 Part 1, Chapter 1 of The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. To find out more or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster. Part 1, Cambridge, Chapter 1. Read for you by Julie Pandia. The cow is there, said Ansel, lighting a match and holding it out over the carpet. No one spoke. He waited till the end of the match fell off. Then he said again, She is there, the cow. There, now. You have not proved it, said a voice. I have proved it to myself. I have proved to myself that she isn't, said the voice. The cow is not there. Ansel frowned and lit another match. She's there for me, he declared. I don't care whether she's there for you or not. Whether I'm in Cambridge or Iceland or dead, the cow will be there. It was philosophy. They were discussing the existence of objects. Do they exist only when there is someone to look at them? Or have they a real existence of their own? It is all very interesting, but at the same time it is difficult. Hence the cow. She seemed to make things easier. She was so familiar, so solid, that surely the truth that she illustrated when in time become familiar and solid also. Is the cow there or not? This was better than deciding between objectivity and subjectivity. So at Oxford, just at the same time, one was asking, What do our rooms look like in the vape? Look here Ansel. I'm there in the meadow. The cow's there. You're there. The cow's there. Do you agree so far? Well? Well, if you go, the cow stops. But if I go, the cow goes. Then what will happen if you stop and I go? Several voices cried out that this was quibbling. I know it is, said the speaker brightly, and silence descended again while they tried honestly to think the matter out. Ricky, on whose carpet the matches were being dropped, did not like to join in the discussion. It was too difficult for him. He could not even quibble. If he spoke, he should simply make himself a fool. He preferred to listen and to watch the tobacco smoke stealing out past the window seat into the tranquil October air. He could see the court too and the college cat teasing the college tortoise and the kitchen men with separate trays upon their heads. Hot food for one, that must be for the geographical dawn who never came in for a haul. Cold food for three, apparently at half a crowd ahead for someone he did not know. Hot food, a la carte, obviously for the ladies haunting the next staircase. Cold food for two at two shillings going to Ansel's rooms for himself and Ansel. And as it passed under the lamp, he saw that it was morags again. Then the bedmakers began to arrive, chatting to each other pleasantly and he could hear Ansel's bedmakers say, oh, dang, when she found she had to lay Ansel's tablecloth for there was not a breath stirring. The great elms were motionless and seemed still in the glory of Midsummer. For the darkness hid the yellow blotches on their leaves and their outlines were still rounded against the tender sky. Those alms were dry-ed so Ricky believed or pretended and the line between the two is subtler than we admit. At all events they were lady-trees and had for generations fooled the college statutes by their residents in the haunts of youth. But what about the cow? He returned to her with a start, for this would never do. He also would try to think the matter out. Was she there or not? The cow, there or not? He strained his eyes into the night. Either way it was attractive. If she was there, other cows were there too. The darkness of Europe was dotted with them and in the far east their flanks were shining in the rising sun. Great herds of them stood browsing in pastures where no man came nor need ever come or plashed knee-deep by the brink of impassable rivers. And this, moreover, was the view of Ansel. Yet Tillard's view had a good deal in it. One might do worse than follow Tillard and suppose the cow not to be there unless oneself was there to see her. A cowless world then stretched round him on every side. Yet he had only to peep into a field and click it would at once become radiant with bovine life. Suddenly he realized that this again would never do. As usual he'd missed the whole point and was overlaying philosophy with gross and senseless details. For if the cow was not there, the fields were not there either. And what would Ansel care about sunlit flanks or impassable streams? Ricky rebuked his own groveling soul and turned his eyes away from the night which had led him to such absurd conclusions. The fire was dancing and the shadow of Ansel who stood close up to it seemed to dominate the little room. He was still talking or rather jerking and he was still lighting matches and dropping their ends upon the carpet. Now and then he would make a motion with his feet as if he were running quickly backward upstairs and would tread on the edge of the fender so that the fire irons went flying and the buttered bundishes crashed against each other in the hearth. The other philosophers were crouched in odd shapes on the sofa and table and chairs and one who was a little bored had crawled to the piano and was timbly trying to prelude to Reingold with his knee upon a soft pedal. The air was heavy with good tobacco smoke and the pleasant warmth of tea and he became more sleepy the events of the day seemed to float one by one before his acquiescent eyes. In the morning he had read Theocrates whom he believed to be the greatest of Greek poets. He had lunched for the Mary Dawn and had tasted his wideback biscuits. Then he had walked with people he liked and had walked just long enough and now his room was full of other people whom he liked and when they left he would go and have supper with Ansel whom he liked as well as anyone. A year ago he'd known none of these joys. He'd crept cold and friendless and ignorant out of a great public school preparing for a silent and solitary journey and praying as a high as favour that he might be left alone. Cambridge had not answered his prayer. She had taken and soothed him and warmed him and had laughed at him a little saying that he must not be so tragic yet a while for his boyhood had been but a dusty corridor that led to the spacious halls of youth. In one year he had made many friends and learnt much and he might learn even more if he could but concentrate his attention on that cow. The fire had died down and in the gloom the man by the piano ventured to ask what would happen if an objective cow had a subjective calf. Ansel gave an angry sigh and at that moment there was a tap on the door. Come in, said Ricky. The door opened. A tall young woman stood framed in the light that fell from the passage. Ladies! whispered everyone in great agitation. Yes, he said nervously, limping towards the door. He was rather lame. Yes, please come in. Can I be any good? Wicked boy! exclaimed the young lady, advancing a gloved finger into the room. Wicked, wicked boy! He clasped his head with his hands. Agnes! Oh, how perfectly awful! Wicked, intolerable boy! She turned on the electric light. The philosophers were revealed with unpleasing suddenness. My goodness, a tea-party! Oh, really, Ricky, you are too bad! I say again, wicked, abominable, intolerable boy! I'll have you horsewhipped, if you please! She turned to the symposium which had now risen to its feet. If you please, he asks me and my brother for the weekend. We accept. At the station, no Ricky. We drive to where his old lodgings were. Trumpery road or some such name, and he's left them. I'm furious, and before I can stop my brother he's paid off the cab, and there we are stranded. I've walked, walked for miles. Pray, can you tell me what is to be done with Ricky? He must indeed be horsewhipped, said Tillard pleasantly. Then he made a bolt for the door. Tillard, do stop. Let me introduce Miss Pembroke. Don't all go! For his friends were flying from his visitor like Miss before the sun. Agnes, I am so sorry. I have nothing to say. I simply forgot you were coming and everything about you. Thank you, thank you, and how soon will you remember to ask where Herbert is? Where is he then? I shall not tell you. But didn't he walk with you? I shall not tell, Ricky. It's part of your punishment. You were not really sorry yet. I shall punish you again later. She was quite right. Ricky was not as much upset as he ought to have been. He was sorry that he had forgotten and that he had caused his visitor's inconvenience, but he did not feel profoundly degraded as a young man should who has acted discourteously to a young lady. Had he acted discourteously to his bedmaker or his jib, he would have minded just as much, which was not polite of him. First I'll go and get food. Do sit down and rest. Oh, let me introduce. Ansel is now the sole remnant of the discussion party. He still stood on the hearth rug with a burnt match in his hand. Miss Pembroke's arrival had never disturbed him. Let me introduce Mr. Ansel. Miss Pembroke, there came an awful moment, a moment when he almost regretted that he had a clever friend. Ansel remained absolutely motionless, moving neither hand nor head. Such behavior is so unknown that Miss Pembroke did not realize what had happened and kept her own hand stretched down longer than his maidenly. Coming to supper asked Ansel in low grave tones. I don't think so, said Ricky helplessly. Ansel departed without another word. Don't mind us, Miss Pembroke, pleasantly. Why shouldn't you keep your engagement with your friend? Herbert's finding lodging, so that's why he's not here, and they're sure to be able to give us some dinner. What jolly rooms you've got. Oh, no, not a bit. I say I am sorry, I am sorry, I am most awfully sorry. What about Ansel? Then he burst forth. Ansel isn't a gentleman, his father's a draper, his uncles are farmers. He's here because he's so clever, just on account of his brains. Now sit down, he isn't a gentleman at all. And he hurried off to order some dinner. What a snob the boy is getting, thought Agnes, a good deal mollified. It never struck her that those could be the words of affection that Ricky would never have spoken them about a person whom he disliked. Nor did it strike her that Ansel's humble birth scarcely explained the quality of his rudeness. He was willing to find life full of trivialities. Six months ago, and she might have minded, but now she cared not what men might do unto her, for she had her own splendid lover who could have knocked all these unhealthy undergraduates into a cocked hat. She dared not tell Gerald a word of what had happened. He might have come up from wherever he was and half killed Ansel, and she determined not to tell her brother either, for her nature was kindly, and it pleased her to pass things over. She took off her gloves, and began to admire them. These earrings were a freak of hers, her only freak. She had always wanted some, and the day Gerald asked her to marry him, she went to his shop and had her ears pierced. In some wonderful way she knew that it was right. And he had given her the rings, little gold knobs, copied, the jeweler told them, from something prehistoric, and he kissed the spots of blood on her handkerchief. Herbert as usual had been shocked. I can't help it, she cried, I'm not like other girls. She began to pace about Ricky's room for she hated to keep quiet. There was nothing much to see in it. The pictures were not attractive, nor did they attract her. School groups, wats, or Percival, a dog running after a rabbit, a man running after a maid, a cheap brown Madonna, and a cheap green frame. In short, a collection where one mediocrity was generally cancelled by another. Over the door there hung a long photograph of a city with waterways, which Agnes, who had never been to Venice, took to be Venice, but which people who'd been to Stockholm knew to be Stockholm. Ricky's mother, looking rather sweet, was standing on the mantelpiece. Some more pictures had just arrived from the framers and were leading with their faces to the wall, but she did not bother to turn them round. On the table were dirty teacups, a flat chocolate cake, and Omar Cayenne with the crimson leaves of autumn. This made her smile. Then she saw her host's shoes. He left them lying on the sofa. Ricky was slightly deformed and so the shoes were not the same size, and one of them had a thick heel to help them towards an even walk. Agh! she exclaimed and removed them gingerly to the bedroom. There she saw other shoes and boots and pumps. A whole row of them all deformed. Ah! poor boy! It is too bad. Why shouldn't he be like other people? This hereditary business is too awful. She shut the door with a sigh. Then she recalled the perfect form of Gerald, his athletic walk, the poise of his shoulders, his arms stretched forward to receive her. Gradually she was comforted. I beg your pardon, Miss, but might I ask how many to lay? It was bedmaker, Mrs. Aberdeen. Three, I think, said Agnes, smiling pleasantly. Mr. Elliot will be back in a minute. He's gone to order dinner. Thank you, Miss. Plenty of teacups to wash up. But teacups is easy washing, particularly Mr. Elliot's. Why are his so easy? Because no nasty corners in them to hold the dirt. Mr. Anderson, he's