22Speaker 1: or if I was in pocket, getting a burn and
- 12:25Speaker 1: a glass of milk and some small shop for a
- 12:27Speaker 1: couple of pennies. The shop windows of London were an
- 12:30Speaker 1: unending marvel to me, and they would be to you too,
- 12:34Speaker 1: if you could remember them as I do. There must
- 12:36Speaker 1: have been hundreds of miles of them, possibly thousands of miles.
- 12:40Speaker 1: In the poor parts. They were chiefly food shops and
- 12:43Speaker 1: cheap clothing shops and the like, and one could exhaust
- 12:46Speaker 1: their interest. But there were thoroughfares like Regent Street and
- 12:49Speaker 1: Piccadilly and narrow Bond Street in Oxford Street, crammed with
- 12:53Speaker 1: all the furnishings of life for the lucky minority, the
- 12:56Speaker 1: people who could spend freely. You will find it quite
- 12:59Speaker 1: difficult to imagine how important a matter the mere buying
- 13:02Speaker 1: of things was in the lives of those people. In
- 13:05Speaker 1: their houses, there was a vast congestion of objects, neither
- 13:08Speaker 1: ornamental nor useful. Purchases in fact, and the women spent
- 13:12Speaker 1: large portions of their every week day in buying things clothes,
- 13:15Speaker 1: table litter, floor litter, wall litter. They had no work,
- 13:20Speaker 1: they were too ignorant to be interested in any real thing.
- 13:23Speaker 1: They had nothing else to do. That was the world's reward,
- 13:27Speaker 1: the substance of success purchases. Through them, you realized your
- 13:32Speaker 1: well being. As a shabby, half grown boy, I pushed
- 13:35Speaker 1: my way among these spenders. Crowds of women dressed wrapped
- 13:39Speaker 1: up rather than a layer after a layer of purchases,
- 13:42Speaker 1: scented painted. Most of them were painted to suggest a
- 13:45Speaker 1: health flushed face, the nose powdered a leprous white. There
- 13:50Speaker 1: is one thing to be said for the old fashion
- 13:52Speaker 1: of abundant clothing in that crowded, jostling world, that saved
- 13:55Speaker 1: people from actually touching each other. I would push through
- 13:59Speaker 1: these streets eastward to less prosperous crowds in Oxford Street,
- 14:02Speaker 1: into a different multitude in Hoeburn. As you went eastward,
- 14:05Speaker 1: the influence of women diminished and that of young men increased.
- 14:09Speaker 1: Cheapside gave you all the material for building up a
- 14:11Speaker 1: twentieth century young man. From the nude in the shop windows,
- 14:15Speaker 1: he was disarticulated and priced hat five and sixpence, trousers
- 14:20Speaker 1: eighteen shillings, tie one and six cigaretes, tup ands and ounce,
- 14:25Speaker 1: newspaper halfpenny, cheap novel sevenpence. On the pavement outside there
- 14:31Speaker 1: he was put together in complete and the cigarette burning,
- 14:35Speaker 1: under the impression that he was a unique, immortal creature,
- 14:38Speaker 1: and that the ideas in his head were altogether his own.
- 14:41Speaker 1: And beyond Cheapside there was clockinwell curious little shops that
- 14:45Speaker 1: sold scarcely anything but old keys, or the pots of
- 14:47Speaker 1: broken up watches or the like detached objects. Then there
- 14:52Speaker 1: were great food markets at Leadenhall Street and Smithfield and
- 14:55Speaker 1: Covent Garden, incredible accumulations of raw stuff. At Covent Garden
- 15:00Speaker 1: they sold fruits and flowers that we should think poor
- 15:03Speaker 1: and undeveloped, but which everyone in those days regarded as
- 15:06Speaker 1: beautiful and delicious. And in Caldonian Market there were innumerable
- 15:11Speaker 1: burrows where people actually bought and took away every sort
- 15:14Speaker 1: of broken in secondhand rubbish, broken ornaments, decaying books with
- 15:18Speaker 1: torn pages, second hand clothing, a wonderland of litter for
- 15:22Speaker 1: any boy with curiosity in its bread. But I could
- 15:25Speaker 1: go on talking endlessly about this old London of mine,
- 15:28Speaker 1: and you want me to get on with my story.
