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The Passionate Friends

By H. G. WELLS

Author of "Marriage."

[Illustration]

WITH FRONTISPIECE

A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

114-120 East Twenty-third Street - - New York

PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH HARPER & BROTHERS


COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1913


TO
L. E. N. S.


[Illustration: "OUR KISSES WERE KISSES OF MOONLIGHT" See p. 85]




CONTENTS


CHAP.                                            PAGE

   I. MR. STRATTON TO HIS SON                       1

  II. BOYHOOD                                      14

 III. INTENTIONS AND THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN       40

  IV. THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN      73

   V. THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA                     102

  VI. LADY MARY JUSTIN                            132

 VII. BEGINNING AGAIN                             197

VIII. THIS SWARMING BUSINESS OF MANKIND           220

  IX. THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW WORLD                 246

   X. MARY WRITES                                 280

  XI. THE LAST MEETING                            318

 XII. THE ARRAIGNMENT OF JEALOUSY                 358




THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS




CHAPTER THE FIRST

MR. STRATTON TO HIS SON


Sec. 1

I want very much to set down my thoughts and my experiences of life. I
want to do so now that I have come to middle age and now that my
attitudes are all defined and my personal drama worked out I feel that
the toil of writing and reconsideration may help to clear and fix many
things that remain a little uncertain in my thoughts because they have
never been fully stated, and I want to discover any lurking
inconsistencies and unsuspected gaps. And I have a story. I have lived
through things that have searched me. I want to tell that story as well
as I can while I am still a clear-headed and active man, and while many
details that may presently become blurred and altered are still rawly
fresh in my mind. And to one person in particular do I wish to think I
am writing, and that is to you, my only son. I want to write my story
not indeed to the child you are now, but to the man you are going to be.
You are half my blood and temperamentally altogether mine. A day will
come when you will realize this, and want to know how life has gone with
me, and then it may be altogether too late for me to answer your
enquiries. I may have become inaccessible as old people are sometimes
inaccessible. And so I think of leaving this book for you--at any rate,
I shall write it as if I meant to leave it for you. Afterwards I can
consider whether I will indeed leave it....

The idea of writing such a book as this came to me first as I sat by the
dead body of your grandfather--my father. It was because I wanted so
greatly such a book from him that I am now writing this. He died, you
must know, only a few months ago, and I went to his house to bury him
and settle all his affairs.

At one time he had been my greatest friend. He had never indeed talked
to me about himself or his youth, but he had always showed an
extraordinary sympathy and helpfulness for me in all the confusion and
perplexities into which I fell. This did not last to the end of his
life. I was the child of his middle years, and suddenly, in a year or
less, the curtains of age and infirmity fell between us. There came an
illness, an operation, and he rose from it ailing, suffering, dwarfed
and altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think that
change through illness and organic decay in the thoughts and spirits of
those who are dear and close to us is the most evil and distressing and
inexplicable. Suddenly he was a changeling, a being querulous and
pitiful, needing indulgence and sacrifices.

In a little while a new state of affairs was established. I ceased to
consider him as a man to whom one told things, of whom one could expect
help or advice. We all ceased to consider him at all in that way. We
humored him, put pleasant things before him, concealed whatever was
disagreeable. A poor old man he was indeed in those concluding years,
weakly rebellious against the firm kindliness of my cousin, his
housekeeper and nurse. He who had once been so alert was now at times
astonishingly apathetic. At times an impish malice I had never known in
him before gleamed in little acts and speeches. His talk ramb