below, has crinkly noctagons and one wouldn't believe the difference. It was I who bought these for Mr. Elliot. His one thought is to save one trouble. I never see such a thoughtful gentleman. The world, I say, will be the better for him. She took the teacups into the gyparum and then returned with the tablecloth and added, if he's spared. I'm afraid he isn't strong, said Agnes. Oh, Miss, his nose. I don't know what he'd say if he knew I mentioned his nose, but really I must speak to someone and he has neither father nor mother. His nose poured twice with blood in the lung. Yes? It's a thing that ought to be known. I assure you that little room and in any case Mr. Elliot is a gentleman that can only afford to lose it. Luckily his friends were up and I always say they're more like brothers than anything else. Nice for him. He has no real brothers. Oh, Mr. Hornblower, he is a merry gentleman and Mr. Tiller, too. And Mr. Elliot himself likes his trumpet times. Why is the merry a staircase in the buildings? Last night the bedmaker from W said to me, What are you doing to my gentleman? Here is Mr. Ansel come back out with his collar flopping. I said, And a good thing. Some beders keep their gentleman just so, but surely miss the role being what it is. The longer one is able to laugh in it, the better. Bedmakers have to be comic and dishonest. It is expected of them. In a picture of university life it is their only function. So when we meet one who has the face of a lady and feelings of which a lady might be proud we pass her by. Yes? Said Miss Pembroke and their talk was toughed by the arrival of her brother. It is too bad, he exclaimed. It is really too bad. Now, Bertie boy, Bertie boy, I'll have no peevishness. I'm not peevish, Agnes, but I have a full right to be. Pray, why did he not meet us? Why did he not provide rooms? And pray, why did you leave me to do all the settling? All the lodgings I knew are full and our bedrooms look into amuse. I cannot help it. And then look here. It is too bad. He held up his foot like a wounded dog. It was dripping with water. Oh! This explains the peevishness. Off with it at once. It'll be another of your colds. I really think I had better. He sat down by the fire and daintily unleashed his boot. I noticed a great change in university tone. I can never remember swaggering three abreast along the pavement and charging inoffensive visitors into a gutter when I was an undergraduate. The man, too, wore an eaten tie. But the others, I should say, came from very queer schools if they came from any schools at all. Mr. Pembroke was nearly twenty years older than his sister and had never been as handsome. But he was not at all the person to knock into a gutter, for though not in orders, he had the air of being on the verge of them. And his features, as well as his clothes, had the clerical cut. And his present conversation became pure and colorless and full of understatements. If he was a real clergyman, neither men nor boys ever forgot that he was there. He had observed this, and it pleased him very much. His conscience permitted him to enter the church whenever his profession, which was a scholastic, should demand it. No gutter in the world as wet as this, said Agnes, who had peeled off her brother's sock and was now toasting into the embers on a pair of tongs. Surely you know the running water by the edge of the Trumpington Road. It was by the refuse, a most primitive idea. When I was up, we had a joke about it, and called it the Pem. How complimentary! You foolish girl, not after me, of course. We called it the Pem because it is close to Pembroke College. I remember, he smiled a little and twiddled his toes. Then he remembered the bed-maker and said, My sock is now dry. My sock, please. Your sock is sopping. No, you don't. She twitched the tongs away from him. Not speaking fetched a pair of Ricky socks and a pair of Ricky shoes. Thank you. Ah, thank you. I am sure Mr. Elliott would allow it. Then he said in French to his sister, Has there been the slightest sign of Frederick? Now do call him Ricky and talk English. I found him here. He had forgotten about us and was very sorry. Now he's gone to get some dinner, and I can't think why he isn't back. Mrs. Aberdeen left them. He wants pulling up sharply. There is nothing original in absent-mindedness. True originality lies elsewhere. Really, the lower classes have no news. However, can I wear such deformities? Or he'd been madly trying to cram a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe. Don't! said Agnes hastily. Don't touch the poor fellow's things. The sight of the smart, stubby pet and leather made her almost feel faint. She'd known Ricky for many years, but it seems so dreadful and so different now that he was a man. The first great contact with the abnormal and unknown fibers of her being rose and revolt against it. She frowned when she heard his uneven tread upon the stairs. Agnes, before he arrives, you ought never to have left me and gone to his rooms alone. A most elementary transgression. Imagine the unpleasantness if you'd found him with friends, if Gerald, Ricky by now, had gone into a fluster. At the kitchens, he'd lost his head and when his turn came, he'd had to wait. He'd yielded his place to those behind, saying that he didn't matter. And he'd wasted more precious time buying bananas, though he knew that the Pembrokes were not partial to fruit. Amid much tardy and chaotic hospitality, the meal got under way. All the spoons and forks were anyhow, for Mrs. Aberdeen's virtues were not practical. The fish seemed never to have been alive. The meat had no kick and the cork of the college claret slid forth silently as if ashamed of the contents. Pregnus was particularly pleasant, but her brother could not recover himself. He still remembered their desolate arrival and he could feel the waters of the Pem eating into his instep. Ricky, cried the lady, are you aware that you haven't congratulated me on my engagement? Ricky laughed nervously and said, Why, no, no more, I have. Say something pretty, then. I hope you'll be very happy, he mumbled, but I don't know anything about marriage. Oh, you awful boy! Herbert, isn't he just the same? But you do know something about Gerald, so don't be so chilly and cautious. I've just realized, looking at those groups that you must have been at school together. Did you come much across him? Very little, he answered and sounded shy. He got up hastily and began to muddle with the coffee. But he was in the same house. Surely that's a house-group. He was a prefect. He made his coffee on the simple system. One had a brown pot into which the boiling stuff was poured, just before serving one put in a drop of cold water. And the idea was that the grounds fell to the bottom. Wasn't he a kind of athletic marvel? Couldn't he knock any boy or master down? Yes. If he'd wanted to, Mr. Pembroke had not spoken for some time. If he'd wanted to, echoed Ricky, I do hope, Agnes, you'll be most awfully happy. I don't know anything about the army, but you'll be most awfully interesting. Mr. Pembroke laughed faintly. Yes, Ricky, the army is a most interesting profession. The profession of Wellington and Marlboro and Lord Roberts. A most interesting profession, as you observe. A profession that may mean death, death rather than dishonor. That's nice, said Ricky, speaking to himself. Any profession may mean dishonor, but one isn't allowed to die instead. The army's different. If a soldier makes a mess, isn't of him, isn't it, if he blows out his brains? Then the other profession somehow seems cowardly. I'm not competent to pronounce Mr. Pembroke, who is not accustomed to have his schoolroom satire commented on. I really know that the army is the finest profession in the world. Which reminds me, Ricky, have you been thinking about yours? No. Not at all. No. Ah, Herbert, don't bother him. Have another meringue. But Ricky, my dear boy, you're twenty. It's time you thought. The tripose is the beginning of life, not the end. In less than two years you will have got your BA. What are you going to do with it? I don't know. You're M.A., aren't you? asked Agnes, but her brother proceeded. I have seen so many promising, brilliant lives wrecked simply on account of this. Not settling soon enough. My dear boy, you must think. Consult your taste if possible, but think. You have not a moment to lose. The bar like your father? Oh, I wouldn't like that at all. I don't mention the church. Oh, Ricky, do be a clergyman. Said Miss Pembroke, you'd be simply killing it a wide awake. He looked at his guests hopelessly. Their kindness and competence overwhelmed him. I wish I could talk to them as I talk to myself, he thought. I'm not such an ass when I talk to myself. I don't believe, for instance, that quite all I thought about the cow was wrought. Allowed, he said. I've sometimes wondered about writing. Writing? Said Mr. Pembroke with a tone of one who gives everything its trial. Well, what about writing? What kind of writing? I rather like— he suppressed something in his throat— I rather like trying to write little stories. Why, I made sure it was poetry, said Agnes, you're just the boy for poetry. I had no idea you wrote. Would you let me see something? Then I could judge. The author shook his head. I just try because it amuses me. What is it about? Silly nonsense. Are you ever going to show it to anyone? I don't think so. Mr. Pembroke did not reply, firstly, because the meringue he was eating was, after all, Ricky's. Secondly, because it was gluey and stuck his jaws together. Agnes observed that the writing was really a very good idea. There was Ricky's aunt. She could push him. I only had the pleasure of seeing your aunt once. I should have thought her a quite uncrushable person, but she would be sure to help you. I couldn't show her anything. She'd think them even sillier than they are. Always running yourself down. There speaks the artist. I'm not modest, he said anxiously. I just know they're bad. Mr. Pembroke's teeth were clear of meringue, and he could refrain no longer. My dear Ricky, your father and mother are dead, and you often say that your aunt takes no interest in you. Therefore your life depends on yourself. Think it over carefully, but settle in having one settled stick. If you think that this writing is practicable and that you could make your living by it, that you could if needs be support a wife, then by all means write. But you must work, work and drudge. Begin at the bottom of the latch and work upwards. Ricky's head drooped. Any metaphor silenced him. He never thought of replying that art in the latter, with a curate as it were on the first rung erector on the second and a bishop still near heaven at the top. He never retorted that the artist is not a bricklayer at all, but a horseman whose business it is to catch pegasus at once, not to practice for him by mounting tamer cults. This is hard, hot, and generally ungraceful work, but it is not drudgery. For drudgery is not art and cannot lead to it. Of course I don't really think about writing, he said, as he poured the cold water into the coffee. Even if my things ever were decent I don't think the magazines would take them and magazines are one's only chance. I read somewhere too that Marie Carelli is about the only person who makes a thing out of literature. I'm certain it wouldn't pay me. I never mentioned the word pay, so Mr. Pembroke uneasily. You must not consider money, there are ideals too. I have no ideals. Ricky, she exclaimed, horrible boy! I have no ideals. Then he got very red, for it was a phrase he'd caught from Ansel, and he could not remember what came next. The person who has no ideals, she exclaimed, is to be pitied. I think so too, said Mr. Pembroke, sipping his coffee. Life without an ideal would be like the sky without the sun. Ricky looked towards the night, wherein there now twinkled innumerable stars, gods and heroes, virgins and brides to whom the Greeks have given their names. The D.L. repeated Mr. Pembroke, and then stopped, where his mouth was full of coffee grounds. The same affliction had overtaken Agnes. After a little jokos laughter, they departed to their lodgings, and Ricky, having seen them as far as the porter's lodge, hurried, singing as he went, to Ansel's room. First opened the door and said, look here, whatever do you mean by it? By what? Ansel was sitting alone with a piece of paper in front of him, on it was a diagram, inside which was, again, a square. By being so rude, you're not gentlemen, and I told her so. He slammed him on the head with a silver cushion. I'm certain one ought to be polite, even to people who aren't saved. Not saved was her phrase they applied just then to those whom they did not like or intimately know. And I believe she is saved. I never knew anyone, so always good tempered and kind. She's been kind to me ever since I knew her. I wish you'd heard her trying to stop her brother. I'll come round. Not but what he was only being nice as well. But she is really nice, and I thought she came into the room so beautifully. Do you know? Oh, of course he despised music, but Anderson was playing Wagner and he just got to the part where they sing, Rhyngold, Rhyngold, and the sun strikes into the waters and the music, which up to then has so often been an E flat, goes into D sharp. I've not understood a single word, partly because you talk as if your mouth belongs, partly because I don't know whom you're talking about. Miss Pembroke, whom you saw. I saw no one. Who came in? No one came in. You're an ass, Shriek Rikki. She came in. You saw her come in. She and her brother have been to dinner. You only think so. They were not really there. But they stopped till Monday. You only think that they're stopping. But, oh, look here. Shut up. The girl like an empress. I saw no empress, nor any girl, nor have you seen them. Ansel, don't rag. Elliot, I never rag, and you know it. She was not really there. There was a moment's silence. Then Rikki exclaimed, I've got you. You say. Or was it tillered? No. You say that the cow's there. Well, there these people are then. Got you. Yeah. Did it never strike you that the phenomena may be of two kinds? One, those which have a real existence, such as the cow. Two, those which are the subjective product which to our destruction we invest with a semblance of reality. If this never struck you, let it strike you now. Rikki spoke again, but received no answer. He paced a little up and down the somber room. Then he sat on the edge of the table and watched his clever friend draw within the square a circle and within the circle a square and inside that another circle and inside that another square. Why will you do that? No answer. Are they real? The inside one is the one in the middle of everything and there's never room enough to draw. End of part one, chapter one, The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster. Chapter two of The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster read for you by Julie Pandia. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. To find out more or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Longest Journey Chapter two A little this side of Manningley to the left of the road, there is a secluded dell paid with grass implanted with fir trees. It could not have been worth a visit twenty years ago, for then it was only a scar of chalk and it is not worth a visit at the present day, for the trees have grown too thick and choked it. But when Rikki was up, it chanced to be the brief season of its romance. A season as brief for a love-pit as a man, its divine interval between the bareness of boyhood and the stuffiness of age. Rikki had discovered it in his second term when the January snows had melted and left fjords and lagoons of clearest water between the inequalities of the floor. The place looked as big as Switzerland or Norway as indeed for the moment it was and he came upon it at a time when his life too was beginning to expand. Accordingly the dell became for him a kind of church. Which were indeed you could do anything you liked, but where anything you did would be transfigured. Like the ancient Greeks he could even laugh at his holy place and leave it no less holy. He chatted gaily about it and about the pleasant thoughts with which it inspired him. He took his friends there. He even took people whom he did not like. Prokleste profane exclaimed a delighted esthete on being introduced to it. But this was never to be the attitude of Ricky. He did not love the vulgar her but he knew that his own vulgarity would be greater if he forbade ingress and that it was not by preciosity that he would attain to the intimate spirit of the dell. Indeed if he had agreed with the esthete he would possibly not have introduced him. If the dell was to bear any inscription he would have liked it to be this way to heaven. Painted on a signpost by the high road and he did not realize till later years that the number of visitors would not there have sensibly increased. On the bless of Monday that the Pembrokes left he walked out here with three friends. It was a day when the sky seemed enormous. One cloud as large as a continent was voyaging near the sun. False other clouds seemed anchored to the horizon too lazy or too happy to move. The sky itself was of the palest blue paling to white where it approached the earth and the earth brown wet and odorous was engaged beneath it on its yearly duty of decay. Ricky was open to the complexities of autumn. He felt extremely tiny extremely tiny and extremely important and perhaps the combination is as fair as any that exists. He hoped that all his life he would never be peevish or unkind. Elliott is in a dangerous state said Ansel. They had reached the dell and had stood for some time in silence each leaning against a tree. It was too wet to sit down. How's that? asked Ricky to stay at all. He shut up Keats whom he thought he'd been reading and slipped him back into his coat pocket. Scarcely ever was he without a book. He was trying to like people. Then he's done for us at Woodrington. He's dead. He's trying to like Hornblower. The others gave shrill agonized cries. He wants to buy in the college together. He wants to link us to the beefy set. I do like Hornblower, he protested. I don't try. And Hornblower tries to like you. That part doesn't matter. But he does try to like you. He tries not to despise you. It is altogether a most public spirited affair. Tillard started them said Woodrington. Tillard thinks it's such a pity the college should be split into sets. Oh, Tillard said Ansel with much irritation. But what can you expect from a person who is eternally beautiful? The other night we've been discussing a long time and suddenly the light was turned on. Everyone else looked at sight as they ought. But there was Tillard sitting neatly on a little chair like an undersized god with not a curl crooked. I should say he will get into the foreign office. Why are most of us so ugly? laughed Ricky. It's merely a sign of our salvation. Really another sign that the college is split. The college isn't split. cried Ricky who got excited on the subject with unfailing regularity. The college is and has been. It always will be one. What you call the beefy set aren't a set at all. They're just the rowing people and naturally they chiefly see each other. But they're always nice to me or to anyone. Of course, they think us rather asses but it's quite in a pleasant way. That's my whole objection, said Ansel. What right have they to think us asses in a pleasant way? Why don't they hate us? What right has harm lured to smack me on the back when I've been rude to him? Well, what right have you to be rude to him? Because I hate him. You think it is so splendid to hate no one. I tell you, it is a crime. You want to love everyone equally and that's worse than impossible, it's wrong. When you do not set, you're really trying to destroy friendship. I maintain, said Ricky. It was a verb he clung to in the hope that it would lend stability to what followed. I maintain that one can like many more people than one supposes. And I maintain that you hate many more people than you pretend. I hate no one, he exclaimed with extraordinary vehemence and the del rieco that it hated no one. We are obliged to believe you, said Woodrington, smiling a little, but we are sorry about it. Not even your father, asked Ansel. Ricky was silent. Not even your father. The cloud above extended a great promontory across the sun. It only lay there for a moment, yet that was enough to summon the lurking coldness from the earth. Does he hate his father, said Woodrington, who had not known? Oh, good. But as father's dead, he will say it doesn't count. Does it something? Do you hate yours? Ansel did not reply. Ricky said, I say, I wonder whether one ought to talk like this. About hitting dead people? Yes. Did you hate your mother? asked Woodrington. Ricky turned crimson. I don't see harmblower as such a roger, remarked the other men. His name was James. James, you are diplomatic, said Ansel. You're trying to tide over an awkward moment. You can go. Woodrington was crimson, too. In his wish to be sprightly, he had used words without thinking of their meanings. Suddenly he realized that father and mother really meant father and mother, people whom he had himself at home. He was very uncomfortable and thought Ricky had been rather queer. He, too, tried to revert to hornblower, but Ansel did not let him. The sun came out and struck on the white ramparts of the dell. Ricky looked straight at it. Then he said abruptly, I think I want to talk. I think you do, replied Ansel. Shouldn't I be rather a fool if I want through Cambridge without talking? It's said never to come so easy again. All the people are dead, too. I can't see why I shouldn't tell you most things about my birth and parentage and education. Talk away. If you bore us, we have books. With this invitation, Ricky began to relate his history. The reader who has no book will be obliged to listen to it. Some people spend their lives in a suburb and not for any urgent reason. This had been the fate of Ricky. He'd opened his eyes to filmy heavens and taken his first walk on Asphalt. He had seen civilization as a row of semi-detached villas and society as a state in which men do not know the men who live next door. He had himself become part of the grey monotony that surrounds all cities. There was no necessity for this. It was only rather convenient to his father. Mr. Elliott was a barrister. In appearance he resembled his son being weakly in lame with hollow little cheeks, a broad white band of forehead, and stiff impoverished hair. His voice, which he did not transmit, was very suave with a fine command of cynical intonation. By altering it ever so little he could make people wince, especially if they were simple or poor. Nor did he transmit his eyes. Their peculiar flatness, as if the soul looked through dirty windowpains, the unkindness of them, the cowardice, the fear in them, the hunger. He married a girl whose voice was beautiful. There was no caress in it, yet all who heard it was soothed, as though the world held some unexpected blessing. She called her dogs one night over invisible waters, and he, at first up on the bridge, thought, that is extraordinarily adequate. In time he discovered that her figure face and thoughts were adequate also, and as she was not impossible socially he married her. I have taken a plunge, he told his family. The family, hostile at first, had not a word to say when the woman was introduced to them, and his sister declared that the plunge had been taken from the opposite bank. Things only went right for a little time. Though beautiful without and within, Mrs. Elliot had not the gift of making her home beautiful, and one day when she bought a carpet for the dining-room that clashed he laughed gently, said he really liked it. Departure is perhaps too strong a word. In Mrs. Elliot's mouth it became my husband has to sleep more in town. He often came down to see them, nearly always unexpectedly, and occasionally they went to see him. Father's house, as Ricky called it, only had three rooms, but these were full of books and pictures and flowers, and the flowers, instead of being squashed down into vases and gracefully from frames of lead which they coiled at the bottom. As doubtless the sea serpent has to lie coiled at the bottom of the sea. Once he was led to live to frame out only once, for he dropped some water on a crayton. I think he's going to have taste, said Mr. Elliot languidly. It is quite possible, his wife replied, she had not taken off her hat and gloves, nor even pulled up her veil. Mr. Elliot laughed, and they went away. Why does father always laugh, as Ricky in the evening when he and his mother were sitting in the nursery? It is the way of your father's. Why does he always laugh at me? Am I so funny? Then after a pause, you have no sense of humor, have you, mummy? Mrs. Elliot, who was raising a thread of cotton to her lips, held it suspended in amazement. You told him so this afternoon, but I have seen you laugh. He nodded wisely. I have seen you laugh ever so often. One day you were laughing all alone, down in the sweet peas. Was I? Yes, were you laughing at me? I was not thinking about you. Caution, please, a real number fifty white from my chest of drawers. Left-hand drawer. No, which is your left side? The side my pocket is. And if you had no pocket, the side my bad foot is. I meant you to say the side my heart is, so Mrs. Elliot holding up the duster between them. Most of us, I mean all of us, can feel on one side a little watch that never stops ticking, so even if you had no bad foot you would still know which is the left. Number fifty white, please. No, I'll get it myself, for she had remembered that the dark passage frightened him. These were the outlines. Ricky filled them in with the slowness that he had never told anything, but he discovered for himself that his father and mother did not love each other and that his mother was lovable. He discovered that Mr. Elliot had dubbed him Ricky because he was rickety, that he took pleasure in alluding to his son's deformity and was sorry that it was not more serious than his own. Mr. Elliot