- 15:31Speaker 1: I have tried to give you something of its endless, incessant, multitudinous,
- 15:35Speaker 1: glittering quality, in the way in which it yielded a
- 15:37Speaker 1: thousand strange and lovely effects, to its changing lights and atmosphere.
- 15:42Speaker 1: I found even its fogs, the dreaded fogs of which
- 15:45Speaker 1: the books tell romantic. But then I was a boy
- 15:48Speaker 1: at the adventurous age. The fog was often very thick.
- 15:52Speaker 1: In Pimlico. It was normally a soft, creamy obscurity that
- 15:56Speaker 1: turned even lights close at hand into luminous blurs came
- 16:00Speaker 1: out of nothingness. Within six yards of you were riddles
- 16:03Speaker 1: and silhouettes before they became real. One could go out
- 16:07Speaker 1: and lose one's self within ten minutes of home, and
- 16:09Speaker 1: perhaps pick up with a distressed automobile driver and walk
- 16:12Speaker 1: by his headlights, signaling him to where the pavement ended.
- 16:16Speaker 1: That was one salt of fog, the dry fog, But
- 16:19Speaker 1: there were many sorts. There was a sort of yellow darkness,
- 16:23Speaker 1: like blackened bronze, that hovered about you and did not
- 16:26Speaker 1: embrace you, and left a clear near world of deep
- 16:29Speaker 1: browns and blacks. And there was an unclean wet mist
- 16:33Speaker 1: that presently turned to drizzle and made every surface a mirror.
- 16:36Speaker 1: And there was daylight, said Willow. Sometimes surely there was daylight, Yes,
- 16:42Speaker 1: Sarnac reflected. There was daylight at times, and sometimes there
- 16:47Speaker 1: was quite a kindly and redeeming sunshine in London in
- 16:50Speaker 1: the spring and early summer. In October. It did not blaze,
- 16:55Speaker 1: but it filled the air with a mild warmth and
- 16:57Speaker 1: turned the surfaces that lit, not indeed to gold, but
- 17:00Speaker 1: to amber and towpaths. And there were even hot days
- 17:03Speaker 1: in London with skies of deep blue above. But they
- 17:06Speaker 1: were rare, and sometimes there was daylight without the sun, Yes,
- 17:13Speaker 1: said Sarnac, and pause. At times there was a daylight
- 17:16Speaker 1: that stripped London bare, showed its grime, showed its real ineffectiveness,
- 17:22Speaker 1: showed the pitiful poverty of intention in its buildings, showed
- 17:26Speaker 1: the many colored billstickers hoardings for the crude and leprous
- 17:29Speaker 1: things they were brought out, the shabbiness of unhealthy bodies
- 17:33Speaker 1: and misfitting garments. Those were terrible, voracious, unhappy days when
- 17:38Speaker 1: London no longer fascinated, but wearied and offended. When even
- 17:42Speaker 1: to an uninstructed boy there came intimations of the long,
- 17:45Speaker 1: distressful journey that our race had still to travel before
- 17:48Speaker 1: it attained even to such peace and health and wisdom
- 17:51Speaker 1: as it has to day Part four. Sarnac stopped short
- 17:56Speaker 1: in his talk and rose with something between a laugh
- 17:59Speaker 1: and a sigh. He stood facing westward, and Sunray stood
- 18:02Speaker 1: beside him. The story will go on forever. If I
- 18:05Speaker 1: digress like this, see the sun will be behind that
- 18:09Speaker 1: ridge in another ten minutes. I cannot finish this evening
- 18:12Speaker 1: because most of the story part still remains to be told.
