Title: The Plattner Story and Others
Author: Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946
Language: English
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  THE
  PLATTNER STORY

  AND OTHERS



  BY THE SAME AUTHOR


  THE STOLEN BACILLUS
  THE WONDERFUL VISIT
  THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
  THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU
  THE TIME MACHINE



  THE
  PLATTNER STORY

  AND OTHERS

  BY
  H. G. WELLS

  METHUEN & CO.
  36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
  LONDON
  1897



  TO
  MY FATHER



CONTENTS


                                      PAGE
  THE PLATTNER STORY                     2
  THE ARGONAUTS OF THE AIR              29
  THE STORY OF THE LATE MR. ELVESHAM    47
  IN THE ABYSS                          71
  THE APPLE                             94
  UNDER THE KNIFE                      106
  THE SEA-RAIDERS                      126
  POLLOCK AND THE PORROH MAN           142
  THE RED ROOM                         165
  THE CONE                             179
  THE PURPLE PILEUS                    196
  THE JILTING OF JANE                  213
  IN THE MODERN VEIN                   224
  A CATASTROPHE                        239
  THE LOST INHERITANCE                 252
  THE SAD STORY OF A DRAMATIC CRITIC   262
  A SLIP UNDER THE MICROSCOPE          274



THE PLATTNER STORY


Whether the story of Gottfried Plattner is to be credited or not, is
a pretty question in the value of evidence. On the one hand, we have
seven witnesses--to be perfectly exact, we have six and a half pairs
of eyes, and one undeniable fact; and on the other we have--what is
it?--prejudice, common sense, the inertia of opinion. Never were there
seven more honest-seeming witnesses; never was there a more undeniable
fact than the inversion of Gottfried Plattner's anatomical structure,
and--never was there a more preposterous story than the one they
have to tell! The most preposterous part of the story is the worthy
Gottfried's contribution (for I count him as one of the seven). Heaven
forbid that I should be led into giving countenance to superstition by
a passion for impartiality, and so come to share the fate of Eusapia's
patrons! Frankly, I believe there is something crooked about this
business of Gottfried Plattner; but what that crooked factor is, I
will admit as frankly, I do not know. I have been surprised at the
credit accorded to the story in the most unexpected and authoritative
quarters. The fairest way to the reader, however, will be for me to
tell it without further comment.

Gottfried Plattner is, in spite of his name, a free-born Englishman.
His father was an Alsatian who came to England in the Sixties, married
a respectable English girl of unexceptionable antecedents, and died,
after a wholesome and uneventful life (devoted, I understand, chiefly
to the laying of parquet flooring), in 1887. Gottfried's age is
seven-and-twenty. He is, by virtue of his heritage of three languages,
Modern Languages Master in a small private school in the South of
England. To the casual observer he is singularly like any other Modern
Languages Master in any other small private school. His costume is
neither very costly nor very fashionable, but, on the other hand, it
is not markedly cheap or shabby; his complexion, like his height and
his bearing, is inconspicuous. You would notice, perhaps, that, like
the majority of people, his face was not absolutely symmetrical, his
right eye a little larger than the left, and his jaw a trifle heavier
on the right side. If you, as an ordinary careless person, were to bare
his chest and feel his heart beating, you would probably find it quite
like the heart of anyone else. But here you and the trained observer
would part company. If you found his heart quite ordinary, the trained
observer would find it quite otherwise. And once the thing was pointed
out to you, you too would perceive the peculiarity easily enough. It is
that Gottfried's heart beats on the right side of his body.

Now, that is not the only singularity of Gottfried's structure,
although it is the only one that would appeal to the untrained mind.
Careful sounding of Gottfried's internal arrangements, by a well-known
surgeon, seems to point to the fact that all the other unsymmetrical
parts of his body are similarly misplaced. The right lobe of his liver
is on the left side, the left on his right; while his lungs, too, are
similarly contraposed. What is still more singular, unless Gottfried is
a consummate actor, we must believe that his right hand has recently
become his left. Since the occurrences we are about to consider (as
impartially as possible), he has found the utmost difficulty in
writing, except from right to left across the paper with his left hand.
He cannot throw with his right hand, he is perplexed at meal times
between knife and fork, and his ideas of the rule of the road--he is
a cyclist--are still a dangerous confusion. And there is not a scrap
of evidence to show that before these occurrences Gottfried was at all
left-handed.

There is yet another wonderful fact in this preposterous business.
Gottfried produces three photographs of himself. You have him at the
age of five or six, thrusting fat legs at you from under a plaid frock,
and scowling. In that photograph his left eye is a little larger than
his right, and his jaw is a trifle heavier on the left side. This
is the reverse of his present living conditions. The photograph of
Gottfried at fourteen seems to contradict these facts, but that is
because it is one of those cheap "Gem" photographs that were then in
vogue, taken direct upon metal, and therefore reversing things just
as a looking-glass would. The third photograph represents him at
one-and-twenty, and confirms the record of the others. There seems here
evidence of the strongest confirmatory character that Gottfried has
exchanged his left side for his right. Yet how a human being can be so
changed, short of a fantastic and pointless miracle, it is exceedingly
hard to suggest.

In one way, of course, these facts might be explicable on the
supposition that Plattner has undertaken an elaborate mystification,
on the strength of his heart's displacement. Photographs may be
fudged, and left-handedness imitated. But the character of the man
does not lend itself to any such theory. He is quiet, practical,
unobtrusive, and thoroughly sane, from the Nordau standpoint. He
likes beer, and smokes moderately, takes walking exercise daily, and
has a healthily high estimate of the value of his teaching. He has a
good but untrained tenor voice, and takes a pleasure in singing airs
of a popular and cheerful character. He is fond, but not morbidly
fond, of reading,--chiefly fiction pervaded with a vaguely pious
optimism,--sleeps well, and rarely dreams. He is, in fact, the very
last person to evolve a fantastic fable. Indeed, so far from forcing
this story upon the world, he has been singularly reticent on the
matter. He meets inquirers with a certain engaging--bashfulness is
almost the word, that disarms the most suspicious. He seems genuinely
ashamed that anything so unusual has occurred to him.

It is to be regretted that Plattner's aversion to the idea of
post-mortem dissection may postpone, perhaps for ever, the positive
proof that his entire body has had its left and right sides
transposed. Upon that fact mainly the credibility of his story hangs.
There is no way of taking a man and moving him about _in space_, as
ordinary people understand space, that will result in our changing
his sides. Whatever you do, his right is still his right, his left
his left. You can do that with a perfectly thin and flat thing, of
course. If you were to cut a figure out of paper, any figure with a
right and left side, you could change its sides simply by lifting it
up and turning it over. But with a solid it is different. Mathematical
theorists tell us that the only way in which the right and left sides
of a solid body can be changed is by taking that body clean out of
space as we know it,--taking it out of ordinary existence, that is,
and turning it somewhere outside space. This is a little abstruse,
no doubt, but anyone with any knowledge of mathematical theory will
assure the reader of its truth. To put the thing in technical language,
the curious inversion of Plattner's right and left sides is proof
that he has moved out of our space into what is called the Fourth
Dimension, and that he has returned again to our world. Unless we
choose to consider ourselves the victims of an elaborate and motiveless
fabrication, we are almost bound to believe that this has occurred.

So much for the tangible facts. We come now to the account of the
phenomena that attended his temporary disappearance from the world.
It appears that in the Sussexville Proprietary School, Plattner not
only discharged the duties of Modern Languages Master, but also taught
chemistry, commercial geography, book-keeping, shorthand, drawing, and
any other additional subject to which the changing fancies of the
boys' parents might direct attention. He knew little or nothing of
these various subjects, but in secondary as distinguished from Board
or elementary schools, knowledge in the teacher is, very properly, by
no means so necessary as high moral character and gentlemanly tone.
In chemistry he was particularly deficient, knowing, he says, nothing
beyond the Three Gases (whatever the three gases may be). As, however,
his pupils began by knowing nothing, and derived all their information
from him, this caused him (or anyone) but little inconvenience for
several terms. Then a little boy named Whibble joined the school, who
had been educated (it seems) by some mischievous relative into an
inquiring habit of mind. This little boy followed Plattner's lessons
with marked and sustained interest, and in order to exhibit his zeal
on the subject, brought, at various times, substances for Plattner to
analyse. Plattner, flattered by this evidence of his power of awakening
interest, and trusting to the boy's ignorance, analysed these, and even
made general statements as to their composition. Indeed, he was so far
stimulated by his pupil as to obtain a work upon analytical chemistry,
and study it during his supervision of the evening's preparation. He
was surprised to find chemistry quite an interesting subject.

So far the story is absolutely commonplace. But now the greenish
powder comes upon the scene. The source of that greenish powder seems,
unfortunately, lost. Master Whibble tells a tortuous story of finding
it done up in a packet in a disused limekiln near the Downs. It would
have been an excellent thing for Plattner, and possibly for Master
Whibble's family, if a match could have been applied to that powder
there and then. The young gentleman certainly did not bring it to
school in a packet, but in a common eight-ounce graduated medicine
bottle, plugged with masticated newspaper. He gave it to Plattner at
the end of the afternoon school. Four boys had been detained after
school prayers in order to complete some neglected tasks, and Plattner
was supervising these in the small classroom in which the chemical
teaching was conducted. The appliances for the practical teaching of
chemistry in the Sussexville Proprietary School, as in most small
schools in this country, are characterised by a severe simplicity. They
are kept in a small cupboard standing in a recess, and having about the
same capacity as a common travelling trunk. Plattner, being bored with
his passive superintendence, seems to have welcomed the intervention of
Whibble with his green powder as an agreeable diversion, and, unlocking
this cupboard, proceeded at once with his analytical experiments.
Whibble sat, luckily for himself, at a safe distance, regarding him.
The four malefactors, feigning a profound absorption in their work,
watched him furtively with the keenest interest. For even within the
limits of the Three Gases, Plattner's practical chemistry was, I
understand, temerarious.

They are practically unanimous in their account of Plattner's
proceedings. He poured a little of the green powder into a test-tube,
and tried the substance with water, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid,
and sulphuric acid in succession. Getting no result, he emptied out a
little heap--nearly half the bottleful, in fact--upon a slate and tried
a match. He held the medicine bottle in his left hand. The stuff began
to smoke and melt, and then--exploded with deafening violence and a
blinding flash.

The five boys, seeing the flash and being prepared for catastrophes,
ducked below their desks, and were none of them seriously hurt. The
window was blown out into the playground, and the blackboard on its
easel was upset. The slate was smashed to atoms. Some plaster fell
from the ceiling. No other damage was done to the school edifice or
appliances, and the boys at first, seeing nothing of Plattner, fancied
he was knocked down and lying out of their sight below the desks. They
jumped out of their places to go to his assistance, and were amazed to
find the space empty. Being still confused by the sudden violence of
the report, they hurried to the open door, under the impression that
he must have been hurt, and have rushed out of the room. But Carson,
the foremost, nearly collided in the doorway with the principal, Mr.
Lidgett.

Mr. Lidgett is a corpulent, excitable man with one eye. The boys
describe him as stumbling into the room mouthing some of those tempered
expletives irritable schoolmasters accustom themselves to use--lest
worse befall. "Wretched mumchancer!" he said. "Where's Mr. Plattner?"
The boys are agreed on the very words. ("Wobbler," "snivelling puppy,"
and "mumchancer" are, it seems, among the ordinary small change of Mr.
Lidgett's scholastic commerce.)

Where's Mr. Plattner? That was a question that was to be repeated many
times in the next few days. It really seemed as though that frantic
hyperbole, "blown to atoms," had for once realised itself. There was
not a visible particle of Plattner to be seen; not a drop of blood nor
a stitch of clothing to be found. Apparently he had been blown clean
out of existence and left not a wrack behind. Not so much as would
cover a sixpenny piece, to quote a proverbial expression! The evidence
of his absolute disappearance, as a consequence of that explosion, is
indubitable.

It is not necessary to enlarge here upon the commotion excited in the
Sussexville Proprietary School, and in Sussexville and elsewhere, by
this event. It is quite possible, indeed, that some of the readers of
these pages may recall the hearing of some remote and dying version
of that excitement during the last summer holidays. Lidgett, it would
seem, did everything in his power to suppress and minimise the story.
He instituted a penalty of twenty-five lines for any mention of
Plattner's name among the boys, and stated in the schoolroom that he
was clearly aware of his assistant's whereabouts. He was afraid, he
explains, that the possibility of an explosion happening, in spite of
the elaborate precautions taken to minimise the practical teaching of
chemistry, might injure the reputation of the school; and so might any
mysterious quality in Plattner's departure. Indeed, he did everything
in his power to make the occurrence seem as ordinary as possible. In
particular, he cross-examined the five eye-witnesses of the occurrence
so searchingly that they began to doubt the plain evidence of their
senses. But, in spite of these efforts, the tale, in a magnified
and distorted state, made a nine days' wonder in the district, and
several parents withdrew their sons on colourable pretexts. Not the
least remarkable point in the matter is the fact that a large number
of people in the neighbourhood dreamed singularly vivid dreams of
Plattner during the period of excitement before his return, and that
these dreams had a curious uniformity. In almost all of them Plattner
was seen, sometimes singly, sometimes in company, wandering about
through a coruscating iridescence. In all cases his face was pale and
distressed, and in some he gesticulated towards the dreamer. One or
two of the boys, evidently under the influence of nightmare, fancied
that Plattner approached them with remarkable swiftness, and seemed to
look closely into their very eyes. Others fled with Plattner from the
pursuit of vague and extraordinary creatures of a globular shape. But
all these fancies were forgotten in inquiries and speculations when, on
the Wednesday next but one after the Monday of the explosion, Plattner
returned.

The circumstances of his return were as singular as those of his
departure. So far as Mr. Lidgett's somewhat choleric outline can be
filled in from Plattner's hesitating statements, it would appear that
on Wednesday evening, towards the hour of sunset, the former gentleman,
having dismissed evening preparation, was engaged in his garden,
picking and eating strawberries, a fruit of which he is inordinately
fond. It is a large old-fashioned garden, secured from observation,
fortunately, by a high and ivy-covered red-brick wall. Just as he was
stooping over a particularly prolific plant, there was a flash in the
air and a heavy thud, and before he could look round, some heavy body
struck him violently from behind. He was pitched forward, crushing the
strawberries he held in his hand, and that so roughly, that his silk
hat--Mr. Lidgett adheres to the older ideas of scholastic costume--was
driven violently down upon his forehead, and almost over one eye.
This heavy missile, which slid over him sideways and collapsed into a
sitting posture among the strawberry plants, proved to be our long-lost
Mr. Gottfried Plattner, in an extremely dishevelled condition. He
was collarless and hatless, his linen was dirty, and there was blood
upon his hands. Mr. Lidgett was so indignant and surprised that he
remained on all-fours, and with his hat jammed down on his eye, while
he expostulated vehemently with Plattner for his disrespectful and
unaccountable conduct.

This scarcely idyllic scene completes what I may call the exterior
version of the Plattner story--its exoteric aspect. It is quite
unnecessary to enter here into all the details of his dismissal by Mr.
Lidgett. Such details, with the full names and dates and references,
will be found in the larger report of these occurrences that was laid
before the Society for the Investigation of Abnormal Phenomena. The
singular transposition of Plattner's right and left sides was scarcely
observed for the first day or so, and then first in connection with
his disposition to write from right to left across the blackboard. He
concealed rather than ostended this curious confirmatory circumstance,
as he considered it would unfavourably affect his prospects in a new
situation. The displacement of his heart was discovered some months
after, when he was having a tooth extracted under anæsthetics. He then,
very unwillingly, allowed a cursory surgical examination to be made of
himself, with a view to a brief account in the _Journal of Anatomy_.
That exhausts the statement of the material facts; and we may now go on
to consider Plattner's account of the matter.

But first let us clearly differentiate between the preceding portion
of this story and what is to follow. All I have told thus far is
established by such evidence as even a criminal lawyer would approve.
Every one of the witnesses is still alive; the reader, if he have the
leisure, may hunt the lads out tomorrow, or even brave the terrors of
the redoubtable Lidgett, and cross-examine and trap and test to his
heart's content; Gottfried Plattner, himself, and his twisted heart and
his three photographs are producible. It may be taken as proved that he
did disappear for nine days as the consequence of an explosion; that
he returned almost as violently, under circumstances in their nature
annoying to Mr. Lidgett, whatever the details of those circumstances
may be; and that he returned inverted, just as a reflection returns
from a mirror. From the last fact, as I have already stated, it
follows almost inevitably that Plattner, during those nine days, must
have been in some state of existence altogether out of space. The
evidence to these statements is, indeed, far stronger than that upon
which most murderers are hanged. But for his own particular account
of where he had been, with its confused explanations and well-nigh
self-contradictory details, we have only Mr. Gottfried Plattner's word.
I do not wish to discredit that, but I must point out--what so many
writers upon obscure psychic phenomena fail to do--that we are passing
here from the practically undeniable to that kind of matter which any
reasonable man is entitled to believe or reject as he thinks proper.
The previous statements render it plausible; its discordance with
common experience tilts it towards the incredible. I would prefer not
to sway the beam of the reader's judgment either way, but simply to
tell the story as Plattner told it me.

He gave me his narrative, I may state, at my house at Chislehurst, and
so soon as he had left me that evening, I went into my study and wrote
down everything as I remembered it. Subsequently he was good enough to
read over a type-written copy, so that its substantial correctness is
undeniable.

He states that at the moment of the explosion he distinctly thought he
was killed. He felt lifted off his feet and driven forcibly backward.
It is a curious fact for psychologists that he thought clearly during
his backward flight, and wondered whether he should hit the chemistry
cupboard or the blackboard easel. His heels struck ground, and he
staggered and fell heavily into a sitting position on something soft
and firm. For a moment the concussion stunned him. He became aware at
once of a vivid scent of singed hair, and he seemed to hear the voice
of Lidgett asking for him. You will understand that for a time his
mind was greatly confused.

At first he was distinctly under the impression that he was still in
the classroom. He perceived quite distinctly the surprise of the boys
and the entry of Mr. Lidgett. He is quite positive upon that score.
He did not hear their remarks; but that he ascribed to the deafening
effect of the experiment. Things about him seemed curiously dark and
faint, but his mind explained that on the obvious but mistaken idea
that the explosion had engendered a huge volume of dark smoke. Through
the dimness the figures of Lidgett and the boys moved, as faint and
silent as ghosts. Plattner's face still tingled with the stinging
heat of the flash. He was, he says, "all muddled." His first definite
thoughts seem to have been of his personal safety. He thought he was
perhaps blinded and deafened. He felt his limbs and face in a gingerly
manner. Then his perceptions grew clearer, and he was astonished to
miss the old familiar desks and other schoolroom furniture about him.
Only dim, uncertain, grey shapes stood in the place of these. Then came
a thing that made him shout aloud, and awoke his stunned faculties
to instant activity. _Two of the boys, gesticulating, walked one
after the other clean through him!_ Neither manifested the slightest
consciousness of his presence. It is difficult to imagine the sensation
he felt. They came against him, he says, with no more force than a wisp
of mist.

Plattner's first thought after that was that he was dead. Having been
brought up with thoroughly sound views in these matters, however, he
was a little surprised to find his body still about him. His second
conclusion was that he was not dead, but that the others were: that the
explosion had destroyed the Sussexville Proprietary School and every
soul in it except himself. But that, too, was scarcely satisfactory. He
was thrown back upon astonished observation.

Everything about him was extraordinarily dark: at first it seemed to
have an altogether ebony blackness. Overhead was a black firmament.
The only touch of light in the scene was a faint greenish glow at the
edge of the sky in one direction, which threw into prominence a horizon
of undulating black hills. This, I say, was his impression at first.
As his eye grew accustomed to the darkness, he began to distinguish a
faint quality of differentiating greenish colour in the circumambient
night. Against this background the furniture and occupants of the
classroom, it seems, stood out like phosphorescent spectres, faint
and impalpable. He extended his hand, and thrust it without an effort
through the wall of the room by the fireplace.

He describes himself as making a strenuous effort to attract attention.
He shouted to Lidgett, and tried to seize the boys as they went to
and fro. He only desisted from these attempts when Mrs. Lidgett, whom
he (as an Assistant Master) naturally disliked, entered the room. He
says the sensation of being in the world, and yet not a part of it,
was an extraordinarily disagreeable one. He compared his feelings,
not inaptly, to those of a cat watching a mouse through a window.
Whenever he made a motion to communicate with the dim, familiar world
about him, he found an invisible, incomprehensible barrier preventing
intercourse.

He then turned his attention to his solid environment. He found the
medicine bottle still unbroken in his hand, with the remainder of the
green powder therein. He put this in his pocket, and began to feel
about him. Apparently, he was sitting on a boulder of rock covered with
a velvety moss. The dark country about him he was unable to see, the
faint, misty picture of the schoolroom blotting it out, but he had a
feeling (due perhaps to a cold wind) that he was near the crest of a
hill, and that a steep valley fell away beneath his feet. The green
glow along the edge of the sky seemed to be growing in extent and
intensity. He stood up, rubbing his eyes.

It would seem that he made a few steps, going steeply down hill, and
then stumbled, nearly fell, and sat down again upon a jagged mass of
rock to watch the dawn. He became aware that the world about him was
absolutely silent. It was as still as it was dark, and though there was
a cold wind blowing up the hill-face, the rustle of grass, the soughing
of the boughs that should have accompanied it, were absent. He could
hear, therefore, if he could not see, that the hillside upon which he
stood was rocky and desolate. The green grew brighter every moment, and
as it did so a faint, transparent blood-red mingled with, but did not
mitigate, the blackness of the sky overhead and the rocky desolations
about him. Having regard to what follows, I am inclined to think that
that redness may have been an optical effect due to contrast. Something
black fluttered momentarily against the livid yellow-green of the
lower sky, and then the thin and penetrating voice of a bell rose out
of the black gulf below him. An oppressive expectation grew with the
growing light.

It is probable that an hour or more elapsed while he sat there, the
strange green light growing brighter every moment, and spreading
slowly, in flamboyant fingers, upward towards the zenith. As it grew,
the spectral vision of _our_ world became relatively or absolutely
fainter. Probably both, for the time must have been about that of our
earthly sunset. So far as his vision of our world went, Plattner, by
his few steps downhill, had passed through the floor of the classroom,
and was now, it seemed, sitting in mid-air in the larger schoolroom
downstairs. He saw the boarders distinctly, but much more faintly
than he had seen Lidgett. They were preparing their evening tasks,
and he noticed with interest that several were cheating with their
Euclid riders by means of a crib, a compilation whose existence he had
hitherto never suspected. As the time passed, they faded steadily, as
steadily as the light of the green dawn increased.

Looking down into the valley, he saw that the light had crept far
down its rocky sides, and that the profound blackness of the abyss
was now broken by a minute green glow, like the light of a glow-worm.
And almost immediately the limb of a huge heavenly body of blazing
green rose over the basaltic undulations of the distant hills, and
the monstrous hill-masses about him came out gaunt and desolate, in
green light and deep, ruddy black shadows. He became aware of a vast
number of ball-shaped objects drifting as thistledown drifts over
the high ground. There were none of these nearer to him than the
opposite side of the gorge. The bell below twanged quicker and quicker,
with something like impatient insistence, and several lights moved
hither and thither. The boys at work at their desks were now almost
imperceptibly faint.

This extinction of our world, when the green sun of this other universe
rose, is a curious point upon which Plattner insists. During the
Other-World night it is difficult to move about, on account of the
vividness with which the things of this world are visible. It becomes a
riddle to explain why, if this is the case, we in this world catch no
glimpse of the Other-World. It is due, perhaps, to the comparatively
vivid illumination of this world of ours. Plattner describes the
midday of the Other-World, at its brightest, as not being nearly so
bright as this world at full moon, while its night is profoundly
black. Consequently, the amount of light, even in an ordinary dark
room, is sufficient to render the things of the Other-World invisible,
on the same principle that faint phosphorescence is only visible in
the profoundest darkness. I have tried, since he told me his story,
to see something of the Other-World by sitting for a long space in a
photographer's dark room at night. I have certainly seen indistinctly
the form of greenish slopes and rocks, but only, I must admit, very
indistinctly indeed. The reader may possibly be more successful.
Plattner tells me that since his return he has dreamt and seen and
recognised places in the Other-World, but this is probably due to his
memory of these scenes. It seems quite possible that people with
unusually keen eyesight may occasionally catch a glimpse of this
strange Other-World about us.

However, this is a digression. As the green sun rose, a long street
of black buildings became perceptible, though only darkly and
indistinctly, in the gorge, and, after some hesitation, Plattner began
to clamber down the precipitous descent towards them. The descent was
long and exceedingly tedious, being so not only by the extraordinary
steepness, but also by reason of the looseness of the boulders
with which the whole face of the hill was strewn. The noise of his
descent--now and then his heels struck fire from the rocks--seemed
now the only sound in the universe, for the beating of the bell had
ceased. As he drew nearer, he perceived that the various edifices had
a singular resemblance to tombs and mausoleums and monuments, saving
only that they were all uniformly black instead of being white, as
most sepulchres are. And then he saw, crowding out of the largest
building, very much as people disperse from church, a number of pallid,
rounded, pale-green figures. These dispersed in several directions
about the broad street of the place, some going through side alleys and
reappearing upon the steepness of the hill, others entering some of the
small black buildings which lined the way.

At the sight of these things drifting up towards him, Plattner stopped,
staring. They were not walking, they were indeed limbless, and they
had the appearance of human heads, beneath which a tadpole-like body
swung. He was too astonished at their strangeness, too full, indeed,
of strangeness, to be seriously alarmed by them. They drove towards
him, in front of the chill wind that was blowing uphill, much as
soap-bubbles drive before a draught. And as he looked at the nearest
of those approaching, he saw it was indeed a human head, albeit with
singularly large eyes, and wearing such an expression of distress and
anguish as he had never seen before upon mortal countenance. He was
surprised to find that it did not turn to regard him, but seemed to be
watching and following some unseen moving thing. For a moment he was
puzzled, and then it occurred to him that this creature was watching
with its enormous eyes something that was happening in the world he had
just left. Nearer it came, and nearer, and he was too astonished to
cry out. It made a very faint fretting sound as it came close to him.
Then it struck his face with a gentle pat--its touch was very cold--and
drove past him, and upward towards the crest of the hill.

An extraordinary conviction flashed across Plattner's mind that this
head had a strong likeness to Lidgett. Then he turned his attention
to the other heads that were now swarming thickly up the hillside.
None made the slightest sign of recognition. One or two, indeed, came
close to his head and almost followed the example of the first, but
he dodged convulsively out of the way. Upon most of them he saw the
same expression of unavailing regret he had seen upon the first, and
heard the same faint sounds of wretchedness from them. One or two wept,
and one rolling swiftly uphill wore an expression of diabolical rage.
But others were cold, and several had a look of gratified interest in
their eyes. One, at least, was almost in an ecstasy of happiness.
Plattner does not remember that he recognised any more likenesses in
those he saw at this time.

For several hours, perhaps, Plattner watched these strange things
dispersing themselves over the hills, and not till long after they
had ceased to issue from the clustering black buildings in the gorge,
did he resume his downward climb. The darkness about him increased so
much that he had a difficulty in stepping true. Overhead the sky was
now a bright, pale green. He felt neither hunger nor thirst. Later,
when he did, he found a chilly stream running down the centre of the
gorge, and the rare moss upon the boulders, when he tried it at last in
desperation, was good to eat.

He groped about among the tombs that ran down the gorge, seeking
vaguely for some clue to these inexplicable things. After a long
time he came to the entrance of the big mausoleum-like building from
which the heads had issued. In this he found a group of green lights
burning upon a kind of basaltic altar, and a bell-rope from a belfry
overhead hanging down into the centre of the place. Round the wall
ran a lettering of fire in a character unknown to him. While he was
still wondering at the purport of these things, he heard the receding
tramp of heavy feet echoing far down the street. He ran out into the
darkness again, but he could see nothing. He had a mind to pull the
bell-rope, and finally decided to follow the footsteps. But, although
he ran far, he never overtook them; and his shouting was of no avail.
The gorge seemed to extend an interminable distance. It was as dark
as earthly starlight throughout its length, while the ghastly green
day lay along the upper edge of its precipices. There were none of the
heads, now, below. They were all, it seemed, busily occupied along the
upper slopes. Looking up, he saw them drifting hither and thither, some
hovering stationary, some flying swiftly through the air. It reminded
him, he said, of "big snowflakes"; only these were black and pale green.

In pursuing the firm, undeviating footsteps that he never overtook, in
groping into new regions of this endless devil's dyke, in clambering up
and down the pitiless heights, in wandering about the summits, and in
watching the drifting faces, Plattner states that he spent the better
part of seven or eight days. He did not keep count, he says. Though
once or twice he found eyes watching him, he had word with no living
soul. He slept among the rocks on the hillside. In the gorge things
earthly were invisible, because, from the earthly standpoint, it was
far underground. On the altitudes, so soon as the earthly day began,
the world became visible to him. He found himself sometimes stumbling
over the dark green rocks, or arresting himself on a precipitous brink,
while all about him the green branches of the Sussexville lanes were
swaying; or, again, he seemed to be walking through the Sussexville
streets, or watching unseen the private business of some household.
And then it was he discovered, that to almost every human being in our
world there pertained some of these drifting heads: that everyone in
the world is watched intermittently by these helpless disembodiments.

What are they--these Watchers of the Living? Plattner never learned.
But two, that presently found and followed him, were like his
childhood's memory of his father and mother. Now and then other faces
turned their eyes upon him: eyes like those of dead people who had
swayed him, or injured him, or helped him in his youth and manhood.
Whenever they looked at him, Plattner was overcome with a strange
sense of responsibility. To his mother he ventured to speak; but she
made no answer. She looked sadly, steadfastly, and tenderly--a little
reproachfully, too, it seemed--into his eyes.

He simply tells this story: he does not endeavour to explain. We are
left to surmise who these Watchers of the Living may be, or if they are
indeed the Dead, why they should so closely and passionately watch a
world they have left for ever. It may be--indeed to my mind it seems
just--that, when our life has closed, when evil or good is no longer
a choice for us, we may still have to witness the working out of the
train of consequences we have laid. If human souls continue after
death, then surely human interests continue after death. But that is
merely my own guess at the meaning of the things seen. Plattner offers
no interpretation, for none was given him. It is well the reader should
understand this clearly. Day after day, with his head reeling, he
wandered about this strange-lit world outside the world, weary and,
towards the end, weak and hungry. By day--by our earthly day, that
is--the ghostly vision of the old familiar scenery of Sussexville, all
about him, irked and worried him. He could not see where to put his
feet, and ever and again with a chilly touch one of these Watching
Souls would come against his face. And after dark the multitude of
these Watchers about him, and their intent distress, confused his mind
beyond describing. A great longing to return to the earthly life that
was so near and yet so remote consumed him. The unearthliness of things
about him produced a positively painful mental distress. He was worried
beyond describing by his own particular followers. He would shout at
them to desist from staring at him, scold at them, hurry away from
them. They were always mute and intent. Run as he might over the uneven
ground, they followed his destinies.

On the ninth day, towards evening, Plattner heard the invisible
footsteps approaching, far away down the gorge. He was then wandering
over the broad crest of the same hill upon which he had fallen in his
entry into this strange Other-World of his. He turned to hurry down
into the gorge, feeling his way hastily, and was arrested by the sight
of the thing that was happening in a room in a back street near the
school. Both of the people in the room he knew by sight. The windows
were open, the blinds up, and the setting sun shone clearly into it, so
that it came out quite brightly at first, a vivid oblong of room, lying
like a magic-lantern picture upon the black landscape and the livid
green dawn. In addition to the sunlight, a candle had just been lit in
the room.

On the bed lay a lank man, his ghastly white face terrible upon the
tumbled pillow. His clenched hands were raised above his head. A little
table beside the bed carried a few medicine bottles, some toast and
water, and an empty glass. Every now and then the lank man's lips
fell apart, to indicate a word he could not articulate. But the woman
did not notice that he wanted anything, because she was busy turning
out papers from an old-fashioned bureau in the opposite corner of the
room. At first the picture was very vivid indeed, but as the green dawn
behind it grew brighter and brighter, so it became fainter and more and
more transparent.

As the echoing footsteps paced nearer and nearer, those footsteps
that sound so loud in that Other-World and come so silently in this,
Plattner perceived about him a great multitude of dim faces gathering
together out of the darkness and watching the two people in the room.
Never before had he seen so many of the Watchers of the Living.
A multitude had eyes only for the sufferer in the room, another
multitude, in infinite anguish, watched the woman as she hunted with
greedy eyes for something she could not find. They crowded about
Plattner, they came across his sight and buffeted his face, the noise
of their unavailing regrets was all about him. He saw clearly only
now and then. At other times the picture quivered dimly, through the
veil of green reflections upon their movements. In the room it must
have been very still, and Plattner says the candle flame streamed
up into a perfectly vertical line of smoke, but in his ears each
footfall and its echoes beat like a clap of thunder. And the faces!
Two, more particularly near the woman's: one a woman's also, white
and clear-featured, a face which might have once been cold and hard,
but which was now softened by the touch of a wisdom strange to earth.
The other might have been the woman's father. Both were evidently
absorbed in the contemplation of some act of hateful meanness, so it
seemed, which they could no longer guard against and prevent. Behind
were others, teachers, it may be, who had taught ill, friends whose
influence had failed. And over the man, too--a multitude, but none
that seemed to be parents or teachers! Faces that might once have
been coarse, now purged to strength by sorrow! And in the forefront
one face, a girlish one, neither angry nor remorseful, but merely
patient and weary, and, as it seemed to Plattner, waiting for relief.
His powers of description fail him at the memory of this multitude of
ghastly countenances. They gathered on the stroke of the bell. He saw
them all in the space of a second. It would seem that he was so worked
on by his excitement that, quite involuntarily, his restless fingers
took the bottle of green powder out of his pocket and held it before
him. But he does not remember that.

Abruptly the footsteps ceased. He waited for the next, and there was
silence, and then suddenly, cutting through the unexpected stillness
like a keen, thin blade, came the first stroke of the bell. At that the
multitudinous faces swayed to and fro, and a louder crying began all
about him. The woman did not hear; she was burning something now in the
candle flame. At the second stroke everything grew dim, and a breath of
wind, icy cold, blew through the host of watchers. They swirled about
him like an eddy of dead leaves in the spring, and at the third stroke
something was extended through them to the bed. You have heard of a
beam of light. This was like a beam of darkness, and looking again at
it, Plattner saw that it was a shadowy arm and hand.

The green sun was now topping the black desolations of the horizon,
and the vision of the room was very faint. Plattner could see that
the white of the bed struggled, and was convulsed; and that the woman
looked round over her shoulder at it, startled.

The cloud of watchers lifted high like a puff of green dust before the
wind, and swept swiftly downward towards the temple in the gorge. Then
suddenly Plattner understood the meaning of the shadowy black arm that
stretched across his shoulder and clutched its prey. He did not dare
turn his head to see the Shadow behind the arm. With a violent effort,
and covering his eyes, he set himself to run, made, perhaps, twenty
strides, then slipped on a boulder, and fell. He fell forward on his
hands; and the bottle smashed and exploded as he touched the ground.

In another moment he found himself, stunned and bleeding, sitting face
to face with Lidgett in the old walled garden behind the school.

       *       *       *       *       *

There the story of Plattner's experiences ends. I have resisted, I
believe successfully, the natural disposition of a writer of fiction
to dress up incidents of this sort. I have told the thing as far as
possible in the order in which Plattner told it to me. I have carefully
avoided any attempt at style, effect, or construction. It would have
been easy, for instance, to have worked the scene of the death-bed
into a kind of plot in which Plattner might have been involved.
But, quite apart from the objectionableness of falsifying a most
extraordinary true story, any such trite devices would spoil, to my
mind, the peculiar effect of this dark world, with its livid green
illumination and its drifting Watchers of the Living, which, unseen and
unapproachable to us, is yet lying all about us.

It remains to add, that a death did actually occur in Vincent Terrace,
just beyond the school garden, and, so far as can be proved, at
the moment of Plattner's return. Deceased was a rate-collector and
insurance agent. His widow, who was much younger than himself, married
last month a Mr. Whymper, a veterinary surgeon of Allbeeding. As the
portion of this story given here has in various forms circulated orally
in Sussexville, she has consented to my use of her name, on condition
that I make it distinctly known that she emphatically contradicts every
detail of Plattner's account of her husband's last moments. She burnt
no will, she says, although Plattner never accused her of doing so:
her husband made but one will, and that just after their marriage.
Certainly, from a man who had never seen it, Plattner's account of the
furniture of the room was curiously accurate.

One other thing, even at the risk of an irksome repetition, I must
insist upon, lest I seem to favour the credulous superstitious view.
Plattner's absence from the world for nine days is, I think, proved.
But that does not prove his story. It is quite conceivable that even
outside space hallucinations may be possible. That, at least, the
reader must bear distinctly in mind.



THE ARGONAUTS OF THE AIR


One saw Monson's Flying Machine from the windows of the trains passing
either along the South-Western main line or along the line between
Wimbledon and Worcester Park,--to be more exact, one saw the huge
scaffoldings which limited the flight of the apparatus. They rose over
the tree-tops, a massive alley of interlacing iron and timber, and an
enormous web of ropes and tackle, extending the best part of two miles.
From the Leatherhead branch this alley was foreshortened and in part
hidden by a hill with villas; but from the main line one had it in
profile, a complex tangle of girders and curving bars, very impressive
to the excursionists from Portsmouth and Southampton and the West.
Monson had taken up the work where Maxim had left it, had gone on at
first with an utter contempt for the journalistic wit and ignorance
that had irritated and hampered his predecessor, and had spent (it was
said) rather more than half his immense fortune upon his experiments.
The results, to an impatient generation, seemed inconsiderable. When
some five years had passed after the growth of the colossal iron groves
at Worcester Park, and Monson still failed to put in a fluttering
appearance over Trafalgar Square, even the Isle of Wight trippers felt
their liberty to smile. And such intelligent people as did not consider
Monson a fool stricken with the mania for invention, denounced him as
being (for no particular reason) a self-advertising quack.

Yet now and again a morning trainload of season-ticket holders would
see a white monster rush headlong through the airy tracery of guides
and bars, and hear the further stays, nettings, and buffers snap,
creak, and groan with the impact of the blow. Then there would be
an efflorescence of black-set white-rimmed faces along the sides of
the train, and the morning papers would be neglected for a vigorous
discussion of the possibility of flying (in which nothing new was ever
said by any chance), until the train reached Waterloo, and its cargo
of season-ticket holders dispersed themselves over London. Or the
fathers and mothers in some multitudinous train of weary excursionists
returning exhausted from a day of rest by the sea, would find the dark
fabric, standing out against the evening sky, useful in diverting some
bilious child from its introspection, and be suddenly startled by the
swift transit of a huge black flapping shape that strained upward
against the guides. It was a great and forcible thing beyond dispute,
and excellent for conversation; yet, all the same, it was but flying in
leading-strings, and most of those who witnessed it scarcely counted
its flight as flying. More of a switchback it seemed to the run of the
folk.

Monson, I say, did not trouble himself very keenly about the opinions
of the press at first. But possibly he, even, had formed but a poor
idea of the time it would take before the tactics of flying were
mastered, the swift assured adjustment of the big soaring shape to
every gust and chance movement of the air; nor had he clearly reckoned
the money this prolonged struggle against gravitation would cost
him. And he was not so pachydermatous as he seemed. Secretly he had
his periodical bundles of cuttings sent him by Romeike, he had his
periodical reminders from his banker; and if he did not mind the
initial ridicule and scepticism, he felt the growing neglect as the
months went by and the money dribbled away. Time was when Monson had
sent the enterprising journalist, keen after readable matter, empty
from his gates. But when the enterprising journalist ceased from
troubling, Monson was anything but satisfied in his heart of hearts.
Still day by day the work went on, and the multitudinous subtle
difficulties of the steering diminished in number. Day by day, too,
the money trickled away, until his balance was no longer a matter of
hundreds of thousands, but of tens. And at last came an anniversary.

Monson, sitting in the little drawing-shed, suddenly noticed the date
on Woodhouse's calendar.

"It was five years ago to-day that we began," he said to Woodhouse
suddenly.

"Is it?" said Woodhouse.

"It's the alterations play the devil with us," said Monson, biting a
paper-fastener.

The drawings for the new vans to the hinder screw lay on the table
before him as he spoke. He pitched the mutilated brass paper-fastener
into the waste-paper basket and drummed with his fingers. "These
alterations! Will the mathematicians ever be clever enough to save us
all this patching and experimenting? Five years--learning by rule of
thumb, when one might think that it was possible to calculate the whole
thing out beforehand. The cost of it! I might have hired three senior
wranglers for life. But they'd only have developed some beautifully
useless theorems in pneumatics. What a time it has been, Woodhouse!"

"These mouldings will take three weeks," said Woodhouse. "At special
prices."

"Three weeks!" said Monson, and sat drumming.

"Three weeks certain," said Woodhouse, an excellent engineer, but no
good as a comforter. He drew the sheets towards him and began shading a
bar.

Monson stopped drumming, and began to bite his finger-nails, staring
the while at Woodhouse's head.

"How long have they been calling this Monson's Folly?" he said suddenly.

"_Oh!_ Year or so," said Woodhouse carelessly, without looking up.

Monson sucked the air in between his teeth, and went to the window. The
stout iron columns carrying the elevated rails upon which the start of
the machine was made rose up close by, and the machine was hidden by
the upper edge of the window. Through the grove of iron pillars, red
painted and ornate with rows of bolts, one had a glimpse of the pretty
scenery towards Esher. A train went gliding noiselessly across the
middle distance, its rattle drowned by the hammering of the workmen
overhead. Monson could imagine the grinning faces at the windows of the
carriages. He swore savagely under his breath, and dabbed viciously at
a blowfly that suddenly became noisy on the window-pane.

"What's up?" said Woodhouse, staring in surprise at his employer.

"I'm about sick of this."

Woodhouse scratched his cheek. "Oh!" he said, after an assimilating
pause. He pushed the drawing away from him.

"Here these fools ... I'm trying to conquer a new element--trying to
do a thing that will revolutionise life. And instead of taking an
intelligent interest, they grin and make their stupid jokes, and call
me and my appliances names."

"Asses!" said Woodhouse, letting his eye fall again on the drawing.

The epithet, curiously enough, made Monson wince. "I'm about sick of
it, Woodhouse, anyhow," he said, after a pause.

Woodhouse shrugged his shoulders.

"There's nothing for it but patience, I suppose," said Monson, sticking
his hands in his pockets. "I've started. I've made my bed, and I've got
to lie on it. I can't go back. I'll see it through, and spend every
penny I have and every penny I can borrow. But I tell you, Woodhouse,
I'm infernally sick of it, all the same. If I'd paid a tenth part of
the money towards some political greaser's expenses--I'd have been a
baronet before this."

Monson paused. Woodhouse stared in front of him with a blank expression
he always employed to indicate sympathy, and tapped his pencil-case on
the table. Monson stared at him for a minute.

"Oh, _damn_!" said Monson suddenly, and abruptly rushed out of the room.

Woodhouse continued his sympathetic rigour for perhaps half a minute.
Then he sighed and resumed the shading of the drawings. Something had
evidently upset Monson. Nice chap, and generous, but difficult to get
on with. It was the way with every amateur who had anything to do with
engineering--wanted everything finished at once. But Monson had usually
the patience of the expert. Odd he was so irritable. Nice and round
that aluminium rod did look now! Woodhouse threw back his head, and put
it, first this side and then that, to appreciate his bit of shading
better.

"Mr. Woodhouse," said Hooper, the foreman of the labourers, putting his
head in at the door.

"Hullo!" said Woodhouse, without turning round.

"Nothing happened, sir?" said Hooper.

"Happened?" said Woodhouse.

"The governor just been up the rails swearing like a tornader."

"_Oh!_" said Woodhouse.

"It ain't like him, sir."

"No?"

"And I was thinking perhaps"--

"Don't think," said Woodhouse, still admiring the drawings.

Hooper knew Woodhouse, and he shut the door suddenly with a vicious
slam. Woodhouse stared stonily before him for some further minutes,
and then made an ineffectual effort to pick his teeth with his pencil.
Abruptly he desisted, pitched that old, tried, and stumpy servitor
across the room, got up, stretched himself, and followed Hooper.

He looked ruffled--it was visible to every workman he met. When a
millionaire who has been spending thousands on experiments that employ
quite a little army of people suddenly indicates that he is sick of
the undertaking, there is almost invariably a certain amount of mental
friction in the ranks of the little army he employs. And even before he
indicates his intentions there are speculations and murmurs, a watching
of faces and a study of straws. Hundreds of people knew before the day
was out that Monson was ruffled, Woodhouse ruffled, Hooper ruffled. A
workman's wife, for instance (whom Monson had never seen), decided to
keep her money in the savings-bank instead of buying a velveteen dress.
So far-reaching are even the casual curses of a millionaire.

Monson found a certain satisfaction in going on the works and behaving
disagreeably to as many people as possible. After a time even
that palled upon him, and he rode off the grounds, to every one's
relief there, and through the lanes south-eastward, to the infinite
tribulation of his house steward at Cheam.

And the immediate cause of it all, the little grain of annoyance that
had suddenly precipitated all this discontent with his life-work
was--these trivial things that direct all our great decisions!--half
a dozen ill-considered remarks made by a pretty girl, prettily
dressed, with a beautiful voice and something more than prettiness
in her soft grey eyes. And of these half-dozen remarks, two words
especially--"Monson's Folly." She had felt she was behaving charmingly
to Monson; she reflected the next day how exceptionally effective she
had been, and no one would have been more amazed than she, had she
learned the effect she had left on Monson's mind. I hope, considering
everything, that she never knew.