had not one scrap of genius. He gathered the pictures and the books and the flower supports mechanically, not in any impulse of love. He never cultured man because he knew how to select, and he passed for an unconventional man because he did not select quite like other people. In reality he never did or said or thought one single thing that had the slightest beauty or value, and in time Ricky discovered this as well. The boy grew up in great loneliness. He worshipped his mother and she was fond of him, but she was dignified and reticent and pathos like Tatl was disgusting to her. She was afraid of intimacy in case it led to confidences and tears, and so all her life she held her son at a little distance. Her kindness and unselfishness knew no limits, but if he tried to be dramatic and thank her, she told him not to be a little goose, so the only person he came to know it all was himself. He would play Hama against himself. He would conduct solitary conversations in which one part of him asked and another part answered. It was an exciting game and concluded with the formula. Goodbye. Thank you. I am glad to admit you. I hope before long we shall enjoy another chat. And then perhaps he would solve for loneliness, for he would see real people, real brothers, real friends doing in warm life the things he had pretended. Shall I ever have a friend he demanded at the age of twelve? I don't see how. They walk too fast, and a brother I shall never have. No laws interrupted Warrington. But I shall never have one, so I quite want one even now. When he was thirteen, Mr. Elliott entered on his illness. The pretty rooms in town would not do for an invalid, and so he came back to his home. One of the first consequences was that Ricky was sent to a public school. Mrs. Elliott did what she could, but she had no hold whatever over her husband. He worries me, he declared. He's a joke of which I have got tired. Would it be possible to send him to a private school? No, so Mr. Elliott, who had all the money, called me. I agree that boy is ought to rough it, but when a boy is lame and very delicate, he roughs it sufficiently if he leaves home. Ricky can't play games, he doesn't make friends, he isn't brilliant. Thinking it over, I feel that as it's like this, we can't ever hope to give him the ordinary education. Perhaps you could think it over too. No. I am sure that things are best for him as they are. The boy is many corners off him as he can stand. He hates it, but it is good for him. A public school will not be good for him. It is too rough. Instead of getting manly and hard, he wilt my head, please. Ricky departed in a state of bewildered misery, which was scarcely ever to grow clearer. Each holiday he found his father more irritable and a little weaker. Mrs. Elliott was quickly growing old. She had to answer the correspondence to paper and repaper the rooms, and all for the sake of a man whom she did not like and who did not conceal his dislike for her. One day she found Ricky tearful and said rather crossly, Well, what is it this time? He replied, Oh, Mummy, I've seen your wrinkles, your grey hair, I'm unhappy. Sudden tenderness overcame her, and she cried, My darling, what does it matter? Whatever does it matter now? He had never known her so emotional, yet even better did he remember another incident. Hearing high voices from his father's room, he went upstairs in the hope that the sound of his tread might stop them. Mrs. Elliott burst open the door and seeing him exclaimed, My dear, if you please, he's hit me. She tried to laugh it off, but a few hours later he saw the bruise which this stick of the invalid had raised upon his mother's hand. God alone knows how far we are on the grip of our bodies. He alone can judge how far cruelty of Mr. Elliott was the outcome of extenuating circumstances, but Mrs. Elliott could accurately judge of its extent. At last he died. Ricky was now fifteen and got off a whole week's school for the funeral. His mother was rather strange. She was much happier, she looked younger, and her morning was as unobtrusive as convention permitted. All this he had expected, but she seemed to be watching him and to be extremely anxious for his opinion on any subject, more especially on his father. Why? At last he saw that she was trying to establish confidence between them, but confidence cannot be established in a moment. They were both shy. The habit of years was upon them, and they alluded to the death of Mr. Elliott as an irreparable loss. Now that your father has gone things will be very different. Shall we be poor, mother? No. Oh. But naturally things will be very different. Yes, naturally. For instance, your poor father liked being near London, but I almost think we might move. Would you like that? Of course, mummy. He looked down at the ground. He was not accustomed to being consulted, and it bewildered him. Perhaps you might like quite a different life better? He giggled. It's a little difficult for me, so Mrs. Elliott pacing vigorously up and down the room, and more and more did her black dress seem a mockery. In some ways you ought to be consulted. Nearly all the money is left to you, as you must hear some time or other. But in other ways, you're only a boy. What am I to do? I don't know, he replied, appearing more helpless and unhelpful than he really was. For instance, would you like me to arrange things exactly as I like? Oh, do! he exclaimed, thinking this a most brilliant suggestion. The very nicest thing of all, and he added, in his half romantic, half pleasing way, I shall be as wax in your hands, Mama. She smiled. Very well, darling, you shall be. And she pressed him lovingly, as though she would mold him into something beautiful. For the next few days great preparations were in the air. She went to see his father's sister, the gifted and vivacious and Emily. They were to live in the country, somewhere right in the country, with grass and trees up to the door, with birds singing everywhere, and a bird singing. He was not to go back to school. Unbelievable! He was never to go back to school, and the headmaster had written saying that he regretted the step, but that possibly it was a wise one. It was raw weather, and Mrs. Elliot watched over him with ceaseless tenderness. It seemed as if she could not do too much to shield him and to draw him nearer to her. Put on your great coat, dearest, she said to him. Miss Bitter, you ought to put it on. But it's so heavy. Do put it on, dear. He was not very often irritable or rude, but he answered, Oh, I shan't catch cold, I do wish you wouldn't keep on bothering. He did not catch cold, but while he was out, his mother died. She only survived her husband eleven days, a coincidence which was recorded on their tombstone. Such in substance was the story which Ricky told his friends as they hit the entrance to the road and the world, and now as in spring they could see nothing but snow-white ramparts and the evergreen foliage of the furs. Only from time to time would a beach leaf flutter in from the woods above to comment on the waning year, and the warmth and radiance of the sun would vanish behind a passing cloud. About the great coat he did not tell them, for he could not have spoken of it without tears. Chapter 3 of the Longest Journey by E. M. Forster Chapter 3 of the Longest Journey by E. M. Forster This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. To find out more or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Longest Journey Chapter 3 Read for You by Julie Pandia Mr. Ansel, a provincial draper of moderate prosperity ought by rights to have been classed not with a cow, but with those phenomena that are not really there. But his son, with pardonable illogicality, accepted him. He never suspected that his father might be the subjective product of a diseased imagination. From his earliest years he had taken him for granted, as a most undeniable and lovable fact. To be born one thing and grow up another, Ansel had accomplished this without weakening one of the ties that bound him to his home. The rooms above the shop still seemed as comfortable. The garden behind it is gracious, as they had seemed fifteen years before when he would sit behind Miss Appelblossom's central throne, and she, like some allegorical figure, would send the change and receded bills spinning away from her in little boxwood balls. At first the young man had attributed these happy relations to his own tact. But in time he proceeded the tact was all on the side of his father. Mr. Ansel was not merely a man of some education. He had what no education can bring, the power of detecting what is important. Like many fathers he had spared no expense over his boy. He had borrowed money to start him at a rapacious and fashionable private school. He had sent him to tutors. He had sent him to Cambridge. But he knew that all this was not the important thing. The important thing was freedom. The boy must use his education as he chose, and if he paid his father back it would certainly not be in his own coin. So when Stuart said, at Cambridge can I read for the Moral Science Tripos? Mr. Ansel had only replied, this philosophy do you say that it lies behind everything? Yes, I think so. It tries to discover what is good and true. Then my boy you had better read as much of it as you can. And a year later, I'd like to take up this philosophy seriously but I don't feel justified. Why not? Because it brings in no return. I think I'm a great philosopher but then all philosophers think that though they don't dare to say so. But however great I am I shan't earn money. Perhaps I shan't ever be able to keep myself. I shan't even get a good social position. You've only to say one word and I'll work for the civil service. I'm good enough to get in high. Mr. Ansel liked money and social position but he knew that there is a more important thing and replied, you must take up this philosophy seriously I think. Another thing, there are the girls. There is enough money now to get Mary and Ma as good husbands as they deserve. And Mary and Ma took the same view. It was in this plebeian household that Ricky spent part of the Christmas vacation. His own home such as it was, was with the silt nitty cousins of his fathers and combined to a peculiar degree the restrictions of hospitality with the discomforts of a boarding house. Such pleasure as he had outside Cambridge was in the homes of his friends and it was a particular joy and honor to visit Ansel. Who though as free from social snobbishness as most of us will ever manage to be was rather careful when he drove up to the facade of his shop. Like a new lettering he said Ansel will repeat it again and again along the high street. Curly gold letters that seem to float in tanks of glazed chocolate. Rather, said Ricky, but he wondered whether one of the bonds that kept the Ansel family united might not be the complete absence of taste, a sureer bond by far than the identity of it. And he wondered this again when he sat at tea opposite a long row of crayons. Steward as a baby, steward as a small boy with large boy with smaller feet. Mary reading a book whose leaves were as thick as idredowns and yet again did he wonder it when he woke with a gasp in the night to find a harp in luminous paint throbbing and glowering at him from the adjacent wall. Watch and pray was written on the harp and until Ricky hung a towel over it the exhortation was partially successful. It was a very happy visit. Miss Appelblossom, who now acted as housekeeper, had met him before during her never-forgotten expedition to Cambridge, and her admiration of university life was as shrill and as genuine now as it had been then. The girls at first were a little aggressive, for on his arrival he had been tired and mawed to take it for haughtiness and said he was looking down on them. But this passed. They did not fall in love with him, nor he with them. But a morning was spent very pleasantly and snowballing in the back garden. Ansel was rather different to what he was in Cambridge, less attractive. And there was a curious charm in the hum of the shop which swelled into a roar if one opened the partition door on a market day. Listen to your money, said Ricky. I wish I could hear mine. I wish my money was alive. I don't understand. Mine's dead money. It's come to me through about six dead people, silently getting a little smaller and a little more respectable each time on account of the death duties. It needed to get respectable. Why, did your people too once keep a shop? Oh, not as bad as that. They only swindled. About a hundred years ago an elite did something shady and founded the fortunes of our house. I never knew anyone so relentless to his ancestors. You make up for your silliness towards the living. You'd be relentless too if you'd heard the sills, as I have talk about a fortune small perhaps, but unsoiled by trade. Of course on Emily is rather different. Oh, goodness me, I've forgotten my aunt. She lives not so far. I shall have to call on her. Accordingly he wrote to Mrs. Fowling and said he should like to pay his respects. He told her about the ancels, and so worded