- 18:16Speaker 1: There are roast fowls with sweet corn and chestnuts, said Firefly, trout,
- 18:21Speaker 1: and various fruits. And some of that gold wine, said Radiant,
- 18:26Speaker 1: Some of that gold wine. Sunray, who had been very
- 18:30Speaker 1: still and intent, awoke Sarnac. Dear, she said, slipping her
- 18:34Speaker 1: arm through his What became of Uncle John Julip, Sarnac reflected,
- 18:41Speaker 1: I forget, he said, Aunt Adelaide Julip died, asked Willow.
- 18:47Speaker 1: She died quite soon after we left Cherry Gardens, my
- 18:50Speaker 1: uncle wrote, I remember, and I remember my mother reading
- 18:53Speaker 1: the letter at breakfast like a proclamation, in saying, seems
- 18:56Speaker 1: if she was really ill, after all, if she had
- 18:59Speaker 1: not been well, then surely she had carried my lingering
- 19:02Speaker 1: to the last extremity. But I forget any particulars about
- 19:06Speaker 1: my uncle's depacha from this world. He probably outlived my mother,
- 19:10Speaker 1: and after her death, the news of his end might
- 19:12Speaker 1: easily have escaped me. You have had the most wonderful
- 19:16Speaker 1: dream in the world, Sarnac said, Starlight, And I want
- 19:20Speaker 1: to hear the whole story and not interrupt. But I
- 19:23Speaker 1: am sorry not to hear more of your uncle John Julip.
- 19:26Speaker 1: It was such a perfect little horror, said Firefly until
- 19:31Speaker 1: the knife edge of the hills cut into the molten
- 19:33Speaker 1: globe of the sun. The holiday makers lingered, watching the
- 19:37Speaker 1: shadows in their last rush up to the mountain crests,
- 19:40Speaker 1: and then, still talking of this particular and that in
- 19:43Speaker 1: Sarnac's story, the six made their way down to the
- 19:46Speaker 1: guest house. In supper, Sarnac was shot, said Radiant. He
- 19:51Speaker 1: hasn't even begun to get shot yet. There is no
- 19:54Speaker 1: end of story still to come. Sarnac asked, Firefly. You
- 19:59Speaker 1: weren't killed in the Great War? Were you suddenly in
- 20:02Speaker 1: some inconsequent sort of way. Not a bit of it,
- 20:06Speaker 1: said Sarnac. I am really beginning to be shot in
- 20:09Speaker 1: this story, though Radiant does not perceive it. But I
- 20:12Speaker 1: must tell my story in my own fashion. At supper,
- 20:15Speaker 1: what was going on was explained to the master of
- 20:18Speaker 1: the guest house. Like so many of these guest house keepers,
- 20:21Speaker 1: he was a jolly, convivial, simple soul, and he was
- 20:24Speaker 1: amused and curious at Sarnac's alleged experience. He laughed at
- 20:29Speaker 1: the impatience of the others. He said, they were like
- 20:32Speaker 1: children in the children's garden, agog for their go to bed.
- 20:35Speaker 1: Fairy tale after they had coffee, they went out for
- 20:38Speaker 1: a time to see the moonlight mingle with the ruddy
- 20:40Speaker 1: afterglow above the peaks, And then the guest master led
- 20:44Speaker 1: the way in, made up a blazing pinewood fire, and
- 20:47Speaker 1: threw cushions before it set out. An after dinner wine,
- 20:51Speaker 1: put out the lights, and prepared for a good night's storytelling.
- 20:55Speaker 1: Sarnac remained thoughtful, looking into the flames until sunray set
- 20:59Speaker 1: him off again, whispering by my go end of section nine,
- 21:04Speaker 1: read by Cris Buchanan, Springfield, Illinois, August nineteenth, twenty twenty three.