"How are you getting on with your flying-machine?" she asked. ("I
wonder if I shall ever meet any one with the sense not to ask that,"
thought Monson.) "It will be very dangerous at first, will it not?"
("Thinks I'm afraid.") "Jorgon is going to play presently; have you
heard him before?" ("My mania being attended to, we turn to rational
conversation.") Gush about Jorgon; gradual decline of conversation,
ending with--"You must let me know when your flying-machine is
finished, Mr. Monson, and then I will consider the advisability of
taking a ticket." ("One would think I was still playing inventions
in the nursery.") But the bitterest thing she said was not meant for
Monson's ears. To Phlox, the novelist, she was always conscientiously
brilliant. "I have been talking to Mr. Monson, and he can think of
nothing, positively nothing, but that flying-machine of his. Do you
know, all his workmen call that place of his 'Monson's Folly'? He is
quite impossible. It is really very, very sad. I always regard him
myself in the light of sunken treasure--the Lost Millionaire, you know."

She was pretty and well educated,--indeed, she had written an
epigrammatic novelette; but the bitterness was that she was typical.
She summarised what the world thought of the man who was working
sanely, steadily, and surely towards a more tremendous revolution in
the appliances of civilisation, a more far-reaching alteration in the
ways of humanity than has ever been effected since history began.
They did not even take him seriously. In a little while he would be
proverbial. "I _must_ fly now," he said on his way home, smarting with
a sense of absolute social failure. "I must fly soon. If it doesn't
come off soon, by God! I shall run amuck."

He said that before he had gone through his pass-book and his litter of
papers. Inadequate as the cause seems, it was that girl's voice and the
expression of her eyes that precipitated his discontent. But certainly
the discovery that he had no longer even one hundred thousand pounds'
worth of realisable property behind him was the poison that made the
wound deadly.

It was the next day after this that he exploded upon Woodhouse and
his workmen, and thereafter his bearing was consistently grim for
three weeks, and anxiety dwelt in Cheam and Ewell, Malden, Morden, and
Worcester Park, places that had thriven mightily on his experiments.

Four weeks after that first swearing of his, he stood with Woodhouse
by the reconstructed machine as it lay across the elevated railway,
by means of which it gained its initial impetus. The new propeller
glittered a brighter white than the rest of the machine, and a gilder,
obedient to a whim of Monson's, was picking out the aluminium bars
with gold. And looking down the long avenue between the ropes (gilded
now with the sunset), one saw red signals, and two miles away an
ant-hill of workmen busy altering the last falls of the run into a
rising slope.

"I'll _come_," said Woodhouse. "I'll come right enough. But I tell you
it's infernally foolhardy. If only you would give another year"--

"I tell you I won't. I tell you the thing works. I've given years
enough"--

"It's not that," said Woodhouse. "We're all right with the machine. But
it's the steering"--

"Haven't I been rushing, night and morning, backwards and forwards,
through this squirrel's cage? If the thing steers true here, it will
steer true all across England. It's just funk, I tell you, Woodhouse.
We could have gone a year ago. And besides"--

"Well?" said Woodhouse.

"The money!" snapped Monson over his shoulder.

"Hang it! I never thought of the money," said Woodhouse, and then,
speaking now in a very different tone to that with which he had said
the words before, he repeated, "I'll come. Trust me."

Monson turned suddenly, and saw all that Woodhouse had not the
dexterity to say, shining on his sunset-lit face. He looked for a
moment, then impulsively extended his hand. "Thanks," he said.

"All right," said Woodhouse, gripping the hand, and with a queer
softening of his features. "Trust me."

Then both men turned to the big apparatus that lay with its flat wings
extended upon the carrier, and stared at it meditatively. Monson,
guided perhaps by a photographic study of the flight of birds, and by
Lilienthal's methods, had gradually drifted from Maxim's shapes towards
the bird form again. The thing, however, was driven by a huge screw
behind in the place of the tail; and so hovering, which needs an almost
vertical adjustment of a flat tail, was rendered impossible. The body
of the machine was small, almost cylindrical, and pointed. Forward and
aft on the pointed ends were two small petroleum engines for the screw,
and the navigators sat deep in a canoe-like recess, the foremost one
steering, and being protected by a low screen, with two plate-glass
windows, from the blinding rush of air. On either side a monstrous flat
framework with a curved front border could be adjusted so as either to
lie horizontally, or to be tilted upward or down. These wings worked
rigidly together, or, by releasing a pin, one could be tilted through
a small angle independently of its fellow. The front edge of either
wing could also be shifted back so as to diminish the wing-area about
one-sixth. The machine was not only not designed to hover, but it was
also incapable of fluttering. Monson's idea was to get into the air
with the initial rush of the apparatus, and then to skim, much as a
playing-card may be skimmed, keeping up the rush by means of the screw
at the stern. Rooks and gulls fly enormous distances in that way with
scarcely a perceptible movement of the wings. The bird really drives
along on an aërial switchback. It glides slanting downward for a
space, until it has gained considerable momentum, and then altering
the inclination of its wings, glides up again almost to its original
altitude. Even a Londoner who has watched the birds in the aviary in
Regent's Park knows that.

But the bird is practising this art from the moment it leaves its nest.
It has not only the perfect apparatus, but the perfect instinct to
use it. A man off his feet has the poorest skill in balancing. Even
the simple trick of the bicycle costs him some hours of labour. The
instantaneous adjustments of the wings, the quick response to a passing
breeze, the swift recovery of equilibrium, the giddy, eddying movements
that require such absolute precision--all that he must learn, learn
with infinite labour and infinite danger, if ever he is to conquer
flying. The flying-machine that will start off some fine day, driven
by neat "little levers," with a nice open deck like a liner, and all
loaded up with bombshells and guns, is the easy dreaming of a literary
man. In lives and in treasure the cost of the conquest of the empire of
the air may even exceed all that has been spent in man's great conquest
of the sea. Certainly it will be costlier than the greatest war that
has ever devastated the world.

No one knew these things better than these two practical men. And they
knew they were in the front rank of the coming army. Yet there is
hope even in a forlorn hope. Men are killed outright in the reserves
sometimes, while others who have been left for dead in the thickest
corner crawl out and survive.

"If we miss these meadows"--said Woodhouse presently in his slow way.

"My dear chap," said Monson, whose spirits had been rising fitfully
during the last few days, "we mustn't miss these meadows. There's
a quarter of a square mile for us to hit, fences removed, ditches
levelled. We shall come down all right--rest assured. And if we don't"--

"Ah!" said Woodhouse. "If we don't!"

Before the day of the start, the newspaper people got wind of the
alterations at the northward end of the framework, and Monson was
cheered by a decided change in the comments Romeike forwarded him. "He
will be off some day," said the papers. "He will be off some day,"
said the South-Western season-ticket holders one to another; the
seaside excursionists, the Saturday-to-Monday trippers from Sussex
and Hampshire and Dorset and Devon, the eminent literary people from
Hazlemere, all remarked eagerly one to another, "He will be off
some day," as the familiar scaffolding came in sight. And actually,
one bright morning, in full view of the ten-past-ten train from
Basingstoke, Monson's flying-machine started on its journey.

They saw the carrier running swiftly along its rail, and the white and
gold screw spinning in the air. They heard the rapid rumble of wheels,
and a thud as the carrier reached the buffers at the end of its run.
Then a whirr as the Flying-Machine was shot forward into the networks.
All that the majority of them had seen and heard before. The thing went
with a drooping flight through the framework and rose again, and then
every beholder shouted, or screamed, or yelled, or shrieked after his
kind. For instead of the customary concussion and stoppage, the Flying
Machine flew out of its five years' cage like a bolt from a crossbow,
and drove slantingly upward into the air, curved round a little, so as
to cross the line, and soared in the direction of Wimbledon Common.

It seemed to hang momentarily in the air and grow smaller, then it
ducked and vanished over the clustering blue tree-tops to the east of
Coombe Hill, and no one stopped staring and gasping until long after it
had disappeared.

That was what the people in the train from Basingstoke saw. If you had
drawn a line down the middle of that train, from engine to guard's
van, you would not have found a living soul on the opposite side to
the flying-machine. It was a mad rush from window to window as the
thing crossed the line. And the engine-driver and stoker never took
their eyes off the low hills about Wimbledon, and never noticed that
they had run clean through Coombe and Maiden and Raynes Park, until,
with returning animation, they found themselves pelting, at the most
indecent pace, into Wimbledon station.

From the moment when Monson had started the carrier with a "_Now!_"
neither he nor Woodhouse said a word. Both men sat with clenched
teeth. Monson had crossed the line with a curve that was too sharp,
and Woodhouse had opened and shut his white lips; but neither spoke.
Woodhouse simply gripped his seat, and breathed sharply through his
teeth, watching the blue country to the west rushing past, and down,
and away from him. Monson knelt at his post forward, and his hands
trembled on the spoked wheel that moved the wings. He could see
nothing before him but a mass of white clouds in the sky.

The machine went slanting upward, travelling with an enormous speed
still, but losing momentum every moment. The land ran away underneath
with diminishing speed.

"_Now!_" said Woodhouse at last, and with a violent effort Monson
wrenched over the wheel and altered the angle of the wings. The machine
seemed to hang for half a minute motionless in mid-air, and then he
saw the hazy blue house-covered hills of Kilburn and Hampstead jump
up before his eyes and rise steadily, until the little sunlit dome of
the Albert Hall appeared through his windows. For a moment he scarcely
understood the meaning of this upward rush of the horizon, but as the
nearer and nearer houses came into view, he realised what he had done.
He had turned the wings over too far, and they were swooping steeply
downward towards the Thames.

The thought, the question, the realisation were all the business of a
second of time. "Too much!" gasped Woodhouse. Monson brought the wheel
half-way back with a jerk, and forthwith the Kilburn and Hampstead
ridge dropped again to the lower edge of his windows. They had been
a thousand feet above Coombe and Maiden station; fifty seconds after
they whizzed, at a frightful pace, not eighty feet above the East
Putney station, on the Metropolitan District line, to the screaming
astonishment of a platformful of people. Monson flung up the vans
against the air, and over Fulham they rushed up their atmospheric
switchback again, steeply--too steeply. The 'buses went floundering
across the Fulham Road, the people yelled.

Then down again, too steeply still, and the distant trees and houses
about Primrose Hill leapt up across Monson's window, and then suddenly
he saw straight before him the greenery of Kensington Gardens and the
towers of the Imperial Institute. They were driving straight down upon
South Kensington. The pinnacles of the Natural History Museum rushed up
into view. There came one fatal second of swift thought, a moment of
hesitation. Should he try and clear the towers, or swerve eastward?

He made a hesitating attempt to release the right wing, left the catch
half released, and gave a frantic clutch at the wheel.

The nose of the machine seemed to leap up before him. The wheel pressed
his hand with irresistible force, and jerked itself out of his control.

Woodhouse, sitting crouched together, gave a hoarse cry, and sprang up
towards Monson. "Too far!" he cried, and then he was clinging to the
gunwale for dear life, and Monson had been jerked clean overhead, and
was falling backwards upon him.

So swiftly had the thing happened that barely a quarter of the people
going to and fro in Hyde Park, and Brompton Road, and the Exhibition
Road saw anything of the aërial catastrophe. A distant winged shape
had appeared above the clustering houses to the south, had fallen
and risen, growing larger as it did so; had swooped swiftly down
towards the Imperial Institute, a broad spread of flying wings, had
swept round in a quarter circle, dashed eastward, and then suddenly
sprang vertically into the air. A black object shot out of it, and
came spinning downward. A man! Two men clutching each other! They came
whirling down, separated as they struck the roof of the Students' Club,
and bounded off into the green bushes on its southward side.

For perhaps half a minute, the pointed stem of the big machine still
pierced vertically upward, the screw spinning desperately. For one
brief instant, that yet seemed an age to all who watched, it had hung
motionless in mid-air. Then a spout of yellow flame licked up its
length from the stern engine, and swift, swifter, swifter, and flaring
like a rocket, it rushed down upon the solid mass of masonry which was
formerly the Royal College of Science. The big screw of white and gold
touched the parapet, and crumpled up like wet linen. Then the blazing
spindle-shaped body smashed and splintered, smashing and splintering in
its fall, upon the north-westward angle of the building.

But the crash, the flame of blazing paraffin that shot heavenward from
the shattered engines of the machine, the crushed horrors that were
found in the garden beyond the Students' Club, the masses of yellow
parapet and red brick that fell headlong into the roadway, the running
to and fro of people like ants in a broken ant-hill, the galloping of
fire-engines, the gathering of crowds--all these things do not belong
to this story, which was written only to tell how the first of all
successful flying-machines was launched and flew. Though he failed, and
failed disastrously, the record of Monson's work remains--a sufficient
monument--to guide the next of that band of gallant experimentalists
who will sooner or later master this great problem of flying. And
between Worcester Park and Malden there still stands that portentous
avenue of iron-work, rusting now, and dangerous here and there, to
witness to the first desperate struggle for man's right of way through
the air.



THE STORY OF THE LATE MR. ELVESHAM


I set this story down, not expecting it will be believed, but, if
possible, to prepare a way of escape for the next victim. He, perhaps,
may profit by my misfortune. My own case, I know, is hopeless, and I am
now in some measure prepared to meet my fate.

My name is Edward George Eden. I was born at Trentham, in Staffordshire,
my father being employed in the gardens there. I lost my mother when
I was three years old, and my father when I was five, my uncle,
George Eden, then adopting me as his own son. He was a single man,
self-educated, and well-known in Birmingham as an enterprising
journalist; he educated me generously, fired my ambition to succeed
in the world, and at his death, which happened four years ago, left
me his entire fortune, a matter of about five hundred pounds after
all outgoing charges were paid. I was then eighteen. He advised me
in his will to expend the money in completing my education. I had
already chosen the profession of medicine, and through his posthumous
generosity, and my good fortune in a scholarship competition, I became
a medical student at University College, London. At the time of the
beginning of my story I lodged at 11A University Street, in a little
upper room, very shabbily furnished, and draughty, overlooking the back
of Shoolbred's premises. I used this little room both to live in and
sleep in, because I was anxious to eke out my means to the very last
shillingsworth.

I was taking a pair of shoes to be mended at a shop in the Tottenham
Court Road when I first encountered the little old man with the yellow
face, with whom my life has now become so inextricably entangled. He
was standing on the kerb, and staring at the number on the door in
a doubtful way, as I opened it. His eyes--they were dull grey eyes,
and reddish under the rims--fell to my face, and his countenance
immediately assumed an expression of corrugated amiability.

"You come," he said, "apt to the moment. I had forgotten the number of
your house. How do you do, Mr. Eden?"

I was a little astonished at his familiar address, for I had never set
eyes on the man before. I was a little annoyed, too, at his catching me
with my boots under my arm. He noticed my lack of cordiality.

"Wonder who the deuce I am, eh? A friend, let me assure you. I have
seen you before, though you haven't seen me. Is there anywhere where I
can talk to you?"

I hesitated. The shabbiness of my room upstairs was not a matter for
every stranger. "Perhaps," said I, "we might walk down the street. I'm
unfortunately prevented"--My gesture explained the sentence before I
had spoken it.

"The very thing," he said, and faced this way and then that. "The
street? Which way shall we go?" I slipped my boots down in the passage.
"Look here!" he said abruptly; "this business of mine is a rigmarole.
Come and lunch with me, Mr. Eden. I'm an old man, a very old man, and
not good at explanations, and what with my piping voice and the clatter
of the traffic"--

He laid a persuasive skinny hand that trembled a little upon my arm.

I was not so old that an old man might not treat me to a lunch. Yet at
the same time I was not altogether pleased by this abrupt invitation.
"I had rather"--I began. "But _I_ had rather," he said, catching me
up, "and a certain civility is surely due to my grey hairs." And so I
consented, and went with him.

He took me to Blavitski's; I had to walk slowly to accommodate myself
to his paces; and over such a lunch as I had never tasted before,
he fended off my leading questions, and I took a better note of his
appearance. His clean-shaven face was lean and wrinkled, his shrivelled
lips fell over a set of false teeth, and his white hair was thin and
rather long; he seemed small to me,--though, indeed, most people seemed
small to me,--and his shoulders were rounded and bent. And watching
him, I could not help but observe that he too was taking note of me,
running his eyes, with a curious touch of greed in them, over me, from
my broad shoulders to my sun-tanned hands, and up to my freckled face
again. "And now," said he, as we lit our cigarettes, "I must tell you
of the business in hand.

"I must tell you, then, that I am an old man, a very old man." He
paused momentarily. "And it happens that I have money that I must
presently be leaving, and never a child have I to leave it to." I
thought of the confidence trick, and resolved I would be on the alert
for the vestiges of my five hundred pounds. He proceeded to enlarge on
his loneliness, and the trouble he had to find a proper disposition
of his money. "I have weighed this plan and that plan, charities,
institutions, and scholarships, and libraries, and I have come to this
conclusion at last,"--he fixed his eyes on my face,--"that I will find
some young fellow, ambitious, pure-minded, and poor, healthy in body
and healthy in mind, and, in short, make him my heir, give him all
that I have." He repeated, "Give him all that I have. So that he will
suddenly be lifted out of all the trouble and struggle in which his
sympathies have been educated, to freedom and influence."

I tried to seem disinterested. With a transparent hypocrisy, I said,
"And you want my help, my professional services, maybe, to find that
person."

He smiled, and looked at me over his cigarette, and I laughed at his
quiet exposure of my modest pretence.

"What a career such a man might have!" he said. "It fills me with envy
to think how I have accumulated that another man may spend--

"But there are conditions, of course, burdens to be imposed. He must,
for instance, take my name. You cannot expect everything without some
return. And I must go into all the circumstances of his life before I
can accept him. He _must_ be sound. I must know his heredity, how his
parents and grandparents died, have the strictest inquiries made into
his private morals"--

This modified my secret congratulations a little. "And do I understand,"
said I, "that I--?"

"Yes," he said, almost fiercely. "You. _You._"

I answered never a word. My imagination was dancing wildly, my innate
scepticism was useless to modify its transports. There was not a
particle of gratitude in my mind--I did not know what to say nor how to
say it. "But why me in particular?" I said at last.

He had chanced to hear of me from Professor Haslar, he said, as a
typically sound and sane young man, and he wished, as far as possible,
to leave his money where health and integrity were assured.

That was my first meeting with the little old man. He was mysterious
about himself; he would not give his name yet, he said, and after I had
answered some questions of his, he left me at the Blavitski portal.
I noticed that he drew a handful of gold coins from his pocket when
it came to paying for the lunch. His insistence upon bodily health
was curious. In accordance with an arrangement we had made I applied
that day for a life policy in the Loyal Insurance Company for a large
sum, and I was exhaustively overhauled by the medical advisers of that
company in the subsequent week. Even that did not satisfy him, and he
insisted I must be re-examined by the great Doctor Henderson. It was
Friday in Whitsun week before he came to a decision. He called me
down, quite late in the evening,--nearly nine it was,--from cramming
chemical equations for my Preliminary Scientific examination. He was
standing in the passage under the feeble gas-lamp, and his face was a
grotesque interplay of shadows. He seemed more bowed than when I had
first seen him, and his cheeks had sunk in a little.

His voice shook with emotion. "Everything is satisfactory, Mr. Eden,"
he said. "Everything is quite, quite satisfactory. And this night of
all nights, you must dine with me and celebrate your--accession." He
was interrupted by a cough. "You won't have long to wait, either," he
said, wiping his handkerchief across his lips, and gripping my hand
with his long bony claw that was disengaged. "Certainly not very long
to wait."

We went into the street and called a cab. I remember every incident of
that drive vividly, the swift, easy motion, the vivid contrast of gas
and oil and electric light, the crowds of people in the streets, the
place in Regent Street to which we went, and the sumptuous dinner we
were served with there. I was disconcerted at first by the well-dressed
waiter's glances at my rough clothes, bothered by the stones of the
olives, but as the champagne warmed my blood, my confidence revived. At
first the old man talked of himself. He had already told me his name in
the cab; he was Egbert Elvesham, the great philosopher, whose name I
had known since I was a lad at school. It seemed incredible to me that
this man, whose intelligence had so early dominated mine, this great
abstraction, should suddenly realise itself as this decrepit, familiar
figure. I daresay every young fellow who has suddenly fallen among
celebrities has felt something of my disappointment. He told me now of
the future that the feeble streams of his life would presently leave
dry for me, houses, copyrights, investments; I had never suspected that
philosophers were so rich. He watched me drink and eat with a touch of
envy. "What a capacity for living you have!" he said; and then, with a
sigh, a sigh of relief I could have thought it, "It will not be long."

"Ay," said I, my head swimming now with champagne; "I have a future
perhaps--of a passing agreeable sort, thanks to you. I shall now have
the honour of your name. But you have a past. Such a past as is worth
all my future."

He shook his head and smiled, as I thought, with half-sad appreciation
of my flattering admiration. "That future," he said, "would you
in truth change it?" The waiter came with liqueurs. "You will not
perhaps mind taking my name, taking my position, but would you
indeed--willingly--take my years?"

"With your achievements," said I gallantly.

He smiled again. "Kummel--both," he said to the waiter, and turned
his attention to a little paper packet he had taken from his pocket.
"This hour," said he, "this after-dinner hour is the hour of small
things. Here is a scrap of my unpublished wisdom." He opened the packet
with his shaking yellow fingers, and showed a little pinkish powder
on the paper. "This," said he--"well, you must guess what it is. But
Kummel--put but a dash of this powder in it--is Himmel." His large
greyish eyes watched mine with an inscrutable expression.

It was a bit of a shock to me to find this great teacher gave his mind
to the flavour of liqueurs. However, I feigned a great interest in his
weakness, for I was drunk enough for such small sycophancy.

He parted the powder between the little glasses, and, rising suddenly,
with a strange unexpected dignity, held out his hand towards me. I
imitated his action, and the glasses rang. "To a quick succession,"
said he, and raised his glass towards his lips.

"Not that," I said hastily. "Not that."

He paused, with the liqueur at the level of his chin, and his eyes
blazing into mine.

"To a long life," said I.

He hesitated. "To a long life," said he, with a sudden bark of
laughter, and with eyes fixed on one another we tilted the little
glasses. His eyes looked straight into mine, and as I drained the stuff
off, I felt a curiously intense sensation. The first touch of it set my
brain in a furious tumult; I seemed to feel an actual physical stirring
in my skull, and a seething humming filled my ears. I did not notice
the flavour in my mouth, the aroma that filled my throat; I saw only
the grey intensity of his gaze that burnt into mine. The draught, the
mental confusion, the noise and stirring in my head, seemed to last an
interminable time. Curious vague impressions of half-forgotten things
danced and vanished on the edge of my consciousness. At last he broke
the spell. With a sudden explosive sigh he put down his glass.

"Well?" he said.

"It's glorious," said I, though I had not tasted the stuff.

My head was spinning. I sat down. My brain was chaos. Then my
perception grew clear and minute as though I saw things in a concave
mirror. His manner seemed to have changed into something nervous and
hasty. He pulled out his watch and grimaced at it. "Eleven-seven! And
to-night I must--Seven--twenty-five. Waterloo! I must go at once." He
called for the bill, and struggled with his coat. Officious waiters
came to our assistance. In another moment I was wishing him good-bye,
over the apron of a cab, and still with an absurd feeling of minute
distinctness, as though--how can I express it?--I not only saw but
_felt_ through an inverted opera-glass.

"That stuff," he said. He put his hand to his forehead. "I ought not
to have given it to you. It will make your head split to-morrow.
Wait a minute. Here." He handed me out a little flat thing like a
seidlitz-powder. "Take that in water as you are going to bed. The other
thing was a drug. Not till you're ready to go to bed, mind. It will
clear your head. That's all. One more shake--Futurus!"

I gripped his shrivelled claw. "Good-bye," he said, and by the droop of
his eyelids I judged he too was a little under the influence of that
brain-twisting cordial.

He recollected something else with a start, felt in his breast-pocket,
and produced another packet, this time a cylinder the size and shape of
a shaving-stick. "Here," said he. "I'd almost forgotten. Don't open
this until I come to-morrow--but take it now."

It was so heavy that I well-nigh dropped it. "All ri'!" said I, and he
grinned at me through the cab window as the cabman flicked his horse
into wakefulness. It was a white packet he had given me, with red seals
at either end and along its edge. "If this isn't money," said I, "it's
platinum or lead."

I stuck it with elaborate care into my pocket, and with a whirling
brain walked home through the Regent Street loiterers and the dark
back streets beyond Portland Road. I remember the sensations of that
walk very vividly, strange as they were. I was still so far myself
that I could notice my strange mental state, and wonder whether this
stuff I had had was opium--a drug beyond my experience. It is hard now
to describe the peculiarity of my mental strangeness--mental doubling
vaguely expresses it. As I was walking up Regent Street I found in my
mind a queer persuasion that it was Waterloo station, and had an odd
impulse to get into the Polytechnic as a man might get into a train. I
put a knuckle in my eye, and it was Regent Street. How can I express
it? You see a skilful actor looking quietly at you, he pulls a grimace,
and lo!--another person. Is it too extravagant if I tell you that it
seemed to me as if Regent Street had, for the moment, done that? Then,
being persuaded it was Regent Street again, I was oddly muddled about
some fantastic reminiscences that cropped up. "Thirty years ago,"
thought I, "it was here that I quarrelled with my brother." Then I
burst out laughing, to the astonishment and encouragement of a group of
night prowlers. Thirty years ago I did not exist, and never in my life
had I boasted a brother. The stuff was surely liquid folly, for the
poignant regret for that lost brother still clung to me. Along Portland
Road the madness took another turn. I began to recall vanished shops,
and to compare the street with what it used to be. Confused, troubled
thinking is comprehensible enough after the drink I had taken, but what
puzzled me were these curiously vivid phantasm memories that had crept
into my mind, and not only the memories that had crept in, but also
the memories that had slipped out. I stopped opposite Stevens', the
natural history dealer's, and cudgelled my brains to think what he had
to do with me. A 'bus went by, and sounded exactly like the rumbling
of a train. I seemed to be dipped into some dark, remote pit for the
recollection. "Of course," said I, at last, "he has promised me three
frogs to-morrow. Odd I should have forgotten."

Do they still show children dissolving views? In those I remember one
view would begin like a faint ghost, and grow and oust another. In
just that way it seemed to me that a ghostly set of new sensations was
struggling with those of my ordinary self.

I went on through Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, puzzled, and a
little frightened, and scarcely noticed the unusual way I was taking,
for commonly I used to cut through the intervening network of back
streets. I turned into University Street, to discover that I had
forgotten my number. Only by a strong effort did I recall 11A, and
even then it seemed to me that it was a thing some forgotten person
had told me. I tried to steady my mind by recalling the incidents of
the dinner, and for the life of me I could conjure up no picture of
my host's face; I saw him only as a shadowy outline, as one might see
oneself reflected in a window through which one was looking. In his
place, however, I had a curious exterior vision of myself sitting at a
table, flushed, bright-eyed, and talkative.

"I must take this other powder," said I. "This is getting impossible."

I tried the wrong side of the hall for my candle and the matches, and
had a doubt of which landing my room might be on. "I'm drunk," I said,
"that's certain," and blundered needlessly on the staircase to sustain
the proposition.

At the first glance my room seemed unfamiliar. "What rot!" I said, and
stared about me. I seemed to bring myself back by the effort, and the
odd phantasmal quality passed into the concrete familiar. There was the
old glass still, with my notes on the albumens stuck in the corner of
the frame, my old everyday suit of clothes pitched about the floor. And
yet it was not so real after all. I felt an idiotic persuasion trying
to creep into my mind, as it were, that I was in a railway carriage in
a train just stopping, that I was peering out of the window at some
unknown station. I gripped the bed-rail firmly to reassure myself.
"It's clairvoyance, perhaps," I said. "I must write to the Psychical
Research Society."

I put the rouleau on my dressing-table, sat on my bed and began to
take off my boots. It was as if the picture of my present sensations
was painted over some other picture that was trying to show through.
"Curse it!" said I; "my wits are going, or am I in two places at once?"
Half-undressed, I tossed the powder into a glass and drank it off. It
effervesced, and became a fluorescent amber colour. Before I was in bed
my mind was already tranquillised. I felt the pillow at my cheek, and
thereupon I must have fallen asleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

I awoke abruptly out of a dream of strange beasts, and found myself
lying on my back. Probably everyone knows that dismal, emotional dream
from which one escapes, awake indeed, but strangely cowed. There was
a curious taste in my mouth, a tired feeling in my limbs, a sense of
cutaneous discomfort. I lay with my head motionless on my pillow,
expecting that my feeling of strangeness and terror would probably
pass away, and that I should then doze off again to sleep. But instead
of that, my uncanny sensations increased. At first I could perceive
nothing wrong about me. There was a faint light in the room, so faint
that it was the very next thing to darkness, and the furniture stood
out in it as vague blots of absolute darkness. I stared with my eyes
just over the bedclothes.

It came into my mind that someone had entered the room to rob me of my
rouleau of money, but after lying for some moments, breathing regularly
to simulate sleep, I realised this was mere fancy. Nevertheless, the
uneasy assurance of something wrong kept fast hold of me. With an
effort I raised my head from the pillow, and peered about me at the
dark. What it was I could not conceive. I looked at the dim shapes
around me, the greater and lesser darknesses that indicated curtains,
table, fireplace, bookshelves, and so forth. Then I began to perceive
something unfamiliar in the forms of the darkness. Had the bed turned
round? Yonder should be the bookshelves, and something shrouded and
pallid rose there, something that would not answer to the bookshelves,
however I looked at it. It was far too big to be my shirt thrown on a
chair.

Overcoming a childish terror, I threw back the bedclothes and thrust my
leg out of bed. Instead of coming out of my truckle-bed upon the floor,
I found my foot scarcely reached the edge of the mattress. I made
another step, as it were, and sat up on the edge of the bed. By the
side of my bed should be the candle, and the matches upon the broken
chair. I put out my hand and touched--nothing. I waved my hand in the
darkness, and it came against some heavy hanging, soft and thick in
texture, which gave a rustling noise at my touch. I grasped this and
pulled it; it appeared to be a curtain suspended over the head of my
bed.

I was now thoroughly awake, and beginning to realise that I was
in a strange room. I was puzzled. I tried to recall the overnight
circumstances, and I found them now, curiously enough, vivid in my
memory: the supper, my reception of the little packages, my wonder
whether I was intoxicated, my slow undressing, the coolness to my
flushed face of my pillow. I felt a sudden distrust. Was that last
night, or the night before? At anyrate, this room was strange to
me, and I could not imagine how I had got into it. The dim, pallid
outline was growing paler, and I perceived it was a window, with the
dark shape of an oval toilet-glass against the weak intimation of the
dawn that filtered through the blind. I stood up, and was surprised
by a curious feeling of weakness and unsteadiness. With trembling
hands outstretched, I walked slowly towards the window, getting,
nevertheless, a bruise on the knee from a chair by the way. I fumbled
round the glass, which was large, with handsome brass sconces, to find
the blind-cord. I could not find any. By chance I took hold of the
tassel, and with the click of a spring the blind ran up.

I found myself looking out upon a scene that was altogether strange
to me. The night was overcast, and through the flocculent grey of
the heaped clouds there filtered a faint half-light of dawn. Just at
the edge of the sky, the cloud-canopy had a blood-red rim. Below,
everything was dark and indistinct, dim hills in the distance, a vague
mass of buildings running up into pinnacles, trees like spilt ink, and
below the window a tracery of black bushes and pale grey paths. It was
so unfamiliar that for the moment I thought myself still dreaming. I
felt the toilet-table; it appeared to be made of some polished wood,
and was rather elaborately furnished--there were little cut-glass
bottles and a brush upon it. There was also a queer little object,
horse-shoe-shaped it felt, with smooth, hard projections, lying in a
saucer. I could find no matches nor candlestick.

I turned my eyes to the room again. Now the blind was up, faint
spectres of its furnishing came out of the darkness. There was a huge
curtained bed, and the fireplace at its foot had a large white mantel
with something of the shimmer of marble.

I leant against the toilet-table, shut my eyes and opened them again,
and tried to think. The whole thing was far too real for dreaming. I
was inclined to imagine there was still some hiatus in my memory, as a
consequence of my draught of that strange liqueur; that I had come into
my inheritance perhaps, and suddenly lost my recollection of everything
since my good fortune had been announced. Perhaps if I waited a little,
things would be clearer to me again. Yet my dinner with old Elvesham
was now singularly vivid and recent. The champagne, the observant
waiters, the powder, and the liqueurs--I could have staked my soul it
all happened a few hours ago.

And then occurred a thing so trivial and yet so terrible to me that I
shiver now to think of that moment. I spoke aloud. I said, "How the
devil did I get here?" ... _And the voice was not my own._

It was not my own, it was thin, the articulation was slurred, the
resonance of my facial bones was different. Then, to reassure myself
I ran one hand over the other, and felt loose folds of skin, the
bony laxity of age. "Surely," I said, in that horrible voice that
had somehow established itself in my throat, "surely this thing is a
dream!" Almost as quickly as if I did it involuntarily, I thrust my
fingers into my mouth. My teeth had gone. My finger-tips ran on the
flaccid surface of an even row of shrivelled gums. I was sick with
dismay and disgust.

I felt then a passionate desire to see myself, to realise at once in
its full horror the ghastly change that had come upon me. I tottered to
the mantel, and felt along it for matches. As I did so, a barking cough
sprang up in my throat, and I clutched the thick flannel nightdress I
found about me. There were no matches there, and I suddenly realised
that my extremities were cold. Sniffing and coughing, whimpering a
little, perhaps, I fumbled back to bed. "It is surely a dream," I
whimpered to myself as I clambered back, "surely a dream." It was a
senile repetition. I pulled the bedclothes over my shoulders, over my
ears, I thrust my withered hand under the pillow, and determined to
compose myself to sleep. Of course it was a dream. In the morning the
dream would be over, and I should wake up strong and vigorous again to
my youth and studies. I shut my eyes, breathed regularly, and, finding
myself wakeful, began to count slowly through the powers of three.

But the thing I desired would not come. I could not get to sleep.
And the persuasion of the inexorable reality of the change that had
happened to me grew steadily. Presently I found myself with my eyes
wide open, the powers of three forgotten, and my skinny fingers upon
my shrivelled gums. I was, indeed, suddenly and abruptly, an old man.
I had in some unaccountable manner fallen through my life and come to
old age, in some way I had been cheated of all the best of my life, of
love, of struggle, of strength, and hope. I grovelled into the pillow
and tried to persuade myself that such hallucination was possible.
Imperceptibly, steadily, the dawn grew clearer.

At last, despairing of further sleep, I sat up in bed and looked
about me. A chill twilight rendered the whole chamber visible. It
was spacious and well-furnished, better furnished than any room I
had ever slept in before. A candle and matches became dimly visible
upon a little pedestal in a recess. I threw back the bedclothes,
and, shivering with the rawness of the early morning, albeit it was
summer-time, I got out and lit the candle. Then, trembling horribly,
so that the extinguisher rattled on its spike, I tottered to the glass
and saw--_Elvesham's face!_ It was none the less horrible because I
had already dimly feared as much. He had already seemed physically
weak and pitiful to me, but seen now, dressed only in a coarse flannel
nightdress that fell apart and showed the stringy neck, seen now as
my own body, I cannot describe its desolate decrepitude. The hollow
cheeks, the straggling tail of dirty grey hair, the rheumy bleared
eyes, the quivering, shrivelled lips, the lower displaying a gleam of
the pink interior lining, and those horrible dark gums showing. You
who are mind and body together, at your natural years, cannot imagine
what this fiendish imprisonment meant to me. To be young and full of
the desire and energy of youth, and to be caught, and presently to be
crushed in this tottering ruin of a body....

But I wander from the course of my story. For some time I must have
been stunned at this change that had come upon me. It was daylight when
I did so far gather myself together as to think. In some inexplicable
way I had been changed, though how, short of magic, the thing had been
done, I could not say. And as I thought, the diabolical ingenuity of
Elvesham came home to me. It seemed plain to me that as I found myself
in his, so he must be in possession of _my_ body, of my strength, that
is, and my future. But how to prove it? Then, as I thought, the thing
became so incredible, even to me, that my mind reeled, and I had to
pinch myself, to feel my toothless gums, to see myself in the glass,
and touch the things about me, before I could steady myself to face the
facts again. Was all life hallucination? Was I indeed Elvesham, and he
me? Had I been dreaming of Eden overnight? Was there any Eden? But if
I was Elvesham, I should remember where I was on the previous morning,
the name of the town in which I lived, what happened before the dream
began. I struggled with my thoughts. I recalled the queer doubleness of
my memories overnight. But now my mind was clear. Not the ghost of any
memories but those proper to Eden could I raise.

"This way lies insanity!" I cried in my piping voice. I staggered to my
feet, dragged my feeble, heavy limbs to the washhand-stand, and plunged
my grey head into a basin of cold water. Then, towelling myself, I
tried again. It was no good. I felt beyond all question that I was
indeed Eden, not Elvesham. But Eden in Elvesham's body!

Had I been a man of any other age, I might have given myself up to my
fate as one enchanted. But in these sceptical days miracles do not pass
current. Here was some trick of psychology. What a drug and a steady
stare could do, a drug and a steady stare, or some similar treatment,
could surely undo. Men have lost their memories before. But to exchange
memories as one does umbrellas! I laughed. Alas! not a healthy laugh,
but a wheezing, senile titter. I could have fancied old Elvesham
laughing at my plight, and a gust of petulant anger, unusual to me,
swept across my feelings. I began dressing eagerly in the clothes I
found lying about on the floor, and only realised when I was dressed
that it was an evening suit I had assumed. I opened the wardrobe
and found some more ordinary clothes, a pair of plaid trousers, and
an old-fashioned dressing-gown. I put a venerable smoking-cap on my
venerable head, and, coughing a little from my exertions, tottered out
upon the landing.

It was then, perhaps, a quarter to six, and the blinds were closely
drawn and the house quite silent. The landing was a spacious one, a
broad, richly-carpeted staircase went down into the darkness of the
hall below, and before me a door ajar showed me a writing-desk, a
revolving bookcase, the back of a study chair, and a fine array of
bound books, shelf upon shelf.

"My study," I mumbled, and walked across the landing. Then at the sound
of my voice a thought struck me, and I went back to the bedroom and put
in the set of false teeth. They slipped in with the ease of old habit.
"That's better," said I, gnashing them, and so returned to the study.

The drawers of the writing-desk were locked. Its revolving top was also
locked. I could see no indications of the keys, and there were none in
the pockets of my trousers. I shuffled back at once to the bedroom,
and went through the dress suit, and afterwards the pockets of all the
garments I could find. I was very eager, and one might have imagined
that burglars had been at work, to see my room when I had done. Not
only were there no keys to be found, but not a coin, nor a scrap of
paper--save only the receipted bill of the overnight dinner.

A curious weariness asserted itself. I sat down and stared at the
garments flung here and there, their pockets turned inside out. My
first frenzy had already flickered out. Every moment I was beginning
to realise the immense intelligence of the plans of my enemy, to see
more and more clearly the hopelessness of my position. With an effort I
rose and hurried hobbling into the study again. On the staircase was a
housemaid pulling up the blinds. She stared, I think, at the expression
of my face. I shut the door of the study behind me, and, seizing a
poker, began an attack upon the desk. That is how they found me. The
cover of the desk was split, the lock smashed, the letters torn out of
the pigeon-holes and tossed about the room. In my senile rage I had
flung about the pens and other such light stationery, and overturned
the ink. Moreover, a large vase upon the mantel had got broken--I do
not know how. I could find no cheque-book, no money, no indications of
the slightest use for the recovery of my body. I was battering madly at
the drawers, when the butler, backed by two women-servants, intruded
upon me.

       *       *       *       *       *

That simply is the story of my change. No one will believe my frantic
assertions. I am treated as one demented, and even at this moment I
am under restraint. But I am sane, absolutely sane, and to prove it I
have sat down to write this story minutely as the things happened to
me. I appeal to the reader, whether there is any trace of insanity in
the style or method of the story he has been reading. I am a young man
locked away in an old man's body. But the clear fact is incredible to
everyone. Naturally I appear demented to those who will not believe
this, naturally I do not know the names of my secretaries, of the
doctors who come to see me, of my servants and neighbours, of this
town (wherever it is) where I find myself. Naturally I lose myself in
my own house, and suffer inconveniences of every sort. Naturally I ask
the oddest questions. Naturally I weep and cry out, and have paroxysms
of despair. I have no money and no cheque-book. The bank will not
recognise my signature, for I suppose that, allowing for the feeble
muscles I now have, my handwriting is still Eden's. These people about
me will not let me go to the bank personally. It seems, indeed, that
there is no bank in this town, and that I have an account in some part
of London. It seems that Elvesham kept the name of his solicitor secret
from all his household--I can ascertain nothing. Elvesham was, of
course, a profound student of mental science, and all my declarations
of the facts of the case merely confirm the theory that my insanity
is the outcome of overmuch brooding upon psychology. Dreams of the
personal identity indeed! Two days ago I was a healthy youngster,
with all life before me; now I am a furious old man, unkempt, and
desperate, and miserable, prowling about a great luxurious strange
house, watched, feared, and avoided as a lunatic by everyone about me.
And in London is Elvesham beginning life again in a vigorous body, and
with all the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of threescore and ten. He
has stolen my life.

What has happened I do not clearly know. In the study are volumes
of manuscript notes referring chiefly to the psychology of memory,
and parts of what may be either calculations or ciphers in symbols
absolutely strange to me. In some passages there are indications that
he was also occupied with the philosophy of mathematics. I take it he
has transferred the whole of his memories, the accumulation that makes
up his personality, from this old withered brain of his to mine, and,
similarly, that he has transferred mine to his discarded tenement.
Practically, that is, he has changed bodies. But how such a change
may be possible is without the range of my philosophy. I have been a
materialist for all my thinking life, but here, suddenly, is a clear
case of man's detachability from matter.

One desperate experiment I am about to try. I sit writing here
before putting the matter to issue. This morning, with the help of a
table-knife that I had secreted at breakfast, I succeeded in breaking
open a fairly obvious secret drawer in this wrecked writing-desk. I
discovered nothing save a little green glass phial containing a white
powder. Round the neck of the phial was a label, and thereon was
written this one word, "_Release_." This may be--is most probably,
poison. I can understand Elvesham placing poison in my way, and I
should be sure that it was his intention so to get rid of the only
living witness against him, were it not for this careful concealment.
The man has practically solved the problem of immortality. Save for the
spite of chance, he will live in my body until it has aged, and then,
again, throwing that aside, he will assume some other victim's youth
and strength. When one remembers his heartlessness, it is terrible to
think of the ever-growing experience, that.... How long has he been
leaping from body to body?... But I tire of writing. The powder appears
to be soluble in water. The taste is not unpleasant.

       *       *       *       *       *

There the narrative found upon Mr. Elvesham's desk ends. His dead body
lay between the desk and the chair. The latter had been pushed back,
probably by his last convulsions. The story was written in pencil,
and in a crazy hand, quite unlike his usual minute characters. There
remain only two curious facts to record. Indisputably there was some
connection between Eden and Elvesham, since the whole of Elvesham's
property was bequeathed to the young man. But he never inherited. When
Elvesham committed suicide, Eden was, strangely enough, already dead.
Twenty-four hours before, he had been knocked down by a cab and killed
instantly, at the crowded crossing at the intersection of Gower Street
and Euston Road. So that the only human being who could have thrown
light upon this fantastic narrative is beyond the reach of questions.
Without further comment I leave this extraordinary matter to the
reader's individual judgment.



IN THE ABYSS


The lieutenant stood in front of the steel sphere and gnawed a piece of
pine splinter. "What do you think of it, Steevens?" he asked.

"It's an idea," said Steevens, in the tone of one who keeps an open
mind.

"I believe it will smash--flat," said the lieutenant.

"He seems to have calculated it all out pretty well," said Steevens,
still impartial.

"But think of the pressure," said the lieutenant. "At the surface
of the water it's fourteen pounds to the inch, thirty feet down
it's double that; sixty, treble; ninety, four times; nine hundred,
forty times; five thousand, three hundred--that's a mile--it's two
hundred and forty times fourteen pounds; that's--let's see--thirty
hundredweight--a ton and a half, Steevens; _a ton and a half_ to the
square inch. And the ocean where he's going is five miles deep. That's
seven and a half"--

"Sounds a lot," said Steevens, "but it's jolly thick steel."

The lieutenant made no answer, but resumed his pine splinter. The
object of their conversation was a huge ball of steel, having an
exterior diameter of perhaps nine feet. It looked like the shot
for some Titanic piece of artillery. It was elaborately nested in a
monstrous scaffolding built into the framework of the vessel, and
the gigantic spars that were presently to sling it overboard gave
the stern of the ship an appearance that had raised the curiosity
of every decent sailor who had sighted it, from the Pool of London
to the Tropic of Capricorn. In two places, one above the other, the
steel gave place to a couple of circular windows of enormously thick
glass, and one of these, set in a steel frame of great solidity, was
now partially unscrewed. Both the men had seen the interior of this
globe for the first time that morning. It was elaborately padded with
air cushions, with little studs sunk between bulging pillows to work
the simple mechanism of the affair. Everything was elaborately padded,
even the Myers apparatus which was to absorb carbonic acid and replace
the oxygen inspired by its tenant, when he had crept in by the glass
manhole, and had been screwed in. It was so elaborately padded that a
man might have been fired from a gun in it with perfect safety. And it
had need to be, for presently a man was to crawl in through that glass
manhole, to be screwed up tightly, and to be flung overboard, and to
sink down--down--down, for five miles, even as the lieutenant said. It
had taken the strongest hold of his imagination; it made him a bore at
mess; and he found Steevens, the new arrival aboard, a godsend to talk
to about it, over and over again.