the letter that she might reasonably have sent an invitation to his friend. She replied that she was looking forward to the tay-de-tay. You mustn't go round by the trains, Mr. Ansel. It means changing at Salisbury. By the road it's no trouble to drive you over Salisbury plain and fetch you, too. There's too much snow, said Ansel, and the girls will take you in their sled. That I will, said Mod, who is not unwilling to see the inside of Cadover, but Ricky went round by the trains. We have all missed you, said Ansel, when he returned. There is a general feeling that you are no nuisance, and it better stop till the end of the vague. This he could not do. He was bound for Christmas to the sills, as underlining the word real twice, and after Christmas he must go to the Pembrokes. These are no reasons. The only real reason for doing a thing is because you want to do it. I think the talk about engagements is cat. I think perhaps it is, said Ricky, but he went, never had the turkey been so athletic or the plum pudding tied into its cloth so tightly, yet he knew that both these symbols of hilarity had cost money, and it went to his heart when Mr. Silt said in a hungry voice, Have you thought at all of what you want to be? No? Well, why should you? You have no need to be anything, and at dessert. I wonder who Cadover goes to. I expect money will follow money. It always does. It was with a guilty feeling of relief that he left for the Pembrokes. The Pembrokes lived in an adjacent suburb, or rather suburb, the tract called Sauston, celebrated for its public school. Their style of life, however, was not particularly suburban. Their house was small, and its name was Shelthorpe, but it had an air about it which suggested a certain amount of money and a certain amount of taste. There were decent watercolors in the drawing-room. Madonna's of acknowledged merit hung upon the stairs. A replica of Hermes of Praxitalis, of course only the bust, stood in the hall with a real palm behind it. Agnes, in her slap-dash way, was a good housekeeper and kept the pretty things well dusted. It was she who insisted on the strip around that led diagonally from the front door to the door of her Herbert's study. Boy's grubby feet should not go treading on her Indian square. It was she who always cleaned the picture frames and washed the bust and the leaves of the palm. In short, if a house could speak, and sometimes it does speak more clearly than the people who live in it, the house of the Pembrokes would have said, I'm not quite like other houses yet I am perfectly comfortable. I contain works of art and a microscope and many of these things or suffer them to disarrange me. I live for myself and for the greater houses that shall come after me, yet in me, neither the cry of money nor the cry for money shall ever be heard. Mr. Pembroke was at the station. He did better as a host than as a guest and welcomed the young man with real friendliness. We were all coming, but Gerald estrange his ankle slightly and wants to keep quiet as he is playing next week in a match, and needless to say that explains the situation with my sister. Gerald does. Yes, he's with us. I'm so glad you'll meet again. So am I, said Ricky with extreme awkwardness. Does he remember me? Vividly. Vivid also was Ricky's remembrance of him. Splendid fellow, asserted Mr. Pembroke. I hope that Agnes is well. Thank you, yes, she is well, and I think you're looking more like other people yourself. I've been having a very good time indeed. That's right. Who is that? Ricky had a young man's reticence. He generally spoke of a friend, a person I know, a place I was at. When the book of life is opening our readings are secret and we are unwilling to give chapter and verse. Mr. Pembroke, who was halfway through the volume and had skipped or forgotten the earlier pages, could not understand Ricky's hesitation, nor a while with such awkwardness that he should pronounce this syllable, Ansel. Ansel, wasn't that the pleasant fellow who asked us to lunch? No, that was Anderson who keeps below. You didn't see Ansel. The ones who came to breakfast were tillered and hornblower. Of course, and since then you have been with the sills. How are they? Very well, thank you. They want to be remembered to you. The Pembrokes had formerly lived near the elliots and had shown great kindness to Ricky when his parents died. They were thus rather in the position to be friends. Please remember us when you write. He added, almost roguishly, the sills are kindness itself. All the same it must be just a little dull, we thought. We thought that you might like a change. And of course we are delighted to have you besides. That goes without saying. It's very good of you, said Ricky, who had accepted the invitation because he felt he ought to. Not a bit, and you mustn't expect us to be otherwise than quiet on the holidays. As you know, and you will find Gerard a splendid fellow. Will they be married soon? Oh no, whispered Mr. Pembroke, shedding his eyes as if Ricky had made some terrible faux pas. It will be a very long engagement. He must make his way first. I have seen such endless misery result from people marrying before they had made their way. Yes, that is so, said Ricky despondently, thinking of the sills. It's a sad, unpalatable truth and a despondency might be personal. But one must accept it, my sister and Gerald. I am thankful to say have accepted it, though naturally it has been a little pill. The cab lurched around the corner as he spoke, and the two patients came in sight. Agnes was leaning over the creosote garden gate, and behind her there stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one. He was fair and clean-shaven, and his colorless hair was cut rather short. Some was in his eyes and they, like his mouth, seemed scarcely more than slits in his healthy skin. Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started. Around his neck went an up-and-down collar and a mauve and gold tie, and the rest of his limbs were hidden by a grey lounge suit carefully creased in the right places. Lovely, lovely! cried Agnes, banging on the gate. Your train must have been to the minute. Hello! said the athlete, and vomited with the greening and cloud of tobacco smoke. It must have been imprisoned in his mouth some time, for no pipe was visible. Hello! returned Ricky, laughing violently. They shook hands. Where are you going, Ricky? asked Agnes. You aren't grubby. Why don't you stop? Gerald, get the large wicker chair. Herbert has letters, but we can sit here till lunch. It's like spring. The garden of Shelforpe was nearly all in front of an unusual and pleasant arrangement. The front gate and the servant's entrance were both at the side, and in the remaining space the gardener had contrived a little lawn and could sit concealed from the road by a fence, from the neighbor by a fence, from the house by a tree, and from the path by a bush. This is the lover's bower, observed Agnes sitting down on the bench. Ricky stood by her till the chair arrived. Are you smoking before lunch, as Mr. Dawes? No, thank you. I hardly ever smoke. No vices. Aren't you at Cambridge now? Yes. What's your college? Ricky told him. Do you know Carruthers? Rather. I mean Ap Carruthers, who got his soccer blue. Rather, he's secretary to the College Musical Society. Ap Carruthers? Yes. Mr. Dawes even defended. He tapped on his teeth and remarked that the weather had no business to be so warm in winter, but it was fiendish before Christmas, said Agnes. He frowned and asked, Do you know a man called Garrosh? No. Ah! Do you know James? Never heard of him. My year, too, he got a blue for hockey in his second term. I know nothing about the varsity. Ricky winced at the abbreviation varsity. It was at that time the proper thing to speak of, the university. I haven't the time, pursued Mr. Dawes. No, no, said Ricky politely. I had the chance of being an undergrad myself, and by Jove I'm thankful I didn't. Why, asked Agnes, for there was a pause. Let's do back in your profession. Men who go there first before the army start hopelessly behind. The same with the stock exchange or painting. I know men in both. They've never caught up the time they lost in the varsity, unless, of course, you turn parson. I love Cambridge, said she, all those glorious buildings and everyone so happy and running in and out of each other's rooms all day long. That might make an undergrad happy, but I beg leave to state it wouldn't me. I haven't four years to throw away for the sake of being called a varsity man and hobnobbing with lords. Ricky was prepared to find his old school fellow ungrammatical and bumptious, but he was not prepared to find him peevish. Athletes, he believed, were simple, straightforward people, cruel and brutal, if you like, but never petty. They knocked you down and hurt you, and then went on their way rejoicing. For this, Ricky thought there was something to be said. He had escaped the sin of despising the physically strong, a sin against which the physically weak must guard. But here was Dawes returning again and again to the subject of the university, full of transparent jealousy and petty spite, nagging, nagging, nagging like a maiden lady who has not been invited to a tea-party. Ricky wondered whether, after all, Ansel in the extremists might not be right, and bodily beauty and strength be signs of the soul's damnation. He glanced at Agnes. She was writing down some orderings for the tradespeople on a piece of paper. Her handsome face was intent on the work. The bench on which she and Gerald had no back, but she sat as straight as a dart. He, though strong enough to sit straight, did not take their trouble. One of them talked to each other, thought Ricky. Gerald, give this paper to the cook. I can give it to the other slavey, can't I? She'd be dressing. Well, there's Herbert. He's busy. Oh, you know where the kitchen is. Take it to the cook. He disappeared slowly behind the tree. What do you think of him? She immediately asked. He murmured calmly. Has he changed since he was his schoolboy? In a way. Do tell me all about him. Why won't you? She might have seen a flash of horror pass over Ricky's face. The horror disappeared, for thank God he was not a man whom civilization protects. But he and Gerald had met, as it were, behind the scenes before our decorous drama begins. And there the elder boy had done things to him. Observed things, not worth chronicling separately. An apple pie bed is nothing. Pinches, kicks, boxed ears, twisted arms, pulled hair, ghost at night, inky books, befell photographs amount to very little by themselves. But let them be united and continuous, and you have a hell that no grown-up devil can devise. Between Ricky and Gerald there lay a shadow that darkens life more often than we suppose. The bully and his victim never quite forget their first relations. They're meeting clubs and country houses and clap one another on the back, but in both the memory is green of a more strenuous day when they were boys together. He tried to say he was the right kind of boy and I was the wrong kind. But Cambridge would not let him smooth the situation over by self belittlement. If he'd been the wrong kind of boy Gerald had been a worse kind. He murmured we are a different very. And Miss Pember, perhaps suspecting something, asked no more. But she kept to the subject of Mr. Dawes depreciating her lover and discussing him without reverence. Ricky laughed but felt uncomfortable. When people were engaged he felt that they should be outside criticism. Yet here he was criticizing. He could not help it. He was dragged in. I hope his ankle is better. Never was bad. He's always fussing over something. He plays next week in a match, I think Herbert says. I dare say he does. Shall we be going? Pray go if you like. I shall stop at home. I have had enough of cold feet. It was all very colorless and odd. Gerald returns saying I can't stand your cook. What she want to ask me questions for. I can't stand talking to servants. I say if I speak to you well and good and it's another thing besides if she were pretty. Well I hope our ugly cook will have lunch any in a minute, said Agnes. We're frightfully unpunctual this morning and I dare not say anything because it was the same yesterday and if I complain again they might leave. Poor wiki must be starved. Why the silks gave me all these sandwiches that I've never eaten them. They always stuff one. And you thought you'd better, eh? said Mr. Dawes in case you weren't stuffed here. Miss Pembroke, who house kept someone economically looked annoyed. The voice of Mr. Pembroke was now heard calling from the house. Frederick! Frederick! My dear boy pardon me. It was an important letter about the church guys. Come in and see your room. He was glad to quit the little lawn. He learned too much there. It was dreadful. They did not love each other. More dreadful even than the case of his father and mother for they, until they married, had gone on pretty well. But this man was already rude and brutal and cold. He was still a school bully who twisted up the arms of little boys and struck them in the stomach when