"It's my opinion," said the lieutenant, "that that glass will simply
bend in and bulge and smash, under a pressure of that sort. Daubrée
has made rocks run like water under big pressures--and, you mark my
words"--

"If the glass did break in," said Steevens, "what then?"

"The water would shoot in like a jet of iron. Have you ever felt a
straight jet of high pressure water? It would hit as hard as a bullet.
It would simply smash him and flatten him. It would tear down his
throat, and into his lungs; it would blow in his ears"--

"What a detailed imagination you have!" protested Steevens, who saw
things vividly.

"It's a simple statement of the inevitable," said the lieutenant.

"And the globe?"

"Would just give out a few little bubbles, and it would settle down
comfortably against the day of judgment, among the oozes and the bottom
clay--with poor Elstead spread over his own smashed cushions like
butter over bread."

He repeated this sentence as though he liked it very much. "Like butter
over bread," he said.

"Having a look at the jigger?" said a voice, and Elstead stood behind
them, spick and span in white, with a cigarette between his teeth,
and his eyes smiling out of the shadow of his ample hat-brim. "What's
that about bread and butter, Weybridge? Grumbling as usual about the
insufficient pay of naval officers? It won't be more than a day now
before I start. We are to get the slings ready to-day. This clean sky
and gentle swell is just the kind of thing for swinging off a dozen
tons of lead and iron; isn't it?"

"It won't affect you much," said Weybridge.

"No. Seventy or eighty feet down, and I shall be there in a dozen
seconds, there's not a particle moving, though the wind shriek itself
hoarse up above, and the water lifts halfway to the clouds. No. Down
there"-- He moved to the side of the ship and the other two followed
him. All three leant forward on their elbows and stared down into the
yellow-green water.

"_Peace_," said Elstead, finishing his thought aloud.

"Are you dead certain that clockwork will act?" asked Weybridge
presently.

"It has worked thirty-five times," said Elstead. "It's bound to work."

"But if it doesn't?"

"Why shouldn't it?"

"I wouldn't go down in that confounded thing," said Weybridge, "for
twenty thousand pounds."

"Cheerful chap you are," said Elstead, and spat sociably at a bubble
below.

"I don't understand yet how you mean to work the thing," said Steevens.

"In the first place, I'm screwed into the sphere," said Elstead, "and
when I've turned the electric light off and on three times to show I'm
cheerful, I'm swung out over the stern by that crane, with all those
big lead sinkers slung below me. The top lead weight has a roller
carrying a hundred fathoms of strong cord rolled up, and that's all
that joins the sinkers to the sphere, except the slings that will be
cut when the affair is dropped. We use cord rather than wire rope
because it's easier to cut and more buoyant--necessary points, as you
will see.

"Through each of these lead weights you notice there is a hole, and
an iron rod will be run through that and will project six feet on the
lower side. If that rod is rammed up from below, it knocks up a lever
and sets the clockwork in motion at the side of the cylinder on which
the cord winds.

"Very well. The whole affair is lowered gently into the water, and the
slings are cut. The sphere floats,--with the air in it, it's lighter
than water,--but the lead weights go down straight and the cord runs
out. When the cord is all paid out, the sphere will go down too, pulled
down by the cord."

"But why the cord?" asked Steevens. "Why not fasten the weights
directly to the sphere?"

"Because of the smash down below. The whole affair will go rushing
down, mile after mile, at a headlong pace at last. It would be knocked
to pieces on the bottom if it wasn't for that cord. But the weights
will hit the bottom, and directly they do, the buoyancy of the sphere
will come into play. It will go on sinking slower and slower; come to a
stop at last, and then begin to float upward again.

"That's where the clockwork comes in. Directly the weights smash
against the sea bottom, the rod will be knocked through and will kick
up the clockwork, and the cord will be rewound on the reel. I shall be
lugged down to the sea bottom. There I shall stay for half an hour,
with the electric light on, looking about me. Then the clockwork
will release a spring knife, the cord will be cut, and up I shall
rush again, like a soda-water bubble. The cord itself will help the
flotation."

"And if you should chance to hit a ship?" said Weybridge.

"I should come up at such a pace, I should go clean through it," said
Elstead, "like a cannon ball. You needn't worry about that."

"And suppose some nimble crustacean should wriggle into your
clockwork"--

"It would be a pressing sort of invitation for me to stop," said
Elstead, turning his back on the water and staring at the sphere.

       *       *       *       *       *

They had swung Elstead overboard by eleven o'clock. The day was
serenely bright and calm, with the horizon lost in haze. The electric
glare in the little upper compartment beamed cheerfully three times.
Then they let him down slowly to the surface of the water, and a sailor
in the stern chains hung ready to cut the tackle that held the lead
weights and the sphere together. The globe, which had looked so large
on deck, looked the smallest thing conceivable under the stern of the
ship. It rolled a little, and its two dark windows, which floated
uppermost, seemed like eyes turned up in round wonderment at the people
who crowded the rail. A voice wondered how Elstead liked the rolling.
"Are you ready?" sang out the commander. "Ay, ay, sir!" "Then let her
go!"

The rope of the tackle tightened against the blade and was cut, and an
eddy rolled over the globe in a grotesquely helpless fashion. Someone
waved a handkerchief, someone else tried an ineffectual cheer, a middy
was counting slowly, "Eight, nine, ten!" Another roll, then with a jerk
and a splash the thing righted itself.

It seemed to be stationary for a moment, to grow rapidly smaller, and
then the water closed over it, and it became visible, enlarged by
refraction and dimmer, below the surface. Before one could count three
it had disappeared. There was a flicker of white light far down in the
water, that diminished to a speck and vanished. Then there was nothing
but a depth of water going down into blackness, through which a shark
was swimming.

Then suddenly the screw of the cruiser began to rotate, the water was
crickled, the shark disappeared in a wrinkled confusion, and a torrent
of foam rushed across the crystalline clearness that had swallowed up
Elstead. "What's the idee?" said one A.B. to another.

"We're going to lay off about a couple of miles, 'fear he should hit us
when he comes up," said his mate.

The ship steamed slowly to her new position. Aboard her almost everyone
who was unoccupied remained watching the breathing swell into which
the sphere had sunk. For the next half-hour it is doubtful if a word
was spoken that did not bear directly or indirectly on Elstead. The
December sun was now high in the sky, and the heat very considerable.

"He'll be cold enough down there," said Weybridge. "They say that below
a certain depth sea water's always just about freezing."

"Where'll he come up?" asked Steevens. "I've lost my bearings."

"That's the spot," said the commander, who prided himself on his
omniscience. He extended a precise finger south-eastward. "And this, I
reckon, is pretty nearly the moment," he said. "He's been thirty-five
minutes."

"How long does it take to reach the bottom of the ocean?" asked
Steevens.

"For a depth of five miles, and reckoning--as we did--an acceleration
of two feet per second, both ways, is just about three-quarters of a
minute."

"Then he's overdue," said Weybridge.

"Pretty nearly," said the commander. "I suppose it takes a few minutes
for that cord of his to wind in."

"I forgot that," said Weybridge, evidently relieved.

And then began the suspense. A minute slowly dragged itself out, and no
sphere shot out of the water. Another followed, and nothing broke the
low oily swell. The sailors explained to one another that little point
about the winding-in of the cord. The rigging was dotted with expectant
faces. "Come up, Elstead!" called one hairy-chested salt impatiently,
and the others caught it up, and shouted as though they were waiting
for the curtain of a theatre to rise.

The commander glanced irritably at them.

"Of course, if the acceleration's less than two," he said, "he'll
be all the longer. We aren't absolutely certain that was the proper
figure. I'm no slavish believer in calculations."

Steevens agreed concisely. No one on the quarter-deck spoke for a
couple of minutes. Then Steevens' watchcase clicked.

When, twenty-one minutes after, the sun reached the zenith, they were
still waiting for the globe to reappear, and not a man aboard had
dared to whisper that hope was dead. It was Weybridge who first gave
expression to that realisation. He spoke while the sound of eight bells
still hung in the air. "I always distrusted that window," he said quite
suddenly to Steevens.

"Good God!" said Steevens; "you don't think--?"

"Well!" said Weybridge, and left the rest to his imagination.

"I'm no great believer in calculations myself," said the commander
dubiously, "so that I'm not altogether hopeless yet." And at midnight
the gunboat was steaming slowly in a spiral round the spot where
the globe had sunk, and the white beam of the electric light fled
and halted and swept discontentedly onward again over the waste of
phosphorescent waters under the little stars.

"If his window hasn't burst and smashed him," said Weybridge, "then
it's a cursed sight worse, for his clockwork has gone wrong, and he's
alive now, five miles under our feet, down there in the cold and dark,
anchored in that little bubble of his, where never a ray of light has
shone or a human being lived, since the waters were gathered together.
He's there without food, feeling hungry and thirsty and scared,
wondering whether he'll starve or stifle. Which will it be? The Myers
apparatus is running out, I suppose. How long do they last?"

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed; "what little things we are! What daring
little devils! Down there, miles and miles of water--all water, and
all this empty water about us and this sky. Gulfs!" He threw his hands
out, and as he did so, a little white streak swept noiselessly up the
sky, travelled more slowly, stopped, became a motionless dot, as though
a new star had fallen up into the sky. Then it went sliding back again
and lost itself amidst the reflections of the stars and the white haze
of the sea's phosphorescence.

At the sight he stopped, arm extended and mouth open. He shut his
mouth, opened it again, and waved his arms with an impatient gesture.
Then he turned, shouted "El-stead ahoy!" to the first watch, and
went at a run to Lindley and the search-light. "I saw him," he said.
"Starboard there! His light's on, and he's just shot out of the water.
Bring the light round. We ought to see him drifting, when he lifts on
the swell."

But they never picked up the explorer until dawn. Then they almost ran
him down. The crane was swung out and a boat's crew hooked the chain
to the sphere. When they had shipped the sphere, they unscrewed the
manhole and peered into the darkness of the interior (for the electric
light chamber was intended to illuminate the water about the sphere,
and was shut off entirely from its general cavity).

The air was very hot within the cavity, and the indiarubber at the lip
of the manhole was soft. There was no answer to their eager questions
and no sound of movement within. Elstead seemed to be lying motionless,
crumpled up in the bottom of the globe. The ship's doctor crawled in
and lifted him out to the men outside. For a moment or so they did not
know whether Elstead was alive or dead. His face, in the yellow light
of the ship's lamps, glistened with perspiration. They carried him down
to his own cabin.

He was not dead, they found, but in a state of absolute nervous
collapse, and besides cruelly bruised. For some days he had to lie
perfectly still. It was a week before he could tell his experiences.

Almost his first words were that he was going down again. The sphere
would have to be altered, he said, in order to allow him to throw off
the cord if need be, and that was all. He had had the most marvellous
experience. "You thought I should find nothing but ooze," he said. "You
laughed at my explorations, and I've discovered a new world!" He told
his story in disconnected fragments, and chiefly from the wrong end, so
that it is impossible to re-tell it in his words. But what follows is
the narrative of his experience.

It began atrociously, he said. Before the cord ran out, the thing kept
rolling over. He felt like a frog in a football. He could see nothing
but the crane and the sky overhead, with an occasional glimpse of the
people on the ship's rail. He couldn't tell a bit which way the thing
would roll next. Suddenly he would find his feet going up, and try to
step, and over he went rolling, head over heels, and just anyhow, on
the padding. Any other shape would have been more comfortable, but
no other shape was to be relied upon under the huge pressure of the
nethermost abyss.

Suddenly the swaying ceased; the globe righted, and when he had
picked himself up, he saw the water all about him greeny-blue, with
an attenuated light filtering down from above, and a shoal of little
floating things went rushing up past him, as it seemed to him, towards
the light. And even as he looked, it grew darker and darker, until
the water above was as dark as the midnight sky, albeit of a greener
shade, and the water below black. And little transparent things in the
water developed a faint glint of luminosity, and shot past him in faint
greenish streaks.

And the feeling of falling! It was just like the start of a lift, he
said, only it kept on. One has to imagine what that means, that keeping
on. It was then of all times that Elstead repented of his adventure. He
saw the chances against him in an altogether new light. He thought of
the big cuttlefish people knew to exist in the middle waters, the kind
of things they find half digested in whales at times, or floating dead
and rotten and half eaten by fish. Suppose one caught hold and wouldn't
let go. And had the clockwork really been sufficiently tested? But
whether he wanted to go on or to go back mattered not the slightest now.

In fifty seconds everything was as black as night outside, except where
the beam from his light struck through the waters, and picked out every
now and then some fish or scrap of sinking matter. They flashed by too
fast for him to see what they were. Once he thinks he passed a shark.
And then the sphere began to get hot by friction against the water.
They had underestimated this, it seems.

The first thing he noticed was that he was perspiring, and then he
heard a hissing growing louder under his feet, and saw a lot of little
bubbles--very little bubbles they were--rushing upward like a fan
through the water outside. Steam! He felt the window, and it was hot.
He turned on the minute glow-lamp that lit his own cavity, looked at
the padded watch by the studs, and saw he had been travelling now for
two minutes. It came into his head that the window would crack through
the conflict of temperatures, for he knew the bottom water is very near
freezing.

Then suddenly the floor of the sphere seemed to press against his feet,
the rush of bubbles outside grew slower and slower, and the hissing
diminished. The sphere rolled a little. The window had not cracked,
nothing had given, and he knew that the dangers of sinking, at anyrate,
were over.

In another minute or so he would be on the floor of the abyss. He
thought, he said, of Steevens and Weybridge and the rest of them five
miles overhead, higher to him than the very highest clouds that ever
floated over land are to us, steaming slowly and staring down and
wondering what had happened to him.

He peered out of the window. There were no more bubbles now, and the
hissing had stopped. Outside there was a heavy blackness--as black as
black velvet--except where the electric light pierced the empty water
and showed the colour of it--a yellow-green. Then three things like
shapes of fire swam into sight, following each other through the water.
Whether they were little and near or big and far off he could not tell.

Each was outlined in a bluish light almost as bright as the lights of
a fishing smack, a light which seemed to be smoking greatly, and all
along the sides of them were specks of this, like the lighter portholes
of a ship. Their phosphorescence seemed to go out as they came into
the radiance of his lamp, and he saw then that they were little fish
of some strange sort, with huge heads, vast eyes, and dwindling bodies
and tails. Their eyes were turned towards him, and he judged they were
following him down. He supposed they were attracted by his glare.

Presently others of the same sort joined them. As he went on down,
he noticed that the water became of a pallid colour, and that little
specks twinkled in his ray like motes in a sunbeam. This was probably
due to the clouds of ooze and mud that the impact of his leaden sinkers
had disturbed.

By the time he was drawn down to the lead weights he was in a dense fog
of white that his electric light failed altogether to pierce for more
than a few yards, and many minutes elapsed before the hanging sheets
of sediment subsided to any extent. Then, lit by his light and by the
transient phosphorescence of a distant shoal of fishes, he was able to
see under the huge blackness of the super-incumbent water an undulating
expanse of greyish-white ooze, broken here and there by tangled
thickets of a growth of sea lilies, waving hungry tentacles in the air.

Farther away were the graceful, translucent outlines of a group of
gigantic sponges. About this floor there were scattered a number of
bristling flattish tufts of rich purple and black, which he decided
must be some sort of sea-urchin, and small, large-eyed or blind things
having a curious resemblance, some to woodlice, and others to lobsters,
crawled sluggishly across the track of the light and vanished into the
obscurity again, leaving furrowed trails behind them.

Then suddenly the hovering swarm of little fishes veered about and came
towards him as a flight of starlings might do. They passed over him
like a phosphorescent snow, and then he saw behind them some larger
creature advancing towards the sphere.

At first he could see it only dimly, a faintly moving figure remotely
suggestive of a walking man, and then it came into the spray of light
that the lamp shot out. As the glare struck it, it shut its eyes,
dazzled. He stared in rigid astonishment.

It was a strange vertebrated animal. Its dark purple head was dimly
suggestive of a chameleon, but it had such a high forehead and such a
braincase as no reptile ever displayed before; the vertical pitch of
its face gave it a most extraordinary resemblance to a human being.

Two large and protruding eyes projected from sockets in chameleon
fashion, and it had a broad reptilian mouth with horny lips beneath its
little nostrils. In the position of the ears were two huge gill-covers,
and out of these floated a branching tree of coralline filaments,
almost like the tree-like gills that very young rays and sharks possess.

But the humanity of the face was not the most extraordinary thing about
the creature. It was a biped; its almost globular body was poised on a
tripod of two frog-like legs and a long thick tail, and its fore limbs,
which grotesquely caricatured the human hand, much as a frog's do,
carried a long shaft of bone, tipped with copper. The colour of the
creature was variegated; its head, hands, and legs were purple; but
its skin, which hung loosely upon it, even as clothes might do, was a
phosphorescent grey. And it stood there blinded by the light.

At last this unknown creature of the abyss blinked its eyes open,
and, shading them with its disengaged hand, opened its mouth and gave
vent to a shouting noise, articulate almost as speech might be, that
penetrated even the steel case and padded jacket of the sphere. How a
shouting may be accomplished without lungs Elstead does not profess to
explain. It then moved sideways out of the glare into the mystery of
shadow that bordered it on either side, and Elstead felt rather than
saw that it was coming towards him. Fancying the light had attracted
it, he turned the switch that cut off the current. In another moment
something soft dabbed upon the steel, and the globe swayed.

Then the shouting was repeated, and it seemed to him that a distant
echo answered it. The dabbing recurred, and the globe swayed and ground
against the spindle over which the wire was rolled. He stood in the
blackness and peered out into the everlasting night of the abyss.
And presently he saw, very faint and remote, other phosphorescent
quasi-human forms hurrying towards him.

Hardly knowing what he did, he felt about in his swaying prison for
the stud of the exterior electric light, and came by accident against
his own small glow-lamp in its padded recess. The sphere twisted, and
then threw him down; he heard shouts like shouts of surprise, and when
he rose to his feet, he saw two pairs of stalked eyes peering into the
lower window and reflecting his light.

In another moment hands were dabbing vigorously at his steel casing,
and there was a sound, horrible enough in his position, of the metal
protection of the clockwork being vigorously hammered. That, indeed,
sent his heart into his mouth, for if these strange creatures succeeded
in stopping that, his release would never occur. Scarcely had he
thought as much when he felt the sphere sway violently, and the floor
of it press hard against his feet. He turned off the small glow-lamp
that lit the interior, and sent the ray of the large light in the
separate compartment out into the water. The sea-floor and the man-like
creatures had disappeared, and a couple of fish chasing each other
dropped suddenly by the window.

He thought at once that these strange denizens of the deep sea had
broken the rope, and that he had escaped. He drove up faster and
faster, and then stopped with a jerk that sent him flying against the
padded roof of his prison. For half a minute, perhaps, he was too
astonished to think.

Then he felt that the sphere was spinning slowly, and rocking, and
it seemed to him that it was also being drawn through the water. By
crouching close to the window, he managed to make his weight effective
and roll that part of the sphere downward, but he could see nothing
save the pale ray of his light striking down ineffectively into the
darkness. It occurred to him that he would see more if he turned the
lamp off, and allowed his eyes to grow accustomed to the profound
obscurity.

In this he was wise. After some minutes the velvety blackness became a
translucent blackness, and then, far away, and as faint as the zodiacal
light of an English summer evening, he saw shapes moving below. He
judged these creatures had detached his cable, and were towing him
along the sea bottom.

And then he saw something faint and remote across the undulations of
the submarine plain, a broad horizon of pale luminosity that extended
this way and that way as far as the range of his little window
permitted him to see. To this he was being towed, as a balloon might be
towed by men out of the open country into a town. He approached it very
slowly, and very slowly the dim irradiation was gathered together into
more definite shapes.

It was nearly five o'clock before he came over this luminous area, and
by that time he could make out an arrangement suggestive of streets
and houses grouped about a vast roofless erection that was grotesquely
suggestive of a ruined abbey. It was spread out like a map below him.
The houses were all roofless enclosures of walls, and their substance
being, as he afterwards saw, of phosphorescent bones, gave the place an
appearance as if it were built of drowned moonshine.

Among the inner caves of the place waving trees of crinoid stretched
their tentacles, and tall, slender, glassy sponges shot like shining
minarets and lilies of filmy light out of the general glow of the
city. In the open spaces of the place he could see a stirring movement
as of crowds of people, but he was too many fathoms above them to
distinguish the individuals in those crowds.

Then slowly they pulled him down, and as they did so, the details of
the place crept slowly upon his apprehension. He saw that the courses
of the cloudy buildings were marked out with beaded lines of round
objects, and then he perceived that at several points below him, in
broad open spaces, were forms like the encrusted shapes of ships.

Slowly and surely he was drawn down, and the forms below him became
brighter, clearer, more distinct. He was being pulled down, he
perceived, towards the large building in the centre of the town, and he
could catch a glimpse ever and again of the multitudinous forms that
were lugging at his cord. He was astonished to see that the rigging of
one of the ships, which formed such a prominent feature of the place,
was crowded with a host of gesticulating figures regarding him, and
then the walls of the great building rose about him silently, and hid
the city from his eyes.

And such walls they were, of water-logged wood, and twisted wire-rope,
and iron spars, and copper, and the bones and skulls of dead men. The
skulls ran in zigzag lines and spirals and fantastic curves over the
building; and in and out of their eye-sockets, and over the whole
surface of the place, lurked and played a multitude of silvery little
fishes.

Suddenly his ears were filled with a low shouting and a noise like the
violent blowing of horns, and this gave place to a fantastic chant.
Down the sphere sank, past the huge pointed windows, through which he
saw vaguely a great number of these strange, ghostlike people regarding
him, and at last he came to rest, as it seemed, on a kind of altar that
stood in the centre of the place.

And now he was at such a level that he could see these strange people
of the abyss plainly once more. To his astonishment, he perceived that
they were prostrating themselves before him, all save one, dressed as
it seemed in a robe of placoid scales, and crowned with a luminous
diadem, who stood with his reptilian mouth opening and shutting, as
though he led the chanting of the worshippers.

A curious impulse made Elstead turn on his small glow-lamp again, so
that he became visible to these creatures of the abyss, albeit the
glare made them disappear forthwith into night. At this sudden sight
of him, the chanting gave place to a tumult of exultant shouts; and
Elstead, being anxious to watch them, turned his light off again, and
vanished from before their eyes. But for a time he was too blind to
make out what they were doing, and when at last he could distinguish
them, they were kneeling again. And thus they continued worshipping
him, without rest or intermission, for the space of three hours.

Most circumstantial was Elstead's account of this astounding city and
its people, these people of perpetual night, who have never seen sun
or moon or stars, green vegetation, nor any living, air-breathing
creatures, who know nothing of fire, nor any light but the
phosphorescent light of living things.

Startling as is his story, it is yet more startling to find that
scientific men, of such eminence as Adams and Jenkins, find nothing
incredible in it. They tell me they see no reason why intelligent,
water-breathing, vertebrated creatures, inured to a low temperature and
enormous pressure, and of such a heavy structure, that neither alive
nor dead would they float, might not live upon the bottom of the deep
sea, and quite unsuspected by us, descendants like ourselves of the
great Theriomorpha of the New Red Sandstone age.

We should be known to them, however, as strange, meteoric creatures,
wont to fall catastrophically dead out of the mysterious blackness of
their watery sky. And not only we ourselves, but our ships, our metals,
our appliances, would come raining down out of the night. Sometimes
sinking things would smite down and crush them, as if it were the
judgment of some unseen power above, and sometimes would come things of
the utmost rarity or utility, or shapes of inspiring suggestion. One
can understand, perhaps, something of their behaviour at the descent of
a living man, if one thinks what a barbaric people might do, to whom an
enhaloed, shining creature came suddenly out of the sky.

At one time or another Elstead probably told the officers of the
_Ptarmigan_ every detail of his strange twelve hours in the abyss. That
he also intended to write them down is certain, but he never did, and
so unhappily we have to piece together the discrepant fragments of his
story from the reminiscences of Commander Simmons, Weybridge, Steevens,
Lindley, and the others.

We see the thing darkly in fragmentary glimpses--the huge ghostly
building, the bowing, chanting people, with their dark chameleon-like
heads and faintly luminous clothing, and Elstead, with his light turned
on again, vainly trying to convey to their minds that the cord by which
the sphere was held was to be severed. Minute after minute slipped
away, and Elstead, looking at his watch, was horrified to find that he
had oxygen only for four hours more. But the chant in his honour kept
on as remorselessly as if it was the marching song of his approaching
death.

The manner of his release he does not understand, but to judge by the
end of cord that hung from the sphere, it had been cut through by
rubbing against the edge of the altar. Abruptly the sphere rolled over,
and he swept up, out of their world, as an ethereal creature clothed
in a vacuum would sweep through our own atmosphere back to its native
ether again. He must have torn out of their sight as a hydrogen bubble
hastens upward from our air. A strange ascension it must have seemed to
them.

The sphere rushed up with even greater velocity than, when weighted
with the lead sinkers, it had rushed down. It became exceedingly hot.
It drove up with the windows uppermost, and he remembers the torrent of
bubbles frothing against the glass. Every moment he expected this to
fly. Then suddenly something like a huge wheel seemed to be released
in his head, the padded compartment began spinning about him, and he
fainted. His next recollection was of his cabin, and of the doctor's
voice.

But that is the substance of the extraordinary story that Elstead
related in fragments to the officers of the _Ptarmigan_. He promised to
write it all down at a later date. His mind was chiefly occupied with
the improvement of his apparatus, which was effected at Rio.

It remains only to tell that on February 2, 1896, he made his second
descent into the ocean abyss, with the improvements his first
experience suggested. What happened we shall probably never know.
He never returned. The _Ptarmigan_ beat about over the point of his
submersion, seeking him in vain for thirteen days. Then she returned to
Rio, and the news was telegraphed to his friends. So the matter remains
for the present. But it is hardly probable that no further attempt
will be made to verify his strange story of these hitherto unsuspected
cities of the deep sea.



THE APPLE


"I must get rid of it," said the man in the corner of the carriage,
abruptly breaking the silence.

Mr. Hinchcliff looked up, hearing imperfectly. He had been lost in
the rapt contemplation of the college cap tied by a string to his
portmanteau handles--the outward and visible sign of his newly-gained
pedagogic position--in the rapt appreciation of the college cap and
the pleasant anticipations it excited. For Mr. Hinchcliff had just
matriculated at London University, and was going to be junior assistant
at the Holmwood Grammar School--a very enviable position. He stared
across the carriage at his fellow-traveller.

"Why not give it away?" said this person. "Give it away! Why not?"

He was a tall, dark, sunburnt man with a pale face. His arms were
folded tightly, and his feet were on the seat in front of him. He was
pulling at a lank black moustache. He stared hard at his toes.

"Why not?" he said.

Mr. Hinchcliff coughed.

The stranger lifted his eyes--they were curious, dark-grey eyes--and
stared blankly at Mr. Hinchcliff for the best part of a minute,
perhaps. His expression grew to interest.

"Yes," he said slowly. "Why not? And end it."

"I don't quite follow you, I'm afraid," said Mr. Hinchcliff, with
another cough.

"You don't quite follow me?" said the stranger quite mechanically,
his singular eyes wandering from Mr. Hinchcliff to the bag with its
ostentatiously displayed cap, and back to Mr. Hinchcliff's downy face.

"You're so abrupt, you know," apologised Mr Hinchcliff.

"Why shouldn't I?" said the stranger, following his thoughts. "You are
a student?" he said, addressing Mr. Hinchcliff.

"I am--by Correspondence--of the London University," said Mr.
Hinchcliff, with irrepressible pride, and feeling nervously at his tie.

"In pursuit of knowledge," said the stranger, and suddenly took his
feet off the seat, put his fist on his knees, and stared at Mr.
Hinchcliff as though he had never seen a student before. "Yes," he
said, and flung out an index finger. Then he rose, took a bag from
the hat-rack, and unlocked it. Quite silently he drew out something
round and wrapped in a quantity of silver-paper, and unfolded this
carefully. He held it out towards Mr. Hinchcliff--a small, very smooth,
golden-yellow fruit.

Mr. Hinchcliff's eyes and mouth were open. He did not offer to take
this object--if he was intended to take it.

"That," said this fantastic stranger, speaking very slowly, "is the
Apple of the Tree of Knowledge. Look at it--small, and bright, and
wonderful--Knowledge--and I am going to give it to you."

Mr. Hinchcliff's mind worked painfully for a minute, and then
the sufficient explanation, "Mad!" flashed across his brain, and
illuminated the whole situation. One humoured madmen. He put his head a
little on one side.

"The Apple of the Tree of Knowledge, eigh!" said Mr. Hinchcliff,
regarding it with a finely assumed air of interest, and then looking
at the interlocutor. "But don't you want to eat it yourself? And
besides--how did you come by it?"

"It never fades. I have had it now three months. And it is ever bright
and smooth and ripe and desirable, as you see it." He laid his hand
on his knee and regarded the fruit musingly. Then he began to wrap it
again in the papers, as though he had abandoned his intention of giving
it away.

"But how did you come by it?" said Mr. Hinchcliff, who had his
argumentative side. "And how do you know that it _is_ the Fruit of the
Tree?"

"I bought this fruit," said the stranger, "three months ago--for a
drink of water and a crust of bread. The man who gave it to me--because
I kept the life in him--was an Armenian. Armenia! that wonderful
country, the first of all countries, where the ark of the Flood
remains to this day, buried in the glaciers of Mount Ararat. This man,
I say, fleeing with others from the Kurds who had come upon them,
went up into desolate places among the mountains--places beyond the
common knowledge of men. And fleeing from imminent pursuit, they
came to a slope high among the mountain-peaks, green with a grass
like knife-blades, that cut and slashed most pitilessly at anyone
who went into it. The Kurds were close behind, and there was nothing
for it but to plunge in, and the worst of it was that the paths they
made through it at the price of their blood served for the Kurds to
follow. Every one of the fugitives was killed save this Armenian and
another. He heard the screams and cries of his friends, and the swish
of the grass about those who were pursuing them--it was tall grass
rising overhead. And then a shouting and answers, and when presently he
paused, everything was still. He pushed out again, not understanding,
cut and bleeding, until he came out on a steep slope of rocks below a
precipice, and then he saw the grass was all on fire, and the smoke of
it rose like a veil between him and his enemies."

The stranger paused. "Yes?" said Mr. Hinchcliff. "Yes?"

"There he was, all torn and bloody from the knife-blades of the grass,
the rocks blazing under the afternoon sun--the sky molten brass--and
the smoke of the fire driving towards him. He dared not stay there.
Death he did not mind, but torture! Far away beyond the smoke he heard
shouts and cries. Women screaming. So he went clambering up a gorge in
the rocks--everywhere were bushes with dry branches that stuck out like
thorns among the leaves--until he clambered over the brow of a ridge
that hid him. And then he met his companion, a shepherd, who had also
escaped. And, counting cold and famine and thirst as nothing against
the Kurds, they went on into the heights, and among the snow and ice.
They wandered three whole days.

"The third day came the vision. I suppose hungry men often do see
visions, but then there is this fruit." He lifted the wrapped globe in
his hand. "And I have heard it, too, from other mountaineers who have
known something of the legend. It was in the evening time, when the
stars were increasing, that they came down a slope of polished rock
into a huge dark valley all set about with strange, contorted trees,
and in these trees hung little globes like glow-worm spheres, strange
round yellow lights.

"Suddenly this valley was lit far away, many miles away, far down it,
with a golden flame marching slowly athwart it, that made the stunted
trees against it black as night, and turned the slopes all about them
and their figures to the likeness of fiery gold. And at the vision
they, knowing the legends of the mountains, instantly knew that it was
Eden they saw, or the sentinel of Eden, and they fell upon their faces
like men struck dead.

"When they dared to look again the valley was dark for a space, and
then the light came again--returning, a burning amber.

"At that the shepherd sprang to his feet, and with a shout began to run
down towards the light, but the other man was too fearful to follow
him. He stood stunned, amazed, and terrified, watching his companion
recede towards the marching glare. And hardly had the shepherd set out
when there came a noise like thunder, the beating of invisible wings
hurrying up the valley, and a great and terrible fear; and at that
the man who gave me the fruit turned--if he might still escape. And
hurrying headlong up the slope again, with that tumult sweeping after
him, he stumbled against one of these stunted bushes, and a ripe fruit
came off it into his hand. This fruit. Forthwith, the wings and the
thunder rolled all about him. He fell and fainted, and when he came to
his senses, he was back among the blackened ruins of his own village,
and I and the others were attending to the wounded. A vision? But the
golden fruit of the tree was still clutched in his hand. There were
others there who knew the legend, knew what that strange fruit might
be." He paused. "And this is it," he said.

It was a most extraordinary story to be told in a third-class carriage
on a Sussex railway. It was as if the real was a mere veil to the
fantastic, and here was the fantastic poking through. "Is it?" was all
Mr. Hinchcliff could say.

"The legend," said the stranger, "tells that those thickets of dwarfed
trees growing about the garden sprang from the apple that Adam carried
in his hand when he and Eve were driven forth. He felt something in
his hand, saw the half-eaten apple, and flung it petulantly aside.
And there they grow, in that desolate valley, girdled round with the
everlasting snows, and there the fiery swords keep ward against the
Judgment Day."

"But I thought these things were"--Mr. Hinchcliff
paused--"fables--parables rather. Do you mean to tell me that there in
Armenia"--

The stranger answered the unfinished question with the fruit in his
open hand.

"But you don't know," said Mr. Hinchcliff, "that that _is_ the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge. The man may have had--a sort of mirage, say.
Suppose"--

"Look at it," said the stranger.

It was certainly a strange-looking globe, not really an apple, Mr.
Hinchcliff saw, and a curious glowing golden colour, almost as though
light itself was wrought into its substance. As he looked at it, he
began to see more vividly the desolate valley among the mountains, the
guarding swords of fire, the strange antiquities of the story he had
just heard. He rubbed a knuckle into his eye. "But"--said he.

"It has kept like that, smooth and full, three months. Longer than that
it is now by some days. No drying, no withering, no decay."

"And you yourself," said Mr. Hinchcliff, "really believe that"--

"Is the Forbidden Fruit."

There was no mistaking the earnestness of the man's manner and his
perfect sanity. "The Fruit of Knowledge," he said.

"Suppose it was?" said Mr. Hinchcliff, after a pause, still staring
at it. "But after all," said Mr. Hinchcliff, "it's not my kind of
knowledge--not the sort of knowledge. I mean, Adam and Eve have eaten
it already."

"We inherit their sins--not their knowledge," said the stranger.
"That would make it all clear and bright again. We should see
into everything, through everything, into the deepest meaning of
everything"--

"Why don't you eat it, then?" said Mr. Hinchcliff, with an inspiration.

"I took it intending to eat it," said the stranger. "Man has fallen.
Merely to eat again could scarcely"--

"Knowledge is power," said Mr. Hinchcliff.

"But is it happiness? I am older than you--more than twice as old.
Time after time I have held this in my hand, and my heart has
failed me at the thought of all that one might know, that terrible
lucidity-- Suppose suddenly all the world became pitilessly clear?"

"That, I think, would be a great advantage," said Mr. Hinchcliff, "on
the whole."

"Suppose you saw into the hearts and minds of everyone about you, into
their most secret recesses--people you loved, whose love you valued?"

"You'd soon find out the humbugs," said Mr. Hinchcliff, greatly struck
by the idea.

"And worse--to know yourself, bare of your most intimate illusions.
To see yourself in your place. All that your lusts and weaknesses
prevented your doing. No merciful perspective."

"That might be an excellent thing too. 'Know thyself,' you know."

"You are young," said the stranger.

"If you don't care to eat it, and it bothers you, why don't you throw
it away?"

"There again, perhaps, you will not understand me. To me, how could one
throw away a thing like that, glowing, wonderful? Once one has it, one
is bound. But, on the other hand, to _give_ it away! To give it away
to someone who thirsted after knowledge, who found no terror in the
thought of that clear perception"--

"Of course," said Mr. Hinchcliff thoughtfully, "it might be some sort
of poisonous fruit."

And then his eye caught something motionless, the end of a white board
black-lettered outside the carriage window. "--MWOOD," he saw. He
started convulsively. "Gracious!" said Mr. Hinchcliff. "Holmwood!"--and
the practical present blotted out the mystic realisations that had been
stealing upon him.

In another moment he was opening the carriage-door, portmanteau in
hand. The guard was already fluttering his green flag. Mr. Hinchcliff
jumped out. "Here!" said a voice behind him, and he saw the dark eyes
of the stranger shining and the golden fruit, bright and bare, held
out of the open carriage-door. He took it instinctively, the train was
already moving.

"_No!_" shouted the stranger, and made a snatch at it as if to take it
back.

"Stand away," cried a country porter, thrusting forward to close the
door. The stranger shouted something Mr. Hinchcliff did not catch, head
and arm thrust excitedly out of the window, and then the shadow of the
bridge fell on him, and in a trice he was hidden. Mr. Hinchcliff stood
astonished, staring at the end of the last waggon receding round the
bend, and with the wonderful fruit in his hand. For the fraction of
a minute his mind was confused, and then he became aware that two or
three people on the platform were regarding him with interest. Was he
not the new Grammar School master making his début? It occurred to him
that, so far as they could tell, the fruit might very well be the naïve
refreshment of an orange. He flushed at the thought, and thrust the
fruit into his side pocket, where it bulged undesirably. But there was
no help for it, so he went towards them, awkwardly concealing his sense
of awkwardness, to ask the way to the Grammar School, and the means of
getting his portmanteau and the two tin boxes which lay up the platform
thither. Of all the odd and fantastic yarns to tell a fellow!

His luggage could be taken on a truck for sixpence, he found, and he
could precede it on foot. He fancied an ironical note in the voices. He
was painfully aware of his contour.

The curious earnestness of the man in the train, and the glamour
of the story he told, had, for a time, diverted the current of Mr.
Hinchcliff's thoughts. It drove like a mist before his immediate
concerns. Fires that went to and fro! But the preoccupation of his
new position, and the impression he was to produce upon Holmwood
generally, and the school people in particular, returned upon him with
reinvigorating power before he left the station and cleared his mental
atmosphere. But it is extraordinary what an inconvenient thing the
addition of a soft and rather brightly-golden fruit, not three inches
in diameter, may prove to a sensitive youth on his best appearance.
In the pocket of his black jacket it bulged dreadfully, spoilt the
lines altogether. He passed a little old lady in black, and he felt
her eye drop upon the excrescence at once. He was wearing one glove
and carrying the other, together with his stick, so that to bear the
fruit openly was impossible. In one place, where the road into the
town seemed suitably secluded, he took his encumbrance out of his
pocket and tried it in his hat. It was just too large, the hat wobbled
ludicrously, and just as he was taking it out again, a butcher's boy
came driving round the corner.

"Confound it!" said Mr. Hinchcliff.

He would have eaten the thing, and attained omniscience there and
then, but it would seem so silly to go into the town sucking a juicy
fruit--and it certainly felt juicy. If one of the boys should come by,
it might do him a serious injury with his discipline so to be seen.
And the juice might make his face sticky and get upon his cuffs--or it
might be an acid juice as potent as lemon, and take all the colour out
of his clothes.

Then round a bend in the lane came two pleasant sunlit girlish figures.
They were walking slowly towards the town and chattering--at any
moment they might look round and see a hot-faced young man behind them
carrying a kind of phosphorescent yellow tomato! They would be sure to
laugh.

"_Hang!_" said Mr. Hinchcliff, and with a swift jerk sent the
encumbrance flying over the stone wall of an orchard that there abutted
on the road. As it vanished, he felt a faint twinge of loss that lasted
scarcely a moment. He adjusted the stick and glove in his hand, and
walked on, erect and self-conscious, to pass the girls.

       *       *       *       *       *

But in the darkness of the night Mr. Hinchcliff had a dream, and saw
the valley, and the flaming swords, and the contorted trees, and knew
that it really was the Apple of the Tree of Knowledge that he had
thrown regardlessly away. And he awoke very unhappy.

In the morning his regret had passed, but afterwards it returned and
troubled him; never, however, when he was happy or busily occupied. At
last, one moonlight night about eleven, when all Holmwood was quiet,
his regrets returned with redoubled force, and therewith an impulse to
adventure. He slipped out of the house and over the playground wall,
went through the silent town to Station Lane, and climbed into the
orchard where he had thrown the fruit. But nothing was to be found
of it there among the dewy grass and the faint intangible globes of
dandelion down.



UNDER THE KNIFE


"What if I die under it?" The thought recurred again and again, as I
walked home from Haddon's. It was a purely personal question. I was
spared the deep anxieties of a married man, and I knew there were few
of my intimate friends but would find my death troublesome chiefly on
account of their duty of regret. I was surprised indeed, and perhaps
a little humiliated, as I turned the matter over, to think how few
could possibly exceed the conventional requirement. Things came
before me stripped of glamour, in a clear dry light, during that walk
from Haddon's house over Primrose Hill. There were the friends of my
youth: I perceived now that our affection was a tradition, which we
foregathered rather laboriously to maintain. There were the rivals
and helpers of my later career: I suppose I had been cold-blooded or
undemonstrative--one perhaps implies the other. It may be that even the
capacity for friendship is a question of physique. There had been a
time in my own life when I had grieved bitterly enough at the loss of
a friend; but as I walked home that afternoon the emotional side of my
imagination was dormant. I could not pity myself, nor feel sorry for
my friends, nor conceive of them as grieving for me.

I was interested in this deadness of my emotional nature--no doubt
a concomitant of my stagnating physiology; and my thoughts wandered
off along the line it suggested. Once before, in my hot youth, I
had suffered a sudden loss of blood, and had been within an ace of
death. I remembered now that my affections as well as my passions had
drained out of me, leaving scarce anything but a tranquil resignation,
a dreg of self-pity. It had been weeks before the old ambitions,
and tendernesses, and all the complex moral interplay of a man, had
reasserted themselves. It occurred to me that the real meaning of
this numbness might be a gradual slipping away from the pleasure-pain
guidance of the animal man. It has been proven, I take it, as
thoroughly as anything can be proven in this world, that the higher
emotions, the moral feelings, even the subtle tendernesses of love, are
evolved from the elemental desires and fears of the simple animal: they
are the harness in which man's mental freedom goes. And it may be that,
as death overshadows us, as our possibility of acting diminishes, this
complex growth of balanced impulse, propensity, and aversion, whose
interplay inspires our acts, goes with it. Leaving what?

I was suddenly brought back to reality by an imminent collision with
a butcher-boy's tray. I found that I was crossing the bridge over the
Regent's Park Canal, which runs parallel with that in the Zoological
Gardens. The boy in blue had been looking over his shoulder at a black
barge advancing slowly, towed by a gaunt white horse. In the Gardens
a nurse was leading three happy little children over the bridge. The
trees were bright green; the spring hopefulness was still unstained by
the dusts of summer; the sky in the water was bright and clear, but
broken by long waves, by quivering bands of black, as the barge drove
through. The breeze was stirring; but it did not stir me as the spring
breeze used to do.

Was this dulness of feeling in itself an anticipation? It was curious
that I could reason and follow out a network of suggestion as clearly
as ever: so, at least, it seemed to me. It was calmness rather than
dulness that was coming upon me. Was there any ground for the belief in
the presentiment of death? Did a man near to death begin instinctively
to withdraw himself from the meshes of matter and sense, even before
the cold hand was laid upon his? I felt strangely isolated--isolated
without regret--from the life and existence about me. The children
playing in the sun and gathering strength and experience for the
business of life, the park-keeper gossiping with a nursemaid, the
nursing mother, the young couple intent upon each other as they passed
me, the trees by the wayside spreading new pleading leaves to the
sunlight, the stir in their branches--I had been part of it all, but I
had nearly done with it now.

Some way down the Broad Walk I perceived that I was tired, and that my
feet were heavy. It was hot that afternoon, and I turned aside and sat
down on one of the green chairs that line the way. In a minute I had
dozed into a dream, and the tide of my thoughts washed up a vision
of the resurrection. I was still sitting in the chair, but I thought
myself actually dead, withered, tattered, dried, one eye (I saw) pecked
out by birds. "Awake!" cried a voice; and incontinently the dust of the
path and the mould under the grass became insurgent. I had never before
thought of Regent's Park as a cemetery, but now, through the trees,
stretching as far as eye could see, I beheld a flat plain of writhing
graves and heeling tombstones. There seemed to be some trouble: the
rising dead appeared to stifle as they struggled upward, they bled in
their struggles, the red flesh was tattered away from the white bones.
"Awake!" cried a voice; but I determined I would not rise to such
horrors. "Awake!" They would not let me alone. "Wike up!" said an angry
voice. A cockney angel! The man who sells the tickets was shaking me,
demanding my penny.

I paid my penny, pocketed my ticket, yawned, stretched my legs, and,
feeling now rather less torpid, got up and walked on towards Langham
Place. I speedily lost myself again in a shifting maze of thoughts
about death. Going across Marylebone Road into that crescent at the end
of Langham Place, I had the narrowest escape from the shaft of a cab,
and went on my way with a palpitating heart and a bruised shoulder. It
struck me that it would have been curious if my meditations on my death
on the morrow had led to my death that day.

But I will not weary you with more of my experiences that day and
the next. I knew more and more certainly that I should die under the
operation; at times I think I was inclined to pose to myself. The
doctors were coming at eleven, and I did not get up. It seemed scarce
worth while to trouble about washing and dressing, and though I read
my newspapers and the letters that came by the first post, I did not
find them very interesting. There was a friendly note from Addison,
my old school friend, calling my attention to two discrepancies and
a printer's error in my new book, with one from Langridge venting
some vexation over Minton. The rest were business communications. I
breakfasted in bed. The glow of pain at my side seemed more massive.
I knew it was pain, and yet, if you can understand, I did not find it
very painful. I had been awake and hot and thirsty in the night, but in
the morning bed felt comfortable. In the night-time I had lain thinking
of things that were past; in the morning I dozed over the question of
immortality. Haddon came, punctual to the minute, with a neat black
bag; and Mowbray soon followed. Their arrival stirred me up a little. I
began to take a more personal interest in the proceedings. Haddon moved
the little octagonal table close to the bedside, and, with his broad
black back to me, began taking things out of his bag. I heard the light
click of steel upon steel. My imagination, I found, was not altogether
stagnant. "Will you hurt me much?" I said in an off-hand tone.

"Not a bit," Haddon answered over his shoulder. "We shall chloroform
you. Your heart's as sound as a bell." And as he spoke, I had a whiff
of the pungent sweetness of the anæsthetic.

They stretched me out, with a convenient exposure of my side, and,
almost before I realised what was happening, the chloroform was being
administered. It stings the nostrils, and there is a suffocating
sensation, at first. I knew I should die--that this was the end of
consciousness for me. And suddenly I felt that I was not prepared for
death: I had a vague sense of a duty overlooked--I knew not what. What
was it I had not done? I could think of nothing more to do, nothing
desirable left in life; and yet I had the strangest disinclination
to death. And the physical sensation was painfully oppressive. Of
course the doctors did not know they were going to kill me. Possibly
I struggled. Then I fell motionless, and a great silence, a monstrous
silence, and an impenetrable blackness came upon me.

There must have been an interval of absolute unconsciousness,
seconds or minutes. Then, with a chilly, unemotional clearness, I
perceived that I was not yet dead. I was still in my body; but all the
multitudinous sensations that come sweeping from it to make up the
background of consciousness had gone, leaving me free of it all. No,
not free of it all; for as yet something still held me to the poor
stark flesh upon the bed--held me, yet not so closely that I did not
feel myself external to it, independent of it, straining away from it.
I do not think I saw, I do not think I heard; but I perceived all that
was going on, and it was as if I both heard and saw. Haddon was bending
over me, Mowbray behind me; the scalpel--it was a large scalpel--was
cutting my flesh at the side under the flying ribs. It was interesting
to see myself cut like cheese, without a pang, without even a qualm.
The interest was much of a quality with that one might feel in a game
of chess between strangers. Haddon's face was firm and his hand steady;
but I was surprised to perceive (_how_ I know not) that he was feeling
the gravest doubt as to his own wisdom in the conduct of the operation.

Mowbray's thoughts, too, I could see. He was thinking that Haddon's
manner showed too much of the specialist. New suggestions came up like
bubbles through a stream of frothing meditation, and burst one after
another in the little bright spot of his consciousness. He could not
help noticing and admiring Haddon's swift dexterity, in spite of his
envious quality and his disposition to detract. I saw my liver exposed.
I was puzzled at my own condition. I did not feel that I was dead, but
I was different in some way from my living self. The grey depression,
that had weighed on me for a year or more and coloured all my thoughts,
was gone. I perceived and thought without any emotional tint at all.
I wondered if everyone perceived things in this way under chloroform,
and forgot it again when he came out of it. It would be inconvenient to
look into some heads, and not forget.

Although I did not think that I was dead, I still perceived quite
clearly that I was soon to die. This brought me back to the
consideration of Haddon's proceedings. I looked into his mind, and
saw that he was afraid of cutting a branch of the portal vein. My
attention was distracted from details by the curious changes going on
in his mind. His consciousness was like the quivering little spot of
light which is thrown by the mirror of a galvanometer. His thoughts
ran under it like a stream, some through the focus bright and distinct,
some shadowy in the half-light of the edge. Just now the little glow
was steady; but the least movement on Mowbray's part, the slightest
sound from outside, even a faint difference in the slow movement of
the living flesh he was cutting, set the light-spot shivering and
spinning. A new sense-impression came rushing up through the flow of
thoughts; and lo! the light-spot jerked away towards it, swifter than
a frightened fish. It was wonderful to think that upon that unstable,
fitful thing depended all the complex motions of the man; that for
the next five minutes, therefore, my life hung upon its movements.
And he was growing more and more nervous in his work. It was as if a
little picture of a cut vein grew brighter, and struggled to oust from
his brain another picture of a cut falling short of the mark. He was
afraid: his dread of cutting too little was battling with his dread of
cutting too far.

Then, suddenly, like an escape of water from under a lock-gate, a
great uprush of horrible realisation set all his thoughts swirling,
and simultaneously I perceived that the vein was cut. He started back
with a hoarse exclamation, and I saw the brown-purple blood gather
in a swift bead, and run trickling. He was horrified. He pitched the
red-stained scalpel on to the octagonal table; and instantly both
doctors flung themselves upon me, making hasty and ill-conceived
efforts to remedy the disaster. "Ice!" said Mowbray, gasping. But I
knew that I was killed, though my body still clung to me.

I will not describe their belated endeavours to save me, though I
perceived every detail. My perceptions were sharper and swifter
than they had ever been in life; my thoughts rushed through my mind
with incredible swiftness, but with perfect definition. I can only
compare their crowded clarity to the effects of a reasonable dose
of opium. In a moment it would all be over, and I should be free. I
knew I was immortal, but what would happen I did not know. Should I
drift off presently, like a puff of smoke from a gun, in some kind of
half-material body, an attenuated version of my material self? Should
I find myself suddenly among the innumerable hosts of the dead, and
know the world about me for the phantasmagoria it had always seemed?
Should I drift to some spiritualistic _séance_, and there make foolish,
incomprehensible attempts to affect a purblind medium? It was a
state of unemotional curiosity, of colourless expectation. And then
I realised a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge
human magnet was drawing me upward out of my body. The stress grew and
grew. I seemed an atom for which monstrous forces were fighting. For
one brief, terrible moment sensation came back to me. That feeling of
falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that feeling a thousand
times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in
a torrent. Then the two doctors, the naked body with its cut side, the
little room, swept away from under me and vanished, as a speck of foam
vanishes down an eddy.

I was in mid-air. Far below was the West End of London, receding
rapidly,--for I seemed to be flying swiftly upward,--and, as it
receded, passing westward, like a panorama. I could see, through the
faint haze of smoke, the innumerable roofs chimney-set, the narrow
roadways, stippled with people and conveyances, the little specks
of squares, and the church steeples like thorns sticking out of the
fabric. But it spun away as the earth rotated on its axis, and in a
few seconds (as it seemed) I was over the scattered clumps of town
about Ealing, the little Thames a thread of blue to the south, and the
Chiltern Hills and the North Downs coming up like the rim of a basin,
far away and faint with haze. Up I rushed. And at first I had not the
faintest conception what this headlong rush upward could mean.

Every moment the circle of scenery beneath me grew wider and wider,
and the details of town and field, of hill and valley, got more and
more hazy and pale and indistinct, a luminous grey was mingled more
and more with the blue of the hills and the green of the open meadows;
and a little patch of cloud, low and far to the west, shone ever more
dazzlingly white. Above, as the veil of atmosphere between myself and
outer space grew thinner, the sky, which had been a fair springtime
blue at first, grew deeper and richer in colour, passing steadily
through the intervening shades, until presently it was as dark as
the blue sky of midnight, and presently as black as the blackness of
a frosty starlight, and at last as black as no blackness I had ever
beheld. And first one star, and then many, and at last an innumerable
host broke out upon the sky: more stars than anyone has ever seen from
the face of the earth. For the blueness of the sky is the light of the
sun and stars sifted and spread abroad blindingly: there is diffused
light even in the darkest skies of winter, and we do not see the stars
by day only because of the dazzling irradiation of the sun. But now I
saw things--I know not how; assuredly with no mortal eyes--and that
defect of bedazzlement blinded me no longer. The sun was incredibly
strange and wonderful. The body of it was a disc of blinding white
light: not yellowish, as it seems to those who live upon the earth, but
livid white, all streaked with scarlet streaks and rimmed about with a
fringe of writhing tongues of red fire. And, shooting half-way across
the heavens from either side of it, and brighter than the Milky Way,
were two pinions of silver-white, making it look more like those winged
globes I have seen in Egyptian sculpture, than anything else I can
remember upon earth. These I knew for the solar corona, though I had
never seen anything of it but a picture during the days of my earthly
life.

When my attention came back to the earth again, I saw that it
had fallen very far away from me. Field and town were long since
indistinguishable, and all the varied hues of the country were merging
into a uniform bright grey, broken only by the brilliant white of the
clouds that lay scattered in flocculent masses over Ireland and the
west of England. For now I could see the outlines of the north of
France and Ireland, and all this island of Britain, save where Scotland
passed over the horizon to the north, or where the coast was blurred
or obliterated by cloud. The sea was a dull grey, and darker than the
land; and the whole panorama was rotating slowly towards the east.

All this had happened so swiftly that, until I was some thousand miles
or so from the earth, I had no thought for myself. But now I perceived
I had neither hands nor feet, neither parts nor organs, and that I felt
neither alarm nor pain. All about me I perceived that the vacancy (for
I had already left the air behind) was cold beyond the imagination of
man; but it troubled me not. The sun's rays shot through the void,
powerless to light or heat until they should strike on matter in their
course. I saw things with a serene self-forgetfulness, even as if I
were God. And down below there, rushing away from me,--countless miles
in a second,--where a little dark spot on the grey marked the position
of London, two doctors were struggling to restore life to the poor
hacked and outworn shell I had abandoned. I felt then such release,
such serenity as I can compare to no mortal delight I have ever known.

It was only after I had perceived all these things that the meaning of
that headlong rush of the earth grew into comprehension. Yet it was
so simple, so obvious, that I was amazed at my never anticipating the
thing that was happening to me. I had suddenly been cut adrift from
matter: all that was material of me was there upon earth, whirling
away through space, held to the earth by gravitation, partaking of the
earth-inertia, moving in its wreath of epicycles round the sun, and
with the sun and the planets on their vast march through space. But
the immaterial has no inertia, feels nothing of the pull of matter
for matter: where it parts from its garment of flesh, there it remains
(so far as space concerns it any longer) immovable in space. I was not
leaving the earth: the earth was leaving _me_, and not only the earth,
but the whole solar system was streaming past. And about me in space,
invisible to me, scattered in the wake of the earth upon its journey,
there must be an innumerable multitude of souls, stripped like myself
of the material, stripped like myself of the passions of the individual
and the generous emotions of the gregarious brute, naked intelligences,
things of newborn wonder and thought, marvelling at the strange release
that had suddenly come on them!

As I receded faster and faster from the strange white sun in the black
heavens, and from the broad and shining earth upon which my being had
begun, I seemed to grow, in some incredible manner, vast: vast as
regards this world I had left, vast as regards the moments and periods
of a human life. Very soon I saw the full circle of the earth, slightly
gibbous, like the moon when she nears her full, but very large; and
the silvery shape of America was now in the noonday blaze wherein (as
it seemed) little England had been basking but a few minutes ago. At
first the earth was large, and shone in the heavens, filling a great
part of them; but every moment she grew smaller and more distant. As
she shrunk, the broad moon in its third quarter crept into view over
the rim of her disc. I looked for the constellations. Only that part of
Aries directly behind the sun and the Lion, which the earth covered,
were hidden. I recognised the tortuous, tattered band of the Milky
Way, with Vega very bright between sun and earth; and Sirius and Orion
shone splendid against the unfathomable blackness in the opposite
quarter of the heavens. The Pole Star was overhead, and the Great Bear
hung over the circle of the earth. And away beneath and beyond the
shining corona of the sun were strange groupings of stars I had never
seen in my life--notably, a dagger-shaped group that I knew for the
Southern Cross. All these were no larger than when they had shone on
earth; but the little stars that one scarce sees shone now against the
setting of black vacancy as brightly as the first-magnitudes had done,
while the larger worlds were points of indescribable glory and colour.
Aldebaran was a spot of blood-red fire, and Sirius condensed to one
point the light of a world of sapphires. And they shone steadily: they
did not scintillate, they were calmly glorious. My impressions had an
adamantine hardness and brightness: there was no blurring softness,
no atmosphere, nothing but infinite darkness set with the myriads of
these acute and brilliant points and specks of light. Presently, when
I looked again, the little earth seemed no bigger than the sun, and
it dwindled and turned as I looked, until, in a second's space (as it
seemed to me), it was halved; and so it went on swiftly dwindling. Far
away in the opposite direction, a little pinkish pin's head of light,
shining steadily, was the planet Mars. I swam motionless in vacancy,
and, without a trace of terror or astonishment, watched the speck of
cosmic dust we call the world fall away from me.

Presently it dawned upon me that my sense of duration had changed: that
my mind was moving not faster but infinitely slower, that between each
separate impression there was a period of many days. The moon spun once
round the earth as I noted this; and I perceived clearly the motion of
Mars in his orbit. Moreover, it appeared as if the time between thought
and thought grew steadily greater, until at last a thousand years was
but a moment in my perception.

At first the constellations had shone motionless against the black
background of infinite space; but presently it seemed as though the
group of stars about Hercules and the Scorpion was contracting, while
Orion and Aldebaran and their neighbours were scattering apart.
Flashing suddenly out of the darkness there came a flying multitude
of particles of rock, glittering like dust-specks in a sunbeam, and
encompassed in a faintly luminous haze. They swirled all about me,
and vanished again in a twinkling far behind. And then I saw that a
bright spot of light, that shone a little to one side of my path, was
growing very rapidly larger, and perceived that it was the planet
Saturn rushing towards me. Larger and larger it grew, swallowing up the
heavens behind it, and hiding every moment a fresh multitude of stars.
I perceived its flattened, whirling body, its disc-like belt, and seven
of its little satellites. It grew and grew, till it towered enormous;
and then I plunged amid a streaming multitude of clashing stones and
dancing dust-particles and gas-eddies, and saw for a moment the mighty
triple belt like three concentric arches of moonlight above me, its
shadow black on the boiling tumult below. These things happened in
one-tenth of the time it takes to tell of them. The planet went by like
a flash of lightning; for a few seconds it blotted out the sun, and
there and then became a mere black, dwindling, winged patch against the
light. The earth, the mother mote of my being, I could no longer see.

So, with a stately swiftness, in the profoundest silence, the solar
system fell from me, as it had been a garment, until the sun was a mere
star amid the multitude of stars, with its eddy of planet-specks, lost
in the confused glittering of the remoter light. I was no longer a
denizen of the solar system: I had come to the Outer Universe, I seemed
to grasp and comprehend the whole world of matter. Ever more swiftly
the stars closed in about the spot where Antares and Vega had vanished
in a luminous haze, until that part of the sky had the semblance of
a whirling mass of nebulæ, and ever before me yawned vaster gaps of
vacant blackness, and the stars shone fewer and fewer. It seemed as if
I moved towards a point between Orion's belt and sword; and the void
about that region opened vaster and vaster every second, an incredible
gulf of nothingness, into which I was falling. Faster and ever faster
the universe rushed by, a hurry of whirling motes at last, speeding
silently into the void. Stars glowing brighter and brighter, with
their circling planets catching the light in a ghostly fashion as I
neared them, shone out and vanished again into inexistence; faint
comets, clusters of meteorites, winking specks of matter, eddying light
points, whizzed past, some perhaps a hundred millions of miles or so
from me at most, few nearer, travelling with unimaginable rapidity,
shooting constellations, momentary darts of fire, through that black,
enormous night. More than anything else it was like a dusty draught,
sunbeam-lit. Broader, and wider, and deeper grew the starless space,
the vacant Beyond, into which I was being drawn. At last a quarter of
the heavens was black and blank, and the whole headlong rush of stellar
universe closed in behind me like a veil of light that is gathered
together. It drove away from me like a monstrous jack-o'-lantern driven
by the wind. I had come out into the wilderness of space. Ever the
vacant blackness grew broader, until the hosts of the stars seemed
only like a swarm of fiery specks hurrying away from me, inconceivably
remote, and the darkness, the nothingness and emptiness, was about me
on every side. Soon the little universe of matter, the cage of points
in which I had begun to be, was dwindling, now to a whirling disc of
luminous glittering, and now to one minute disc of hazy light. In a
little while it would shrink to a point, and at last would vanish
altogether.

Suddenly feeling came back to me--feeling in the shape of overwhelming
terror: such a dread of those dark vastitudes as no words can describe,
a passionate resurgence of sympathy and social desire. Were there
other souls, invisible to me as I to them, about me in the blackness?
or was I indeed, even as I felt, alone? Had I passed out of being
into something that was neither being nor not-being? The covering
of the body, the covering of matter, had been torn from me, and the
hallucinations of companionship and security. Everything was black and
silent. I had ceased to be. I was nothing. There was nothing, save only
that infinitesimal dot of light that dwindled in the gulf. I strained
myself to hear and see, and for a while there was naught but infinite
silence, intolerable darkness, horror, and despair.

Then I saw that about the spot of light into which the whole world of
matter had shrunk there was a faint glow. And in a band on either side
of that the darkness was not absolute. I watched it for ages, as it
seemed to me, and through the long waiting the haze grew imperceptibly
more distinct. And then about the band appeared an irregular cloud
of the faintest, palest brown. I felt a passionate impatience; but
the things grew brighter so slowly that they scarce seemed to change.
What was unfolding itself? What was this strange reddish dawn in the
interminable night of space?

The cloud's shape was grotesque. It seemed to be looped along its lower
side into four projecting masses, and, above, it ended in a straight
line. What phantom was it? I felt assured I had seen that figure
before; but I could not think what, nor where, nor when it was. Then
the realisation rushed upon me. _It was a clenched Hand._ I was alone
in space, alone with this huge, shadowy Hand, upon which the whole
Universe of Matter lay like an unconsidered speck of dust. It seemed
as though I watched it through vast periods of time. On the forefinger
glittered a ring; and the universe from which I had come was but a spot
of light upon the ring's curvature. And the thing that the hand gripped
had the likeness of a black rod. Through a long eternity I watched
this Hand, with the ring and the rod, marvelling and fearing and
waiting helplessly on what might follow. It seemed as though nothing
could follow: that I should watch for ever, seeing only the Hand and
the thing it held, and understanding nothing of its import. Was the
whole universe but a refracting speck upon some greater Being? Were our
worlds but the atoms of another universe, and those again of another,
and so on through an endless progression? And what was I? Was I indeed
immaterial? A vague persuasion of a body gathering about me came into
my suspense. The abysmal darkness about the Hand filled with impalpable
suggestions, with uncertain, fluctuating shapes.

Then, suddenly, came a sound, like the sound of a tolling bell: faint,
as if infinitely far; muffled, as though heard through thick swathings
of darkness: a deep, vibrating resonance, with vast gulfs of silence
between each stroke. And the Hand appeared to tighten on the rod. And
I saw far above the Hand, towards the apex of the darkness, a circle
of dim phosphorescence, a ghostly sphere whence these sounds came
throbbing; and at the last stroke the Hand vanished, for the hour had
come, and I heard a noise of many waters. But the black rod remained
as a great band across the sky. And then a voice, which seemed to run
to the uttermost parts of space, spoke, saying, "There will be no more
pain."

At that an almost intolerable gladness and radiance rushed in upon
me, and I saw the circle shining white and bright, and the rod black
and shining, and many things else distinct and clear. And the circle
was the face of the clock, and the rod the rail of my bed. Haddon was
standing at the foot, against the rail, with a small pair of scissors
on his fingers; and the hands of my clock on the mantel over his
shoulder were clasped together over the hour of twelve. Mowbray was
washing something in a basin at the octagonal table, and at my side I
felt a subdued feeling that could scarce be spoken of as pain.

The operation had not killed me. And I perceived, suddenly, that the
dull melancholy of half a year was lifted from my mind.



THE SEA RAIDERS

I


Until the extraordinary affair at Sidmouth, the peculiar species
_Haploteuthis ferox_ was known to science only generically, on the
strength of a half-digested tentacle obtained near the Azores, and a
decaying body pecked by birds and nibbled by fish, found early in 1896
by Mr. Jennings, near Land's End.

In no department of zoological science, indeed, are we quite so much in
the dark as with regard to the deep-sea cephalopods. A mere accident,
for instance, it was that led to the Prince of Monaco's discovery
of nearly a dozen new forms in the summer of 1895, a discovery in
which the before-mentioned tentacle was included. It chanced that
a cachalot was killed off Terceira by some sperm whalers, and in
its last struggles charged almost to the Prince's yacht, missed it,
rolled under, and died within twenty yards of his rudder. And in its
agony it threw up a number of large objects, which the Prince, dimly
perceiving they were strange and important, was, by a happy expedient,
able to secure before they sank. He set his screws in motion, and
kept them circling in the vortices thus created until a boat could
be lowered. And these specimens were whole cephalopods and fragments
of cephalopods, some of gigantic proportions, and almost all of them
unknown to science!

It would seem, indeed, that these large and agile creatures, living
in the middle depths of the sea, must, to a large extent, for ever
remain unknown to us, since under water they are too nimble for nets,
and it is only by such rare unlooked-for accidents that specimens
can be obtained. In the case of _Haploteuthis ferox_, for instance,
we are still altogether ignorant of its habitat, as ignorant as we
are of the breeding-ground of the herring or the sea-ways of the
salmon. And zoologists are altogether at a loss to account for its
sudden appearance on our coast. Possibly it was the stress of a hunger
migration that drove it hither out of the deep. But it will be,
perhaps, better to avoid necessarily inconclusive discussion, and to
proceed at once with our narrative.

The first human being to set eyes upon a living _Haploteuthis_--the
first human being to survive, that is, for there can be little doubt
now that the wave of bathing fatalities and boating accidents that
travelled along the coast of Cornwall and Devon in early May was due
to this cause--was a retired tea-dealer of the name of Fison, who was
stopping at a Sidmouth boarding-house. It was in the afternoon, and he
was walking along the cliff path between Sidmouth and Ladram Bay. The
cliffs in this direction are very high, but down the red face of them
in one place a kind of ladder staircase has been made. He was near
this when his attention was attracted by what at first he thought to
be a cluster of birds struggling over a fragment of food that caught
the sunlight, and glistened pinkish-white. The tide was right out, and
this object was not only far below him, but remote across a broad waste
of rock reefs covered with dark seaweed and interspersed with silvery
shining tidal pools. And he was, moreover, dazzled by the brightness of
the further water.

In a minute, regarding this again, he perceived that his judgment was
in fault, for over this struggle circled a number of birds, jackdaws
and gulls for the most part, the latter gleaming blindingly when the
sunlight smote their wings, and they seemed minute in comparison with
it. And his curiosity was, perhaps, aroused all the more strongly
because of his first insufficient explanations.

As he had nothing better to do than amuse himself, he decided to make
this object, whatever it was, the goal of his afternoon walk, instead
of Ladram Bay, conceiving it might perhaps be a great fish of some
sort, stranded by some chance, and flapping about in its distress. And
so he hurried down the long steep ladder, stopping at intervals of
thirty feet or so to take breath and scan the mysterious movement.

At the foot of the cliff he was, of course, nearer his object than
he had been; but, on the other hand, it now came up against the
incandescent sky, beneath the sun, so as to seem dark and indistinct.
Whatever was pinkish of it was now hidden by a skerry of weedy
boulders. But he perceived that it was made up of seven rounded bodies,
distinct or connected, and that the birds kept up a constant croaking
and screaming, but seemed afraid to approach it too closely.

Mr. Fison, torn by curiosity, began picking his way across the
wave-worn rocks, and, finding the wet seaweed that covered them thickly
rendered them extremely slippery, he stopped, removed his shoes and
socks, and coiled his trousers above his knees. His object was, of
course, merely to avoid stumbling into the rocky pools about him, and
perhaps he was rather glad, as all men are, of an excuse to resume,
even for a moment, the sensations of his boyhood. At anyrate, it is to
this, no doubt, that he owes his life.

He approached his mark with all the assurance which the absolute
security of this country against all forms of animal life gives its
inhabitants. The round bodies moved to and fro, but it was only when he
surmounted the skerry of boulders I have mentioned that he realised the
horrible nature of the discovery. It came upon him with some suddenness.

The rounded bodies fell apart as he came into sight over the ridge,
and displayed the pinkish object to be the partially devoured body of
a human being, but whether of a man or woman he was unable to say.
And the rounded bodies were new and ghastly-looking creatures, in
shape somewhat resembling an octopus, and with huge and very long and
flexible tentacles, coiled copiously on the ground. The skin had a
glistening texture, unpleasant to see, like shiny leather. The downward
bend of the tentacle-surrounded mouth, the curious excrescence at the
bend, the tentacles, and the large intelligent eyes, gave the creatures
a grotesque suggestion of a face. They were the size of a fair-sized
swine about the body, and the tentacles seemed to him to be many feet
in length. There were, he thinks, seven or eight at least of the
creatures. Twenty yards beyond them, amid the surf of the now returning
tide, two others were emerging from the sea.

Their bodies lay flatly on the rocks, and their eyes regarded him with
evil interest; but it does not appear that Mr. Fison was afraid, or
that he realised that he was in any danger. Possibly his confidence
is to be ascribed to the limpness of their attitudes. But he was
horrified, of course, and intensely excited and indignant at such
revolting creatures preying upon human flesh. He thought they had
chanced upon a drowned body. He shouted to them, with the idea of
driving them off, and, finding they did not budge, cast about him,
picked up a big rounded lump of rock, and flung it at one.

And then, slowly uncoiling their tentacles, they all began moving
towards him--creeping at first deliberately, and making a soft purring
sound to each other.

In a moment Mr. Fison realised that he was in danger. He shouted again,
threw both his boots, and started off, with a leap, forthwith. Twenty
yards off he stopped and faced about, judging them slow, and behold!
the tentacles of their leader were already pouring over the rocky
ridge on which he had just been standing!

At that he shouted again, but this time not threatening, but a cry
of dismay, and began jumping, striding, slipping, wading across the
uneven expanse between him and the beach. The tall red cliffs seemed
suddenly at a vast distance, and he saw, as though they were creatures
in another world, two minute workmen engaged in the repair of the
ladder-way, and little suspecting the race for life that was beginning
below them. At one time he could hear the creatures splashing in the
pools not a dozen feet behind him, and once he slipped and almost fell.

They chased him to the very foot of the cliffs, and desisted only when
he had been joined by the workmen at the foot of the ladder-way up the
cliff. All three of the men pelted them with stones for a time, and
then hurried to the cliff top and along the path towards Sidmouth, to
secure assistance and a boat, and to rescue the desecrated body from
the clutches of these abominable creatures.


II

And, as if he had not already been in sufficient peril that day, Mr.
Fison went with the boat to point out the exact spot of his adventure.

As the tide was down, it required a considerable detour to reach the
spot, and when at last they came off the ladder-way, the mangled body
had disappeared. The water was now running in, submerging first one
slab of slimy rock and then another, and the four men in the boat--the
workmen, that is, the boatman, and Mr. Fison--now turned their
attention from the bearings off shore to the water beneath the keel.

At first they could see little below them, save a dark jungle of
laminaria, with an occasional darting fish. Their minds were set
on adventure, and they expressed their disappointment freely. But
presently they saw one of the monsters swimming through the water
seaward, with a curious rolling motion that suggested to Mr. Fison
the spinning roll of a captive balloon. Almost immediately after,
the waving streamers of laminaria were extraordinarily perturbed,
parted for a moment, and three of these beasts became darkly visible,
struggling for what was probably some fragment of the drowned man. In
a moment the copious olive-green ribbons had poured again over this
writhing group.

At that all four men, greatly excited, began beating the water with
oars and shouting, and immediately they saw a tumultuous movement among
the weeds. They desisted to see more clearly, and as soon as the water
was smooth, they saw, as it seemed to them, the whole sea bottom among
the weeds set with eyes.

"Ugly swine!" cried one of the men. "Why, there's dozens!"

And forthwith the things began to rise through the water about them.
Mr. Fison has since described to the writer this startling eruption
out of the waving laminaria meadows. To him it seemed to occupy a
considerable time, but it is probable that really it was an affair of
a few seconds only. For a time nothing but eyes, and then he speaks of
tentacles streaming out and parting the weed fronds this way and that.
Then these things, growing larger, until at last the bottom was hidden
by their intercoiling forms, and the tips of tentacles rose darkly here
and there into the air above the swell of the waters.

One came up boldly to the side of the boat, and, clinging to this with
three of its sucker-set tentacles, threw four others over the gunwale,
as if with an intention either of oversetting the boat or of clambering
into it. Mr. Fison at once caught up the boathook, and, jabbing
furiously at the soft tentacles, forced it to desist. He was struck in
the back and almost pitched overboard by the boatman, who was using his
oar to resist a similar attack on the other side of the boat. But the
tentacles on either side at once relaxed their hold at this, slid out
of sight, and splashed into the water.

"We'd better get out of this," said Mr. Fison, who was trembling
violently. He went to the tiller, while the boatman and one of the
workmen seated themselves and began rowing. The other workman stood
up in the fore part of the boat, with the boathook, ready to strike
any more tentacles that might appear. Nothing else seems to have been
said. Mr. Fison had expressed the common feeling beyond amendment.
In a hushed, scared mood, with faces white and drawn, they set about
escaping from the position into which they had so recklessly blundered.

But the oars had scarcely dropped into the water before dark, tapering,
serpentine ropes had bound them, and were about the rudder; and
creeping up the sides of the boat with a looping motion came the
suckers again. The men gripped their oars and pulled, but it was like
trying to move a boat in a floating raft of weeds. "Help here!" cried
the boatman, and Mr. Fison and the second workman rushed to help lug at
the oar.

Then the man with the boathook--his name was Ewan, or Ewen--sprang up
with a curse, and began striking downward over the side, as far as he
could reach, at the bank of tentacles that now clustered along the
boat's bottom. And, at the same time, the two rowers stood up to get
a better purchase for the recovery of their oars. The boatman handed
his to Mr. Fison, who lugged desperately, and, meanwhile, the boatman
opened a big clasp-knife, and, leaning over the side of the boat, began
hacking at the spiring arms upon the oar shaft.

Mr. Fison, staggering with the quivering rocking of the boat, his teeth
set, his breath coming short, and the veins starting on his hands as
he pulled at his oar, suddenly cast his eyes seaward. And there, not
fifty yards off, across the long rollers of the incoming tide, was a
large boat standing in towards them, with three women and a little
child in it. A boatman was rowing, and a little man in a pink-ribboned
straw hat and whites stood in the stern, hailing them. For a moment, of
course, Mr. Fison thought of help, and then he thought of the child.
He abandoned his oar forthwith, threw up his arms in a frantic gesture,
and screamed to the party in the boat to keep away "for God's sake!"
It says much for the modesty and courage of Mr. Fison that he does not
seem to be aware that there was any quality of heroism in his action at
this juncture. The oar he had abandoned was at once drawn under, and
presently reappeared floating about twenty yards away.

At the same moment Mr. Fison felt the boat under him lurch violently,
and a hoarse scream, a prolonged cry of terror from Hill, the boatman,
caused him to forget the party of excursionists altogether. He turned,
and saw Hill crouching by the forward rowlock, his face convulsed with
terror, and his right arm over the side and drawn tightly down. He gave
now a succession of short, sharp cries, "Oh! oh! oh!--oh!" Mr. Fison
believes that he must have been hacking at the tentacles below the
water-line, and have been grasped by them, but, of course, it is quite
impossible to say now certainly what had happened. The boat was heeling
over, so that the gunwale was within ten inches of the water, and both
Ewan and the other labourer were striking down into the water, with oar
and boathook, on either side of Hill's arm. Mr. Fison instinctively
placed himself to counterpoise them.

Then Hill, who was a burly, powerful man, made a strenuous effort, and
rose almost to a standing position. He lifted his arm, indeed, clean
out of the water. Hanging to it was a complicated tangle of brown
ropes; and the eyes of one of the brutes that had hold of him, glaring
straight and resolute, showed momentarily above the surface. The boat
heeled more and more, and the green-brown water came pouring in a
cascade over the side. Then Hill slipped and fell with his ribs across
the side, and his arm and the mass of tentacles about it splashed back
into the water. He rolled over; his boot kicked Mr. Fison's knee as
that gentleman rushed forward to seize him, and in another moment fresh
tentacles had whipped about his waist and neck, and after a brief,
convulsive struggle, in which the boat was nearly capsized, Hill was
lugged overboard. The boat righted with a violent jerk that all but
sent Mr. Fison over the other side, and hid the struggle in the water
from his eyes.

He stood staggering to recover his balance for a moment, and as he
did so, he became aware that the struggle and the inflowing tide had
carried them close upon the weedy rocks again. Not four yards off a
table of rock still rose in rhythmic movements above the in-wash of the
tide. In a moment Mr. Fison seized the oar from Ewan, gave one vigorous
stroke, then, dropping it, ran to the bows and leapt. He felt his feet
slide over the rock, and, by a frantic effort, leapt again towards a
further mass. He stumbled over this, came to his knees, and rose again.

"Look out!" cried someone, and a large drab body struck him. He was
knocked flat into a tidal pool by one of the workmen, and as he went
down he heard smothered, choking cries, that he believed at the time
came from Hill. Then he found himself marvelling at the shrillness and
variety of Hill's voice. Someone jumped over him, and a curving rush
of foamy water poured over him, and passed. He scrambled to his feet
dripping, and, without looking seaward, ran as fast as his terror would
let him shoreward. Before him, over the flat space of scattered rocks,
stumbled the two workmen--one a dozen yards in front of the other.

He looked over his shoulder at last, and, seeing that he was not
pursued, faced about. He was astonished. From the moment of the rising
of the cephalopods out of the water, he had been acting too swiftly
to fully comprehend his actions. Now it seemed to him as if he had
suddenly jumped out of an evil dream.

For there were the sky, cloudless and blazing with the afternoon sun,
the sea weltering under its pitiless brightness, the soft creamy foam
of the breaking water, and the low, long, dark ridges of rock. The
righted boat floated, rising and falling gently on the swell about
a dozen yards from shore. Hill and the monsters, all the stress and
tumult of that fierce fight for life, had vanished as though they had
never been.

Mr. Fison's heart was beating violently; he was throbbing to the
finger-tips, and his breath came deep.

There was something missing. For some seconds he could not think
clearly enough what this might be. Sun, sky, sea, rocks--what was it?
Then he remembered the boatload of excursionists. It had vanished.
He wondered whether he had imagined it. He turned, and saw the two
workmen standing side by side under the projecting masses of the tall
pink cliffs. He hesitated whether he should make one last attempt
to save the man Hill. His physical excitement seemed to desert him
suddenly, and leave him aimless and helpless. He turned shoreward,
stumbling and wading towards his two companions.

He looked back again, and there were now two boats floating, and the
one farthest out at sea pitched clumsily, bottom upward.


III

So it was _Haploteuthis ferox_ made its appearance upon the Devonshire
coast. So far, this has been its most serious aggression. Mr. Fison's
account, taken together with the wave of boating and bathing casualties
to which I have already alluded, and the absence of fish from the
Cornish coasts that year, points clearly to a shoal of these voracious
deep-sea monsters prowling slowly along the sub-tidal coastline.
Hunger migration has, I know, been suggested as the force that drove
them hither; but, for my own part, I prefer to believe the alternative
theory of Hemsley. Hemsley holds that a pack or shoal of these
creatures may have become enamoured of human flesh by the accident of
a foundered ship sinking among them, and have wandered in search of it
out of their accustomed zone; first waylaying and following ships, and
so coming to our shores in the wake of the Atlantic traffic. But to
discuss Hemsley's cogent and admirably-stated arguments would be out
of place here.

It would seem that the appetites of the shoal were satisfied by the
catch of eleven people--for so far as can be ascertained, there were
ten people in the second boat, and certainly these creatures gave
no further signs of their presence off Sidmouth that day. The coast
between Seaton and Budleigh Salterton was patrolled all that evening
and night by four Preventive Service boats, the men in which were armed
with harpoons and cutlasses, and as the evening advanced, a number
of more or less similarly equipped expeditions, organised by private
individuals, joined them. Mr. Fison took no part in any of these
expeditions.

About midnight excited hails were heard from a boat about a couple of
miles out at sea to the south-east of Sidmouth, and a lantern was seen
waving in a strange manner to and fro and up and down. The nearer boats
at once hurried towards the alarm. The venturesome occupants of the
boat, a seaman, a curate, and two schoolboys, had actually seen the
monsters passing under their boat. The creatures, it seems, like most
deep-sea organisms, were phosphorescent, and they had been floating,
five fathoms deep or so, like creatures of moonshine through the
blackness of the water, their tentacles retracted and as if asleep,
rolling over and over, and moving slowly in a wedge-like formation
towards the south-east.

These people told their story in gesticulated fragments, as first one
boat drew alongside and then another. At last there was a little fleet
of eight or nine boats collected together, and from them a tumult,
like the chatter of a marketplace, rose into the stillness of the
night. There was little or no disposition to pursue the shoal, the
people had neither weapons nor experience for such a dubious chase,
and presently--even with a certain relief, it may be--the boats turned
shoreward.

And now to tell what is perhaps the most astonishing fact in this whole
astonishing raid. We have not the slightest knowledge of the subsequent
movements of the shoal, although the whole south-west coast was now
alert for it. But it may, perhaps, be significant that a cachalot
was stranded off Sark on June 3. Two weeks and three days after this
Sidmouth affair, a living _Haploteuthis_ came ashore on Calais sands.
It was alive, because several witnesses saw its tentacles moving in a
convulsive way. But it is probable that it was dying. A gentleman named
Pouchet obtained a rifle and shot it.

That was the last appearance of a living _Haploteuthis_. No others
were seen on the French coast. On the 15th of June a dead body, almost
complete, was washed ashore near Torquay, and a few days later a boat
from the Marine Biological station, engaged in dredging off Plymouth,
picked up a rotting specimen, slashed deeply with a cutlass wound. How
the former specimen had come by its death it is impossible to say. And
on the last day of June, Mr. Egbert Caine, an artist, bathing near
Newlyn, threw up his arms, shrieked, and was drawn under. A friend
bathing with him made no attempt to save him, but swam at once for
the shore. This is the last fact to tell of this extraordinary raid
from the deeper sea. Whether it is really the last of these horrible
creatures it is, as yet, premature to say. But it is believed, and
certainly it is to be hoped, that they have returned now, and returned
for good, to the sunless depths of the middle seas, out of which they
have so strangely and so mysteriously arisen.



POLLOCK AND THE PORROH MAN


It was in a swampy village on the lagoon river behind the Turner
Peninsula that Pollock's first encounter with the Porroh man occurred.
The women of that country are famous for their good looks--they are
Gallinas with a dash of European blood that dates from the days of
Vasco de Gama and the English slave-traders, and the Porroh man, too,
was possibly inspired by a faint Caucasian taint in his composition.
(It's a curious thing to think that some of us may have distant cousins
eating men on Sherboro Island or raiding with the Sofas.) At anyrate,
the Porroh man stabbed the woman to the heart as though he had been a
mere low-class Italian, and very narrowly missed Pollock. But Pollock,
using his revolver to parry the lightning stab which was aimed at his
deltoid muscle, sent the iron dagger flying, and, firing, hit the man
in the hand.

He fired again and missed, knocking a sudden window out of the wall
of the hut. The Porroh man stooped in the doorway, glancing under his
arm at Pollock. Pollock caught a glimpse of his inverted face in the
sunlight, and then the Englishman was alone, sick and trembling with
the excitement of the affair, in the twilight of the place. It had all
happened in less time than it takes to read about it.

The woman was quite dead, and having ascertained this, Pollock went to
the entrance of the hut and looked out. Things outside were dazzling
bright. Half a dozen of the porters of the expedition were standing up
in a group near the green huts they occupied, and staring towards him,
wondering what the shots might signify. Behind the little group of men
was the broad stretch of black fetid mud by the river, a green carpet
of rafts of papyrus and water-grass, and then the leaden water. The
mangroves beyond the stream loomed indistinctly through the blue haze.
There were no signs of excitement in the squat village, whose fence was
just visible above the cane-grass.

Pollock came out of the hut cautiously and walked towards the river,
looking over his shoulder at intervals. But the Porroh man had
vanished. Pollock clutched his revolver nervously in his hand.

One of his men came to meet him, and as he came, pointed to the bushes
behind the hut in which the Porroh man had disappeared. Pollock had
an irritating persuasion of having made an absolute fool of himself;
he felt bitter, savage, at the turn things had taken. At the same
time, he would have to tell Waterhouse--the moral, exemplary, cautious
Waterhouse--who would inevitably take the matter seriously. Pollock
cursed bitterly at his luck, at Waterhouse, and especially at the West
Coast of Africa. He felt consummately sick of the expedition. And
in the back of his mind all the time was a speculative doubt where
precisely within the visible horizon the Porroh man might be.

It is perhaps rather shocking, but he was not at all upset by the
murder that had just happened. He had seen so much brutality during the
last three months, so many dead women, burnt huts, drying skeletons, up
the Kittam River in the wake of the Sofa cavalry, that his senses were
blunted. What disturbed him was the persuasion that this business was
only beginning.

He swore savagely at the black, who ventured to ask a question, and
went on into the tent under the orange-trees where Waterhouse was
lying, feeling exasperatingly like a boy going into the headmaster's
study.

Waterhouse was still sleeping off the effects of his last dose of
chlorodyne, and Pollock sat down on a packing-case beside him, and,
lighting his pipe, waited for him to awake. About him were scattered
the pots and weapons Waterhouse had collected from the Mendi people,
and which he had been repacking for the canoe voyage to Sulyma.

Presently Waterhouse woke up, and after judicial stretching, decided
he was all right again. Pollock got him some tea. Over the tea the
incidents of the afternoon were described by Pollock, after some
preliminary beating about the bush. Waterhouse took the matter even
more seriously than Pollock had anticipated. He did not simply
disapprove, he scolded, he insulted.

"You're one of those infernal fools who think a black man isn't a human
being," he said. "I can't be ill a day without you must get into some
dirty scrape or other. This is the third time in a month that you have
come crossways-on with a native, and this time you're in for it with a
vengeance. Porroh, too! They're down upon you enough as it is, about
that idol you wrote your silly name on. And they're the most vindictive
devils on earth! You make a man ashamed of civilisation. To think you
come of a decent family! If ever I cumber myself up with a vicious,
stupid young lout like you again"--

"Steady on, now," snarled Pollock, in the tone that always exasperated
Waterhouse; "steady on."

At that Waterhouse became speechless. He jumped to his feet.

"Look here, Pollock," he said, after a struggle to control his breath.
"You must go home. I won't have you any longer. I'm ill enough as it is
through you"--

"Keep your hair on," said Pollock, staring in front of him. "I'm ready
enough to go."

Waterhouse became calmer again. He sat down on the camp-stool. "Very
well," he said. "I don't want a row, Pollock, you know, but it's
confoundedly annoying to have one's plans put out by this kind of
thing. I'll come to Sulyma with you, and see you safe aboard"--

"You needn't," said Pollock. "I can go alone. From here."

"Not far," said Waterhouse. "You don't understand this Porroh
business."

"How should _I_ know she belonged to a Porroh man?" said Pollock
bitterly.

"Well, she did," said Waterhouse; "and you can't undo the thing. Go
alone, indeed! I wonder what they'd do to you. You don't seem to
understand that this Porroh hokey-pokey rules this country, is its law,
religion, constitution, medicine, magic.... They appoint the chiefs.
The Inquisition, at its best, couldn't hold a candle to these chaps.
He will probably set Awajale, the chief here, on to us. It's lucky our
porters are Mendis. We shall have to shift this little settlement of
ours.... Confound you, Pollock! And, of course, you must go and miss
him."

He thought, and his thoughts seemed disagreeable. Presently he stood up
and took his rifle. "I'd keep close for a bit, if I were you," he said,
over his shoulder, as he went out. "I'm going out to see what I can
find out about it."

Pollock remained sitting in the tent, meditating. "I was meant for a
civilised life," he said to himself, regretfully, as he filled his
pipe. "The sooner I get back to London or Paris the better for me."

His eye fell on the sealed case in which Waterhouse had put the
featherless poisoned arrows they had bought in the Mendi country. "I
wish I had hit the beggar somewhere vital," said Pollock viciously.

Waterhouse came back after a long interval. He was not communicative,
though Pollock asked him questions enough. The Porroh man, it seems,
was a prominent member of that mystical society. The village was
interested, but not threatening. No doubt the witch-doctor had gone
into the bush. He was a great witch-doctor. "Of course, he's up to
something," said Waterhouse, and became silent.

"But what can he do?" asked Pollock, unheeded.

"I must get you out of this. There's something brewing, or things would
not be so quiet," said Waterhouse, after a gap of silence. Pollock
wanted to know what the brew might be. "Dancing in a circle of skulls,"
said Waterhouse; "brewing a stink in a copper pot." Pollock wanted
particulars. Waterhouse was vague, Pollock pressing. At last Waterhouse
lost his temper. "How the devil should _I_ know?" he said to Pollock's
twentieth inquiry what the Porroh man would do. "He tried to kill
you off-hand in the hut. _Now_, I fancy he will try something more
elaborate. But you'll see fast enough. I don't want to help unnerve
you. It's probably all nonsense."