they were swinging on the horizontal bar. Poor Agnes. Why ever had she done it? She thought not somebody to interfere. He had forgotten his sandwiches and went back to get them. Gerald and Agnes were locked in each other's arms. He only looked for a moment, but the sight burnt into his brain. The man's grip was the stronger. He had drawn the woman onto his knee, was pressing her with all his strength against him. Already her hands slipped off him and she whispered Don't! You hurt! Her face had no expression. It stared at the intruder and never stopped. Then her lover kissed it and immediately it shone with mysterious beauty like some star. Ricky limped away without the sandwiches, crimson and afraid. He thought do such things actually happen? And he seemed to be looking down colored valleys. Brighter they glowed, till gods of pure flame were born in them. And then he was looking at pinnacles of virgin snow. Well, Mr. Pember talked to the riot of fair images increased. They invaded his being but lamps at unsuspected shrines. Their orchestra commenced in that suburban house where he had to stand aside for the maid to carry in the luncheon. Music flowed past him like a river. He stood at the springs of creation and heard the primeval monotony. Then an obscure instrument gave out a little phrase. The river continued unheating. The phrase was repeated and a listener might know it was a fragment of the tune of tunes. Nobler instruments accepted it. The clarinet brass encouraged and it rose to the surface to the whisperer violins. In full unison was love born, flame of flame flushing the dark river beneath him in the virgin snows above. His wings were infinite. His youth eternal. The sun was a jewel on his finger as he passed it in benediction over the world. Creation no longer monotonous acclaimed him in widening melody, in brighter radiances. Was love a column of fire? Was it a torrent of song? Was he greater than either the touch of a man on a woman? It was the nearest accident that Ricky had not been disgusted, but this he could not know. Mr. Pemberg, when he called the two daughters into lunch, was aware of a hand in his arm and a voice that murmured, Don't they may be happy. He stared and struck the gong to its music they approached, priest and high priestess. Ricky, can I give these sandwiches to the two of them? The gong, be quick the gong. Are you smoking before lunch? said the other. But they got into heaven and nothing could get them out of it. Others might think them surly or prosaic. He knew he could remember every word they spoke. He would treasure every motion, every glance of either, and so in time to come when the gates of heaven had shut some faint radiance, some echo of wisdom remained with him outside. As a matter of fact, he saw very little during his visit. He tricked himself because he was unworthy. What right had he to pry, even in the spirit, upon their bliss? It was no crime to have seen them on the lawn. It would be a crime to go to it again. He tried to keep himself in his thoughts away, not because he was ascetic, but because they would not like it if they knew. This behavior of his suited them admirably. And when any gracious little thing occurred to him, any little thing that his sympathy had contrived and allowed, they put it down to chance or to each other. So the lovers fall into the background. They are part of the distant sunrise, and only the mountains speak to them. Ricky talks to Mr. Pembroke amidst the unlit valleys of our over-habitable world. End of Chapter 3. The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster Chapter 4 of The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. To find out more or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Longest Journey Chapter 4 Read for You by Julie Pandia Sauston School had been founded by a tradesman in the seventeenth century. It was then a tiny grammar school in a tiny town, and the city company who governed it had to drive half a day through the woods and heath on the occasion of their annual visit. In the twentieth century they still drove, but only from the railway station and found themselves not in a tiny town, nor yet in a large one, but amongst innumerable residences detached and semi-detached, which had gathered around the school. For the intentions of the founder had been altered, or at all events amplified. Instead of educating the poor of my home, he now educated the upper classes of England. The change had taken place not so far back. Till the nineteenth century the grammar school was still composed of day scholars from the neighborhood. Then two things happened. Firstly, the school's property rose in value, and it became rich. Secondly, for no obvious reason it suddenly emitted a quantity of bishops. The bishops, like the stars from a Roman candle, were all colors and flew in all directions. Some high, some low, some to distant colonies, one into the church of Rome. But many father traced their course in the papers. Many a mother wondered whether her son, if properly ignited, might not burn as bright. Many a family moved to the place where living and education were so cheap, where day boys were not looked down upon, and where the orthodox and the up-to-date were said to be combined. The school doubled its numbers. It built new classrooms, laboratories, and a gymnasium. It dropped the prefix grammar. It coaxed the sons of the local tradesmen into a new foundation, the commercial school, built a couple of miles away, and it started boarding-houses. It had not the gracious antiquity of Eaton or Winchester, nor, on the other hand, had it a conscious policy like Lansing, Wellington, and other purely modern foundations. Where tradition served, it clung to them. Where new departures seemed desirable, they were made. It aimed at producing the average Englishman, and to a very great extent it succeeded. Here Mr. Pembroke passed his happy and industrious life. His technical position was that of master to a form low down on the modern side, but his work lay elsewhere. He organized. If no organization existed, he would create one. If one did exist, he would modify it. An organization, he would say, is after all not an end in itself. It must contribute to a movement when one good customs seemed likely to corrupt and he was ready with another. He believed that without innumerable customs there was no safety, either for boys or men. Perhaps he is right, and always will be right. Perhaps each of us would go to ruin if for one short hour we acted as we thought fit and attempted the service of perfect freedom. The school caps with their elaborate symbolism were his. His the many tinted bathing drawers that showed how far a boy could swim. His the hierarchy and blazers. It was he who instituted bounds and call and the two sorts of exercise paper and the three sorts of caning and the satonian a bi-terminal magazine. His plump finger was in every pie. The dome of his skull, mild but impressive, shone at every master's meeting, he was generally acknowledged to be the coming man. His last achievement had been the organization of the day boys. They had been left too much to themselves and were weak in his spree decor. They were apt to regard home, not school as the most important thing in their lives. Moreover, they got out of their parents hands. They did their preparation any time and sometimes anyhow. They shirked games. They were out at all hours, ate what they should not. They smoked. They bicycled on the asphalt. Now all was over. Like boarders, they were to be in at 7.15 p.m. and were not allowed out after unless with a written order or guardian. They too must work at fixed hours in the evening and before breakfast next morning from 7 to 8. Games were compulsory. They must not go to parties in term time. They must keep to bounds. Of course, the reform was not complete. It was impossible to control the dieting, though on a printed circular, day parents were implored to provide simple food. And it is also believed that some mothers dissipated the rule of her preparation and allowed their sons to do all the work overnight and have a longer sleep in the morning. But the gulf between day boys and boarders was considerably lessened and grew still narrow when the day boys too were organized into a house with house master and colors of their own. Through the house, Mr. Pemberg won Lawrence patriotism for the school, just as through the school won Lawrence patriotism for the country. Our only course, therefore, is to organize the day boys into a house. The headmaster was seen, as he often did, and the new community was formed. Mr. Pemberg, to avoid the tongues of malice, had refused the post of house master for himself, saying to Mr. Jackson, who taught the six, you keep too much in the background. Here is a chance for you. But this was a failure. Mr. Jackson, a scholar and a student, neither felt nor conveyed any enthusiasm, and when confronted with his house would say, well, I don't know what we're all going to think you'd better go home to your mother's. He returned to his background, and next term Mr. Pemberg was to take his place. Such were the themes on which Mr. Pemberg discoursed to Ricky's civil ear. He showed him the school, and the library, and the subterranean hall, where the day boys might leave their coats and caps, and where on festival occasions they subbed. He showed him Mr. Jackson's pretty house, and whispered, were it not for his brilliant intellect or the case of quick march. He showed him the racquet court happily completed, and the chapel unhappily still in need of funds. Ricky was impressed, but then he was impressed by everything. Of course, the house of day boys seemed a little shadowy after Agnes and Gerald, but he imparted some reality even to that. The racquet court, so Mr. Pemberg, is most gratifying. We never expected to manage it this year, but before the Easter holidays, he received a subscription card, and was given to understand that he must collect thirty shillings. You will scarcely believe me, but they nearly all responded. Next term there was a dinner in the great school, and all who had collected not thirty shillings, but as much as a pound were invited to it, for naturally one was not precise for a few shillings. The response being the really valuable thing. Practically the whole school had to come. They must enjoy the court tremendously. They used very much. Rackets, as I dare say you know, is rather an expensive game. Only the wealthier boys play, and I am sorry to say that it is not of our wealthier boys that we are always the proudest. But the point is that no public school could be called first class until it has one. They are building them right and left. And now you must finish the chapel. Now we must complete the chapel. He paused reverently and said, and here is a fragment of the original building. Ricky at once had a rush of sympathy. He too looked with reverence at the morsel of Jacobian brickwork, ruddy and beautiful amidst the machine-squared stones of the modern apps. The two men who had so little in common were thrilled with patriotism. They rejoiced that their country was great, noble, and old. Thank God I am English! said Ricky suddenly. Thank him indeed! said Mr. Pembergling, a hand on his back. We have been nearly as great as the Greeks, I do believe. Greater I am sure than the Italians, though they did get closer to beauty. Greater than the French, though we do take all their ideas, I can't help thinking that England is immense. English literature, certainly. Mr. Pembergling removed his hand. He found such patriotism somewhat craven. Genuine patriotism comes only from the heart. It knows no parlaying with reason. English ladies will declare a bra that there are no fogs in London. And Mr. Pemberg, though he would not go to this, was only restrained by the certainty of being found out. On this occasion he remarked that the Greeks lacked spiritual insight and had a low conception of women. As to women? Oh, they were dreadful, said Ricky, leaning his hand on the chapel. I realize that more and more, but as to spiritual insight I don't quite like to say, and I find Plato too difficult, but I know men who don't, and I fancy you. Far be it from me to discourage Plato, and for philosophy as a whole I have the greatest respect, but it is the crown of man's education, not the foundation itself. Myself, I read it with the utmost profit, but I have known endless trouble result from boys who attempted too soon before they were set. But if those boys had died first, cried Ricky with sudden vehemence, without knowing what there is to know, or isn't to know, said Mr. Pemberg sarcastically, or what there isn't to know, exactly that's it. My dear Ricky, what do you mean? If an old friend may be frank, you are talking great rubbish. And with a few well-worn formulae, he propped up the young man's orthodoxy. The props were unnecessary. Ricky had his own equilibrium, neither the revivalism that assails a boy at about the age of fifteen, nor the skepticism that meets him five years later, could sway him from his allegiance into which he'd been born. But his equilibrium was