That night, as they were sitting at their fire, Pollock again tried to
draw Waterhouse out on the subject of Porroh methods. "Better get to
sleep," said Waterhouse, when Pollock's bent became apparent; "we start
early to-morrow. You may want all your nerve about you."

"But what line will he take?"

"Can't say. They're versatile people. They know a lot of rum dodges.
You'd better get that copper-devil, Shakespear, to talk."

There was a flash and a heavy bang out of the darkness behind the
huts, and a clay bullet came whistling close to Pollock's head. This,
at least, was crude enough. The blacks and half-breeds sitting and
yarning round their own fire jumped up, and someone fired into the dark.

"Better go into one of the huts," said Waterhouse quietly, still
sitting unmoved.

Pollock stood up by the fire and drew his revolver. Fighting, at least,
he was not afraid of. But a man in the dark is in the best of armour.
Realising the wisdom of Waterhouse's advice, Pollock went into the tent
and lay down there.

What little sleep he had was disturbed by dreams, variegated dreams,
but chiefly of the Porroh man's face, upside down, as he went out of
the hut, and looked up under his arm. It was odd that this transitory
impression should have stuck so firmly in Pollock's memory. Moreover,
he was troubled by queer pains in his limbs.

In the white haze of the early morning, as they were loading the
canoes, a barbed arrow suddenly appeared quivering in the ground close
to Pollock's foot. The boys made a perfunctory effort to clear out the
thicket, but it led to no capture.

After these two occurrences, there was a disposition on the part of
the expedition to leave Pollock to himself, and Pollock became, for
the first time in his life, anxious to mingle with blacks. Waterhouse
took one canoe, and Pollock, in spite of a friendly desire to chat
with Waterhouse, had to take the other. He was left all alone in the
front part of the canoe, and he had the greatest trouble to make the
men--who did not love him--keep to the middle of the river, a clear
hundred yards or more from either shore. However, he made Shakespear,
the Freetown half-breed, come up to his own end of the canoe and tell
him about Porroh, which Shakespear, failing in his attempts to leave
Pollock alone, presently did with considerable freedom and gusto.

The day passed. The canoe glided swiftly along the ribbon of lagoon
water, between the drift of water-figs, fallen trees, papyrus, and
palm-wine palms, and with the dark mangrove swamp to the left, through
which one could hear now and then the roar of the Atlantic surf.
Shakespear told in his soft, blurred English of how the Porroh could
cast spells; how men withered up under their malice; how they could
send dreams and devils; how they tormented and killed the sons of
Ijibu; how they kidnapped a white trader from Sulyma who had maltreated
one of the sect, and how his body looked when it was found. And Pollock
after each narrative cursed under his breath at the want of missionary
enterprise that allowed such things to be, and at the inert British
Government that ruled over this dark heathendom of Sierra Leone. In
the evening they came to the Kasi Lake, and sent a score of crocodiles
lumbering off the island on which the expedition camped for the night.

The next day they reached Sulyma, and smelt the sea breeze, but Pollock
had to put up there for five days before he could get on to Freetown.
Waterhouse, considering him to be comparatively safe here, and within
the pale of Freetown influence, left him and went back with the
expedition to Gbemma, and Pollock became very friendly with Perera,
the only resident white trader at Sulyma--so friendly, indeed, that he
went about with him everywhere. Perera was a little Portuguese Jew, who
had lived in England, and he appreciated the Englishman's friendliness
as a great compliment.

For two days nothing happened out of the ordinary; for the most part
Pollock and Perera played Nap--the only game they had in common--and
Pollock got into debt. Then, on the second evening, Pollock had a
disagreeable intimation of the arrival of the Porroh man in Sulyma by
getting a flesh-wound in the shoulder from a lump of filed iron. It
was a long shot, and the missile had nearly spent its force when it
hit him. Still it conveyed its message plainly enough. Pollock sat up
in his hammock, revolver in hand, all that night, and next morning
confided, to some extent, in the Anglo-Portuguese.

Perera took the matter seriously. He knew the local customs pretty
thoroughly. "It is a personal question, you must know. It is revenge.
And of course he is hurried by your leaving de country. None of de
natives or half-breeds will interfere wid him very much--unless you
make it wort deir while. If you come upon him suddenly, you might shoot
him. But den he might shoot you.

"Den dere's dis--infernal magic," said Perera. "Of course, I don't
believe in it--superstition--but still it's not nice to tink dat
wherever you are, dere is a black man, who spends a moonlight night now
and den a-dancing about a fire to send you bad dreams.... Had any bad
dreams?"

"Rather," said Pollock. "I keep on seeing the beggar's head upside down
grinning at me and showing all his teeth as he did in the hut, and
coming close up to me, and then going ever so far off, and coming back.
It's nothing to be afraid of, but somehow it simply paralyses me with
terror in my sleep. Queer things--dreams. I know it's a dream all the
time, and I can't wake up from it."

"It's probably only fancy," said Perera. "Den my niggers say Porroh men
can send snakes. Seen any snakes lately?"

"Only one. I killed him this morning, on the floor near my hammock.
Almost trod on him as I got up."

"_Ah!_" said Perera, and then, reassuringly, "Of course it is
a--coincidence. Still I would keep my eyes open. Den dere's pains in de
bones."

"I thought they were due to miasma," said Pollock.

"Probably dey are. When did dey begin?"

Then Pollock remembered that he first noticed them the night after the
fight in the hut. "It's my opinion he don't want to kill you," said
Perera--"at least not yet. I've heard deir idea is to scare and worry
a man wid deir spells, and narrow misses, and rheumatic pains, and bad
dreams, and all dat, until he's sick of life. Of course, it's all talk,
you know. You mustn't worry about it.... But I wonder what he'll be up
to next."

"_I_ shall have to be up to something first," said Pollock, staring
gloomily at the greasy cards that Perera was putting on the table. "It
don't suit my dignity to be followed about, and shot at, and blighted
in this way. I wonder if Porroh hokey-pokey upsets your luck at cards."

He looked at Perera suspiciously.

"Very likely it does," said Perera warmly, shuffling. "Dey are
wonderful people."

That afternoon Pollock killed two snakes in his hammock, and there
was also an extraordinary increase in the number of red ants that
swarmed over the place; and these annoyances put him in a fit temper
to talk over business with a certain Mendi rough he had interviewed
before. The Mendi rough showed Pollock a little iron dagger, and
demonstrated where one struck in the neck, in a way that made Pollock
shiver, and in return for certain considerations Pollock promised him a
double-barrelled gun with an ornamental lock.

In the evening, as Pollock and Perera were playing cards, the Mendi
rough came in through the doorway, carrying something in a blood-soaked
piece of native cloth.

"Not here!" said Pollock very hurriedly. "Not here!"

But he was not quick enough to prevent the man, who was anxious to get
to Pollock's side of the bargain, from opening the cloth and throwing
the head of the Porroh man upon the table. It bounded from there on to
the floor, leaving a red trail on the cards, and rolled into a corner,
where it came to rest upside down, but glaring hard at Pollock.

Perera jumped up as the thing fell among the cards, and began in his
excitement to gabble in Portuguese. The Mendi was bowing, with the red
cloth in his hand. "De gun!" he said. Pollock stared back at the head
in the corner. It bore exactly the expression it had in his dreams.
Something seemed to snap in his own brain as he looked at it.

Then Perera found his English again.

"You got him killed?" he said. "You did not kill him yourself?"

"Why should I?" said Pollock.

"But he will not be able to take it off now!"

"Take _what_ off?" said Pollock.

"And all dese cards are spoiled!"

"_What_ do you mean by taking off?" said Pollock.

"You must send me a new pack from Freetown. You can buy dem dere."

"But--'take it off'?"

"It is only superstition. I forgot. De niggers say dat if de
witches--he was a witch-- But it is rubbish.... You must make de Porroh
man take it off, or kill him yourself.... It is very silly."

Pollock swore under his breath, still staring hard at the head in the
corner.

"I can't stand that glare," he said. Then suddenly he rushed at the
thing and kicked it. It rolled some yards or so, and came to rest in
the same position as before, upside down, and looking at him.

"He is ugly," said the Anglo-Portuguese. "Very ugly. Dey do it on deir
faces with little knives."

Pollock would have kicked the head again, but the Mendi man touched
him on the arm. "De gun?" he said, looking nervously at the head.

"Two--if you will take that beastly thing away," said Pollock.

The Mendi shook his head, and intimated that he only wanted one gun now
due to him, and for which he would be obliged. Pollock found neither
cajolery nor bullying any good with him. Perera had a gun to sell (at
a profit of three hundred per cent.), and with that the man presently
departed. Then Pollock's eyes, against his will, were recalled to the
thing on the floor.

"It is funny dat his head keeps upside down," said Perera, with an
uneasy laugh. "His brains must be heavy, like de weight in de little
images one sees dat keep always upright wid lead in dem. You will take
him wiv you when you go presently. You might take him now. De cards are
all spoilt. Dere is a man sell dem in Freetown. De room is in a filty
mess as it is. You should have killed him yourself."

Pollock pulled himself together, and went and picked up the head. He
would hang it up by the lamp-hook in the middle of the ceiling of his
room, and dig a grave for it at once. He was under the impression that
he hung it up by the hair, but that must have been wrong, for when he
returned for it, it was hanging by the neck upside down.

He buried it before sunset on the north side of the shed he occupied,
so that he should not have to pass the grave after dark when he was
returning from Perera's. He killed two snakes before he went to
sleep. In the darkest part of the night he awoke with a start, and
heard a pattering sound and something scraping on the floor. He sat up
noiselessly, and felt under his pillow for his revolver. A mumbling
growl followed, and Pollock fired at the sound. There was a yelp, and
something dark passed for a moment across the hazy blue of the doorway.
"A dog!" said Pollock, lying down again.

In the early dawn he awoke again with a peculiar sense of unrest. The
vague pain in his bones had returned. For some time he lay watching the
red ants that were swarming over the ceiling, and then, as the light
grew brighter, he looked over the edge of his hammock and saw something
dark on the floor. He gave such a violent start that the hammock
overset and flung him out.

He found himself lying, perhaps, a yard away from the head of the
Porroh man. It had been disinterred by the dog, and the nose was
grievously battered. Ants and flies swarmed over it. By an odd
coincidence, it was still upside down, and with the same diabolical
expression in the inverted eyes.

Pollock sat paralysed, and stared at the horror for some time. Then
he got up and walked round it--giving it a wide berth--and out of the
shed. The clear light of the sunrise, the living stir of vegetation
before the breath of the dying land-breeze, and the empty grave with
the marks of the dog's paws, lightened the weight upon his mind a
little.

He told Perera of the business as though it was a jest--a jest to be
told with white lips. "You should not have frighten de dog," said
Perera, with poorly simulated hilarity.

The next two days, until the steamer came, were spent by Pollock in
making a more effectual disposition of his possession. Overcoming
his aversion to handling the thing, he went down to the river mouth
and threw it into the sea-water, but by some miracle it escaped the
crocodiles, and was cast up by the tide on the mud a little way up
the river, to be found by an intelligent Arab half-breed, and offered
for sale to Pollock and Perera as a curiosity, just on the edge of
night. The native hung about in the brief twilight, making lower and
lower offers, and at last, getting scared in some way by the evident
dread these wise white men had for the thing, went off, and, passing
Pollock's shed, threw his burden in there for Pollock to discover in
the morning.

At this Pollock got into a kind of frenzy. He would burn the thing. He
went out straightway into the dawn, and had constructed a big pyre of
brushwood before the heat of the day. He was interrupted by the hooter
of the little paddle steamer from Monrovia to Bathurst, which was
coming through the gap in the bar. "Thank Heaven!" said Pollock, with
infinite piety, when the meaning of the sound dawned upon him. With
trembling hands he lit his pile of wood hastily, threw the head upon
it, and went away to pack his portmanteau and make his adieux to Perera.

That afternoon, with a sense of infinite relief, Pollock watched the
flat swampy foreshore of Sulyma grow small in the distance. The gap in
the long line of white surge became narrower and narrower. It seemed
to be closing in and cutting him off from his trouble. The feeling of
dread and worry began to slip from him bit by bit. At Sulyma belief in
Porroh malignity and Porroh magic had been in the air, his sense of
Porroh had been vast, pervading, threatening, dreadful. Now manifestly
the domain of Porroh was only a little place, a little black band
between the sea and the blue cloudy Mendi uplands.

"Good-bye, Porroh!" said Pollock. "Good-bye--certainly not _au revoir_."

The captain of the steamer came and leant over the rail beside him, and
wished him good-evening, and spat at the froth of the wake in token of
friendly ease.

"I picked up a rummy curio on the beach this go," said the captain.
"It's a thing I never saw done this side of Indy before."

"What might that be?" said Pollock.

"Pickled 'ed," said the captain.

"_What?_" said Pollock.

"'Ed--smoked. 'Ed of one of these Porroh chaps, all ornamented with
knife-cuts. Why! What's up? Nothing? I shouldn't have took you for a
nervous chap. Green in the face. By gosh! you're a bad sailor. All
right, eh? Lord, how funny you went!... Well, this 'ed I was telling
you of is a bit rum in a way. I've got it, along with some snakes, in a
jar of spirit in my cabin what I keeps for such curios, and I'm hanged
if it don't float upsy down. Hullo!"

Pollock had given an incoherent cry, and had his hands in his hair. He
ran towards the paddle-boxes with a half-formed idea of jumping into
the sea, and then he realised his position and turned back towards the
captain.

"Here!" said the captain. "Jack Philips, just keep him off me! Stand
off! No nearer, mister! What's the matter with you? Are you mad?"

Pollock put his hand to his head. It was no good explaining. "I believe
I am pretty nearly mad at times," he said. "It's a pain I have here.
Comes suddenly. You'll excuse me, I hope."

He was white and in a perspiration. He saw suddenly very clearly all
the danger he ran of having his sanity doubted. He forced himself
to restore the captain's confidence, by answering his sympathetic
inquiries, noting his suggestions, even trying a spoonful of neat
brandy in his cheek, and, that matter settled, asking a number of
questions about the captain's private trade in curiosities. The captain
described the head in detail. All the while Pollock was struggling to
keep under a preposterous persuasion that the ship was as transparent
as glass, and that he could distinctly see the inverted face looking at
him from the cabin beneath his feet.

Pollock had a worse time almost on the steamer than he had at Sulyma.
All day he had to control himself in spite of his intense perception
of the imminent presence of that horrible head that was overshadowing
his mind. At night his old nightmare returned, until, with a violent
effort, he would force himself awake, rigid with the horror of it, and
with the ghost of a hoarse scream in his throat.

He left the actual head behind at Bathurst, where he changed ship
for Teneriffe, but not his dreams nor the dull ache in his bones.
At Teneriffe Pollock transferred to a Cape liner, but the head
followed him. He gambled, he tried chess, he even read books, but
he knew the danger of drink. Yet whenever a round black shadow, a
round black object came into his range, there he looked for the head,
and--saw it. He knew clearly enough that his imagination was growing
traitor to him, and yet at times it seemed the ship he sailed in,
his fellow-passengers, the sailors, the wide sea, was all part of a
filmy phantasmagoria that hung, scarcely veiling it, between him and a
horrible real world. Then the Porroh man, thrusting his diabolical face
through that curtain, was the one real and undeniable thing. At that he
would get up and touch things, taste something, gnaw something, burn
his hand with a match, or run a needle into himself.

So, struggling grimly and silently with his excited imagination,
Pollock reached England. He landed at Southampton, and went on straight
from Waterloo to his banker's in Cornhill in a cab. There he transacted
some business with the manager in a private room, and all the while the
head hung like an ornament under the black marble mantel and dripped
upon the fender. He could hear the drops fall, and see the red on the
fender.

"A pretty fern," said the manager, following his eyes. "But it makes
the fender rusty."

"Very," said Pollock; "a _very_ pretty fern. And that reminds me.
Can you recommend me a physician for mind troubles? I've got a
little--what is it?--hallucination."

The head laughed savagely, wildly. Pollock was surprised the manager
did not notice it. But the manager only stared at his face.

With the address of a doctor, Pollock presently emerged in Cornhill.
There was no cab in sight, and so he went on down to the western end
of the street, and essayed the crossing opposite the Mansion House.
The crossing is hardly easy even for the expert Londoner; cabs, vans,
carriages, mail-carts, omnibuses go by in one incessant stream; to
anyone fresh from the malarious solitudes of Sierra Leone it is a
boiling, maddening confusion. But when an inverted head suddenly comes
bouncing, like an indiarubber ball, between your legs, leaving distinct
smears of blood every time it touches the ground, you can scarcely hope
to avoid an accident. Pollock lifted his feet convulsively to avoid
it, and then kicked at the thing furiously. Then something hit him
violently in the back, and a hot pain ran up his arm.

He had been hit by the pole of an omnibus, and three of the fingers
of his left hand smashed by the hoof of one of the horses--the very
fingers, as it happened, that he shot from the Porroh man. They pulled
him out from between the horses' legs, and found the address of the
physician in his crushed hand.

For a couple of days Pollock's sensations were full of the sweet,
pungent smell of chloroform, of painful operations that caused him no
pain, of lying still and being given food and drink. Then he had a
slight fever, and was very thirsty, and his old nightmare came back. It
was only when it returned that he noticed it had left him for a day.

"If my skull had been smashed instead of my fingers, it might have gone
altogether," said Pollock, staring thoughtfully at the dark cushion
that had taken on for the time the shape of the head.

Pollock at the first opportunity told the physician of his mind
trouble. He knew clearly that he must go mad unless something
should intervene to save him. He explained that he had witnessed
a decapitation in Dahomey, and was haunted by one of the heads.
Naturally, he did not care to state the actual facts. The physician
looked grave.

Presently he spoke hesitatingly. "As a child, did you get very much
religious training?"

"Very little," said Pollock.

A shade passed over the physician's face. "I don't know if you have
heard of the miraculous cures--it may be, of course, they are not
miraculous--at Lourdes."

"Faith-healing will hardly suit me, I am afraid," said Pollock, with
his eye on the dark cushion.

The head distorted its scarred features in an abominable grimace. The
physician went upon a new track. "It's all imagination," he said,
speaking with sudden briskness. "A fair case for faith-healing, anyhow.
Your nervous system has run down, you're in that twilight state of
health when the bogles come easiest. The strong impression was too
much for you. I must make you up a little mixture that will strengthen
your nervous system--especially your brain. And you must take exercise."

"I'm no good for faith-healing," said Pollock.

"And therefore we must restore tone. Go in search of stimulating
air--Scotland, Norway, the Alps"--

"Jericho, if you like," said Pollock--"where Naaman went."

However, so soon as his fingers would let him, Pollock made a gallant
attempt to follow out the doctor's suggestion. It was now November.
He tried football, but to Pollock the game consisted in kicking a
furious inverted head about a field. He was no good at the game. He
kicked blindly, with a kind of horror, and when they put him back into
goal, and the ball came swooping down upon him, he suddenly yelled
and got out of its way. The discreditable stories that had driven him
from England to wander in the tropics shut him off from any but men's
society, and now his increasingly strange behaviour made even his man
friends avoid him. The thing was no longer a thing of the eye merely;
it gibbered at him, spoke to him. A horrible fear came upon him that
presently, when he took hold of the apparition, it would no longer
become some mere article of furniture, but would _feel_ like a real
dissevered head. Alone, he would curse at the thing, defy it, entreat
it; once or twice, in spite of his grim self-control, he addressed it
in the presence of others. He felt the growing suspicion in the eyes of
the people that watched him--his landlady, the servant, his man.

One day early in December his cousin Arnold--his next of kin--came to
see him and draw him out, and watch his sunken yellow face with narrow
eager eyes. And it seemed to Pollock that the hat his cousin carried
in his hand was no hat at all, but a Gorgon head that glared at him
upside down, and fought with its eyes against his reason. However,
he was still resolute to see the matter out. He got a bicycle, and,
riding over the frosty road from Wandsworth to Kingston, found the
thing rolling along at his side, and leaving a dark trail behind it. He
set his teeth and rode faster. Then suddenly, as he came down the hill
towards Richmond Park, the apparition rolled in front of him and under
his wheel, so quickly that he had no time for thought, and, turning
quickly to avoid it, was flung violently against a heap of stones and
broke his left wrist.

The end came on Christmas morning. All night he had been in a fever,
the bandages encircling his wrist like a band of fire, his dreams more
vivid and terrible than ever. In the cold, colourless, uncertain light
that came before the sunrise, he sat up in his bed, and saw the head
upon the bracket in the place of the bronze jar that had stood there
overnight.

"I know that is a bronze jar," he said, with a chill doubt at his
heart. Presently the doubt was irresistible. He got out of bed slowly,
shivering, and advanced to the jar with his hand raised. Surely
he would see now his imagination had deceived him, recognise the
distinctive sheen of bronze. At last, after an age of hesitation,
his fingers came down on the patterned cheek of the head. He withdrew
them spasmodically. The last stage was reached. His sense of touch had
betrayed him.

Trembling, stumbling against the bed, kicking against his shoes with
his bare feet, a dark confusion eddying round him, he groped his way to
the dressing-table, took his razor from the drawer, and sat down on the
bed with this in his hand. In the looking-glass he saw his own face,
colourless, haggard, full of the ultimate bitterness of despair.

He beheld in swift succession the incidents in the brief tale of his
experience. His wretched home, his still more wretched schooldays,
the years of vicious life he had led since then, one act of selfish
dishonour leading to another; it was all clear and pitiless now, all
its squalid folly, in the cold light of the dawn. He came to the
hut, to the fight with the Porroh man, to the retreat down the river
to Sulyma, to the Mendi assassin and his red parcel, to his frantic
endeavours to destroy the head, to the growth of his hallucination. It
was a hallucination! He _knew_ it was. A hallucination merely. For a
moment he snatched at hope. He looked away from the glass, and on the
bracket, the inverted head grinned and grimaced at him.... With the
stiff fingers of his bandaged hand he felt at his neck for the throb of
his arteries. The morning was very cold, the steel blade felt like ice.



THE RED ROOM


"I can assure you," said I, "that it will take a very tangible ghost to
frighten me." And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.

"It is your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, and
glanced at me askance.

"Eight-and-twenty years," said I, "I have lived, and never a ghost have
I seen as yet."

The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open.
"Ay," she broke in; "and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and
never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There's a many things to
see, when one's still but eight-and-twenty." She swayed her head slowly
from side to side. "A many things to see and sorrow for."

I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual
terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty
glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of
myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the
queer old mirror at the end of the room. "Well," I said, "if I see
anything to-night, I shall be so much the wiser. For I come to the
business with an open mind."

"It's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm once more.

I heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the
passage outside, and the door creaked on its hinges as a second old man
entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He
supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade,
and his lower lip, half-averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying
yellow teeth. He made straight for an arm-chair on the opposite side
of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with the
withered arm gave this new-comer a short glance of positive dislike;
the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes
fixed steadily on the fire.

"I said--it's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm,
when the coughing had ceased for a while.

"It's my own choosing," I answered.

The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time,
and threw his head back for a moment and sideways, to see me. I caught
a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. Then he
began to cough and splutter again.

"Why don't you drink?" said the man with the withered arm, pushing
the beer towards him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful
with a shaky arm that splashed half as much again on the deal table.
A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall and mocked his
action as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarce expected
these grotesque custodians. There is to my mind something inhuman in
senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem
to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made
me feel uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage,
their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another.

"If," said I, "you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will
make myself comfortable there."

The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it
startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from under
the shade; but no one answered me. I waited a minute, glancing from one
to the other.

"If," I said a little louder, "if you will show me to this haunted room
of yours, I will relieve you from the task of entertaining me."

"There's a candle on the slab outside the door," said the man with the
withered arm, looking at my feet as he addressed me. "But if you go to
the red room to-night"--

("This night of all nights!" said the old woman.)

"You go alone."

"Very well," I answered. "And which way do I go?"

"You go along the passage for a bit," said he, "until you come to a
door, and through that is a spiral staircase, and half-way up that is a
landing and another door covered with baize. Go through that and down
the long corridor to the end, and the red room is on your left up the
steps."

"Have I got that right?" I said, and repeated his directions. He
corrected me in one particular.

"And are you really going?" said the man with the shade, looking at me
again for the third time, with that queer, unnatural tilting of the
face.

("This night of all nights!" said the old woman.)

"It is what I came for," I said, and moved towards the door. As I did
so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so
as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned
and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against
the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent
expression on their ancient faces.

"Good-night," I said, setting the door open.

"It's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm.

I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I
shut them in and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.

I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in
whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned,
old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper's room in which they
foregathered, affected me in spite of my efforts to keep myself at a
matter-of-fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age, an older
age, an age when things spiritual were different from this of ours,
less certain; an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts
beyond denying. Their very existence was spectral; the cut of their
clothing, fashions born in dead brains. The ornaments and conveniences
of the room about them were ghostly--the thoughts of vanished men,
which still haunted rather than participated in the world of to-day.
But with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long,
draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle
flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and
down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and
one fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the landing
and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that I fancied
I heard; then, satisfied of the absolute silence, I pushed open the
baize-covered door and stood in the corridor.

The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight, coming
in by the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything
in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination. Everything was in its
place: the house might have been deserted on the yesterday instead of
eighteen months ago. There were candles in the sockets of the sconces,
and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the polished
flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in the moonlight.
I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon
the landing, hidden from me by the corner of the wall, but its shadow
fell with marvellous distinctness upon the white panelling, and gave
me the impression of someone crouching to waylay me. I stood rigid for
half a minute perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held my
revolver, I advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle glistening
in the moonlight. That incident for a time restored my nerve, and a
porcelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently as I
passed him, scarcely startled me.

The door to the red room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy
corner. I moved my candle from side to side, in order to see clearly
the nature of the recess in which I stood before opening the door. Here
it was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of
that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my
shoulder at the Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door of the
red room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid silence
of the landing.

I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in
the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft, surveying the
scene of my vigil, the great red room of Lorraine Castle, in which the
young duke had died. Or, rather, in which he had begun his dying, for
he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just
ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to
conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, I thought, had
apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. And there were other
and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-credible
beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that
came to her husband's jest of frightening her. And looking around that
large shadowy room, with its shadowy window bays, its recesses and
alcoves, one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its
black corners, its germinating darkness. My candle was a little tongue
of light in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the
room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of
light.

I resolved to make a systematic examination of the place at once, and
dispel the fanciful suggestions of its obscurity before they obtained a
hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, I
began to walk about the room, peering round each article of furniture,
tucking up the valances of the bed, and opening its curtains wide. I
pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several windows
before closing the shutters, leant forward and looked up the blackness
of the wide chimney, and tapped the dark oak panelling for any secret
opening. There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of
sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were more candles
in china candlesticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire
was laid,--an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper,--and I
lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning
well, I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I
had pulled up a chintz-covered arm-chair and a table, to form a kind
of barricade before me, and on this lay my revolver ready to hand. My
precise examination had done me good, but I still found the remoter
darkness of the place, and its perfect stillness, too stimulating for
the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire
was no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove, at the end
in particular, had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd
suggestion of a lurking living thing, that comes so easily in silence
and solitude. At last, to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into
it, and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood
that candle upon the floor of the alcove, and left it in that position.

By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although
to my reason there was no adequate cause for the condition. My mind,
however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that
nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began to
string some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, of the original legend
of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were not pleasant.
For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with
myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted
to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep
it upon that topic. The sombre reds and blacks of the room troubled me;
even with seven candles the place was merely dim. The one in the alcove
flared in a draught, and the fire-flickering kept the shadows and
penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring. Casting about for a remedy,
I recalled the candles I had seen in the passage, and, with a slight
effort, walked out into the moonlight, carrying a candle and leaving
the door open, and presently returned with as many as ten. These I put
in various knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely
adorned, lit and placed where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the
floor, some in the window recesses, until at last my seventeen candles
were so arranged that not an inch of the room but had the direct light
of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost came, I
could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite brightly
illuminated. There was something very cheery and reassuring in these
little streaming flames, and snuffing them gave me an occupation, and
afforded a reassuring sense of the passage of time.

Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed
heavily upon me. It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove
suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there.
I did not see the candle go out; I simply turned and saw that the
darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence
of a stranger. "By Jove!" said I aloud; "that draught's a strong one!"
and, taking the matches from the table, I walked across the room in a
leisurely manner to relight the corner again. My first match would not
strike, and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink
on the wall before me. I turned my head involuntarily, and saw that the
two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I
rose at once to my feet.

"Odd!" I said. "Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness?"

I walked back, relit one, and as I did so, I saw the candle in the
right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost
immediately its companion followed it. There was no mistake about it.
The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a
finger and a thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but
black. While I stood gaping, the candle at the foot of the bed went
out, and the shadows seemed to take another step towards me.

"This won't do!" said I, and first one and then another candle on the
mantelshelf followed.

"What's up?" I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice
somehow. At that the candle on the wardrobe went out, and the one I had
relit in the alcove followed.

"Steady on!" I said. "These candles are wanted," speaking with a
half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the
while for the mantel candlesticks. My hands trembled so much that
twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged
from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the window
were eclipsed. But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror
candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the
moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a volley there
vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and I
struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither
to take it.

As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two
candles on the table. With a cry of terror, I dashed at the alcove,
then into the corner, and then into the window, relighting three, as
two more vanished by the fireplace; then, perceiving a better way,
I dropped the matches on the iron-bound deed-box in the corner, and
caught up the bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of
striking matches; but for all that the steady process of extinction
went on, and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and
crept in upon me, first a step gained on this side of me and then on
that. It was like a ragged storm-cloud sweeping out the stars. Now and
then one returned for a minute, and was lost again. I was now almost
frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession
deserted me. I leaped panting and dishevelled from candle to candle, in
a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.

I bruised myself on the thigh against the table, I sent a chair
headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in
my fall. My candle rolled away from me, and I snatched another as I
rose. Abruptly this was blown out, as I swung it off the table, by the
wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles
followed. But there was light still in the room, a red light that
staved off the shadows from me. The fire! Of course, I could still
thrust my candle between the bars and relight it!

I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing
coals, and splashing red reflections upon the furniture, made two steps
towards the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished,
the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and vanished, and
as I thrust the candle between the bars, darkness closed upon me like
the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed
my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of reason from my brain. The
candle fell from my hand. I flung out my arms in a vain effort to
thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and, lifting up my voice,
screamed with all my might--once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must
have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit
corridor, and, with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a run
for the door.

But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and struck myself
heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and
was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furniture.
I have a vague memory of battering myself thus, to and fro in the
darkness, of a cramped struggle, and of my own wild crying as I darted
to and fro, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, a horrible
sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to
keep my footing, and then I remember no more.

       *       *       *       *       *

I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man
with the withered arm was watching my face. I looked about me, trying
to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect.
I rolled my eyes into the corner, and saw the old woman, no longer
abstracted, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue
phial into a glass. "Where am I?" I asked. "I seem to remember you, and
yet I cannot remember who you are."

They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who hears
a tale. "We found you at dawn," said he, "and there was blood on your
forehead and lips."

It was very slowly I recovered my memory of my experience. "You believe
now," said the old man, "that the room is haunted?" He spoke no longer
as one who greets an intruder, but as one who grieves for a broken
friend.

"Yes," said I; "the room is haunted."

"And you have seen it. And we, who have lived here all our lives, have
never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared.... Tell us, is it
truly the old earl who"--

"No," said I; "it is not."

"I told you so," said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. "It is
his poor young countess who was frightened"--

"It is not," I said. "There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of
countess in that room, there is no ghost there at all; but worse, far
worse"--

"Well?" they said.

"The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal man," said I; "and
that is, in all its nakedness--_Fear!_ Fear that will not have light
nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and
overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me
in the room"--

I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up
to my bandages.

Then the man with the shade sighed and spoke. "That is it," said he.
"I knew that was it. A Power of Darkness. To put such a curse upon a
woman! It lurks there always. You can feel it even in the daytime, even
of a bright summer's day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping
behind you however you face about. In the dusk it creeps along the
corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. There is Fear in
that room of hers--black Fear, and there will be--so long as this house
of sin endures."



THE CONE


The night was hot and overcast, the sky red-rimmed with the lingering
sunset of midsummer. They sat at the open window, trying to fancy the
air was fresher there. The trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff
and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt, bright orange against
the hazy blue of the evening. Farther were the three lights of the
railway signal against the lowering sky. The man and woman spoke to one
another in low tones.

"He does not suspect?" said the man, a little nervously.

"Not he," she said peevishly, as though that too irritated her. "He
thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel. He has no
imagination, no poetry."

"None of these men of iron have," he said sententiously. "They have no
hearts."

"_He_ has not," she said. She turned her discontented face towards the
window. The distant sound of a roaring and rushing drew nearer and
grew in volume; the house quivered; one heard the metallic rattle of
the tender. As the train passed, there was a glare of light above the
cutting and a driving tumult of smoke; one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight black oblongs--eight trucks--passed across the dim
grey of the embankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in
the throat of the tunnel, which, with the last, seemed to swallow down
train, smoke, and sound in one abrupt gulp.

"This country was all fresh and beautiful once," he said; "and now--it
is Gehenna. Down that way--nothing but pot-banks and chimneys belching
fire and dust into the face of heaven.... But what does it matter? An
end comes, an end to all this cruelty.... _To-morrow._" He spoke the
last word in a whisper.

"_To-morrow_," she said, speaking in a whisper too, and still staring
out of the window.

"Dear!" he said, putting his hand on hers.

She turned with a start, and their eyes searched one another's. Hers
softened to his gaze. "My dear one!" she said, and then: "It seems
so strange--that you should have come into my life like this--to
open"-- She paused.

"To open?" he said.

"All this wonderful world"--she hesitated, and spoke still more
softly--"this world of _love_ to me."

Then suddenly the door clicked and closed. They turned their heads,
and he started violently back. In the shadow of the room stood a great
shadowy figure--silent. They saw the face dimly in the half-light, with
unexpressive dark patches under the penthouse brows. Every muscle in
Raut's body suddenly became tense. When could the door have opened?
What had he heard? Had he heard all? What had he seen? A tumult of
questions.

The new-comer's voice came at last, after a pause that seemed
interminable. "Well?" he said.

"I was afraid I had missed you, Horrocks," said the man at the window,
gripping the window-ledge with his hand. His voice was unsteady.

The clumsy figure of Horrocks came forward out of the shadow. He made
no answer to Raut's remark. For a moment he stood above them.

The woman's heart was cold within her. "I told Mr. Raut it was just
possible you might come back," she said, in a voice that never quivered.

Horrocks, still silent, sat down abruptly in the chair by her little
work-table. His big hands were clenched; one saw now the fire of his
eyes under the shadow of his brows. He was trying to get his breath.
His eyes went from the woman he had trusted to the friend he had
trusted, and then back to the woman.

By this time and for the moment all three half understood one another.
Yet none dared say a word to ease the pent-up things that choked them.

It was the husband's voice that broke the silence at last.

"You wanted to see me?" he said to Raut.

Raut started as he spoke. "I came to see you," he said, resolved to lie
to the last.

"Yes," said Horrocks.

"You promised," said Raut, "to show me some fine effects of moonlight
and smoke."

"I promised to show you some fine effects of moonlight and smoke,"
repeated Horrocks in a colourless voice.

"And I thought I might catch you to-night before you went down to the
works," proceeded Raut, "and come with you."

There was another pause. Did the man mean to take the thing coolly? Did
he after all know? How long had he been in the room? Yet even at the
moment when they heard the door, their attitudes.... Horrocks glanced
at the profile of the woman, shadowy pallid in the half-light. Then he
glanced at Raut, and seemed to recover himself suddenly. "Of course,"
he said, "I promised to show you the works under their proper dramatic
conditions. It's odd how I could have forgotten."

"If I am troubling you"--began Raut.

Horrocks started again. A new light had suddenly come into the sultry
gloom of his eyes. "Not in the least," he said.

"Have you been telling Mr. Raut of all these contrasts of flame and
shadow you think so splendid?" said the woman, turning now to her
husband for the first time, her confidence creeping back again, her
voice just one half-note too high. "That dreadful theory of yours
that machinery is beautiful, and everything else in the world ugly. I
thought he would not spare you, Mr. Raut. It's his great theory, his
one discovery in art."

"I am slow to make discoveries," said Horrocks grimly, damping her
suddenly. "But what I discover...." He stopped.

"Well?" she said.

"Nothing;" and suddenly he rose to his feet.

"I promised to show you the works," he said to Raut, and put his big,
clumsy hand on his friend's shoulder. "And you are ready to go?"

"Quite," said Raut, and stood up also.

There was another pause. Each of them peered through the indistinctness
of the dusk at the other two. Horrock's hand still rested on Raut's
shoulder. Raut half fancied still that the incident was trivial after
all. But Mrs. Horrocks knew her husband better, knew that grim quiet in
his voice, and the confusion in her mind took a vague shape of physical
evil. "Very well," said Horrocks, and, dropping his hand, turned
towards the door.

"My hat?" Raut looked round in the half-light.

"That's my work-basket," said Mrs. Horrocks, with a gust of hysterical
laughter. Their hands came together on the back of the chair. "Here it
is!" he said. She had an impulse to warn him in an undertone, but she
could not frame a word. "Don't go!" and "Beware of him!" struggled in
her mind, and the swift moment passed.

"Got it?" said Horrocks, standing with the door half open.

Raut stepped towards him. "Better say good-bye to Mrs. Horrocks," said
the ironmaster, even more grimly quiet in his tone than before.

Raut started and turned. "Good-evening, Mrs. Horrocks," he said, and
their hands touched.

Horrocks held the door open with a ceremonial politeness unusual in
him towards men. Raut went out, and then, after a wordless look at
her, her husband followed. She stood motionless while Raut's light
footfall and her husband's heavy tread, like bass and treble, passed
down the passage together. The front door slammed heavily. She went to
the window, moving slowly, and stood watching--leaning forward. The two
men appeared for a moment at the gateway in the road, passed under the
street lamp, and were hidden by the black masses of the shrubbery. The
lamplight fell for a moment on their faces, showing only unmeaning pale
patches, telling nothing of what she still feared, and doubted, and
craved vainly to know. Then she sank down into a crouching attitude in
the big arm-chair, her eyes wide open and staring out at the red lights
from the furnaces that flickered in the sky. An hour after she was
still there, her attitude scarcely changed.

The oppressive stillness of the evening weighed heavily upon Raut. They
went side by side down the road in silence, and in silence turned into
the cinder-made by-way that presently opened out the prospect of the
valley.

A blue haze, half dust, half mist, touched the long valley with
mystery. Beyond were Hanley and Etruria, grey and dark masses,
outlined thinly by the rare golden dots of the street lamps, and here
and there a gaslit window, or the yellow glare of some late-working
factory or crowded public-house. Out of the masses, clear and slender
against the evening sky, rose a multitude of tall chimneys, many of
them reeking, a few smokeless during a season of "play." Here and
there a pallid patch and ghostly stunted beehive shapes showed the
position of a pot-bank, or a wheel, black and sharp against the hot
lower sky, marked some colliery where they raise the iridescent coal
of the place. Nearer at hand was the broad stretch of railway, and
half invisible trains shunted--a steady puffing and rumbling, with
every run a ringing concussion and a rhythmic series of impacts, and a
passage of intermittent puffs of white steam across the further view.
And to the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hill
beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned
with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of the Jeddah
Company Blast Furnaces, the central edifices of the big ironworks of
which Horrocks was the manager. They stood heavy and threatening, full
of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten iron, and about
the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills, and the steam-hammer beat
heavily and splashed the white iron sparks hither and thither. Even as
they looked, a truckful of fuel was shot into one of the giants, and
the red flames gleamed out, and a confusion of smoke and black dust
came boiling upwards towards the sky.

"Certainly you get some fine effects of colour with your furnaces,"
said Raut, breaking a silence that had become apprehensive.

Horrocks grunted. He stood with his hands in his pockets, frowning down
at the dim steaming railway and the busy ironworks beyond, frowning as
if he were thinking out some knotty problem.

Raut glanced at him and away again. "At present your moonlight effect
is hardly ripe," he continued, looking upward; "the moon is still
smothered by the vestiges of daylight."

Horrocks stared at him with the expression of a man who has suddenly
awakened. "Vestiges of daylight?... Of course, of course." He too
looked up at the moon, pale still in the midsummer sky. "Come along,"
he said suddenly, and, gripping Raut's arm in his hand, made a move
towards the path that dropped from them to the railway.

Raut hung back. Their eyes met and saw a thousand things in a moment
that their lips came near to say. Horrocks's hand tightened and then
relaxed. He let go, and before Raut was aware of it, they were arm in
arm, and walking, one unwillingly enough, down the path.

"You see the fine effect of the railway signals towards Burslem,"
said Horrocks, suddenly breaking into loquacity, striding fast and
tightening the grip of his elbow the while. "Little green lights
and red and white lights, all against the haze. You have an eye for
effect, Raut. It's a fine effect. And look at those furnaces of mine,
how they rise upon us as we come down the hill. That to the right is
my pet--seventy feet of him. I packed him myself, and he's boiled
away cheerfully with iron in his guts for five long years. I've a
particular fancy for _him_. That line of red there--a lovely bit of
warm orange you'd call it, Raut--that's the puddlers' furnaces, and
there, in the hot light, three black figures--did you see the white
splash of the steam-hammer then?--that's the rolling-mills. Come along!
Clang, clatter, how it goes rattling across the floor! Sheet tin,
Raut,--amazing stuff. Glass mirrors are not in it when that stuff comes
from the mill. And, squelch!--there goes the hammer again. Come along!"

He had to stop talking to catch at his breath. His arm twisted into
Raut's with benumbing tightness. He had come striding down the black
path towards the railway as though he was possessed. Raut had not
spoken a word, had simply hung back against Horrocks's pull with all
his strength.

"I say," he said now, laughing nervously, but with an undernote of
snarl in his voice, "why on earth are you nipping my arm off, Horrocks,
and dragging me along like this?"

At length Horrocks released him. His manner changed again. "Nipping
your arm off?" he said. "Sorry. But it's you taught me the trick of
walking in that friendly way."

"You haven't learnt the refinements of it yet then," said Raut,
laughing artificially again. "By Jove! I'm black and blue." Horrocks
offered no apology. They stood now near the bottom of the hill, close
to the fence that bordered the railway. The ironworks had grown larger
and spread out with their approach. They looked up to the blast
furnaces now instead of down; the further view of Etruria and Hanley
had dropped out of sight with their descent. Before them, by the stile,
rose a notice-board, bearing, still dimly visible, the words, "BEWARE
OF THE TRAINS," half hidden by splashes of coaly mud.

"Fine effects," said Horrocks, waving his arm. "Here comes a train. The
puffs of smoke, the orange glare, the round eye of light in front of
it, the melodious rattle. Fine effects! But these furnaces of mine used
to be finer, before we shoved cones in their throats, and saved the
gas."

"How?" said Raut. "Cones?"

"Cones, my man, cones. I'll show you one nearer. The flames used to
flare out of the open throats, great--what is it?--pillars of cloud by
day, red and black smoke, and pillars of fire by night. Now we run it
off in pipes, and burn it to heat the blast, and the top is shut by a
cone. You'll be interested in that cone."

"But every now and then," said Raut, "you get a burst of fire and smoke
up there."

"The cone's not fixed, it's hung by a chain from a lever, and balanced
by an equipoise. You shall see it nearer. Else, of course, there'd be
no way of getting fuel into the thing. Every now and then the cone
dips, and out comes the flare."

"I see," said Raut. He looked over his shoulder. "The moon gets
brighter," he said.

"Come along," said Horrocks abruptly, gripping his shoulder again, and
moving him suddenly towards the railway crossing. And then came one of
those swift incidents, vivid, but so rapid that they leave one doubtful
and reeling. Halfway across, Horrocks's hand suddenly clenched upon him
like a vice and swung him backward and through a half-turn, so that
he looked up the line. And there a chain of lamp-lit carriage-windows
telescoped swiftly as it came towards them, and the red and yellow
lights of an engine grew larger and larger, rushing down upon them.
As he grasped what this meant, he turned his face to Horrocks, and
pushed with all his strength against the arm that held him back between
the rails. The struggle did not last a moment. Just as certain as it
was that Horrocks held him there, so certain was it that he had been
violently lugged out of danger.

"Out of the way," said Horrocks, with a gasp, as the train came
rattling by, and they stood panting by the gate into the ironworks.

"I did not see it coming," said Raut, still, even in spite of his own
apprehensions, trying to keep up an appearance of ordinary intercourse.

Horrocks answered with a grunt. "The cone," he said, and then, as one
who recovers himself, "I thought you did not hear."

"I didn't," said Raut.

"I wouldn't have had you run over then for the world," said Horrocks.

"For a moment I lost my nerve," said Raut.

Horrocks stood for half a minute, then turned abruptly towards the
ironworks again. "See how fine these great mounds of mine, these
clinker-heaps, look in the night! That truck yonder, up above there!
Up it goes, and out-tilts the slag. See the palpitating red stuff go
sliding down the slope. As we get nearer, the heap rises up and cuts
the blast furnaces. See the quiver up above the big one. Not that
way! This way, between the heaps. That goes to the puddling furnaces,
but I want to show you the canal first." He came and took Raut by the
elbow, and so they went along side by side. Raut answered Horrocks
vaguely. What, he asked himself, had really happened on the line? Was
he deluding himself with his own fancies, or had Horrocks actually held
him back in the way of the train? Had he just been within an ace of
being murdered?

Suppose this slouching, scowling monster _did_ know anything? For a
minute or two then Raut was really afraid for his life, but the mood
passed as he reasoned with himself. After all, Horrocks might have
heard nothing. At anyrate, he had pulled him out of the way in time.
His odd manner might be due to the mere vague jealousy he had shown
once before. He was talking now of the ash-heaps and the canal. "Eigh?"
said Horrocks.

"What?" said Raut. "Rather! The haze in the moonlight. Fine!"

"Our canal," said Horrocks, stopping suddenly. "Our canal by moonlight
and firelight is an immense effect. You've never seen it? Fancy that!
You've spent too many of your evenings philandering up in Newcastle
there. I tell you, for real florid effects-- But you shall see. Boiling
water...."

As they came out of the labyrinth of clinker-heaps and mounds of coal
and ore, the noises of the rolling-mill sprang upon them suddenly,
loud, near, and distinct. Three shadowy workmen went by and touched
their caps to Horrocks. Their faces were vague in the darkness. Raut
felt a futile impulse to address them, and before he could frame
his words, they passed into the shadows. Horrocks pointed to the
canal close before them now: a weird-looking place it seemed, in the
blood-red reflections of the furnaces. The hot water that cooled the
tuyères came into it, some fifty yards up--a tumultuous, almost boiling
affluent, and the steam rose up from the water in silent white wisps
and streaks, wrapping damply about them, an incessant succession of
ghosts coming up from the black and red eddies, a white uprising that
made the head swim. The shining black tower of the larger blast-furnace
rose overhead out of the mist, and its tumultuous riot filled their
ears. Raut kept away from the edge of the water, and watched Horrocks.

"Here it is red," said Horrocks, "blood-red vapour as red and hot as
sin; but yonder there, where the moonlight falls on it, and it drives
across the clinker-heaps, it is as white as death."

Raut turned his head for a moment, and then came back hastily to his
watch on Horrocks. "Come along to the rolling-mills," said Horrocks.
The threatening hold was not so evident that time, and Raut felt a
little reassured. But all the same, what on earth did Horrocks mean
about "white as death" and "red as sin"? Coincidence, perhaps?

They went and stood behind the puddlers for a little while, and then
through the rolling-mills, where amidst an incessant din the deliberate
steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black,
half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax,
between the wheels. "Come on," said Horrocks in Raut's ear, and they
went and peeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyères, and
saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace. It left
one eye blinded for a while. Then, with green and blue patches dancing
across the dark, they went to the lift by which the trucks of ore and
fuel and lime were raised to the top of the big cylinder.

And out upon the narrow rail that overhung the furnace, Raut's
doubts came upon him again. Was it wise to be here? If Horrocks did
know--everything! Do what he would, he could not resist a violent
trembling. Right under foot was a sheer depth of seventy feet. It was a
dangerous place. They pushed by a truck of fuel to get to the railing
that crowned the place. The reek of the furnace, a sulphurous vapour
streaked with pungent bitterness, seemed to make the distant hillside
of Hanley quiver. The moon was riding out now from among a drift of
clouds, half-way up the sky above the undulating wooded outlines
of Newcastle. The steaming canal ran away from below them under an
indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim haze of the flat fields
towards Burslem.

"That's the cone I've been telling you of," shouted Horrocks; "and,
below that, sixty feet of fire and molten metal, with the air of the
blast frothing through it like gas in soda-water."

Raut gripped the hand-rail tightly, and stared down at the cone. The
heat was intense. The boiling of the iron and the tumult of the blast
made a thunderous accompaniment to Horrocks's voice. But the thing had
to be gone through now. Perhaps, after all....

"In the middle," bawled Horrocks, "temperature near a thousand degrees.
If _you_ were dropped into it ... flash into flame like a pinch of
gunpowder in a candle. Put your hand out and feel the heat of his
breath. Why, even up here I've seen the rain-water boiling off the
trucks. And that cone there. It's a damned sight too hot for roasting
cakes. The top side of it's three hundred degrees."

"Three hundred degrees!" said Raut.

"Three hundred centigrade, mind!" said Horrocks. "It will boil the
blood out of you in no time."

"Eigh?" said Raut, and turned.

"Boil the blood out of you in.... No, you don't!"

"Let me go!" screamed Raut. "Let go my arm!"

With one hand he clutched at the hand-rail, then with both. For a
moment the two men stood swaying. Then suddenly, with a violent jerk,
Horrocks had twisted him from his hold. He clutched at Horrocks and
missed, his foot went back into empty air; in mid-air he twisted
himself, and then cheek and shoulder and knee struck the hot cone
together.

He clutched the chain by which the cone hung, and the thing sank an
infinitesimal amount as he struck it. A circle of glowing red appeared
about him, and a tongue of flame, released from the chaos within,
flickered up towards him. An intense pain assailed him at the knees,
and he could smell the singeing of his hands. He raised himself to his
feet, and tried to climb up the chain, and then something struck his
head. Black and shining with the moonlight, the throat of the furnace
rose about him.

Horrocks, he saw, stood above him by one of the trucks of fuel on the
rail. The gesticulating figure was bright and white in the moonlight,
and shouting, "Fizzle, you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of women! You
hot-blooded hound! Boil! boil! boil!"

Suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of the truck, and flung it
deliberately, lump after lump, at Raut.

"Horrocks!" cried Raut. "Horrocks!"

He clung crying to the chain, pulling himself up from the burning of
the cone. Each missile Horrocks flung hit him. His clothes charred
and glowed, and as he struggled the cone dropped, and a rush of hot
suffocating gas whooped out and burned round him in a swift breath of
flame.

His human likeness departed from him. When the momentary red had
passed, Horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head streaked
with blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain, and writhing
in agony--a cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous creature that began a
sobbing intermittent shriek.

Abruptly, at the sight, the ironmaster's anger passed. A deadly
sickness came upon him. The heavy odour of burning flesh came drifting
up to his nostrils. His sanity returned to him.

"God have mercy upon me!" he cried. "O God! what have I done?"

He knew the thing below him, save that it still moved and felt, was
already a dead man--that the blood of the poor wretch must be boiling
in his veins. An intense realisation of that agony came to his mind,
and overcame every other feeling. For a moment he stood irresolute, and
then, turning to the truck, he hastily tilted its contents upon the
struggling thing that had once been a man. The mass fell with a thud,
and went radiating over the cone. With the thud the shriek ended, and
a boiling confusion of smoke, dust, and flame came rushing up towards
him. As it passed, he saw the cone clear again.

Then he staggered back, and stood trembling, clinging to the rail with
both hands. His lips moved, but no words came to them.

Down below was the sound of voices and running steps. The clangour of
rolling in the shed ceased abruptly.



THE PURPLE PILEUS


Mr. Coombes was sick of life. He walked away from his unhappy home,
and, sick not only of his own existence, but of everybody else's,
turned aside down Gaswork Lane to avoid the town, and, crossing the
wooden bridge that goes over the canal to Starling's Cottages, was
presently alone in the damp pinewoods and out of sight and sound of
human habitation. He would stand it no longer. He repeated aloud with
blasphemies unusual to him that he would stand it no longer.

He was a pale-faced little man, with dark eyes and a fine and very
black moustache. He had a very stiff, upright collar slightly frayed,
that gave him an illusory double chin, and his overcoat (albeit
shabby) was trimmed with astrachan. His gloves were a bright brown
with black stripes over the knuckles, and split at the finger ends.
His appearance, his wife had said once in the dear, dead days beyond
recall,--before he married her, that is,--was military. But now she
called him-- It seems a dreadful thing to tell of between husband and
wife, but she called him "a little grub." It wasn't the only thing she
had called him, either.

The row had arisen about that beastly Jennie again. Jennie was his
wife's friend, and, by no invitation of Mr. Coombes, she came in every
blessed Sunday to dinner, and made a shindy all the afternoon. She was
a big, noisy girl, with a taste for loud colours and a strident laugh;
and this Sunday she had outdone all her previous intrusions by bringing
in a fellow with her, a chap as showy as herself. And Mr. Coombes,
in a starchy, clean collar and his Sunday frock-coat, had sat dumb
and wrathful at his own table, while his wife and her guests talked
foolishly and undesirably, and laughed aloud. Well, he stood that, and
after dinner (which, "as usual," was late), what must Miss Jennie do
but go to the piano and play banjo tunes, for all the world as if it
were a week-day! Flesh and blood could not endure such goings on. They
would hear next door, they would hear in the road, it was a public
announcement of their disrepute. He had to speak.

He had felt himself go pale, and a kind of rigour had affected his
respiration as he delivered himself. He had been sitting on one of
the chairs by the window--the new guest had taken possession of the
arm-chair. He turned his head. "Sun Day!" he said over the collar, in
the voice of one who warns. "Sun Day!" What people call a "nasty" tone
it was.

Jennie had kept on playing, but his wife, who was looking through
some music that was piled on the top of the piano, had stared at him.
"What's wrong now?" she said; "can't people enjoy themselves?"

"I don't mind rational 'njoyment, at all," said little Coombes, "but I
ain't a-going to have week-day tunes playing on a Sunday in this house."

"What's wrong with my playing now?" said Jennie, stopping and twirling
round on the music-stool with a monstrous rustle of flounces.

Coombes saw it was going to be a row, and opened too vigorously, as is
common with your timid, nervous men all the world over. "Steady on with
that music-stool!" said he; "it ain't made for 'eavy weights."

"Never you mind about weights," said Jennie, incensed. "What was you
saying behind my back about my playing?"

"Surely you don't 'old with not having a bit of music on a Sunday, Mr.
Coombes?" said the new guest, leaning back in the arm-chair, blowing
a cloud of cigarette smoke and smiling in a kind of pitying way. And
simultaneously his wife said something to Jennie about "Never mind 'im.
You go on, Jinny."

"I do," said Mr. Coombes, addressing the new guest.

"May I arst why?" said the new guest, evidently enjoying both his
cigarette and the prospect of an argument. He was, by the bye, a lank
young man, very stylishly dressed in bright drab, with a white cravat
and a pearl and silver pin. It had been better taste to come in a black
coat, Mr. Coombes thought.

"Because," began Mr. Coombes, "it don't suit me. I'm a business man. I
'ave to study my connection. Rational 'njoyment"--

"His connection!" said Mrs. Coombes scornfully. "That's what he's
always a-saying. We got to do this, and we got to do that"--

"If you don't mean to study my connection," said Mr. Coombes, "what did
you marry me for?"

"I wonder," said Jennie, and turned back to the piano.

"I never saw such a man as you," said Mrs. Coombes. "You've altered all
round since we were married. Before"--

Then Jennie began at the tum, tum, tum again.

"Look here!" said Mr. Coombes, driven at last to revolt, standing up
and raising his voice. "I tell you I won't have that." The frock-coat
heaved with his indignation.

"No vi'lence, now," said the long young man in drab, sitting up.

"Who the juice are you?" said Mr. Coombes fiercely.

Whereupon they all began talking at once. The new guest said he was
Jennie's "intended," and meant to protect her, and Mr. Coombes said he
was welcome to do so anywhere but in his (Mr. Coombes') house; and Mrs.
Coombes said he ought to be ashamed of insulting his guests, and (as I
have already mentioned) that he was getting a regular little grub; and
the end was, that Mr. Coombes ordered his visitors out of the house,
and they wouldn't go, and so he said he would go himself. With his face
burning and tears of excitement in his eyes, he went into the passage,
and as he struggled with his overcoat--his frock-coat sleeves got
concertinaed up his arm--and gave a brush at his silk hat, Jennie began
again at the piano, and strummed him insultingly out of the house.
Tum, tum, tum. He slammed the shop door so that the house quivered.
That, briefly, was the immediate making of his mood. You will perhaps
begin to understand his disgust with existence.

As he walked along the muddy path under the firs,--it was late October,
and the ditches and heaps of fir needles were gorgeous with clumps of
fungi,--he recapitulated the melancholy history of his marriage. It
was brief and commonplace enough. He now perceived with sufficient
clearness that his wife had married him out of a natural curiosity
and in order to escape from her worrying, laborious, and uncertain
life in the workroom; and, like the majority of her class, she was
far too stupid to realise that it was her duty to co-operate with
him in his business. She was greedy of enjoyment, loquacious, and
socially-minded, and evidently disappointed to find the restraints of
poverty still hanging about her. His worries exasperated her, and the
slightest attempt to control her proceedings resulted in a charge of
"grumbling." Why couldn't he be nice--as he used to be? And Coombes was
such a harmless little man, too, nourished mentally on _Self-Help_, and
with a meagre ambition of self-denial and competition, that was to end
in a "sufficiency." Then Jennie came in as a female Mephistopheles,
a gabbling chronicle of "fellers," and was always wanting his wife
to go to theatres, and "all that." And in addition were aunts of his
wife, and cousins (male and female), to eat up capital, insult him
personally, upset business arrangements, annoy good customers, and
generally blight his life. It was not the first occasion by many
that Mr. Coombes had fled his home in wrath and indignation, and
something like fear, vowing furiously and even aloud that he wouldn't
stand it, and so frothing away his energy along the line of least
resistance. But never before had he been quite so sick of life as on
this particular Sunday afternoon. The Sunday dinner may have had its
share in his despair--and the greyness of the sky. Perhaps, too, he
was beginning to realise his unendurable frustration as a business man
as the consequence of his marriage. Presently bankruptcy, and after
that-- Perhaps she might have reason to repent when it was too late.
And destiny, as I have already intimated, had planted the path through
the wood with evil-smelling fungi, thickly and variously planted it,
not only on the right side, but on the left.

A small shopman is in such a melancholy position, if his wife turns out
a disloyal partner. His capital is all tied up in his business, and to
leave her, means to join the unemployed in some strange part of the
earth. The luxuries of divorce are beyond him altogether. So that the
good old tradition of marriage for better or worse holds inexorably for
him, and things work up to tragic culminations. Bricklayers kick their
wives to death, and dukes betray theirs; but it is among the small
clerks and shopkeepers nowadays that it comes most often to a cutting
of throats. Under the circumstances it is not so very remarkable--and
you must take it as charitably as you can--that the mind of Mr. Coombes
ran for a while on some such glorious close to his disappointed hopes,
and that he thought of razors, pistols, bread-knives, and touching
letters to the coroner denouncing his enemies by name, and praying
piously for forgiveness. After a time his fierceness gave way to
melancholia. He had been married in this very overcoat, in his first
and only frock-coat that was buttoned up beneath it. He began to recall
their courting along this very walk, his years of penurious saving to
get capital, and the bright hopefulness of his marrying days. For it
all to work out like this! Was there no sympathetic ruler anywhere in
the world? He reverted to death as a topic.

He thought of the canal he had just crossed, and doubted whether he
shouldn't stand with his head out, even in the middle, and it was
while drowning was in his mind that the purple pileus caught his eye.
He looked at it mechanically for a moment, and stopped and stooped
towards it to pick it up, under the impression that it was some such
small leather object as a purse. Then he saw that it was the purple top
of a fungus, a peculiarly poisonous-looking purple: slimy, shiny, and
emitting a sour odour. He hesitated with his hand an inch or so from
it, and the thought of poison crossed his mind. With that he picked the
thing, and stood up again with it in his hand.

The odour was certainly strong--acrid, but by no means disgusting.
He broke off a piece, and the fresh surface was a creamy white, that
changed like magic in the space of ten seconds to a yellowish-green
colour. It was even an inviting-looking change. He broke off two other
pieces to see it repeated. They were wonderful things these fungi,
thought Mr. Coombes, and all of them the deadliest poisons, as his
father had often told him. Deadly poisons!

There is no time like the present for a rash resolve. Why not here
and now? thought Mr. Coombes. He tasted a little piece, a very little
piece indeed--a mere crumb. It was so pungent that he almost spat
it out again, then merely hot and full-flavoured. A kind of German
mustard with a touch of horse-radish and--well, mushroom. He swallowed
it in the excitement of the moment. Did he like it or did he not?
His mind was curiously careless. He would try another bit. It really
wasn't bad--it was good. He forgot his troubles in the interest of
the immediate moment. Playing with death it was. He took another
bite, and then deliberately finished a mouthful. A curious tingling
sensation began in his finger-tips and toes. His pulse began to move
faster. The blood in his ears sounded like a mill-race. "Try bi' more,"
said Mr. Coombes. He turned and looked about him, and found his feet
unsteady. He saw and struggled towards a little patch of purple a dozen
yards away. "Jol' goo' stuff," said Mr. Coombes. "E--lomore ye'." He
pitched forward and fell on his face, his hands outstretched towards
the cluster of pilei. But he did not eat any more of them. He forgot
forthwith.

He rolled over and sat up with a look of astonishment on his face.
His carefully brushed silk hat had rolled away towards the ditch. He
pressed his hand to his brow. Something had happened, but he could
not rightly determine what it was. Anyhow, he was no longer dull--he
felt bright, cheerful. And his throat was afire. He laughed in the
sudden gaiety of his heart. Had he been dull? He did not know; but at
anyrate he would be dull no longer. He got up and stood unsteadily,
regarding the universe with an agreeable smile. He began to remember.
He could not remember very well, because of a steam roundabout that
was beginning in his head. And he knew he had been disagreeable at
home, just because they wanted to be happy. They were quite right; life
should be as gay as possible. He would go home and make it up, and
reassure them. And why not take some of this delightful toadstool with
him, for them to eat? A hatful, no less. Some of those red ones with
white spots as well, and a few yellow. He had been a dull dog, an enemy
to merriment; he would make up for it. It would be gay to turn his
coat-sleeves inside out, and stick some yellow gorse into his waistcoat
pockets. Then home--singing--for a jolly evening.

       *       *       *       *       *

After the departure of Mr. Coombes, Jennie discontinued playing, and
turned round on the music-stool again. "What a fuss about nothing,"
said Jennie.

"You see, Mr. Clarence, what I've got to put up with," said Mrs.
Coombes.

"He is a bit hasty," said Mr. Clarence judicially.

"He ain't got the slightest sense of our position," said Mrs. Coombes;
"that's what I complain of. He cares for nothing but his old shop; and
if I have a bit of company, or buy anything to keep myself decent,
or get any little thing I want out of the housekeeping money, there's
disagreeables. 'Economy,' he says; 'struggle for life,' and all that.
He lies awake of nights about it, worrying how he can screw me out of a
shilling. He wanted us to eat Dorset butter once. If once I was to give
in to him--there!"

"Of course," said Jennie.

"If a man values a woman," said Mr. Clarence lounging back in the
arm-chair, "he must be prepared to make sacrifices for her. For my own
part," said Mr. Clarence, with his eye on Jennie, "I shouldn't think
of marrying till I was in a position to do the thing in style. It's
downright selfishness. A man ought to go through the rough-and-tumble
by himself, and not drag her"--

"I don't agree altogether with that," said Jennie. "I don't see why
a man shouldn't have a woman's help, provided he doesn't treat her
meanly, you know. It's meanness"--

"You wouldn't believe," said Mrs. Coombes. "But I was a fool to 'ave
'im. I might 'ave known. If it 'adn't been for my father, we shouldn't
have had not a carriage to our wedding."

"Lord! he didn't stick out at that?" said Mr. Clarence, quite shocked.

"Said he wanted the money for his stock, or some such rubbish. Why, he
wouldn't have a woman in to help me once a week if it wasn't for my
standing out plucky. And the fusses he makes about money--comes to me,
well, pretty near crying, with sheets of paper and figgers. 'If only we
can tide over this year,' he says, 'the business is bound to go.' 'If
only we can tide over this year,' I says; 'then it'll be, if only we
can tide over next year. I know you,' I says. 'And you don't catch me
screwing myself lean and ugly. Why didn't you marry a slavey?' I says,
'if you wanted one--instead of a respectable girl,' I says."

So Mrs. Coombes. But we will not follow this unedifying conversation
further. Suffice it that Mr. Coombes was very satisfactorily disposed
of, and they had a snug little time round the fire. Then Mrs. Coombes
went to get the tea, and Jennie sat coquettishly on the arm of Mr.
Clarence's chair until the tea-things clattered outside. "What was
that I heard?" asked Mrs. Coombes playfully, as she entered, and there
was badinage about kissing. They were just sitting down to the little
circular table when the first intimation of Mr. Coombes' return was
heard.

This was a fumbling at the latch of the front door.

"'Ere's my lord," said Mrs. Coombes. "Went out like a lion and comes
back like a lamb, I'll lay."

Something fell over in the shop: a chair, it sounded like. Then there
was a sound as of some complicated step exercise in the passage. Then
the door opened and Coombes appeared. But it was Coombes transfigured.
The immaculate collar had been torn carelessly from his throat. His
carefully-brushed silk hat, half-full of a crush of fungi, was under
one arm; his coat was inside out, and his waistcoat adorned with
bunches of yellow-blossomed furze. These little eccentricities of
Sunday costume, however, were quite overshadowed by the change in his
face; it was livid white, his eyes were unnaturally large and bright,
and his pale blue lips were drawn back in a cheerless grin. "Merry!"
he said. He had stopped dancing to open the door. "Rational 'njoyment.
Dance." He made three fantastic steps into the room, and stood bowing.

"Jim!" shrieked Mrs. Coombes, and Mr. Clarence sat petrified, with a
dropping lower jaw.

"Tea," said Mr. Coombes. "Jol' thing, tea. Tose-stools, too. Brosher."

"He's drunk," said Jennie in a weak voice. Never before had she seen
this intense pallor in a drunken man, or such shining, dilated eyes.

Mr. Coombes held out a handful of scarlet agaric to Mr. Clarence. "Jo'
stuff," said he; "ta' some."

At that moment he was genial. Then at the sight of their startled faces
he changed, with the swift transition of insanity, into overbearing
fury. And it seemed as if he had suddenly recalled the quarrel of his
departure. In such a huge voice as Mrs. Coombes had never heard before,
he shouted, "My house. I'm master 'ere. Eat what I give yer!" He bawled
this, as it seemed, without an effort, without a violent gesture,
standing there as motionless as one who whispers, holding out a handful
of fungus.

Clarence approved himself a coward. He could not meet the mad fury in
Coombes' eyes; he rose to his feet, pushing back his chair, and turned,
stooping. At that Coombes rushed at him. Jennie saw her opportunity,
and, with the ghost of a shriek, made for the door. Mrs. Coombes
followed her. Clarence tried to dodge. Over went the tea-table with a
smash as Coombes clutched him by the collar and tried to thrust the
fungus into his mouth. Clarence was content to leave his collar behind
him, and shot out into the passage with red patches of fly agaric still
adherent to his face. "Shut 'im in!" cried Mrs. Coombes, and would have
closed the door, but her supports deserted her; Jennie saw the shop
door open, and vanished thereby, locking it behind her, while Clarence
went on hastily into the kitchen. Mr. Coombes came heavily against the
door, and Mrs. Coombes, finding the key was inside, fled upstairs and
locked herself in the spare bedroom.

So the new convert to _joie de vivre_ emerged upon the passage, his
decorations a little scattered, but that respectable hatful of fungi
still under his arm. He hesitated at the three ways, and decided on the
kitchen. Whereupon Clarence, who was fumbling with the key, gave up
the attempt to imprison his host, and fled into the scullery, only to
be captured before he could open the door into the yard. Mr. Clarence
is singularly reticent of the details of what occurred. It seems that
Mr. Coombes' transitory irritation had vanished again, and he was once
more a genial playfellow. And as there were knives and meat choppers
about, Clarence very generously resolved to humour him and so avoid
anything tragic. It is beyond dispute that Mr. Coombes played with Mr.
Clarence to his heart's content; they could not have been more playful
and familiar if they had known each other for years. He insisted gaily
on Clarence trying the fungi, and after a friendly tussle, was smitten
with remorse at the mess he was making of his guest's face. It also
appears that Clarence was dragged under the sink and his face scrubbed
with the blacking brush,--he being still resolved to humour the lunatic
at any cost,--and that finally, in a somewhat dishevelled, chipped, and
discoloured condition, he was assisted to his coat and shown out by the
back door, the shopway being barred by Jennie. Mr. Coombes' wandering
thoughts then turned to Jennie. Jennie had been unable to unfasten the
shop door, but she shot the bolts against Mr. Coombes' latch-key, and
remained in possession of the shop for the rest of the evening.

It would appear that Mr. Coombes then returned to the kitchen, still
in pursuit of gaiety, and, albeit a strict Good Templar, drank (or
spilt down the front of the first and only frock-coat) no less than
five bottles of the stout Mrs. Coombes insisted upon having for her
health's sake. He made cheerful noises by breaking off the necks of
the bottles with several of his wife's wedding-present dinner-plates,
and during the earlier part of this great drunk he sang divers merry
ballads. He cut his finger rather badly with one of the bottles,--the
only bloodshed in this story,--and what with that, and the systematic
convulsion of his inexperienced physiology by the liquorish brand
of Mrs. Coombes' stout, it may be the evil of the fungus poison was
somehow allayed. But we prefer to draw a veil over the concluding
incidents of this Sunday afternoon. They ended in the coal cellar, in a
deep and healing sleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

An interval of five years elapsed. Again it was a Sunday afternoon
in October, and again Mr. Coombes walked through the pinewood beyond
the canal. He was still the same dark-eyed, black-moustached little
man that he was at the outset of the story, but his double chin was
now scarcely so illusory as it had been. His overcoat was new, with a
velvet lapel, and a stylish collar with turn-down corners, free of any
coarse starchiness, had replaced the original all-round article. His
hat was glossy, his gloves newish--though one finger had split and been
carefully mended. And a casual observer would have noticed about him a
certain rectitude of bearing, a certain erectness of head that marks
the man who thinks well of himself. He was a master now, with three
assistants. Beside him walked a larger sunburnt parody of himself, his
brother Tom, just back from Australia. They were recapitulating their
early struggles, and Mr. Coombes had just been making a financial
statement.

"It's a very nice little business, Jim," said brother Tom. "In these
days of competition you're jolly lucky to have worked it up so. And
you're jolly lucky, too, to have a wife who's willing to help like
yours does."

"Between ourselves," said Mr. Coombes, "it wasn't always so. It wasn't
always like this. To begin with, the missus was a bit giddy. Girls are
funny creatures."

"Dear me!"

"Yes. You'd hardly think it, but she was downright extravagant, and
always having slaps at me. I was a bit too easy and loving, and all
that, and she thought the whole blessed show was run for her. Turned
the 'ouse into a regular caravansery, always having her relations and
girls from business in, and their chaps. Comic songs a' Sunday, it was
getting to, and driving trade away. And she was making eyes at the
chaps, too! I tell you, Tom, the place wasn't my own."

"Shouldn't 'a' thought it."

"It was so. Well--I reasoned with her. I said, 'I ain't a duke, to keep
a wife like a pet animal. I married you for 'elp and company.' I said,
'You got to 'elp and pull the business through.' She wouldn't 'ear of
it. 'Very well,' I says; 'I'm a mild man till I'm roused,' I says, 'and
it's getting to that.' But she wouldn't 'ear of no warnings."

"Well?"

"It's the way with women. She didn't think I 'ad it in me to be roused.
Women of her sort (between ourselves, Tom) don't respect a man until
they're a bit afraid of him. So I just broke out to show her. In comes
a girl named Jennie, that used to work with her, and her chap. We 'ad
a bit of a row, and I came out 'ere--it was just such another day as
this--and I thought it all out. Then I went back and pitched into them."

"You did?"

"I did. I was mad, I can tell you. I wasn't going to 'it 'er, if I
could 'elp it, so I went back and licked into this chap, just to show
'er what I could do. 'E was a big chap, too. Well, I chucked him, and
smashed things about, and gave 'er a scaring, and she ran up and locked
'erself into the spare room."

"Well?"

"That's all. I says to 'er the next morning, 'Now you know,' I says,
'what I'm like when I'm roused.' And I didn't 'ave to say anything
more."

"And you've been happy ever after, eh?"

"So to speak. There's nothing like putting your foot down with them. If
it 'adn't been for that afternoon I should 'a' been tramping the roads
now, and she'd 'a' been grumbling at me, and all her family grumbling
for bringing her to poverty--I know their little ways. But we're all
right now. And it's a very decent little business, as you say."

They proceed on their way meditatively. "Women are funny creatures,"
said brother Tom.

"They want a firm hand," says Coombes.

"What a lot of these funguses there are about here!" remarked brother
Tom presently. "I can't see what use they are in the world."

Mr. Coombes looked. "I dessay they're sent for some wise purpose," said
Mr. Coombes.

And that was as much thanks as the purple pileus ever got for maddening
this absurd little man to the pitch of decisive action, and so altering
the whole course of his life.



THE JILTING OF JANE


As I sit writing in my study, I can hear our Jane bumping her way
downstairs with a brush and dustpan. She used in the old days to sing
hymn tunes, or the British national song for the time being, to these
instruments, but latterly she has been silent and even careful over
her work. Time was when I prayed with fervour for such silence, and
my wife with sighs for such care, but now they have come we are not
so glad as we might have anticipated we should be. Indeed, I would
rejoice secretly, though it may be unmanly weakness to admit it, even
to hear Jane sing "Daisy," or by the fracture of any plate but one of
Euphemia's best green ones, to learn that the period of brooding has
come to an end.

Yet how we longed to hear the last of Jane's young man before we heard
the last of him! Jane was always very free with her conversation to
my wife, and discoursed admirably in the kitchen on a variety of
topics--so well, indeed, that I sometimes left my study door open--our
house is a small one--to partake of it. But after William came, it was
always William, nothing but William; William this and William that;
and when we thought William was worked out and exhausted altogether,
then William all over again. The engagement lasted altogether three
years; yet how she got introduced to William, and so became thus
saturated with him, was always a secret. For my part, I believe it
was at the street corner where the Rev. Barnabas Baux used to hold an
open-air service after evensong on Sundays. Young Cupids were wont to
flit like moths round the paraffin flare of that centre of High Church
hymn-singing. I fancy she stood singing hymns there, out of memory and
her imagination, instead of coming home to get supper, and William
came up beside her and said, "Hello!" "Hello yourself!" she said; and,
etiquette being satisfied, they proceeded to talk together.

As Euphemia has a reprehensible way of letting her servants talk to
her, she soon heard of him. "He is _such_ a respectable young man,
ma'am," said Jane, "you don't know." Ignoring the slur cast on her
acquaintance, my wife inquired further about this William.

"He is second porter at Maynard's, the draper's," said Jane, "and
gets eighteen shillings--nearly a pound--a week, m'm; and when the
head porter leaves he will be head porter. His relatives are quite
superior people, m'm. Not labouring people at all. His father was a
greengrosher, m'm, and had a chumor, and he was bankrup' twice. And one
of his sisters is in a Home for the Dying. It will be a very good match
for me, m'm," said Jane, "me being an orphan girl."

"Then you are engaged to him?" asked my wife.

"Not engaged, ma'am; but he is saving money to buy a ring--hammyfist."

"Well, Jane, when you are properly engaged to him you may ask him round
here on Sunday afternoons, and have tea with him in the kitchen."
For my Euphemia has a motherly conception of her duty towards her
maid-servants. And presently the amethystine ring was being worn about
the house, even with ostentation, and Jane developed a new way of
bringing in the joint, so that this gage was evident. The elder Miss
Maitland was aggrieved by it, and told my wife that servants ought not
to wear rings. But my wife looked it up in _Enquire Within_ and _Mrs.
Motherly's Book of Household Management_, and found no prohibition. So
Jane remained with this happiness added to her love.

The treasure of Jane's heart appeared to me to be what respectable
people call a very deserving young man. "William, ma'am," said Jane one
day suddenly, with ill-concealed complacency, as she counted out the
beer bottles, "William, ma'am, is a teetotaller. Yes, m'm; and he don't
smoke. Smoking, ma'am," said Jane, as one who reads the heart, "_do_
make such a dust about. Beside the waste of money. _And_ the smell.
However, I suppose it's necessary to some."

Possibly it dawned on Jane that she was reflecting a little severely
upon Euphemia's comparative ill-fortune, and she added kindly, "I'm
sure the master is a hangel when his pipe's alight. Compared to other
times."

William was at first a rather shabby young man of the ready-made black
coat school of costume. He had watery grey eyes, and a complexion
appropriate to the brother of one in a Home for the Dying. Euphemia
did not fancy him very much, even at the beginning. His eminent
respectability was vouched for by an alpaca umbrella, from which he
never allowed himself to be parted.

"He goes to chapel," said Jane. "His papa, ma'am"--

"His _what_, Jane?"

"His papa, ma'am, was Church; but Mr. Maynard is a Plymouth Brother,
and William thinks it Policy, ma'am, to go there too. Mr. Maynard comes
and talks to him quite friendly, when they ain't busy, about using up
all the ends of string, and about his soul. He takes a lot of notice,
do Mr. Maynard, of William, and the way he saves string and his soul,
ma'am."

Presently we heard that the head porter at Maynard's had left, and that
William was head porter at twenty-three shillings a week. "He is really
kind of over the man who drives the van," said Jane, "and him married
with three children." And she promised in the pride of her heart to
make interest for us with William to favour us so that we might get our
parcels of drapery from Maynard's with exceptional promptitude.

After this promotion a rapidly increasing prosperity came upon Jane's
young man. One day, we learned that Mr. Maynard had given William a
book. "Smiles' Elp Yourself, it's called," said Jane; "but it ain't
comic. It tells you how to get on in the world, and some what William
read to me was _lovely_, ma'am."

Euphemia told me of this laughing, and then she became suddenly grave.
"Do you know, dear," she said, "Jane said one thing I did not like. She
had been quiet for a minute, and then she suddenly remarked, 'William
is a lot above me, ma'am, ain't he?'"

"I don't see anything in that," I said, though later my eyes were to be
opened.

One Sunday afternoon about that time I was sitting at my
writing-desk--possibly I was reading a good book--when a something
went by the window. I heard a startled exclamation behind me, and
saw Euphemia with her hands clasped together and her eyes dilated.
"George," she said in an awestricken whisper, "did you see?"

Then we both spoke to one another at the same moment, slowly and
solemnly: "_A silk hat! Yellow gloves! A new umbrella!_"

"It may be my fancy, dear," said Euphemia; "but his tie was very like
yours. I believe Jane keeps him in ties. She told me a little while
ago in a way that implied volumes about the rest of your costume, 'The
master _do_ wear pretty ties, ma'am.' And he echoes all your novelties."

The young couple passed our window again on their way to their
customary walk. They were arm in arm. Jane looked exquisitely proud,
happy, and uncomfortable, with new white cotton gloves, and William, in
the silk hat, singularly genteel!

That was the culmination of Jane's happiness. When she returned, "Mr.
Maynard has been talking to William, ma'am," she said, "and he is to
serve customers, just like the young shop gentlemen, during the next
sale. And if he gets on, he is to be made an assistant, ma'am, at the
first opportunity. He has got to be as gentlemanly as he can, ma'am;
and if he ain't, ma'am, he says it won't be for want of trying. Mr.
Maynard has took a great fancy to him."

"He _is_ getting on, Jane," said my wife.

"Yes, ma'am," said Jane thoughtfully, "he _is_ getting on."

And she sighed.

That next Sunday, as I drank my tea, I interrogated my wife. "How is
this Sunday different from all other Sundays, little woman? What has
happened? Have you altered the curtains, or rearranged the furniture,
or where is the indefinable difference of it? Are you wearing your hair
in a new way without warning me? I clearly perceive a change in my
environment, and I cannot for the life of me say what it is."

Then my wife answered in her most tragic voice: "George," she said,
"that--that William has not come near the place to-day! And Jane is
crying her heart out upstairs."

There followed a period of silence. Jane, as I have said, stopped
singing about the house, and began to care for our brittle possessions,
which struck my wife as being a very sad sign indeed. The next Sunday,
and the next, Jane asked to go out, "to walk with William," and my
wife, who never attempts to extort confidences, gave her permission,
and asked no questions. On each occasion Jane came back looking
flushed and very determined. At last one day she became communicative.

"William is being led away," she remarked abruptly, with a catching of
the breath, apropos of tablecloths. "Yes, m'm. She is a milliner, and
she can play on the piano."

"I thought," said my wife, "that you went out with him on Sunday."

"Not out with him, m'm--after him. I walked along by the side of them,
and told her he was engaged to me."

"Dear me, Jane, did you? What did they do?"

"Took no more notice of me than if I was dirt. So I told her she should
suffer for it."

"It could not have been a very agreeable walk, Jane."

"Not for no parties, ma'am.

"I wish," said Jane, "I could play the piano, ma'am. But anyhow, I
don't mean to let _her_ get him away from me. She's older than him, and
her hair ain't gold to the roots, ma'am."

It was on the August Bank Holiday that the crisis came. We do not
clearly know the details of the fray, but only such fragments as poor
Jane let fall. She came home dusty, excited, and with her heart hot
within her.

The milliner's mother, the milliner, and William had made a party to
the Art Museum at South Kensington, I think. Anyhow, Jane had calmly
but firmly accosted them somewhere in the streets, and asserted her
right to what, in spite of the consensus of literature, she held to
be her inalienable property. She did, I think, go so far as to lay
hands on him. They dealt with her in a crushingly superior way. They
"called a cab." There was a "scene," William being pulled away into the
four-wheeler by his future wife and mother-in-law from the reluctant
hands of our discarded Jane. There were threats of giving her "in
charge."

"My poor Jane!" said my wife, mincing veal as though she was mincing
William. "It's a shame of them. I would think no more of him. He is not
worthy of you."

"No, m'm," said Jane. "He _is_ weak."

"But it's that woman has done it," said Jane. She was never known
to bring herself to pronounce "that woman's" name or to admit her
girlishness. "I can't think what minds some women must have--to try and
get a girl's young man away from her. But there, it only hurts to talk
about it," said Jane.

Thereafter our house rested from William. But there was something in
the manner of Jane's scrubbing the front doorstep or sweeping out the
rooms, a certain viciousness, that persuaded me that the story had not
yet ended.

"Please, m'm, may I go and see a wedding to-morrow?" said Jane one day.

My wife knew by instinct whose wedding. "Do you think it is wise,
Jane?" she said.

"I would like to see the last of him," said Jane.

"My dear," said my wife, fluttering into my room about twenty minutes
after Jane had started, "Jane has been to the boot-hole and taken all
the left-off boots and shoes, and gone off to the wedding with them in
a bag. Surely she cannot mean"--

"Jane," I said, "is developing character. Let us hope for the best."

Jane came back with a pale, hard face. All the boots seemed to be still
in her bag, at which my wife heaved a premature sigh of relief. We
heard her go upstairs and replace the boots with considerable emphasis.

"Quite a crowd at the wedding, ma'am," she said presently, in a purely
conversational style, sitting in our little kitchen, and scrubbing the
potatoes; "and such a lovely day for them." She proceeded to numerous
other details, clearly avoiding some cardinal incident.

"It was all extremely respectable and nice, ma'am; but _her_ father
didn't wear a black coat, and looked quite out of place, ma'am. Mr.
Piddingquirk"--

"_Who?_"

"Mr. Piddingquirk--William that _was_, ma'am--had white gloves, and
a coat like a clergyman, and a lovely chrysanthemum. He looked so
nice, ma'am. And there was red carpet down, just like for gentlefolks.
And they say he gave the clerk four shillings, ma'am. It was a real
kerridge they had--not a fly. When they came out of church there was
rice-throwing, and her two little sisters dropping dead flowers. And
someone threw a slipper, and then I threw a boot"--

"Threw a _boot_, Jane!"

"Yes, ma'am. Aimed at _her_. But it hit _him_. Yes, ma'am, hard. Gev
him a black eye, I should think. I only threw that one. I hadn't the
heart to try again. All the little boys cheered when it hit him."

After an interval--"I am sorry the boot hit _him_."

Another pause. The potatoes were being scrubbed violently. "He always
_was_ a bit above me, you know, ma'am. And he was led away."

The potatoes were more than finished. Jane rose sharply, with a sigh,
and rapped the basin down on the table.

"I don't care," she said. "I don't care a rap. He will find out his
mistake yet. It serves me right. I was stuck up about him. I ought not
to have looked so high. And I am glad things are as things are."

My wife was in the kitchen, seeing to the higher cookery. After the
confession of the boot-throwing, she must have watched poor Jane fuming
with a certain dismay in those brown eyes of hers. But I imagine they
softened again very quickly, and then Jane's must have met them.

"Oh, ma'am," said Jane, with an astonishing change of note, "think
of all that _might_ have been! Oh, ma'am, I _could_ have been so
happy! I ought to have known, but I didn't know.... You're very kind
to let me talk to you, ma'am ... for it's hard on me, ma'am ... it's
har-r-r-r-d"--

And I gather that Euphemia so far forgot herself as to let Jane sob
out some of the fulness of her heart on a sympathetic shoulder. My
Euphemia, thank Heaven, has never properly grasped the importance of
"keeping up her position." And since that fit of weeping, much of the
accent of bitterness has gone out of Jane's scrubbing and brush work.

Indeed, something passed the other day with the butcher-boy--but that
scarcely belongs to this story. However, Jane is young still, and time
and change are at work with her. We all have our sorrows, but I do not
believe very much in the existence of sorrows that never heal.



IN THE MODERN VEIN

AN UNSYMPATHETIC LOVE STORY


Of course the cultivated reader has heard of Aubrey Vair. He has
published on three several occasions volumes of delicate verses,--some,
indeed, border on indelicacy,--and his column "Of Things Literary" in
the _Climax_ is well known. His Byronic visage and an interview have
appeared in the _Perfect Lady_. It was Aubrey Vair, I believe, who
demonstrated that the humour of Dickens was worse than his sentiment,
and who detected "a subtle bourgeois flavour" in Shakespeare. However,
it is not generally known that Aubrey Vair has had erotic experiences
as well as erotic inspirations. He adopted Goethe some little time
since as his literary prototype, and that may have had something to do
with his temporary lapse from sexual integrity.

For it is one of the commonest things that undermine literary men,
giving us landslips and picturesque effects along the otherwise even
cliff of their respectable life, ranking next to avarice, and certainly
above drink, this instability called genius, or, more fully, the
consciousness of genius, such as Aubrey Vair possessed. Since Shelley
set the fashion, your man of gifts has been assured that his duty to
himself and his duty to his wife are incompatible, and his renunciation
of the Philistine has been marked by such infidelity as his means and
courage warranted. Most virtue is lack of imagination. At anyrate,
a minor genius without his affections twisted into an inextricable
muddle, and who did not occasionally shed sonnets over his troubles, I
have never met.

Even Aubrey Vair did this, weeping the sonnets overnight into his
blotting-book, and pretending to write literary _causerie_ when his
wife came down in her bath slippers to see what kept him up. She did
not understand him, of course. He did this even before the other woman
appeared, so ingrained is conjugal treachery in the talented mind.
Indeed, he wrote more sonnets before the other woman came than after
that event, because thereafter he spent much of his leisure in cutting
down the old productions, retrimming them, and generally altering this
readymade clothing of his passion to suit her particular height and
complexion.

Aubrey Vair lived in a little red villa with a lawn at the back and a
view of the Downs behind Reigate. He lived upon discreet investment
eked out by literary work. His wife was handsome, sweet, and gentle,
and--such is the tender humility of good married women--she found her
life's happiness in seeing that little Aubrey Vair had well-cooked
variety for dinner, and that their house was the neatest and brightest
of all the houses they entered. Aubrey Vair enjoyed the dinners, and
was proud of the house, yet nevertheless he mourned because his genius
dwindled. Moreover, he grew plump, and corpulence threatened him.

We learn in suffering what we teach in song, and Aubrey Vair knew
certainly that his soul could give no creditable crops unless his
affections were harrowed. And how to harrow them was the trouble, for
Reigate is a moral neighbourhood.

So Aubrey Vair's romantic longings blew loose for a time, much as a
seedling creeper might, planted in the midst of a flower-bed. But at
last, in the fulness of time, the other woman came to the embrace
of Aubrey Vair's yearning heart-tendrils, and his romantic episode
proceeded as is here faithfully written down.

The other woman was really a girl, and Aubrey Vair met her first at
a tennis party at Redhill. Aubrey Vair did not play tennis after the
accident to Miss Morton's eye, and because latterly it made him pant
and get warmer and moister than even a poet should be; and this young
lady had only recently arrived in England, and could not play. So they
gravitated into the two vacant basket chairs beside Mrs. Bayne's deaf
aunt, in front of the hollyhocks, and were presently talking at their
ease together.

The other woman's name was unpropitious,--Miss Smith,--but you would
never have suspected it from her face and costume. Her parentage
was promising, she was an orphan, her mother was a Hindoo, and her
father an Indian civil servant; and Aubrey Vair--himself a happy
mixture of Kelt and Teuton, as, indeed, all literary men have to be
nowadays--naturally believed in the literary consequences of a mixture
of races. She was dressed in white. She had finely moulded pale
features, great depth of expression, and a cloud of delicately _frisé_
black hair over her dark eyes, and she looked at Aubrey Vair with a
look half curious and half shy, that contrasted admirably with the
stereotyped frankness of your common Reigate girl.

"This is a splendid lawn--the best in Redhill," said Aubrey Vair in the
course of the conversation; "and I like it all the better because the
daisies are spared." He indicated the daisies with a graceful sweep of
his rather elegant hand.