personal, and the secret of it useless to others, he desired that each man should find his own. What does philosophy do, that proper continued, doesn't make a man happier in life, doesn't make him dumber peacefully? I fancy that in the long run Herbert Spencer will get no further than the rest of us. Ah, Ricky, I wish you could move among the school boys, and see their healthy contempt for all they was going too far and had to add. Their spiritual capacities, of course, are another matter. Then he remembered the Greeks and said, which proves my original statement. Submissive signs, as of one propped, appeared in Ricky's face. Mr. Pemberg then questioned him about the men who found Plato not difficult. But here he kept silence, patting the school chapel gently, and presently the conversation turned to topics with which they were both headed to deal. Does Agnes take much interest in the school? Not as much as she did, it is the result of her engagement. If our naughty soldier had not carried her off, she might have made an ideal schoolmaster's wife. I often chafed him about it, for he a little despises the intellectual professions. Natural, perfectly natural, how can a man who faces death feel as we do towards Mensa or Tupto? Perfectly true, absolutely true. Mr. Pemberg remarked to himself that Frederick was improving. If a man shoots straight and hits straight and speaks straight, if his heart is in the right place, and if he has the instincts of a Christian and a gentleman, then I, at all events, ask no better husband for my sister. How could you get it better? He cried. Do you remember the thing in the clouds? And he quoted, as well as he could, from the invitation of the Dekaios logos, the description of the young Athenian, perfect in body, placid in mind bar, and trains all day among the woods and meadows with a garland on his head and a friend to set the pace. The scent of new leaves is upon them, they rejoice in their freshness of spring, over their heads the plain tree whispers to the elm, perhaps the most glorious invitation to the brainless life that has ever been given. Yes, yes, said Mr. Pemberg who did not want a brother-in-law out of Aristophanes, nor had he got one, for Mr. Daz would not have bothered over the garland of spring, and would have complained that the friend ran too slowly or too fast. And as for her, but he could think of no classical parallel for Agnes, she slipped between examples, a kindly Medea, a Cleopatra with a sense of duty, they suggested her a little. She was not born in Greece, but came overseas to it, a dark, intelligent princess. With all her splendor there were hints of splendor still hidden, hints of an older, richer, and more mysterious life. He smiled at the idea of her being not there. Ansel, clever as he was, had made a bad blunder. She had more reality than any other woman in the world. Mr. Pemberg leased at this boyish enthusiasm. He was fond of his sister, though he knew her to be full of faults. Yes, I envy her, he said, and she has found a worthy help-meat for her life's journey, I do believe, and though they chafe at the long engagement, it is a blessing in disguise. They met each other thoroughly before contracting more intimate ties. Rikki did not ascend. The length of the engagement seemed to him unspeakably cruel. Here were two people who loved each other, and they could not marry for years, because they had no beastly money. Not all Herbert's highest skill could make this out of blessing. It was bad enough being so rich at the siltz. Here he was more ashamed of it than ever. In a few weeks he would come of age, and his money would have pity things were so crookedly arranged. He did not want money, or at all events he did not want so much. Suppose, he meditated, for he became much worried over this. Suppose I had a hundred pounds a year less than I shall have. Well, I should still have enough. I don't want anything but food, lodging, clothes, and now and then a railway fare. I haven't any tastes, I don't collect anything or play games. Books are nice to have, but after these, or, if it comes to that, the free library. Oh, my profession, I forgot I shall have a profession. Well, that will leave me with more to spare than ever. And he is supposed away till he lost touch with the world, and with what it permits, and committed an unpardonable sin. It happened towards the end of his visit, another airless day of that mild January. Mr. Dawes was playing against a scratch team of ceds, and had to go down to the grounds in the middle of something. Ricky proposed to come too. Hitherto he had been no nuisance. He'll be frightfully bored, said Agnes, observing the cloud on her lover's face, and Gerald walks like a maniac. I had a little thought over the museum this morning, so Mr. Humberk, it is very strong and flint arrowheads. Ah, that's your line, Ricky. I do envy you and Herbert the way you enjoy the past. I almost think I'll go with Dawes if he'll have me. I can walk just to the ground and back. Arrowheads are wonderful, but I don't really enjoy them yet, though I hope I shell in time. Mr. Humberk was offended, but Ricky held firm. In a quarter of an hour he was back at the house alone, nearly crying. Oh, did the rats go too fast? Called Miss Humberk from her bedroom window. I went too fast for him. He spoke quite sharply, and before he had time to say he was sorry, and didn't mean exactly that, the window had shut. They've quarreled, she thought, whatever about. She soon heard. Gerald returned in a cold, stormy temper. Ricky had offered him money. My dear fella, don't be so cross. The child's mad. If it was, I'd forgive that, but I can't stand unhealthiness. Now, Gerald, that's where I hate you. You don't know what it is to pity the weak. Woman's job! So you wish I'd taken a hundred pounds a year from him? Did you ever hear such a cheat marry us, he, you, and me, a hundred pounds down and as much annual? He, of course, to pry into all we did, and we'd do cow-tow and eat dirt-pie to him. If there is Mr. Rickety Elliott's idea of a soldier and an Englishman, it isn't mine, and I wish I'd had a horse whip. She was roaring with laughter. Your babies, a pair of you, and you're the worst. Why couldn't you let the little silly down gently? There he was, puffing and sniffing under my window, and I thought he'd come. Why didn't you accept? Accept, he thundered. It would have taken the nonsense out of him forever, why he was only talking out of a book. More fool he. Well, don't be angry with a fool. He means no harm. He muddles all day with poetry and old dead people, and then tries to bring it into life. It's too funny for words. Gerald repeated that he could not stand unhealthiness. I don't call that exactly unhealthy. I do, and why he could give the money's worse. What do you mean? He became shy. I hadn't meant to tell you, it's not quite for a lady. For, like most men who are rather animal, he was intellectually abrood. He says he can't ever marry owing to his foot. It wouldn't be fair to posterity. His grandfather was crocked, his father too, and he's as bad. He thinks that it's hereditary and may get worse next generation. He's disgusted all over with other undergrads. A bright lot they must be. He didn't risk having any children, hence the hundred quid. She stopped laughing. Oh, little beast, if you said all that! He was encouraged to proceed. Hitherto he had not talked about their school days. Now he told her everything, the barley sugar, as he called it, the pins and chapel, and how one afternoon he tied him head downward onto a tree-trunk and then ran away. Of course, only for a moment. For this she scolded him well. But she had a thrill of joy when she thought of the weak boy and the clutches of the strong one. End of Chapter 4 The Longest Journey Chapter 5 of The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster Read for you by Julie Pandia. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. To find out more or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Longest Journey Chapter 5 Gerald died that afternoon. He was broken up in the football match. Ricky and Mr. Pembroke were on the ground when the accident took place. It was no good torturing him by a drive to the hospital, and he was merely carried to the little pavilion and laid upon the floor. A doctor came and sowed at a clergyman, but it seemed better to leave him the sickness who had ridden down on her bicycle. It was a strange, lamentable interview. The girl was so accustomed to health that for a time she could not understand. It must be a joke that he chose to lie there in the dust with a rug over him and his knees bent up towards his chin. His arms were as she knew them, and their admirable muscles showed clear and clean beneath the jersey. The face too, though a little flushed, was uninjured. It must be some curious joke. Gerald, what have you been doing? He replied, I can't see you, it's too dark. Oh, I'll soon alter that, she said in her old brisk way. She opened the pavilion door. The people who were standing by moved aside. She saw a deserted meadow steaming in gray and beyond it slate-roofed cottages, row beside row climbing a shapeless hill. Towards London the sky was yellow. There, that's better. She sat down by him again and drew his hand into her own. Now we were all right, aren't we? Where are you? This time she could not reply. What is it? Where am I going? Wasn't the rector here? She said after a silence. He explained heaven and thinks that I but I couldn't tell a partisan, but I don't seem to have any use for any of the things there. We are Christians, said Agnes Shiley. Dear love, we don't talk about these things, but we believe them. I think that you will get well and be as strong again as ever. But in any case, there is a spiritual life and we know that some day you and I, I shan't do as a spirit. He interrupted sighing pitifully. I want you as I am and it cannot be managed. The rector had to say so. I don't want to talk. I can't see you. Shut that door. She obeyed and crept into his arms. Only this time her grasp was the stronger. Her heart beat louder and louder as the sound of his grew more faint. He was crying like a little frightened child and her lips were wet with his tears. Bear it bravely, she told him. I can't, he whispered. It isn't to be done. I can't see you. And passed from her trembling with open eyes. She rode home on her bicycle, leaving to follow. Some ladies who did not know what had happened bowed and smiled as she passed and she returned their salute. Oh, miss, is it true? cried the cook, her face streaming with tears. Agnes nodded. Presumably it was true. Letters had just arrived. One was for Gerald from his mother. Life which had given them no warning seemed to make no comment now. The incident was outside nature and would surely pass away like a dream. And the grief of the servants annoyed her. They sobbed. Ah, look at his marks. Ah, little he thought. In the brown Holland strip by the front door a heavy football boot had left its impress. They had not liked Gerald, but he was a man. They were women. He had died. Their mistress ordered them to leave her. For many minutes she sat at the foot of the stairs rubbing her eyes. An obscured spiritual crisis was going on. Should she weep like the servants? Or should she bear up in trust in the consoler time? Was the death of a man so terrible after all? As she invited herself to apathy there were steps on the gravel and Ricky Elliot burst in. He was splashed with mud. His breath was gone and his hair fell wildly over his meager face. She thought these are the people who are left alive. From the bottom of her soul she hated him. I came to see what you're doing. He cried. Resting. He knelt beside her and she said, Would you please go away? Yes, dear Agnes, of course. But I must see first that you mind. Her breath caught. Her eyes moved to the treads going outwards so firmly. So irretrievably. He panted. It's the worst thing that can ever happen to you in all your life and you've got to mind it. Though come saying, bear up trust to time. No, no, they're wrong. Mind it. Through all her misery she knew that this boy was greater than they supposed. He rose to his feet and with intense conviction cried, But I know, I understand, it's your death as well as his. He's gone Agnes and his arms will never hold you again. In God's name mind such a thing and don't sit fencing with your soul. Don't stop being great. I forgive you. She faltered. Who, who forgives? Gerald. At the sound of his name she slipped forward and all her dishonesty left her. She acknowledged that life's meaning had vanished. Bending down she kissed the footprint. How can he forgive me? She sobbed. Where has he gone to? You could never dream such an awful thing. He couldn't see me though I opened the door. Wide, plenty of light. He comforted him. He wasn't ever a great reader and he couldn't remember the things the rector tried and he couldn't I came and I couldn't. She could not speak for tears. Ricky did not check her. He let her accuse herself and fate and Herbert who had postponed their marriage. She might have been a wife six months, but Herbert has spoken of self-control and of all life before them. He let her kiss the footprints till their marks gave way to the marks of her lips. She moaned. He is gone. Where is he? And then he replied quite quietly. He is in heaven. She begged him not to comfort her. She could not bear it. I did not come to comfort you. I came to see that you mind. He is in heaven, Agnes. The greatest thing is over. Her hatred was lulled. She murmured. A meager face showed as a seraph who spoke the truth and forbade her to juggle with her soul. Dear Ricky, but for the rest of my life what am I to do? Anything, if you remember that the greatest thing is over. I don't know you, she said tremulously. You have grown up in a moment. You never talked to us and yet you understand it all. Tell me again, I can only trust you where he is. Are you sure? It puzzled her that Ricky, who could scarcely tell you the time without a saving clause should be so certain about immortality. End of chapter 5 THE LONGEST JOURNEY Chapter 6 THE LONGEST JOURNEY by E. M. Forrester Read for you by Julie Pandia. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. To find out more or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org THE LONGEST JOURNEY Chapter 6 He did not stop for the funeral. Mr. Pembroke thought that he had a bad effect on Agnes and prevented her from acquiescing in the tragedy as rapidly as she might have done. As he expressed it, one must not court sorrow, and he hinted to the young man that they desired to be alone. Ricky went back to the siltz. He was only there a few days. As soon as term opened he returned to Cambridge, for which he longed passionately. The journey thither was now familiar to him, and he took pleasure in each landmark. The fair valley of Tiwun Watcher, the cutting into Hitchin, where the train traverses the chalk, Baldock Church, roisted with its promise of downs, were nothing in themselves, but dearest stages in the pilgrimage of friends. They had all had pleasant vacations. It was a happy world. The atmosphere alters. Cambridge, according to her custom, welcomed her sons with open drains. Fetty Curry was up, so was Trinity Street, and navvies peeped out of King's Parade. Here it was gas, their electric light, but everywhere something, and always a smell. It was also the day that the wheels fell off the station and the train was departing. The vehicle, which was safely inside, was among the passengers, who sustained no injury, but a shock, and had as hearty a laugh over the mishap afterwards as anyone. Tillard fled into a hamsome, cursing himself for having tried to do the thing cheaply. Hornblower also swept past yelling derisively with his luggage neatly piled above his head. Oh, Mrs. Aberdeen, I never saw you. I am so glad to see you. I am so very glad." Mrs. Aberdeen was cold. She did not like being spoken to outside the college, and was also distraite about her basket. Hitherto no gentile eye had even seen inside it, but in the collision its little calico veil fell off and there was revealed nothing. The basket was empty and never would hold anything illegal. All the same she was distraite, and we shall meet later, sir, I desi, was all the greeting Ricky got from her. Now what kind of life has Mrs. Aberdeen, he exclaimed, as he and Ansel pursued the station road. Here these bedders come and make us comfortable. We owe an enormous amount to them. Their wages are absurd, and we know nothing about them. Off they go to Barnwell, and then their lives are hidden. I just know that Mrs. Aberdeen has a husband, but that's all. She never will talk about him. Now I do so want to fill in her life. I see one half of it, what's the other half? She may have a real jolly house, in good taste, with a little garden and books and pictures. Or again she may it. But in any case, why not to know? I know she'd dislike it, but she oughtn't to dislike. After all betters are to blame for the present lamentable state of things, just as much as gentle folk. She ought to want me to come. She ought to introduce me to her husband. They had reached the corner of Hill's road. Ansel spoke for the first time. He said, Ugg. Drain's? Yes, spiritual cesspool. Ricky laughed. I expected it from your letter. The one you never answered. I answered none of your letters. You are quite hopeless by now. You can go to the bad, but I refuse to accompany you. I refuse to believe that every human being is a moving wonder of supreme interest in tragedy and beauty, which was what the letter in question amounted to. You find plenty who will believe it. It's a very popular view among people who are too idle to think, and saves them the trouble of detecting the beautiful from the ugly, the interesting from the dull, the tragic from the melodramatic. You had just come from Sosten and were apparently carried away by the fact that Miss Pembroke had the usual amount of arms and legs. Ricky was silent. He had told his friend how he felt, but not what had happened. Ansel could discuss love and death admirably, but somehow he would not understand lovers or a dying man. And in the letter there had been scant allusion to these concrete facts. Would Cambridge understand them, either? He watched some dons who were peeping into an excavation and throwing up their hands with humor as gestures of despair. These men would lecture next week on Catalan's conspiracy, on Luther, on evolution, on Catullus. They dealt with so much, and they had experienced so little. Was it possible he would ever come to think Cambridge narrow? In his short life Ricky had known two sudden deaths, and that is enough to disarrange any placid outlook on the world. He knew once for all that we are all of us bubbles on an extremely rough sea. Into this sea humanity has built, as it were, some little breakwaters, scientific knowledge, civilized restraint, so that the bubbles do not break so frequently or so soon. But the sea has not altered, and it was only a chance that he, Ansel, Tillard, and Mrs. Aberdeen had not all been killed in the tram. They waited for the other tram by the Roman Catholic Church, whose floored bulk was already receding into twilight. It is the first big building that the incoming visitor sees. Oh, here come the colleges! cries the Protestant parent, and then learns that it was built by a papist who made a fortune out of movable eyes for dolls. Built out of dolls' eyes to contain idols. That, at all events, is the legend and the joke. It watches over the apostate city, taller by many a yard than anything within, and asserting, however wildly, that here is eternity, stability, and bubbles unbreakable upon a windless sea. A costly hymn tune announced five o'clock, and in the distance the more lovable note of St. Mary's could be heard speaking from the heart of the town. Then the tram arrived, the slow, stuffy tram that plies every twenty minutes between the unknown and the marketplace, and took them past the desecrated grounds of Downing, past Addenbrook's hospital, Gert-like Venetian palace with a mantling canal, past the Fitzwilliam, towering upon immense obstructions like any Roman temple, right up to the gates of one's own college, which looked like nothing else in the world. The porters were glad to see them, but wished it had been a handsome. Our luggage, explained Ricky, comes in the hotel omnibus, if you would kindly pay a shilling for mine. Ansel turned aside to some large, lighted windows, the abode of a hospitable dawn, and from other windows there floated familiar voices, and the familiar mistakes in a Beethoven's sonata. The college, though small, was civilized and proud of its civilization. It was not sufficient glory to be a blue there, nor an additional glory to get drunk. Many a maiden lady who had read that Cambridge men were sad dogs was surprised, and perhaps a little disappointed at the reasonable life which greeted her. Miss Appleblossom in particular had had a tremendous shock. The sight of young fellows making tea and drinking water had made her wonder whether this was Cambridge College at all. It is so, she exclaimed afterwards, it is just as I say, and what's more, I wouldn't have it otherwise. Stuart says it's as easy as easy to get into the swim, and not at all expensive. The direction of the swim was determined a little by the genius of the place, for places have a genius, though the less we talk about it the better, and a good deal by the tutors and resident fellows who treated with rare dexterity the products that came up yearly from the public schools. They taught the perky boy that he was not everything, and the limp boy that he might be something. They even welcomed those boys who were neither limp nor perky, but odd, those boys who had never been at a public school at all, and such did not find a welcome everywhere, and they did everything with ease, one might almost say with no chalance, so that the boys noticed nothing and received education, often for the first time in their lives. But Ricky turned to none of these friends, for just then he loved his rooms better than any person. There were all he really possessed in the world, the only place he could call his own. Over the door was his name, and through the paint, like a gray ghost, he could still read the name of his predecessor. With a sigh of joy he entered the perishable home that was his for a couple of years. There was a beautiful fire, and the kettle boiled at once. He made tea on the hearth-frog and ate the biscuits which Mrs. Aberdeen had brought for him up from Anderson's. Gentleman, she said, must learn to give and take. He sighed again and again, like one who had escaped from danger. With his head on the fender and all his limbs relaxed, he felt almost as safe as he felt once when his mother killed a ghost in the passage by carrying him through it in her arms. There was no ghost now. He was frightened at reality. He was frightened at the splendors and horrors of the world. A letter from Miss Prenberg was on the table. He did not hurry to open it, for she, and all that she did, was overwhelming. She wrote like the Sibyl. Her sorrowful face moved over the stars and shattered their harmonies. Last night he saw her with the eyes of Blake, a virgin widow, tall, veiled, consecrated, with her hands stretched out against an everlasting wind. Why should she write? Her letters were not for the likes of him, nor to be read in rooms like his. We are not leaving Sauston, she wrote. I saw how selfish it was of me to risk spoiling Herbert's career. I shall get used to any place. Now that he is gone, nothing of that sort can matter. Everyone has been most kind, but you have comforted me most, though you did not mean to. I cannot think how you did it, or understood so much. I still think of you as a little boy with a lame leg. I know you will let me say this. And yet when it came to the point you knew more than people who had been all their lives with sorrow and death. Ricky burnt this letter, which he ought not to have done, for it was one of the few tributes Miss Pembroke ever paid to imagination. But he felt that it did not belong to him. Words so sincere should be for Gerald alone. The smoke rushed up the chimney, and he indulged in a vision. He saw it reach the outer air and beat against the low ceiling of clouds. The clouds were too strong for it, but in them was one chink revealing one star, and through this the smoke escaped into the light of stars innumerable. Then, but then the vision failed, and the voice of science whispered that all smoke remains on earth in the form of smuts, and is troublesome to Mrs. Aberdeen. I am jolly unpractical, he mused, and what is the point of it when real things are so wonderful? Who wants visions in a world that has Agnes and Gerald? He turned on the electric light and pulled open the table drawer. There among spoons and corks and string he found a fragment of a little story that he tried to write last term. It was called The Bay of the Fifteen Islets, and the action took place on St. John's Eve off the coast of Sicily. A party of tourists land on one of the islands. Suddenly the boatmen become uneasy and say that the island is not generally there. It is an extra one, and they'd better have tea on one of the ordinaries. Poo! Volcanic! says the leading tourist, and the ladies say, how interesting! The island begins to rock, and so do the minds of its visitors. They start in quarrel and jabber. Fingers burst up through the sand-black fingers of sea devils. The island tilts. The tourists go mad. But just before the catastrophe, one man, Integer, Bichet, Galeris, Puris, sees the truth. Here are no devils. Other muscles, other minds, are pulling the island to its subterranean home. Through the advancing wall of waters he sees no grizzly faces, no ghastly medieval limbs, but what nonsense! One real things are so wonderful. What is the point of pretending? And so Ricky deflected his enthusiasm. Hitherto they had played on gods and heroes, on the infinite and the impossible, on virtue and beauty and strength. Now, with a steadier radiance, they transfigured a man who was dead and a woman who was still alive. End of Chapter 6 The Longest Journey