"They are sweet little flowers," said the lady in white, "and I have
always associated them with England, chiefly, perhaps, through a
picture I saw 'over there' when I was very little, of children making
daisy chains. I promised myself that pleasure when I came home. But,
alas! I feel now rather too large for such delights."

"I do not see why we should not be able to enjoy these simple pleasures
as we grow older--why our growth should have in it so much forgetting.
For my own part"--

"Has your wife got Jane's recipe for stuffing trout?" asked Mrs.
Bayne's deaf aunt abruptly.

"I really don't know," said Aubrey Vair.

"That's all right," said Mrs. Bayne's deaf aunt. "It ought to please
even you."

"Anything will please me," said Aubrey Vair; "I care very little"--

"Oh, it's a lovely dish," said Mrs. Bayne's deaf aunt, and relapsed
into contemplation.

"I was saying," said Aubrey Vair, "that I think I still find my keenest
pleasures in childish pastimes. I have a little nephew that I see a
great deal of, and when we fly kites together, I am sure it would be
hard to tell which of us is the happier. By the bye, you should get at
your daisy chains in that way. Beguile some little girl."

"But I did. I took that Morton mite for a walk in the meadows, and
timidly broached the subject. And she reproached me for suggesting
'frivolous pursuits.' It was a horrible disappointment."

"The governess here," said Aubrey Vair, "is robbing that child of its
youth in a terrible way. What will a life be that has no childhood at
the beginning?"

"Some human beings are never young," he continued, "and they never
grow up. They lead absolutely colourless lives. They are--they are
etiolated. They never love, and never feel the loss of it. They
are--for the moment I can think of no better image--they are human
flower-pots, in which no soul has been planted. But a human soul
properly growing must begin in a fresh childishness."

"Yes," said the dark lady thoughtfully, "a careless childhood, running
wild almost. That should be the beginning."

"Then we pass through the wonder and diffidence of youth."

"To strength and action," said the dark lady. Her dreamy eyes were
fixed on the Downs, and her fingers tightened on her knees as she
spoke. "Ah, it is a grand thing to live--as a man does--self-reliant
and free."

"And so at last," said Aubrey Vair, "come to the culmination and crown
of life." He paused and glanced hastily at her. Then he dropped his
voice almost to a whisper--"And the culmination of life is love."

Their eyes met for a moment, but she looked away at once. Aubrey Vair
felt a peculiar thrill and a catching in his breath, but his emotions
were too complex for analysis. He had a certain sense of surprise,
also, at the way his conversation had developed.

Mrs. Bayne's deaf aunt suddenly dug him in the chest with her
ear-trumpet, and someone at tennis bawled, "Love all!"

"Did I tell you Jane's girls have had scarlet fever?" asked Mrs.
Bayne's deaf aunt.

"No," said Aubrey Vair.

"Yes; and they are peeling now," said Mrs. Bayne's deaf aunt, shutting
her lips tightly, and nodding in a slow, significant manner at both of
them.

There was a pause. All three seemed lost in thought, too deep for words.

"Love," began Aubrey Vair presently, in a severely philosophical tone,
leaning back in his chair, holding his hands like a praying saint's
in front of him, and staring at the toe of his shoe,--"love is, I
believe, the one true and real thing in life. It rises above reason,
interest, or explanation. Yet I never read of an age when it was so
much forgotten as it is now. Never was love expected to run so much in
appointed channels, never was it so despised, checked, ordered, and
obstructed. Policemen say, 'This way, Eros!' As a result, we relieve
our emotional possibilities in the hunt for gold and notoriety. And
after all, with the best fortune in these, we only hold up the gilded
images of our success, and are weary slaves, with unsatisfied hearts,
in the pageant of life."

Aubrey Vair sighed, and there was a pause. The girl looked at him out
of the mysterious darkness of her eyes. She had read many books, but
Aubrey Vair was her first literary man, and she took this kind of thing
for genius--as girls have done before.

"We are," continued Aubrey Vair, conscious of a favourable
impression,--"we are like fireworks, mere dead, inert things until the
appointed spark comes; and then--if it is not damp--the dormant soul
blazes forth in all its warmth and beauty. That is living. I sometimes
think, do you know, that we should be happier if we could die soon
after that golden time, like the Ephemerides. There is a decay sets in."

"Eigh?" said Mrs. Bayne's deaf aunt startlingly. "I didn't hear you."

"I was on the point of remarking," shouted Aubrey Vair, wheeling the
array of his thoughts,--"I was on the point of remarking that few
people in Redhill could match Mrs. Morton's fine broad green."

"Others have noticed it," Mrs. Bayne's deaf aunt shouted back. "It is
since she has had in her new false teeth."

This interruption dislocated the conversation a little. However--

"I must thank you, Mr. Vair," said the dark girl, when they parted that
afternoon, "for having given me very much to think about."

And from her manner, Aubrey Vair perceived clearly he had not wasted
his time.

       *       *       *       *       *

It would require a subtler pen than mine to tell how from that day a
passion for Miss Smith grew like Jonah's gourd in the heart of Aubrey
Vair. He became pensive, and in the prolonged absence of Miss Smith,
irritable. Mrs. Aubrey Vair felt the change in him, and put it down
to a vitriolic Saturday Reviewer. Indisputably the _Saturday_ does at
times go a little far. He re-read _Elective Affinities_; and lent it
to Miss Smith. Incredible as it may appear to members of the Areopagus
Club, where we know Aubrey Vair, he did also beyond all question
inspire a sort of passion in that sombre-eyed, rather clever, and
really very beautiful girl.

He talked to her a lot about love and destiny, and all that bric-à-brac
of the minor poet. And they talked together about his genius. He
elaborately, though discreetly, sought her society, and presented
and read to her the milder of his unpublished sonnets. We consider
his Byronic features pasty, but the feminine mind has its own laws.
I suppose, also, where a girl is not a fool, a literary man has an
enormous advantage over anyone but a preacher, in the show he can make
of his heart's wares.

At last a day in that summer came when he met her alone, possibly by
chance, in a quiet lane towards Horley. There were ample hedges on
either side, rich with honeysuckle, vetch, and mullein.

They conversed intimately of his poetic ambitions, and then he read
her those verses of his subsequently published in _Hobson's Magazine_:
"Tenderly ever, since I have met thee." He had written these the day
before; and though I think the sentiment is uncommonly trite, there is
a redeeming note of sincerity about the lines not conspicuous in all
Aubrey Vair's poetry.

He read rather well, and a swell of genuine emotion crept into his
voice as he read, with one white hand thrown out to point the rhythm of
the lines. "Ever, my sweet, for thee," he concluded, looking up into
her face.

Before he looked up, he had been thinking chiefly of his poem and its
effect. Straightway he forgot it. Her arms hung limply before her, and
her hands were clasped together. Her eyes were very tender.

"Your verses go to the heart," she said softly.

Her mobile features were capable of wonderful shades of expression. He
suddenly forgot his wife and his position as a minor poet as he looked
at her. It is possible that his classical features may themselves have
undergone a certain transfiguration. For one brief moment--and it was
always to linger in his memory--destiny lifted him out of his vain
little self to a nobler level of simplicity. The copy of "Tenderly
ever" fluttered from his hand. Considerations vanished. Only one thing
seemed of importance.

"I love you," he said abruptly.

An expression of fear came into her eyes. The grip of her hands upon
one another tightened convulsively. She became very pale.

Then she moved her lips as if to speak, bringing her face slightly
nearer to his. There was nothing in the world at that moment for either
of them but one another. They were both trembling exceedingly. In a
whisper she said, "You love me?"

Aubrey Vair stood quivering and speechless, looking into her eyes. He
had never seen such a light as he saw there before. He was in a wild
tumult of emotion. He was dreadfully scared at what he had done. He
could not say another word. He nodded.

"And this has come to me?" she said presently, in the same awe-stricken
whisper, and then, "Oh, my love, my love!"

And thereupon Aubrey Vair had her clasped to himself, her cheek upon
his shoulder and his lips to hers.

Thus it was that Aubrey Vair came by the cardinal memory of his life.
To this day it recurs in his works.

A little boy clambering in the hedge some way down the lane saw this
group with surprise, and then with scorn and contempt. Recking nothing
of his destiny, he turned away, feeling that he at least could never
come to the unspeakable unmanliness of hugging girls. Unhappily for
Reigate scandal, his shame for his sex was altogether too deep for
words.

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour after, Aubrey Vair returned home in a hushed mood. There were
muffins after his own heart for his tea--Mrs. Aubrey Vair had had
hers. And there were chrysanthemums, chiefly white ones,--flowers he
loved,--set out in the china bowl he was wont to praise. And his wife
came behind him to kiss him as he sat eating.

"De lill Jummuns," she remarked, kissing him under the ear.

Then it came into the mind of Aubrey Vair with startling clearness,
while his ear was being kissed, and with his mouth full of muffin, that
life is a singularly complex thing.

       *       *       *       *       *

The summer passed at last into the harvest-time, and the leaves began
falling. It was evening, the warm sunset light still touched the Downs,
but up the valley a blue haze was creeping. One or two lamps in Reigate
were already alight.

About half-way up the slanting road that scales the Downs, there is
a wooden seat where one may obtain a fine view of the red villas
scattered below, and of the succession of blue hills beyond. Here the
girl with the shadowy face was sitting.

She had a book on her knees, but it lay neglected. She was leaning
forward, her chin resting upon her hand. She was looking across the
valley into the darkening sky, with troubled eyes.

Aubrey Vair appeared through the hazel-bushes, and sat down beside her.
He held half a dozen dead leaves in his hand.

She did not alter her attitude. "Well?" she said.

"Is it to be flight?" he asked.

Aubrey Vair was rather pale. He had been having bad nights latterly,
with dreams of the Continental Express, Mrs. Aubrey Vair possibly even
in pursuit,--he always fancied her making the tragedy ridiculous by
tearfully bringing additional pairs of socks, and any such trifles he
had forgotten, with her,--all Reigate and Redhill in commotion. He had
never eloped before, and he had visions of difficulties with hotel
proprietors. Mrs. Aubrey Vair might telegraph ahead. Even he had had a
prophetic vision of a headline in a halfpenny evening newspaper: "Young
Lady abducts a Minor Poet." So there was a quaver in his voice as he
asked, "Is it to be flight?"

"As you will," she answered, still not looking at him.

"I want you to consider particularly how this will affect you. A man,"
said Aubrey Vair, slowly, and staring hard at the leaves in his hand,
"even gains a certain éclat in these affairs. But to a woman it is
ruin--social, moral."

"This is not love," said the girl in white.

"Ah, my dearest! Think of yourself."

"Stupid!" she said, under her breath.

"You spoke?"

"Nothing."

"But cannot we go on, meeting one another, loving one another, without
any great scandal or misery? Could we not"--

"That," interrupted Miss Smith, "would be unspeakably horrible."

"This is a dreadful conversation to me. Life is so intricate, such a
web of subtle strands binds us this way and that. I cannot tell what is
right. You must consider"--

"A man would break such strands."

"There is no manliness," said Aubrey Vair, with a sudden glow of moral
exaltation, "in doing wrong. My love"--

"We could at least die together, dearest," she said.

"Good Lord!" said Aubrey Vair. "I mean--consider my wife."

"You have not considered her hitherto."

"There is a flavour--of cowardice, of desertion, about suicide," said
Aubrey Vair. "Frankly, I have the English prejudice, and do not like
any kind of running away."

Miss Smith smiled very faintly. "I see clearly now what I did not see.
My love and yours are very different things."

"Possibly it is a sexual difference," said Aubrey Vair; and then,
feeling the remark inadequate, he relapsed into silence.

They sat for some time without a word. The two lights in Reigate below
multiplied to a score of bright points, and, above, one star had become
visible. She began laughing, an almost noiseless, hysterical laugh that
jarred unaccountably upon Aubrey Vair.

Presently she stood up. "They will wonder where I am," she said. "I
think I must be going."

He followed her to the road. "Then this is the end?" he said, with a
curious mixture of relief and poignant regret.

"Yes, this is the end," she answered, and turned away.

There straightway dropped into the soul of Aubrey Vair a sense of
infinite loss. It was an altogether new sensation. She was perhaps
twenty yards away, when he groaned aloud with the weight of it, and
suddenly began running after her with his arms extended.

"Annie," he cried,--"Annie! I have been talking _rot_. Annie, now
I know I love you! I cannot spare you. This must not be. I did not
understand."

The weight was horrible.

"Oh, stop, Annie!" he cried, with a breaking voice, and there were
tears on his face.

She turned upon him suddenly, and his arms fell by his side. His
expression changed at the sight of her pale face.

"You do not understand," she said. "I have said good-bye."

She looked at him; he was evidently greatly distressed, a little out of
breath, and he had just stopped blubbering. His contemptible quality
reached the pathetic. She came up close to him, and, taking his damp
Byronic visage between her hands, she kissed him again and again.
"Good-bye, little man that I loved," she said; "and good-bye to this
folly of love."

Then, with something that may have been a laugh or a sob,--she herself,
when she came to write it all in her novel, did not know which,--she
turned and hurried away again, and went out of the path that Aubrey
Vair must pursue, at the cross-roads.

Aubrey Vair stood, where she had kissed him, with a mind as inactive
as his body, until her white dress had disappeared. Then he gave an
involuntary sigh, a large exhaustive expiration, and so awoke himself,
and began walking, pensively dragging his feet through the dead leaves,
home. Emotions are terrible things.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Do you like the potatoes, dear?" asked Mrs. Aubrey Vair at dinner. "I
cooked them myself."

Aubrey Vair descended slowly from cloudy, impalpable meditations to the
level of fried potatoes. "These potatoes"--he remarked, after a pause
during which he was struggling with recollection. "Yes. These potatoes
have exactly the tints of the dead leaves of the hazel."

"What a fanciful poet it is!" said Mrs. Aubrey Vair. "Taste them. They
are very nice potatoes indeed."



A CATASTROPHE


The little shop was not paying. The realisation came insensibly.
Winslow was not the man for definite addition and subtraction
and sudden discovery. He became aware of the truth in his mind
gradually, as though it had always been there. A lot of facts had
converged and led him there. There was that line of cretonnes--four
half-pieces--untouched, save for half a yard sold to cover a stool.
There were those shirtings at 4¾d.--Bandersnatch, in the Broadway,
was selling them at 2¾d.--under cost, in fact. (Surely Bandersnatch
might let a man live!) Those servants' caps, a selling line, needed
replenishing, and that brought back the memory of Winslow's sole
wholesale dealers, Helter, Skelter, & Grab. Why! how about their
account?

Winslow stood with a big green box open on the counter before him
when he thought of it. His pale grey eyes grew a little rounder; his
pale, straggling moustache twitched. He had been drifting along, day
after day. He went round to the ramshackle cash-desk in the corner--it
was Winslow's weakness to sell his goods over the counter, give his
customers a duplicate bill, and then dodge into the desk to receive
the money, as though he doubted his own honesty. His lank forefinger,
with the prominent joints, ran down the bright little calendar
("Clack's Cottons last for All Time"). "One--two--three; three weeks
an' a day!" said Winslow, staring. "March! Only three weeks and a day.
It _can't_ be."

"Tea, dear," said Mrs. Winslow, opening the door with the glass window
and the white blind that communicated with the parlour.

"One minute," said Winslow, and began unlocking the desk.

An irritable old gentleman, very hot and red about the face, and in a
heavy fur-lined cloak, came in noisily. Mrs. Winslow vanished.

"Ugh!" said the old gentleman. "Pocket-handkerchief."

"Yes, sir," said Winslow. "About what price"--

"Ugh!" said the old gentleman. "Poggit-handkerchief, quig!"

Winslow began to feel flustered. He produced two boxes.

"These, sir"--began Winslow.

"Sheed tin!" said the old gentleman, clutching the stiffness of the
linen. "Wad to blow my nose--not haggit about."

"A cotton one, p'raps, sir?" said Winslow.

"How much?" said the old gentleman over the handkerchief.

"Sevenpence, sir. There's nothing more I can show you? No ties,
braces--?"

"Damn!" said the old gentleman, fumbling in his ticket-pocket, and
finally producing half a crown. Winslow looked round for his little
metallic duplicate-book which he kept in various fixtures, according
to circumstances, and then he caught the old gentleman's eye. He
went straight to the desk at once and got the change, with an entire
disregard of the routine of the shop.

Winslow was always more or less excited by a customer. But the open
desk reminded him of his trouble. It did not come back to him all at
once. He heard a finger-nail softly tapping on the glass, and, looking
up, saw Minnie's eyes over the blind. It seemed like retreat opening.
He shut and locked the desk, and went into the little room to tea.

But he was preoccupied. Three weeks and a day! He took unusually large
bites of his bread and butter, and stared hard at the little pot of
jam. He answered Minnie's conversational advances distractedly. The
shadow of Helter, Skelter, & Grab lay upon the tea-table. He was
struggling with this new idea of failure, the tangible realisation,
that was taking shape and substance, condensing, as it were, out
of the misty uneasiness of many days. At present it was simply one
concrete fact; there were thirty-nine pounds left in the bank, and that
day three weeks Messrs. Helter, Skelter, & Grab, those enterprising
outfitters of young men, would demand their eighty pounds.

After tea there was a customer or so--little purchases: some muslin
and buckram, dress-protectors, tape, and a pair of Lisle hose. Then,
knowing that Black Care was lurking in the dusky corners of the shop,
he lit the three lamps early and set to, refolding his cotton prints,
the most vigorous and least meditative proceeding of which he could
think. He could see Minnie's shadow in the other room as she moved
about the table. She was busy turning an old dress. He had a walk after
supper, looked in at the Y.M.C.A., but found no one to talk to, and
finally went to bed. Minnie was already there. And there, too, waiting
for him, nudging him gently, until about midnight he was hopelessly
awake, sat Black Care.

He had had one or two nights lately in that company, but this was
much worse. First came Messrs. Helter, Skelter, & Grab, and their
demand for eighty pounds--an enormous sum when your original capital
was only a hundred and seventy. They camped, as it were, before him,
sat down and beleaguered him. He clutched feebly at the circumambient
darkness for expedients. Suppose he had a sale, sold things for almost
anything? He tried to imagine a sale miraculously successful in some
unexpected manner, and mildly profitable, in spite of reductions below
cost. Then Bandersnatch Limited, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107 Broadway,
joined the siege, a long caterpillar of frontage, a battery of shop
fronts, wherein things were sold at a farthing above cost. How could
he fight such an establishment? Besides, what had he to sell? He began
to review his resources. What taking line was there to bait the sale?
Then straightway came those pieces of cretonne, yellow and black, with
a bluish-green flower; those discredited skirtings, prints without
buoyancy, skirmishing haberdashery, some despairful four-button gloves
by an inferior maker--a hopeless crew. And that was his force against
Bandersnatch, Helter, Skelter, & Grab, and the pitiless world behind
them. Whatever had made him think a mortal would buy such things?
Why had he bought this and neglected that? He suddenly realised the
intensity of his hatred for Helter, Skelter, & Grab's salesman. Then
he drove towards an agony of self-reproach. He had spent too much
on that cash-desk. What real need was there of a desk? He saw his
vanity of that desk in a lurid glow of self-discovery. And the lamps?
Five pounds! Then suddenly, with what was almost physical pain, he
remembered the rent.

He groaned and turned over. And there, dim in the darkness, was the
hummock of Mrs. Winslow's shoulders. That set him off in another
direction. He became acutely sensible of Minnie's want of feeling. Here
he was, worried to death about business, and she sleeping like a little
child. He regretted having married, with that infinite bitterness that
only comes to the human heart in the small hours of the morning. That
hummock of white seemed absolutely without helpfulness, a burden, a
responsibility. What fools men were to marry! Minnie's inert repose
irritated him so much that he was almost provoked to wake her up and
tell her that they were "Ruined." She would have to go back to her
uncle; her uncle had always been against him: and as for his own
future, Winslow was exceedingly uncertain. A shop assistant who has
once set up for himself finds the utmost difficulty in getting into a
situation again. He began to figure himself "crib-hunting" again, going
from this wholesale house to that, writing innumerable letters. How
he hated writing letters! "Sir,--Referring to your advertisement in
the _Christian World_." He beheld an infinite vista of discomfort and
disappointment, ending--in a gulf.

He dressed, yawning, and went down to open the shop. He felt tired
before the day began. As he carried the shutters in, he kept asking
himself what good he was doing. The end was inevitable, whether he
bothered or not. The clear daylight smote into the place, and showed
how old and rough and splintered was the floor, how shabby the
second-hand counter, how hopeless the whole enterprise. He had been
dreaming these past six months of a bright little shop, of a happy
couple, of a modest but comely profit flowing in. He had suddenly
awakened from his dream. The braid that bound his decent black coat--it
was a little loose--caught against the catch of the shop door, and was
torn loose. This suddenly turned his wretchedness to wrath. He stood
quivering for a moment, then, with a spiteful clutch, tore the braid
looser, and went in to Minnie.

"Here," he said, with infinite reproach; "look here! You might look
after a chap a bit."

"I didn't see it was torn," said Minnie.

"You never do," said Winslow, with gross injustice, "until things are
too late."

Minnie looked suddenly at his face. "I'll sew it now, Sid, if you like."

"Let's have breakfast first," said Winslow, "and do things at their
proper time."

He was preoccupied at breakfast, and Minnie watched him anxiously.
His only remark was to declare his egg a bad one. It wasn't; it was a
little flavoury,--being one of those at fifteen a shilling,--but quite
nice. He pushed it away from him, and then, having eaten a slice of
bread and butter, admitted himself in the wrong by resuming the egg.

"Sid," said Minnie, as he stood up to go into the shop again, "you're
not well."

"I'm _well_ enough." He looked at her as though he hated her.

"Then there's something else the matter. You aren't angry with me, Sid,
are you, about that braid? _Do_ tell me what's the matter. You were
just like this at tea yesterday, and at supper-time. It wasn't the
braid then."

"And I'm likely to be."

She looked interrogation. "Oh, what _is_ the matter?" she said.

It was too good a chance to miss, and he brought the evil news out with
dramatic force. "Matter?" he said. "I done my best, and here we are.
That's the matter! If I can't pay Helter, Skelter & Grab eighty pounds,
this day three week"--Pause. "We shall be sold up! Sold up! That's the
matter, Min! SOLD UP!"

"Oh, Sid!" began Minnie.

He slammed the door. For the moment he felt relieved of at least half
his misery. He began dusting boxes that did not require dusting,
and then reblocked a cretonne already faultlessly blocked. He was
in a state of grim wretchedness; a martyr under the harrow of fate.
At anyrate, it should not be said he failed for want of industry.
And how he had planned and contrived and worked! All to this end!
He felt horrible doubts. Providence and Bandersnatch--surely they
were incompatible! Perhaps he was being "tried"? That sent him
off upon a new tack, a very comforting one. That martyr pose, the
gold-in-the-furnace attitude, lasted all the morning.

At dinner--"potato pie"--he looked up suddenly, and saw Minnie's face
regarding him. Pale she looked, and a little red about the eyes.
Something caught him suddenly with a queer effect upon his throat. All
his thoughts seemed to wheel round into quite a new direction.

He pushed back his plate and stared at her blankly. Then he got up,
went round the table to her--she staring at him. He dropped on his
knees beside her without a word. "Oh, Minnie!" he said, and suddenly
she knew it was peace, and put her arms about him, as he began to sob
and weep.

He cried like a little boy, slobbering on her shoulder that he was a
knave to have married her and brought her to this, that he hadn't the
wits to be trusted with a penny, that it was all his fault, that he
"_had_ hoped _so_"--ending in a howl. And she, crying gently herself,
patting his shoulders, said "_Ssh!_" softly to his noisy weeping, and
so soothed the outbreak. Then suddenly the crazy little bell upon the
shop door began, and Winslow had to jump to his feet, and be a man
again.

After that scene they "talked it over" at tea, at supper, in
bed, at every possible interval in between, solemnly--quite
inconclusively--with set faces and eyes for the most part staring in
front of them--and yet with a certain mutual comfort. "What to do I
don't know," was Winslow's main proposition. Minnie tried to take a
cheerful view of service--with a probable baby. But she found she
needed all her courage. And her uncle would help her again, perhaps,
just at the critical time. It didn't do for folks to be too proud.
Besides, "something might happen," a favourite formula with her.

One hopeful line was to anticipate a sudden afflux of customers.
"Perhaps," said Minnie, "you might get together fifty. They know you
well enough to trust you a bit." They debated that point. Once the
possibility of Helter, Skelter and Grab giving credit was admitted,
it was pleasant to begin sweating the acceptable minimum. For some
half-hour over tea the second day after Winslow's discoveries they
were quite cheerful again, laughing even at their terrific fears. Even
twenty pounds to go on with might be considered enough. Then in some
mysterious way the pleasant prospect of Messrs. Helter, Skelter, & Grab
tempering the wind to the shorn retailer vanished--vanished absolutely,
and Winslow found himself again in the pit of despair.

He began looking about at the furniture, and wondering idly what
it would fetch. The chiffonier was good, anyhow, and there were
Minnie's old plates that her mother used to have. Then he began to
think of desperate expedients for putting off the evil day. He had
heard somewhere of Bills of Sale--there was to his ears something
comfortingly substantial in the phrase. Then, why not "Go to the
Money-Lenders"?

One cheering thing happened on Thursday afternoon; a little girl came
in with a pattern of "print," and he was able to match it. He had not
been able to match anything out of his meagre stock before. He went
in and told Minnie. The incident is mentioned lest the reader should
imagine it was uniform despair with him.

The next morning, and the next, after the discovery, Winslow opened
shop late. When one has been awake most of the night, and has no hope,
what _is_ the good of getting up punctually? But as he went into the
dark shop on Friday he saw something lying on the floor, something
lit by the bright light that came under the ill-fitting door--a black
oblong. He stooped and picked up an envelope with a deep mourning edge.
It was addressed to his wife. Clearly a death in her family--perhaps
her uncle. He knew the man too well to have expectations. And they
would have to get mourning and go to the funeral. The brutal cruelty
of people dying! He saw it all in a flash--he always visualised his
thoughts. Black trousers to get, black crape, black gloves--none in
stock--the railway fares, the shop closed for the day.

"I'm afraid there's bad news, Minnie," he said.

She was kneeling before the fireplace, blowing the fire. She had her
housemaid's gloves on and the old country sun-bonnet she wore of
a morning, to keep the dust out of her hair. She turned, saw the
envelope, gave a gasp, and pressed two bloodless lips together.

"I'm afraid it's uncle," she said, holding the letter and staring with
eyes wide open into Winslow's face. "_It's a strange hand!_"

"The postmark's Hull," said Winslow.

"The postmark's Hull."

Minnie opened the letter slowly, drew it out, hesitated, turned it
over, saw the signature. "It's Mr. Speight!"

"What does he say?" said Winslow.

Minnie began to read. "_Oh!_" she screamed. She dropped the letter,
collapsed into a crouching heap, her hands covering her eyes. Winslow
snatched at it. "A most terrible accident has occurred," he read;
"Melchior's chimney fell down yesterday evening right on the top of
your uncle's house, and every living soul was killed--your uncle,
your cousin Mary, Will and Ned, and the girl--every one of them, and
smashed--you would hardly know them. I'm writing to you to break the
news before you see it in the papers"--The letter fluttered from
Winslow's fingers. He put out his hand against the mantel to steady
himself.

All of them dead! Then he saw, as in a vision, a row of seven cottages,
each let at seven shillings a week, a timber yard, two villas, and the
ruins--still marketable--of the avuncular residence. He tried to feel
a sense of loss and could not. They were sure to have been left to
Minnie's aunt. All dead! 7×7×52÷20 began insensibly to work itself out
in his mind, but discipline was ever weak in his mental arithmetic;
figures kept moving from one line to another, like children playing
at Widdy, Widdy Way. Was it two hundred pounds about--or one hundred
pounds? Presently he picked up the letter again, and finishing reading
it. "You being the next of kin," said Mr. Speight.

"How _awful_!" said Minnie in a horror-struck whisper, and looking up
at last. Winslow stared back at her, shaking his head solemnly. There
were a thousand things running through his mind, but none that, even
to his dull sense, seemed appropriate as a remark. "It was the Lord's
will," he said at last.

"It seems so very, very terrible," said Minnie; "auntie, dear
auntie--Ted--poor, dear uncle"--

"It was the Lord's will, Minnie," said Winslow, with infinite feeling.
A long silence.

"Yes," said Minnie, very slowly, staring thoughtfully at the crackling
black paper in the grate. The fire had gone out. "Yes, perhaps it was
the Lord's will."

They looked gravely at one another. Each would have been terribly
shocked at any mention of the property by the other. She turned to the
dark fireplace and began tearing up an old newspaper slowly. Whatever
our losses may be, the world's work still waits for us. Winslow gave a
deep sigh and walked in a hushed manner towards the front door. As he
opened it, a flood of sunlight came streaming into the dark shadows of
the closed shop. Bandersnatch, Helter, Skelter, & Grab, had vanished
out of his mind like the mists before the rising sun.

Presently he was carrying in the shutters, and in the briskest way,
the fire in the kitchen was crackling exhilaratingly, with a little
saucepan walloping above it, for Minnie was boiling two eggs,--one for
herself this morning, as well as one for him,--and Minnie herself was
audible, laying breakfast with the greatest _éclat_. The blow was a
sudden and terrible one--but it behoves us to face such things bravely
in this sad, unaccountable world. It was quite midday before either of
them mentioned the cottages.



THE LOST INHERITANCE


"My uncle," said the man with the glass eye, "was what you might call
a hemi-semi-demi millionaire. He was worth about a hundred and twenty
thousand. Quite. And he left me all his money."

I glanced at the shiny sleeve of his coat, and my eye travelled up to
the frayed collar.

"Every penny," said the man with the glass eye, and I caught the active
pupil looking at me with a touch of offence.

"I've never had any windfalls like that," I said, trying to speak
enviously and propitiate him.

"Even a legacy isn't always a blessing," he remarked with a sigh, and
with an air of philosophical resignation he put the red nose and the
wiry moustache into his tankard for a space.

"Perhaps not," I said.

"He was an author, you see, and he wrote a lot of books."

"Indeed!"

"That was the trouble of it all." He stared at me with the available
eye to see if I grasped his statement, then averted his face a little
and produced a toothpick.

"You see," he said, smacking his lips after a pause, "it was like this.
He was my uncle--my maternal uncle. And he had--what shall I call
it?--a weakness for writing edifying literature. Weakness is hardly
the word--downright mania is nearer the mark. He'd been librarian in a
Polytechnic, and as soon as the money came to him he began to indulge
his ambition. It's a simply extraordinary and incomprehensible thing
to me. Here was a man of thirty-seven suddenly dropped into a perfect
pile of gold, and he didn't go--not a day's bust on it. One would think
a chap would go and get himself dressed a bit decent--say a couple of
dozen pairs of trousers at a West End tailor's; but he never did. You'd
hardly believe it, but when he died he hadn't even a gold watch. It
seems wrong for people like that to have money. All he did was just to
take a house, and order in pretty nearly five tons of books and ink and
paper, and set to writing edifying literature as hard as ever he could
write. I _can't_ understand it! But he did. The money came to him,
curiously enough, through a maternal uncle of _his_, unexpected like,
when he was seven-and-thirty. My mother, it happened, was his only
relation in the wide, wide world, except some second cousins of his.
And I was her only son. You follow all that? The second cousins had one
only son, too, but they brought him to see the old man too soon. He was
rather a spoilt youngster, was this son of theirs, and directly he set
eyes on my uncle, he began bawling out as hard as he could. 'Take 'im
away--er,' he says, 'take 'im away,' and so did for himself entirely.
It was pretty straight sailing, you'd think, for me, eh? And my mother,
being a sensible, careful woman, settled the business in her own mind
long before he did.

"He was a curious little chap, was my uncle, as I remember him. I
don't wonder at the kid being scared. Hair, just like these Japanese
dolls they sell, black and straight and stiff all round the brim and
none in the middle, and below, a whitish kind of face and rather
large dark grey eyes moving about behind his spectacles. He used to
attach a great deal of importance to dress, and always wore a flapping
overcoat and a big-brimmed felt hat of a most extraordinary size. He
looked a rummy little beggar, I can tell you. Indoors it was, as a
rule, a dirty red flannel dressing-gown and a black skull-cap he had.
That black skull-cap made him look like the portraits of all kinds of
celebrated people. He was always moving about from house to house,
was my uncle, with his chair which had belonged to Savage Landor, and
his two writing-tables, one of Carlyle's and the other of Shelley's,
so the dealer told him, and the completest portable reference library
in England, he said he had--and he lugged the whole caravan, now to a
house at Down, near Darwin's old place, then to Reigate, near Meredith,
then off to Haslemere, then back to Chelsea for a bit, and then up to
Hampstead. He knew there was something wrong with his stuff, but he
never knew there was anything wrong with his brains. It was always the
air, or the water, or the altitude, or some tommy-rot like that. 'So
much depends on environment,' he used to say, and stare at you hard, as
if he half suspected you were hiding a grin at him somewhere under your
face. 'So much depends on environment to a sensitive mind like mine.'

"What was his name? You wouldn't know it if I told you. He wrote
nothing that anyone has ever read--nothing. No one _could_ read it.
He wanted to be a great teacher, he said, and he didn't know what he
wanted to teach any more than a child. So he just blethered at large
about Truth and Righteousness, and the Spirit of History, and all
that. Book after book he wrote and published at his own expense. He
wasn't quite right in his head, you know, really; and to hear him go
on at the critics--not because they slated him, mind you--he liked
that--but because they didn't take any notice of him at all. 'What
do the nations want?' he would ask, holding out his brown old claw.
'Why, teaching--guidance! They are scattered upon the hills like sheep
without a shepherd. There is War and Rumours of War, the unlaid Spirit
of Discord abroad in the land, Nihilism, Vivisection, Vaccination,
Drunkenness, Penury, Want, Socialistic Error, Selfish Capital! Do
you see the clouds, Ted?'--My name, you know--'Do you see the clouds
lowering over the land? and behind it all--the Mongol waits!' He
was always very great on Mongols and the Spectre of Socialism, and
such-like things.

"Then out would come his finger at me, and with his eyes all afire and
his skull-cap askew, he would whisper: 'And here am I. What do I want?
Nations to teach. Nations! I say it with all modesty, Ted, I _could_. I
would guide them; nay! but I _will_ guide them to a safe haven, to the
land of Righteousness, flowing with milk and honey.'

"That's how he used to go on. Ramble, rave about the nations, and
righteousness, and that kind of thing. Kind of mincemeat of Bible and
blethers. From fourteen up to three-and-twenty, when I might have
been improving my mind, my mother used to wash me and brush my hair
(at least in the earlier years of it), with a nice parting down the
middle, and take me, once or twice a week, to hear this old lunatic
jabber about things he had read of in the morning papers, trying to do
it as much like Carlyle as he could, and I used to sit according to
instructions, and look intelligent and nice, and pretend to be taking
it all in. Afterwards I used to go of my own free will, out of a regard
for the legacy. I was the only person that used to go and see him.
He wrote, I believe, to every man who made the slightest stir in the
world, sending him a copy or so of his books, and inviting him to come
and talk about the nations to him; but half of them didn't answer,
and none ever came. And when the girl let you in--she was an artful
bit of goods, that girl--there were heaps of letters on the hall-seat
waiting to go off, addressed to Prince Bismark, the President of the
United States, and such-like people. And one went up the staircase
and along the cobwebby passage,--the housekeeper drank like fury, and
his passages were always cobwebby,--and found him at last, with books
turned down all over the room, and heaps of torn paper on the floor,
and telegrams and newspapers littered about, and empty coffee-cups and
half-eaten bits of toast on the desk and the mantel. You'd see his back
humped up, and his hair would be sticking out quite straight between
the collar of that dressing-gown thing and the edge of the skull-cap.

"'A moment!' he would say. 'A moment!' over his shoulder. 'The _mot
juste_, you know, Ted, _le mot juste_. Righteous thought righteously
expressed--Aah!--concatenation. And now, Ted,' he'd say, spinning round
in his study chair, 'how's Young England?' That was his silly name for
me.

"Well, that was my uncle, and that was how he talked--to me, at
anyrate. With others about he seemed a bit shy. And he not only talked
to me, but he gave me his books, books of six hundred pages or so,
with cock-eyed headings, 'The Shrieking Sisterhood,' 'The Behemoth of
Bigotry,' 'Crucibles and Cullenders,' and so on. All very strong, and
none of them original. The very last time but one that I saw him he
gave me a book. He was feeling ill even then, and his hand shook and he
was despondent. I noticed it because I was naturally on the look-out
for those little symptoms. 'My last book, Ted,' he said. 'My last book,
my boy; my last word to the deaf and hardened nations;' and I'm hanged
if a tear didn't go rolling down his yellow old cheek. He was regular
crying because it was so nearly over, and he hadn't only written about
fifty-three books of rubbish. 'I've sometimes thought, Ted'--he said,
and stopped.

"'Perhaps I've been a bit hasty and angry with this stiff-necked
generation. A little more sweetness, perhaps, and a little less
blinding light. I've sometimes thought--I might have swayed them. But
I've done my best, Ted.'

"And then, with a burst, for the first and last time in his life
he owned himself a failure. It showed he was really ill. He seemed
to think for a minute, and then he spoke quietly and low, as sane
and sober as I am now. 'I've been a fool, Ted,' he said. 'I've been
flapping nonsense all my life. Only He who readeth the heart knows
whether this is anything more than vanity. Ted, I don't. But He knows,
He knows, and if I have done foolishly and vainly, in my heart--in my
heart'--

"Just like that he spoke, repeating himself, and he stopped quite short
and handed the book to me, trembling. Then the old shine came back into
his eye. I remember it all fairly well, because I repeated it and acted
it to my old mother when I got home, to cheer her up a bit. 'Take this
book and read it,' he said. 'It's my last word, my very last word. I've
left all my property to you, Ted, and may you use it better than I have
done.' And then he fell a-coughing.

"I remember that quite well even now, and how I went home cock-a-hoop,
and how he was in bed the next time I called. The housekeeper was
downstairs drunk, and I fooled about--as a young man will--with the
girl in the passage before I went to him. He was sinking fast. But even
then his vanity clung to him.

"'Have you read it?' he whispered.

"'Sat up all night reading it,' I said in his ear to cheer him. 'It's
the last,' said I, and then, with a memory of some poetry or other in
my head, 'but it's the bravest and best.'

"He smiled a little and tried to squeeze my hand as a woman might do,
and left off squeezing in the middle, and lay still. 'The bravest and
the best,' said I again, seeing it pleased him. But he didn't answer.
I heard the girl giggle outside the door, for occasionally we'd had
just a bit of innocent laughter, you know, at his ways. I looked at
his face, and his eyes were closed, and it was just as if somebody had
punched in his nose on either side. But he was still smiling. It's
queer to think of--he lay dead, lay dead there, an utter failure, with
the smile of success on his face.

"That was the end of my uncle. You can imagine me and my mother saw
that he had a decent funeral. Then, of course, came the hunt for the
will. We began decent and respectful at first, and before the day was
out we were ripping chairs, and smashing bureau panels, and sounding
walls. Every hour we expected those others to come in. We asked the
housekeeper, and found she'd actually witnessed a will--on an ordinary
half-sheet of notepaper it was written, and very short, she said--not
a month ago. The other witness was the gardener, and he bore her out
word for word. But I'm hanged if there was that or any other will to
be found. The way my mother talked must have made him turn in his
grave. At last a lawyer at Reigate sprang one on us that had been made
years ago during some temporary quarrel with my mother. I'm blest if
that wasn't the only will to be discovered anywhere, and it left every
penny he possessed to that 'Take 'im away' youngster of his second
cousin's--a chap who'd never had to stand his talking not for one
afternoon of his life."

The man with the glass eye stopped.

"I thought you said"--I began.

"Half a minute," said the man with the glass eye. "_I_ had to wait
for the end of the story till this very morning, and I was a blessed
sight more interested than you are. You just wait a bit too. They
executed the will, and the other chap inherited, and directly he was
one-and-twenty he began to blew it. How he did blew it, to be sure! He
bet, he drank, he got in the papers for this and that. I tell you, it
makes me wriggle to think of the times he had. He blewed every ha'penny
of it before he was thirty, and the last I heard of him was--Holloway!
Three years ago.

"Well, I naturally fell on hard times, because, as you see, the only
trade I knew was legacy-cadging. All my plans were waiting over to
begin, so to speak, when the old chap died. I've had my ups and downs
since then. Just now it's a period of depression. I tell you frankly,
I'm on the look-out for help. I was hunting round my room to find
something to raise a bit on for immediate necessities, and the sight
of all those presentation volumes--no one will buy them, not to wrap
butter in, even--well, they annoyed me. I'd promised him not to part
with them, and I never kept a promise easier. I let out at them with my
boot, and sent them shooting across the room. One lifted at the kick,
and spun through the air. And out of it flapped--You guess?

"It was the will. He'd given it me himself in that very last volume of
all."

He folded his arms on the table, and looked sadly with the active eye
at his empty tankard. He shook his head slowly, and said softly, "I'd
never _opened_ the book, much more cut a page!" Then he looked up, with
a bitter laugh, for my sympathy. "Fancy hiding it there! Eigh? Of all
places."

He began to fish absently for a dead fly with his finger. "It just
shows you the vanity of authors," he said, looking up at me. "It wasn't
no trick of his. He'd meant perfectly fair. He'd really thought I was
really going home to read that blessed book of his through. But it
shows you, don't it?"--his eye went down to the tankard again,--"It
shows you, too, how we poor human beings fail to understand one
another."

But there was no misunderstanding the eloquent thirst of his eye.
He accepted with ill-feigned surprise. He said, in the usual subtle
formula, that he didn't mind if he did.



THE SAD STORY OF A DRAMATIC CRITIC


I was--you shall hear immediately why I am not now--Egbert Craddock
Cummins. The name remains. I am still (Heaven help me!) Dramatic Critic
to the _Fiery Cross_. What I shall be in a little while I do not know.
I write in great trouble and confusion of mind. I will do what I can
to make myself clear in the face of terrible difficulties. You must
bear with me a little. When a man is rapidly losing his own identity,
he naturally finds a difficulty in expressing himself. I will make it
perfectly plain in a minute, when once I get my grip upon the story.
Let me see--where _am_ I? I wish I knew. Ah, I have it! Dead self!
Egbert Craddock Cummins!

In the past I should have disliked writing anything quite so full of
"I" as this story must be. It is full of "I's" before and behind, like
the beast in Revelation--the one with a head like a calf, I am afraid.
But my tastes have changed since I became a Dramatic Critic and studied
the masters--G.R.S., G.B.S., G.A.S., and the others. Everything has
changed since then. At least the story is about myself--so that there
is some excuse for me. And it is really not egotism, because, as I
say, since those days my identity has undergone an entire alteration.

That past!... I was--in those days--rather a nice fellow, rather
shy--taste for grey in my clothes, weedy little moustache, face
"interesting," slight stutter which I had caught in early life from
a schoolfellow. Engaged to a very nice girl, named Delia. Fairly
new, she was--cigarettes--liked me because I was human and original.
Considered I was like Lamb--on the strength of the stutter, I believe.
Father, an eminent authority on postage stamps. She read a great
deal in the British Museum. (A perfect pairing ground for literary
people, that British Museum--you should read George Egerton and Justin
Huntly M'Carthy and Gissing and the rest of them.) We loved in our
intellectual way, and shared the brightest hopes. (All gone now.) And
her father liked me because I seemed honestly eager to hear about
stamps. She had no mother. Indeed, I had the happiest prospects a
young man could have. I never went to theatres in those days. My Aunt
Charlotte before she died had told me not to.

Then Barnaby, the editor of the _Fiery Cross_, made me--in spite
of my spasmodic efforts to escape--Dramatic Critic. He is a fine,
healthy man, Barnaby, with an enormous head of frizzy black hair and
a convincing manner, and he caught me on the staircase going to see
Wembly. He had been dining, and was more than usually buoyant. "Hullo,
Cummins!" he said. "The very man I want!" He caught me by the shoulder
or the collar or something, ran me up the little passage, and flung me
over the waste-paper basket into the arm-chair in his office. "Pray be
seated," he said, as he did so. Then he ran across the room and came
back with some pink and yellow tickets and pushed them into my hand.
"Opera Comique," he said, "Thursday; Friday, the Surrey; Saturday, the
Frivolity. That's all, I think."

"But"--I began.

"Glad you're free," he said, snatching some proofs off the desk and
beginning to read.

"I don't quite understand," I said.

"_Eigh?_" he said, at the top of his voice, as though he thought I had
gone, and was startled at my remark.

"Do you want me to criticise these plays?"

"Do something with 'em.... Did you think it was a treat?"

"But I can't."

"Did you call me a fool?"

"Well, I've never been to a theatre in my life."

"Virgin soil."

"But I don't know anything about it, you know."

"That's just it. New view. No habits. No _clichés_ in stock. Ours is a
live paper, not a bag of tricks. None of your clockwork professional
journalism in this office. And I can rely on your integrity"--

"But I've conscientious scruples"--

He caught me up suddenly and put me outside his door. "Go and talk to
Wembly about that," he said. "He'll explain."

As I stood perplexed, he opened the door again, said, "I forgot this,"
thrust a fourth ticket into my hand (it was for that night--in twenty
minutes' time), and slammed the door upon me. His expression was quite
calm, but I caught his eye.

I hate arguments. I decided that I would take his hint and become (to
my own destruction) a Dramatic Critic. I walked slowly down the passage
to Wembly. That Barnaby has a remarkably persuasive way. He has made
few suggestions during our very pleasant intercourse of four years
that he has not ultimately won me round to adopting. It may be, of
course, that I am of a yielding disposition; certainly I am too apt to
take my colour from my circumstances. It is, indeed, to my unfortunate
susceptibility to vivid impressions that all my misfortunes are due.
I have already alluded to the slight stammer I had acquired from a
schoolfellow in my youth. However, this is a digression.... I went home
in a cab to dress.

I will not trouble the reader with my thoughts about the first-night
audience, strange assembly as it is,--those I reserve for my
Memoirs,--nor the humiliating story of how I got lost during the
_entr'acte_ in a lot of red plush passages, and saw the third act from
the gallery. The only point upon which I wish to lay stress was the
remarkable effect of the acting upon me. You must remember I had lived
a quiet and retired life, and had never been to the theatre before,
and that I am extremely sensitive to vivid impressions. At the risk of
repetition I must insist upon these points.

The first effect was a profound amazement, not untinctured by alarm.
The phenomenal unnaturalness of acting is a thing discounted in the
minds of most people by early visits to the theatre. They get used to
the fantastic gestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings,
melodious snortings, agonising yelps, lip-gnawings, glaring horrors,
and other emotional symbolism of the stage. It becomes at last a mere
deaf-and-dumb language to them, which they read intelligently _pari
passu_ with the hearing of the dialogue. But all this was new to me.
The thing was called a modern comedy, the people were supposed to be
English and were dressed like fashionable Americans of the current
epoch, and I fell into the natural error of supposing that the actors
were trying to represent human beings. I looked round on my first-night
audience with a kind of wonder, discovered--as all new Dramatic Critics
do--that it rested with me to reform the Drama, and, after a supper
choked with emotion, went off to the office to write a column, piebald
with "new paragraphs" (as all my stuff is--it fills out so) and purple
with indignation. Barnaby was delighted.

But I could not sleep that night. I dreamt of actors--actors glaring,
actors smiting their chests, actors flinging out a handful of extended
fingers, actors smiling bitterly, laughing despairingly, falling
hopelessly, dying idiotically. I got up at eleven with a slight
headache, read my notice in the _Fiery Cross_, breakfasted, and went
back to my room to shave. (It's my habit to do so.) Then an odd thing
happened. I could not find my razor. Suddenly it occurred to me that I
had not unpacked it the day before.

"Ah!" said I, in front of the looking-glass. Then "Hullo!"

Quite involuntarily, when I had thought of my portmanteau, I had flung
up the left arm (fingers fully extended) and clutched at my diaphragm
with my right hand. I am an acutely self-conscious man at all times.
The gesture struck me as absolutely novel for me. I repeated it, for
my own satisfaction. "Odd!" Then (rather puzzled) I turned to my
portmanteau.

After shaving, my mind reverted to the acting I had seen, and I
entertained myself before the cheval glass with some imitations of
Jafferay's more exaggerated gestures. "Really, one might think it a
disease," I said--"Stage-Walkitis!" (There's many a truth spoken in
jest.) Then, if I remember rightly, I went off to see Wembly, and
afterwards lunched at the British Museum with Delia. We actually spoke
about our prospects, in the light of my new appointment.

But that appointment was the beginning of my downfall. From that day
I necessarily became a persistent theatre-goer, and almost insensibly
I began to change. The next thing I noticed after the gesture about
the razor, was to catch myself bowing ineffably when I met Delia, and
stooping in an old-fashioned, courtly way over her hand. Directly I
caught myself, I straightened myself up and became very uncomfortable.
I remember she looked at me curiously. Then, in the office, I found
myself doing "nervous business," fingers on teeth, when Barnaby asked
me a question I could not very well answer. Then, in some trifling
difference with Delia, I clasped my hand to my brow. And I pranced
through my social transactions at times singularly like an actor! I
tried not to--no one could be more keenly alive to the arrant absurdity
of the histrionic bearing. And I did!

It began to dawn on me what it all meant. The acting, I saw, was too
much for my delicately-strung nervous system. I have always, I know,
been too amenable to the suggestions of my circumstances. Night after
night of concentrated attention to the conventional attitudes and
intonation of the English stage was gradually affecting my speech and
carriage. I was giving way to the infection of sympathetic imitation.
Night after night my plastic nervous system took the print of some new
amazing gesture, some new emotional exaggeration--and retained it. A
kind of theatrical veneer threatened to plate over and obliterate my
private individuality altogether. I saw myself in a kind of vision.
Sitting by myself one night, my new self seemed to me to glide,
posing and gesticulating, across the room. He clutched his throat, he
opened his fingers, he opened his legs in walking like a high-class
marionette. He went from attitude to attitude. He might have been
clockwork. Directly after this I made an ineffectual attempt to
resign my theatrical work. But Barnaby persisted in talking about the
Polywhiddle Divorce all the time I was with him, and I could get no
opportunity of saying what I wished.

And then Delia's manner began to change towards me. The ease of our
intercourse vanished. I felt she was learning to dislike me. I
grinned, and capered, and scowled, and posed at her in a thousand ways,
and knew--with what a voiceless agony!--that I did it all the time. I
tried to resign again, and Barnaby talked about "X" and "Z" and "Y" in
the _New Review_, and gave me a strong cigar to smoke, and so routed
me. And then I walked up the Assyrian Gallery in the manner of Irving
to meet Delia, and so precipitated the crisis.

"Ah!--_Dear!_" I said, with more sprightliness and emotion in my voice
than had ever been in all my life before I became (to my own undoing) a
Dramatic Critic.

She held out her hand rather coldly, scrutinising my face as she did
so. I prepared, with a new-won grace, to walk by her side.

"Egbert," she said, standing still, and thought. Then she looked at me.

I said nothing. I felt what was coming. I tried to be the old Egbert
Craddock Cummins of shambling gait and stammering sincerity, whom she
loved, but I felt even as I did so that I was a new thing, a thing
of surging emotions and mysterious fixity--like no human being that
ever lived, except upon the stage. "Egbert," she said, "you are not
yourself."

"Ah!" Involuntarily I clutched my diaphragm and averted my head (as is
the way with them).

"There!" she said.

"_What do you mean?_" I said, whispering in vocal italics--you know
how they do it--turning on her, perplexity on face, right hand down,
left on brow. I knew quite well what she meant. I knew quite well the
dramatic unreality of my behaviour. But I struggled against it in vain.
"What do you mean?" I said, and, in a kind of hoarse whisper, "I don't
understand!"

She really looked as though she disliked me. "What do you keep on
posing for?" she said. "I don't like it. You didn't use to."

"Didn't use to!" I said slowly, repeating this twice. I glared up and
down the gallery, with short, sharp glances. "We are alone," I said
swiftly. "_Listen!_" I poked my forefinger towards her, and glared at
her. "I am under a curse."

I saw her hand tighten upon her sunshade. "You are under some bad
influence or other," said Delia. "You should give it up. I never knew
anyone change as you have done."

"Delia!" I said, lapsing into the pathetic. "Pity me. Augh! Delia!
_Pit_--y me!"

She eyed me critically. "_Why_ you keep playing the fool like this I
don't know," she said. "Anyhow, I really cannot go about with a man who
behaves as you do. You made us both ridiculous on Wednesday. Frankly,
I dislike you, as you are now. I met you here to tell you so--as it's
about the only place where we can be sure of being alone together"--

"Delia!" said I, with intensity, knuckles of clenched hands white. "You
don't mean"--

"I do," said Delia. "A woman's lot is sad enough at the best of times.
But with you"--

I clapped my hand on my brow.

"So, good-bye," said Delia, without emotion.

"Oh, Delia!" I said. "Not _this_?"

"Good-bye, Mr. Cummins," she said.

By a violent effort I controlled myself and touched her hand. I tried
to say some word of explanation to her. She looked into my working face
and winced. "I _must_ do it," she said hopelessly. Then she turned from
me and began walking rapidly down the gallery.

Heavens! How the human agony cried within me! I loved Delia. But
nothing found expression--I was already too deeply crusted with my
acquired self.

"Good-baye!" I said at last, watching her retreating figure. How I
hated myself for doing it! After she had vanished, I repeated in a
dreamy way, "Good-baye!" looking hopelessly round me. Then, with a kind
of heart-broken cry, I shook my clenched fists in the air, staggered to
the pedestal of a winged figure, buried my face in my arms, and made my
shoulders heave. Something within me said "Ass!" as I did so. (I had
the greatest difficulty in persuading the Museum policeman, who was
attracted by my cry of agony, that I was not intoxicated, but merely
suffering from a transient indisposition.)

But even this great sorrow has not availed to save me from my fate.
I see it, everyone sees it; I grow more "theatrical" every day.
And no one could be more painfully aware of the pungent silliness
of theatrical ways. The quiet, nervous, but pleasing E. C. Cummins
vanishes. I cannot save him. I am driven like a dead leaf before the
winds of March. My tailor even enters into the spirit of my disorder.
He has a peculiar sense of what is fitting. I tried to get a dull grey
suit from him this spring, and he foisted a brilliant blue upon me,
and I see he has put braid down the sides of my new dress trousers. My
hairdresser insists upon giving me a "wave."

I am beginning to associate with actors. I detest them, but it is only
in their company that I can feel I am not glaringly conspicuous. Their
talk infects me. I notice a growing tendency to dramatic brevity, to
dashes and pauses in my style, to a punctuation of bows and attitudes.
Barnaby has remarked it too. I offended Wembly by calling him "Dear
Boy" yesterday. I dread the end, but I cannot escape from it.

The fact is, I am being obliterated. Living a grey, retired life all
my youth, I came to the theatre a delicate sketch of a man, a thing
of tints and faint lines. Their gorgeous colouring has effaced me
altogether. People forget how much mode of expression, method of
movement, are a matter of contagion. I have heard of stage-struck
people before, and thought it a figure of speech. I spoke of it
jestingly, as a disease. It is no jest. It _is_ a disease. And I have
got it bad! Deep down within me I protest against the wrong done to my
personality--unavailingly. For three hours or more a week I have to go
and concentrate my attention on some fresh play, and the suggestions
of the drama strengthen their awful hold upon me. My manners grow so
flamboyant, my passions so professional, that I doubt, as I said at the
outset, whether it is really myself that behaves in such a manner. I
feel merely the core to this dramatic casing, that grows thicker and
presses upon me--me and mine. I feel like King John's abbot in his cope
of lead.

I doubt, indeed, whether I should not abandon the struggle
altogether--leave this sad world of ordinary life for which I am
so ill-fitted, abandon the name of Cummins for some professional
pseudonym, complete my self-effacement, and--a thing of tricks and
tatters, of posing and pretence--go upon the stage. It seems my only
resort--"to hold the mirror up to Nature." For in the ordinary life,
I will confess, no one now seems to regard me as both sane and sober.
Only upon the stage, I feel convinced, will people take me seriously.
That will be the end of it. I _know_ that will be the end of it. And
yet ... I will frankly confess ... all that marks off your actor
from your common man ... I _detest_. I am still largely of my Aunt
Charlotte's opinion, that playacting is unworthy of a pure-minded man's
attention, much more participation. Even now I would resign my dramatic
criticism and try a rest. Only I can't get hold of Barnaby. Letters
of resignation he never notices. He says it is against the etiquette
of journalism to write to your Editor. And when I go to see him, he
gives me another big cigar and some strong whisky and soda, and then
something always turns up to prevent my explanation.



A SLIP UNDER THE MICROSCOPE


Outside the laboratory windows was a watery-grey fog, and within
a close warmth and the yellow light of the green-shaded gas lamps
that stood two to each table down its narrow length. On each table
stood a couple of glass jars containing the mangled vestiges of the
crayfish, mussels, frogs, and guineapigs, upon which the students had
been working, and down the side of the room, facing the windows, were
shelves bearing bleached dissections in spirits, surmounted by a row
of beautifully executed anatomical drawings in whitewood frames and
overhanging a row of cubical lockers. All the doors of the laboratory
were panelled with blackboard, and on these were the half-erased
diagrams of the previous day's work. The laboratory was empty, save for
the demonstrator, who sat near the preparation-room door, and silent,
save for a low, continuous murmur, and the clicking of the rocker
microtome at which he was working. But scattered about the room were
traces of numerous students: hand-bags, polished boxes of instruments,
in one place a large drawing covered by newspaper, and in another a
prettily bound copy of _News from Nowhere_, a book oddly at variance
with its surroundings. These things had been put down hastily as the
students had arrived and hurried at once to secure their seats in the
adjacent lecture theatre. Deadened by the closed door, the measured
accents of the professor sounded as a featureless muttering.

Presently, faint through the closed windows came the sound of the
Oratory clock striking the hour of eleven. The clicking of the
microtome ceased, and the demonstrator looked at his watch, rose,
thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked slowly down the
laboratory towards the lecture theatre door. He stood listening for a
moment, and then his eye fell on the little volume by William Morris.
He picked it up, glanced at the title, smiled, opened it, looked at the
name on the fly-leaf, ran the leaves through with his hand, and put
it down. Almost immediately the even murmur of the lecturer ceased,
there was a sudden burst of pencils rattling on the desks in the
lecture theatre, a stirring, a scraping of feet, and a number of voices
speaking together. Then a firm footfall approached the door, which
began to open, and stood ajar, as some indistinctly heard question
arrested the new-comer.

The demonstrator turned, walked slowly back past the microtome, and
left the laboratory by the preparation-room door. As he did so,
first one, and then several students carrying notebooks entered the
laboratory from the lecture theatre, and distributed themselves among
the little tables, or stood in a group about the doorway. They were an
exceptionally heterogeneous assembly, for while Oxford and Cambridge
still recoil from the blushing prospect of mixed classes, the College
of Science anticipated America in the matter years ago--mixed socially,
too, for the prestige of the College is high, and its scholarships,
free of any age limit, dredge deeper even than do those of the Scotch
universities. The class numbered one-and-twenty, but some remained in
the theatre questioning the professor, copying the blackboard diagrams
before they were washed off, or examining the special specimens he had
produced to illustrate the day's teaching. Of the nine who had come
into the laboratory three were girls, one of whom, a little fair woman,
wearing spectacles and dressed in greyish-green, was peering out of
the window at the fog, while the other two, both wholesome-looking,
plain-faced schoolgirls, unrolled and put on the brown holland aprons
they wore while dissecting. Of the men, two went down the laboratory
to their places, one a pallid, dark-bearded man, who had once been
a tailor; the other a pleasant-featured, ruddy young man of twenty,
dressed in a well-fitting brown suit; young Wedderburn, the son of
Wedderburn the eye specialist. The others formed a little knot near
the theatre door. One of these, a dwarfed, spectacled figure, with
a hunch back, sat on a bent wood stool; two others, one a short,
dark youngster, and the other a flaxen-haired, reddish-complexioned
young man, stood leaning side by side against the slate sink, while
the fourth stood facing them, and maintained the larger share of the
conversation.

This last person was named Hill. He was a sturdily built young fellow,
of the same age as Wedderburn; he had a white face, dark grey eyes,
hair of an indeterminate colour, and prominent, irregular features.
He talked rather louder than was needful, and thrust his hands deeply
into his pockets. His collar was frayed and blue with the starch of a
careless laundress, his clothes were evidently readymade, and there
was a patch on the side of his boot near the toe. And as he talked
or listened to the others, he glanced now and again towards the
lecture theatre door. They were discussing the depressing peroration
of the lecture they had just heard, the last lecture it was in the
introductory course in zoology. "From ovum to ovum is the goal of the
higher vertebrata," the lecturer had said in his melancholy tones,
and so had neatly rounded off the sketch of comparative anatomy he
had been developing. The spectacled hunchback had repeated it, with
noisy appreciation, had tossed it towards the fair-haired student with
an evident provocation, and had started one of those vague, rambling
discussions on generalities, so unaccountably dear to the student mind
all the world over.

"That is our goal, perhaps--I admit it--as far as science goes," said
the fair-haired student, rising to the challenge. "But there are things
above science."

"Science," said Hill confidently, "is systematic knowledge. Ideas that
don't come into the system--must anyhow--be loose ideas." He was not
quite sure whether that was a clever saying or a fatuity until his
hearers took it seriously.

"The thing I cannot understand," said the hunchback, at large, "is
whether Hill is a materialist or not."

"There is one thing above matter," said Hill promptly, feeling he had
a better thing this time, aware, too, of someone in the doorway behind
him, and raising his voice a trifle for her benefit, "and that is, the
delusion that there is something above matter."

"So we have your gospel at last," said the fair student. "It's all
a delusion, is it? All our aspirations to lead something more than
dogs' lives, all our work for anything beyond ourselves. But see how
inconsistent you are. Your socialism, for instance. Why do you trouble
about the interests of the race? Why do you concern yourself about
the beggar in the gutter? Why are you bothering yourself to lend that
book"--he indicated William Morris by a movement of the head--"to
everyone in the lab.?"

"Girl," said the hunchback indistinctly, and glanced guiltily over his
shoulder.

The girl in brown, with the brown eyes, had come into the laboratory,
and stood on the other side of the table behind him, with her rolled-up
apron in one hand, looking over her shoulder, listening to the
discussion. She did not notice the hunchback, because she was glancing
from Hill to his interlocutor. Hill's consciousness of her presence
betrayed itself to her only in his studious ignorance of the fact; but
she understood that, and it pleased her. "I see no reason," said he,
"why a man should live like a brute because he knows of nothing beyond
matter, and does not expect to exist a hundred years hence."

"Why shouldn't he?" said the fair-haired student.

"Why _should_ he?" said Hill.

"What inducement has he?"

"That's the way with all you religious people. It's all a business of
inducements. Cannot a man seek after righteousness for righteousness'
sake?"

There was a pause. The fair man answered, with a kind of vocal padding,
"But--you see--inducement--when I said inducement," to gain time. And
then the hunchback came to his rescue and inserted a question. He was
a terrible person in the debating society with his questions, and they
invariably took one form--a demand for a definition. "What's your
definition of righteousness?" said the hunchback at this stage.

Hill experienced a sudden loss of complacency at this question,
but even as it was asked, relief came in the person of Brooks, the
laboratory attendant, who entered by the preparation-room door,
carrying a number of freshly killed guineapigs by their hind legs.
"This is the last batch of material this session," said the youngster,
who had not previously spoken. Brooks advanced up the laboratory,
smacking down a couple of guineapigs at each table. The rest of the
class, scenting the prey from afar, came crowding in by the lecture
theatre door, and the discussion perished abruptly as the students who
were not already in their places hurried to them to secure the choice
of a specimen. There was a noise of keys rattling on split rings as
lockers were opened and dissecting instruments taken out. Hill was
already standing by his table, and his box of scalpels was sticking out
of his pocket. The girl in brown came a step towards him, and, leaning
over his table, said softly, "Did you see that I returned your book,
Mr. Hill?"

During the whole scene she and the book had been vividly present in his
consciousness; but he made a clumsy pretence of looking at the book and
seeing it for the first time. "Oh yes," he said, taking it up. "I see.
Did you like it?"

"I want to ask you some questions about it--some time."

"Certainly," said Hill. "I shall be glad." He stopped awkwardly. "You
liked it?" he said.

"It's a wonderful book. Only some things I don't understand."

Then suddenly the laboratory was hushed by a curious braying noise. It
was the demonstrator. He was at the blackboard ready to begin the day's
instruction, and it was his custom to demand silence by a sound midway
between the "Er" of common intercourse and the blast of a trumpet. The
girl in brown slipped back to her place: it was immediately in front
of Hill's, and Hill, forgetting her forthwith, took a notebook out of
the drawer of his table, turned over its leaves hastily, drew a stumpy
pencil from his pocket, and prepared to make a copious note of the
coming demonstration. For demonstrations and lectures are the sacred
text of the College students. Books, saving only the Professor's own,
you may--it is even expedient to--ignore.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hill was the son of a Landport cobbler, and had been hooked by a chance
blue paper the authorities had thrown out to the Landport Technical
College. He kept himself in London on his allowance of a guinea a
week, and found that, with proper care, this also covered his clothing
allowance, an occasional waterproof collar, that is; and ink and
needles and cotton, and such-like necessaries for a man about town.
This was his first year and his first session, but the brown old man
in Landport had already got himself detested in many public-houses by
boasting of his son, "the Professor." Hill was a vigorous youngster,
with a serene contempt for the clergy of all denominations, and a
fine ambition to reconstruct the world. He regarded his scholarship
as a brilliant opportunity. He had begun to read at seven, and had
read steadily whatever came in his way, good or bad, since then. His
worldly experience had been limited to the island of Portsea, and
acquired chiefly in the wholesale boot factory in which he had worked
by day, after passing the seventh standard of the Board school. He had
a considerable gift of speech, as the College Debating Society, which
met amidst the crushing machines and mine models in the metallurgical
theatre downstairs, already recognised--recognised by a violent
battering of desks whenever he rose. And he was just at that fine
emotional age when life opens at the end of a narrow pass like a broad
valley at one's feet, full of the promise of wonderful discoveries and
tremendous achievements. And his own limitations, save that he knew
that he knew neither Latin nor French, were all unknown to him.

At first his interest had been divided pretty equally between his
biological work at the College and social and theological theorising,
an employment which he took in deadly earnest. Of a night, when the
big museum library was not open, he would sit on the bed of his room
in Chelsea with his coat and a muffler on, and write out the lecture
notes and revise his dissection memoranda, until Thorpe called him
out by a whistle,--the landlady objected to open the door to attic
visitors,--and then the two would go prowling about the shadowy, shiny,
gas-lit streets, talking, very much in the fashion of the sample
just given, of the God Idea, and Righteousness, and Carlyle, and the
Reorganisation of Society. And, in the midst of it all, Hill, arguing
not only for Thorpe, but for the casual passer-by, would lose the
thread of his argument glancing at some pretty painted face that looked
meaningly at him as he passed. Science and Righteousness! But once or
twice lately there had been signs that a third interest was creeping
into his life, and he had found his attention wandering from the fate
of the mesoblastic somites or the probable meaning of the blastopore,
to the thought of the girl with the brown eyes who sat at the table
before him.

She was a paying student; she descended inconceivable social altitudes
to speak to him. At the thought of the education she must have had,
and the accomplishments she must possess, the soul of Hill became
abject within him. She had spoken to him first over a difficulty about
the alisphenoid of a rabbit's skull, and he had found that, in biology
at least, he had no reason for self-abasement. And from that, after
the manner of young people starting from any starting-point, they got
to generalities, and while Hill attacked her upon the question of
socialism,--some instinct told him to spare her a direct assault upon
her religion,--she was gathering resolution to undertake what she told
herself was his æsthetic education. She was a year or two older than
he, though the thought never occurred to him. The loan of _News from
Nowhere_ was the beginning of a series of cross loans. Upon some absurd
first principle of his, Hill had never "wasted time" upon poetry,
and it seemed an appalling deficiency to her. One day in the lunch
hour, when she chanced upon him alone in the little museum where the
skeletons were arranged, shamefully eating the bun that constituted
his midday meal, she retreated, and returned to lend him, with a
slightly furtive air, a volume of Browning. He stood sideways towards
her and took the book rather clumsily, because he was holding the bun
in the other hand. And in the retrospect his voice lacked the cheerful
clearness he could have wished.

That occurred after the examination in comparative anatomy, on the
day before the College turned out its students, and was carefully
locked up by the officials, for the Christmas holidays. The excitement
of cramming for the first trial of strength had for a little while
dominated Hill, to the exclusion of his other interests. In the
forecasts of the result in which everyone indulged, he was surprised
to find that no one regarded him as a possible competitor for the
Harvey Commemoration Medal, of which this and the two subsequent
examinations disposed. It was about this time that Wedderburn, who
so far had lived inconspicuously on the uttermost margin of Hill's
perceptions, began to take on the appearance of an obstacle. By a
mutual agreement, the nocturnal prowlings with Thorpe ceased for the
three weeks before the examination, and his landlady pointed out that
she really could not supply so much lamp oil at the price. He walked to
and fro from the College with little slips of mnemonics in his hand,
lists of crayfish appendages, rabbits' skull-bones, and vertebrate
nerves, for example, and became a positive nuisance to foot passengers
in the opposite direction.

But, by a natural reaction, Poetry and the girl with the brown eyes
ruled the Christmas holiday. The pending results of the examination
became such a secondary consideration that Hill marvelled at his
father's excitement. Even had he wished it, there was no comparative
anatomy to read in Landport, and he was too poor to buy books, but the
stock of poets in the library was extensive, and Hill's attack was
magnificently sustained. He saturated himself with the fluent numbers
of Longfellow and Tennyson, and fortified himself with Shakespeare;
found a kindred soul in Pope, and a master in Shelley, and heard and
fled the siren voices of Eliza Cook and Mrs. Hemans. But he read no
more Browning, because he hoped for the loan of other volumes from Miss
Haysman when he returned to London.

He walked from his lodgings to the College with that volume of Browning
in his shiny black bag, and his mind teeming with the finest general
propositions about poetry. Indeed, he framed first this little speech
and then that with which to grace the return. The morning was an
exceptionally pleasant one for London; there was a clear, hard frost
and undeniable blue in the sky, a thin haze softened every outline, and
warm shafts of sunlight struck between the house blocks and turned the
sunny side of the street to amber and gold. In the hall of the College
he pulled off his glove and signed his name with fingers so stiff with
cold that the characteristic dash under the signature he cultivated
became a quivering line. He imagined Miss Haysman about him everywhere.
He turned at the staircase, and there, below, he saw a crowd struggling
at the foot of the notice-board. This, possibly, was the biology list.
He forgot Browning and Miss Haysman for the moment, and joined the
scrimmage. And at last, with his cheek flattened against the sleeve of
the man on the step above him, he read the list--

                      CLASS I

              H. J. Somers Wedderburn
              William Hill

and thereafter followed a second class that is outside our present
sympathies. It was characteristic that he did not trouble to look for
Thorpe on the physics list, but backed out of the struggle at once, and
in a curious emotional state between pride over common second-class
humanity and acute disappointment at Wedderburn's success, went on his
way upstairs. At the top, as he was hanging up his coat in the passage,
the zoological demonstrator, a young man from Oxford, who secretly
regarded him as a blatant "mugger" of the very worst type, offered his
heartiest congratulations.

At the laboratory door Hill stopped for a second to get his breath,
and then entered. He looked straight up the laboratory and saw all
five girl students grouped in their places, and Wedderburn, the once
retiring Wedderburn, leaning rather gracefully against the window,
playing with the blind tassel and talking, apparently, to the five
of them. Now, Hill could talk bravely enough and even overbearingly
to one girl, and he could have made a speech to a roomful of girls,
but this business of standing at ease and appreciating, fencing, and
returning quick remarks round a group was, he knew, altogether beyond
him. Coming up the staircase his feelings for Wedderburn had been
generous, a certain admiration perhaps, a willingness to shake his hand
conspicuously and heartily as one who had fought but the first round.
But before Christmas Wedderburn had never gone up to that end of the
room to talk. In a flash Hill's mist of vague excitement condensed
abruptly to a vivid dislike of Wedderburn. Possibly his expression
changed. As he came up to his place, Wedderburn nodded carelessly to
him, and the others glanced round. Miss Haysman looked at him and away
again, the faintest touch of her eyes. "I can't agree with you, Mr.
Wedderburn," she said.

"I must congratulate you on your first class, Mr. Hill," said the
spectacled girl in green, turning round and beaming at him.

"It's nothing," said Hill, staring at Wedderburn and Miss Haysman
talking together, and eager to hear what they talked about.

"We poor folks in the second class don't think so," said the girl in
spectacles.

What was it Wedderburn was saying? Something about William Morris!
Hill did not answer the girl in spectacles, and the smile died out of
his face. He could not hear, and failed to see how he could "cut in."
Confound Wedderburn! He sat down, opened his bag, hesitated whether
to return the volume of Browning forthwith, in the sight of all, and
instead drew out his new notebooks for the short course in elementary
botany that was now beginning, and which would terminate in February.
As he did so, a fat, heavy man, with a white face and pale grey eyes,
Bindon, the professor of botany, who came up from Kew for January and
February, came in by the lecture theatre door, and passed, rubbing his
hands together and smiling, in silent affability down the laboratory.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the subsequent six weeks Hill experienced some very rapid and
curiously complex emotional developments. For the most part he had
Wedderburn in focus--a fact that Miss Haysman never suspected. She told
Hill (for in the comparative privacy of the museum she talked a good
deal to him of socialism and Browning and general propositions) that
she had met Wedderburn at the house of some people she knew, and "he's
inherited his cleverness; for his father, you know, is the great eye
specialist."

"_My_ father is a cobbler," said Hill, quite irrelevantly, and
perceived the want of dignity even as he said it. But the gleam of
jealousy did not offend her. She conceived herself the fundamental
source of it. He suffered bitterly from a sense of Wedderburn's
unfairness, and a realisation of his own handicap. Here was this
Wedderburn had picked up a prominent man for a father, and instead
of his losing so many marks on the score of that advantage, it was
counted to him for righteousness! And while Hill had to introduce
himself and talk to Miss Haysman clumsily over mangled guineapigs in
the laboratory, this Wedderburn, in some backstairs way, had access to
her social altitudes, and could converse in a polished argot that Hill
understood perhaps, but felt incapable of speaking. Not, of course,
that he wanted to. Then it seemed to Hill that for Wedderburn to come
there day after day with cuffs unfrayed, neatly tailored, precisely
barbered, quietly perfect, was in itself an ill-bred, sneering sort
of proceeding. Moreover, it was a stealthy thing for Wedderburn to
behave insignificantly for a space, to mock modesty, to lead Hill to
fancy that he himself was beyond dispute the man of the year, and
then suddenly to dart in front of him, and incontinently to swell up
in this fashion. In addition to these things, Wedderburn displayed an
increasing disposition to join in any conversational grouping that
included Miss Haysman, and would venture, and indeed seek occasion, to
pass opinions derogatory to socialism and atheism. He goaded Hill to
incivilities by neat, shallow, and exceedingly effective personalities
about the socialist leaders, until Hill hated Bernard Shaw's graceful
egotisms, William Morris's limited editions and luxurious wall-papers,
and Walter Crane's charmingly absurd ideal working men, about as much
as he hated Wedderburn. The dissertations in the laboratory, that had
been his glory in the previous term, became a danger, degenerated into
inglorious tussles with Wedderburn, and Hill kept to them only out of
an obscure perception that his honour was involved. In the debating
society Hill knew quite clearly that, to a thunderous accompaniment
of banged desks, he could have pulverised Wedderburn. Only Wedderburn
never attended the debating society to be pulverised, because--nauseous
affectation!--he "dined late."

You must not imagine that these things presented themselves in quite
such a crude form to Hill's perception. Hill was a born generaliser.
Wedderburn to him was not so much an individual obstacle as a type,
the salient angle of a class. The economic theories that, after
infinite ferment, had shaped themselves in Hill's mind, became abruptly
concrete at the contact. The world became full of easy-mannered,
graceful, gracefully-dressed, conversationally dexterous, finally
shallow Wedderburns, Bishops Wedderburn, Wedderburn M.P.'s, Professors
Wedderburn, Wedderburn landlords, all with finger-bowl shibboleths and
epigrammatic cities of refuge from a sturdy debater. And everyone
ill-clothed or ill-dressed, from the cobbler to the cab-runner, was a
man and a brother, a fellow-sufferer, to Hill's imagination. So that
he became, as it were, a champion of the fallen and oppressed, albeit
to outward seeming only a self-assertive, ill-mannered young man, and
an unsuccessful champion at that. Again and again a skirmish over the
afternoon tea that the girl students had inaugurated, left Hill with
flushed cheeks and a tattered temper, and the debating society noticed
a new quality of sarcastic bitterness in his speeches.

You will understand now how it was necessary, if only in the interests
of humanity, that Hill should demolish Wedderburn in the forthcoming
examination and outshine him in the eyes of Miss Haysman; and you
will perceive, too, how Miss Haysman fell into some common feminine
misconceptions. The Hill-Wedderburn quarrel, for in his unostentatious
way Wedderburn reciprocated Hill's ill-veiled rivalry, became a tribute
to her indefinable charm; she was the Queen of Beauty in a tournament
of scalpels and stumpy pencils. To her confidential friend's secret
annoyance, it even troubled her conscience, for she was a good girl,
and painfully aware, from Ruskin and contemporary fiction, how entirely
men's activities are determined by women's attitudes. And if Hill never
by any chance mentioned the topic of love to her, she only credited him
with the finer modesty for that omission.

So the time came on for the second examination, and Hill's increasing
pallor confirmed the general rumour that he was working hard. In the
aërated bread shop near South Kensington Station you would see him,
breaking his bun and sipping his milk, with his eyes intent upon a
paper of closely written notes. In his bedroom there were propositions
about buds and stems round his looking-glass, a diagram to catch his
eye, if soap should chance to spare it, above his washing basin.
He missed several meetings of the debating society, but he found
the chance encounters with Miss Haysman in the spacious ways of the
adjacent art museum, or in the little museum at the top of the College,
or in the College corridors, more frequent and very restful. In
particular, they used to meet in a little gallery full of wrought-iron
chests and gates, near the art library, and there Hill used to talk,
under the gentle stimulus of her flattering attention, of Browning and
his personal ambitions. A characteristic she found remarkable in him
was his freedom from avarice. He contemplated quite calmly the prospect
of living all his life on an income below a hundred pounds a year. But
he was determined to be famous, to make, recognisably in his own proper
person, the world a better place to live in. He took Bradlaugh and John
Burns for his leaders and models, poor, even impecunious, great men.
But Miss Haysman thought that such lives were deficient on the æsthetic
side, by which, though she did not know it, she meant good wall-paper
and upholstery, pretty books, tasteful clothes, concerts, and meals
nicely cooked and respectfully served.

At last came the day of the second examination, and the professor of
botany, a fussy, conscientious man, rearranged all the tables in a long
narrow laboratory to prevent copying, and put his demonstrator on a
chair on a table (where he felt, he said, like a Hindoo god), to see
all the cheating, and stuck a notice outside the door, "Door closed,"
for no earthly reason that any human being could discover. And all the
morning from ten till one the quill of Wedderburn shrieked defiance
at Hill's, and the quills of the others chased their leaders in a
tireless pack, and so also it was in the afternoon. Wedderburn was a
little quieter than usual, and Hill's face was hot all day, and his
overcoat bulged with textbooks and notebooks against the last moment's
revision. And the next day, in the morning and in the afternoon, was
the practical examination, when sections had to be cut and slides
identified. In the morning Hill was depressed because he knew he had
cut a thick section, and in the afternoon came the mysterious slip.

It was just the kind of thing that the botanical professor was always
doing. Like the income tax, it offered a premium to the cheat. It was
a preparation under the microscope, a little glass slip, held in its
place on the stage of the instrument by light steel clips, and the
inscription set forth that the slip was not to be moved. Each student
was to go in turn to it, sketch it, write in his book of answers what
he considered it to be, and return to his place. Now, to move such a
slip is a thing one can do by a chance movement of the finger, and in
a fraction of a second. The professor's reason for decreeing that the
slip should not be moved depended on the fact that the object he wanted
identified was characteristic of a certain tree stem. In the position
in which it was placed it was a difficult thing to recognise, but once
the slip was moved so as to bring other parts of the preparation into
view, its nature was obvious enough.

Hill came to this, flushed from a contest with staining re-agents, sat
down on the little stool before the microscope, turned the mirror to
get the best light, and then, out of sheer habit, shifted the slip.
At once he remembered the prohibition, and, with an almost continuous
motion of his hands, moved it back, and sat paralysed with astonishment
at his action.

Then, slowly, he turned his head. The professor was out of the room;
the demonstrator sat aloft on his impromptu rostrum, reading the
_Q. Jour. Mi. Sci._; the rest of the examinees were busy, and with
their backs to him. Should he own up to the accident now? He knew
quite clearly what the thing was. It was a lenticel, a characteristic
preparation from the elder-tree. His eyes roved over his intent
fellow-students, and Wedderburn suddenly glanced over his shoulder at
him with a queer expression in his eyes. The mental excitement that had
kept Hill at an abnormal pitch of vigour these two days gave way to a
curious nervous tension. His book of answers was beside him. He did not
write down what the thing was, but with one eye at the microscope he
began making a hasty sketch of it. His mind was full of this grotesque
puzzle in ethics that had suddenly been sprung upon him. Should he
identify it? or should he leave this question unanswered? In that
case Wedderburn would probably come out first in the second result.
How could he tell now whether he might not have identified the thing
without shifting it? It was possible that Wedderburn had failed to
recognise it, of course. Suppose Wedderburn too had shifted the slide?
He looked up at the clock. There were fifteen minutes in which to
make up his mind. He gathered up his book of answers and the coloured
pencils he used in illustrating his replies, and walked back to his
seat.

He read through his manuscript, and then sat thinking and gnawing
his knuckle. It would look queer now if he owned up. He _must_ beat
Wedderburn. He forgot the examples of those starry gentlemen, John
Burns and Bradlaugh. Besides, he reflected, the glimpse of the rest
of the slip he had had was, after all, quite accidental, forced upon
him by chance, a kind of providential revelation rather than an unfair
advantage. It was not nearly so dishonest to avail himself of that as
it was of Broome, who believed in the efficacy of prayer, to pray daily
for a first-class. "Five minutes more," said the demonstrator, folding
up his paper and becoming observant. Hill watched the clock hands until
two minutes remained; then he opened the book of answers, and, with hot
ears and an affectation of ease, gave his drawing of the lenticel its
name.

When the second pass list appeared, the previous positions of
Wedderburn and Hill were reversed, and the spectacled girl in green,
who knew the demonstrator in private life (where he was practically
human), said that in the result of the two examinations taken together
Hill had the advantage of a mark--167 to 166 out of a possible 200.
Everyone admired Hill in a way, though the suspicion of "mugging"
clung to him. But Hill was to find congratulations and Miss Haysman's
enhanced opinion of him, and even the decided decline in the crest
of Wedderburn, tainted by an unhappy memory. He felt a remarkable
access of energy at first, and the note of a democracy marching to
triumph returned to his debating society speeches; he worked at his
comparative anatomy with tremendous zeal and effect, and he went on
with his æsthetic education. But through it all, a vivid little picture
was continually coming before his mind's eye--of a sneakish person
manipulating a slide.

No human being had witnessed the act, and he was cocksure that no
higher power existed to see it; but for all that it worried him.
Memories are not dead things, but alive; they dwindle in disuse,
but they harden and develop in all sorts of queer ways if they are
being continually fretted. Curiously enough, though at the time he
perceived clearly that the shifting was accidental, as the days wore
on, his memory became confused about it, until at last he was not
sure--although he assured himself that he _was_ sure--whether the
movement had been absolutely involuntary. Then it is possible that
Hill's dietary was conducive to morbid conscientiousness; a breakfast
frequently eaten in a hurry, a midday bun, and, at such hours after
five as chanced to be convenient, such meat as his means determined,
usually in a chophouse in a back street off the Brompton Road.
Occasionally he treated himself to threepenny or ninepenny classics,
and they usually represented a suppression of potatoes or chops. It is
indisputable that outbreaks of self-abasement and emotional revival
have a distinct relation to periods of scarcity. But apart from this
influence on the feelings, there was in Hill a distinct aversion
to falsity that the blasphemous Landport cobbler had inculcated by
strap and tongue from his earliest years. Of one fact about professed
atheists I am convinced; they may be--they usually are--fools, void
of subtlety, revilers of holy institutions, brutal speakers, and
mischievous knaves, but they lie with difficulty. If it were not so,
if they had the faintest grasp of the idea of compromise, they would
simply be liberal churchmen. And, moreover, this memory poisoned his
regard for Miss Haysman. For she now so evidently preferred him to
Wedderburn that he felt sure he cared for her, and began reciprocating
her attentions by timid marks of personal regard; at one time he even
bought a bunch of violets, carried it about in his pocket, and produced
it, with a stumbling explanation, withered and dead, in the gallery of
old iron. It poisoned, too, the denunciation of capitalist dishonesty
that had been one of his life's pleasures. And, lastly, it poisoned his
triumph in Wedderburn. Previously he had been Wedderburn's superior
in his own eyes, and had raged simply at a want of recognition. Now
he began to fret at the darker suspicion of positive inferiority. He
fancied he found justifications for his position in Browning, but they
vanished on analysis. At last--moved, curiously enough, by exactly the
same motive forces that had resulted in his dishonesty--he went to
Professor Bindon, and made a clean breast of the whole affair. As Hill
was a paid student, Professor Bindon did not ask him to sit down, and
he stood before the professor's desk as he made his confession.

"It's a curious story," said Professor Bindon, slowly realising how
the thing reflected on himself, and then letting his anger rise,--"A
most remarkable story. I can't understand your doing it, and I can't
understand this avowal. You're a type of student--Cambridge men would
never dream--I suppose I ought to have thought--Why _did_ you cheat?"

"I didn't--cheat," said Hill.

"But you have just been telling me you did."

"I thought I explained"--

"Either you cheated or you did not cheat."

"I said my motion was involuntary."

"I am not a metaphysician, I am a servant of science--of fact. You
were told not to move the slip. You did move the slip. If that is not
cheating"--

"If I was a cheat," said Hill, with the note of hysterics in his voice,
"should I come here and tell you?"

"Your repentance, of course, does you credit," said Professor Bindon,
"but it does not alter the original facts."

"No, sir," said Hill, giving in in utter self-abasement.

"Even now you cause an enormous amount of trouble. The examination list
will have to be revised."

"I suppose so, sir."

"Suppose so? Of course it must be revised. And I don't see how I can
conscientiously pass you."

"Not pass me?" said Hill. "Fail me?"

"It's the rule in all examinations. Or where should we be? What else
did you expect? You don't want to shirk the consequences of your own
acts?"

"I thought, perhaps"--said Hill. And then, "Fail me? I thought, as I
told you, you would simply deduct the marks given for that slip."

"Impossible!" said Bindon. "Besides, it would still leave you above
Wedderburn. Deduct only the marks--Preposterous! The Departmental
Regulations distinctly say"--

"But it's my own admission, sir."

"The Regulations say nothing whatever of the manner in which the matter
comes to light. They simply provide"--

"It will ruin me. If I fail this examination, they won't renew my
scholarship."

"You should have thought of that before."

"But, sir, consider all my circumstances"--

"I cannot consider anything. Professors in this College are machines.
The Regulations will not even let us recommend our students for
appointments. I am a machine, and you have worked me. I have to do"--

"It's very hard, sir."

"Possibly it is."

"If I am to be failed this examination, I might as well go home at
once."

"That is as you think proper." Bindon's voice softened a little; he
perceived he had been unjust, and, provided he did not contradict
himself, he was disposed to amelioration, "As a private person," he
said, "I think this confession of yours goes far to mitigate your
offence. But you have set the machinery in motion, and now it must take
its course. I--I am really sorry you gave way."

A wave of emotion prevented Hill from answering. Suddenly, very
vividly, he saw the heavily-lined face of the old Landport cobbler, his
father. "Good God! What a fool I have been!" he said hotly and abruptly.

"I hope," said Bindon, "that it will be a lesson to you."

But, curiously enough, they were not thinking of quite the same
indiscretion.

There was a pause.

"I would like a day to think, sir, and then I will let you know--about
going home, I mean," said Hill, moving towards the door.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day Hill's place was vacant. The spectacled girl in green was,
as usual, first with the news. Wedderburn and Miss Haysman were talking
of a performance of _The Meistersingers_ when she came up to them.

"Have you heard?" she said.

"Heard what?"

"There was cheating in the examination."

"Cheating!" said Wedderburn, with his face suddenly hot. "How?"

"That slide"--

"Moved? Never!"

"It was. That slide that we weren't to move"--

"Nonsense!" said Wedderburn. "Why! How could they find out? Who do they
say--?"

"It was Mr. Hill."

"_Hill!_"

"Mr. Hill!"

"Not--surely not the immaculate Hill?" said Wedderburn, recovering.

"I don't believe it," said Miss Haysman. "How do you know?"

"I _didn't_," said the girl in spectacles. "But I know it now for a
fact. Mr. Hill went and confessed to Professor Bindon himself."

"By Jove!" said Wedderburn. "Hill of all people. But I am always
inclined to distrust these philanthropists-on-principle"--

"Are you quite sure?" said Miss Haysman, with a catch in her breath.

"Quite. It's dreadful, isn't it? But, you know, what can you expect?
His father is a cobbler."

Then Miss Haysman astonished the girl in spectacles.

"I don't care. I will not believe it," she said, flushing darkly under
her warm-tinted skin. "I will not believe it until he has told me so
himself--face to face. I would scarcely believe it then," and abruptly
she turned her back on the girl in spectacles, and walked to her own
place.

"It's true, all the same," said the girl in spectacles, peering and
smiling at Wedderburn.

But Wedderburn did not answer her. She was indeed one of those people
who seem destined to make unanswered remarks.


THE END



  PRINTED BY
  MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH



Transcriber's note


Words in italics were surrounded with _underscores_ and small capitals
changed to all capitals.

The original has been preserved, except for the following corrections,
on page

   11 "contion" changed to "condition" (in an extremely dishevelled
      condition.)
   99 , changed to . (parables rather. Do you mean)
  221 . added (but it hit _him_. Yes, ma'am)
  257 " removed (was his silly name for me.)
  259 beginning double quotes added and nested double quotes changed to
      single quotes ("'Have you read it?' ... 'The bravest and the best,'
      said I again).

Additional: the book mentioned on page 216 "Smiles' Elp Yourself"
is an existing book "Self help; with illustrations of conduct and
perseverance" by Samuel Smiles, to be found on LibraryBlog as
Ebook number 935.





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