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diff --git a/456-h/456-h.htm b/456-h/456-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0056d84 --- /dev/null +++ b/456-h/456-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6578 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Door in the Wall And Other Stories, by H. G. 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G. Wells</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Door in the Wall And Other Stories</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: H. G. Wells</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March, 1996 [eBook #456]<br /> +[Most recently updated: April 12, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Judith Boss</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOOR IN THE WALL AND OTHER STORIES ***</div> + +<h1>The Door in the Wall<br /> +And Other Stories</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by H. G. Wells</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">THE DOOR IN THE WALL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">THE STAR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">THE CONE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">A MOONLIGHT FABLE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">THE DIAMOND MAKER</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>THE DOOR IN THE WALL</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +One confidential evening, not three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me this +story of the Door in the Wall. And at the time I thought that so far as he was +concerned it was a true story. +</p> + +<p> +He told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that I could not do +otherwise than believe in him. But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a +different atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled the things he had told +me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed +shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and the +pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had +shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from +every-day realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible. “He was +mystifying!” I said, and then: “How well he did it!. . . . . It +isn’t quite the thing I should have expected him, of all people, to do +well.” +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards, as I sat up in bed and sipped my morning tea, I found myself trying +to account for the flavour of reality that perplexed me in his impossible +reminiscences, by supposing they did in some way suggest, present, +convey—I hardly know which word to use—experiences it was otherwise +impossible to tell. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I don’t resort to that explanation now. I have got over my +intervening doubts. I believe now, as I believed at the moment of telling, that +Wallace did to the very best of his ability strip the truth of his secret for +me. But whether he himself saw, or only thought he saw, whether he himself was +the possessor of an inestimable privilege, or the victim of a fantastic dream, +I cannot pretend to guess. Even the facts of his death, which ended my doubts +forever, throw no light on that. That much the reader must judge for himself. +</p> + +<p> +I forget now what chance comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent a man +to confide in me. He was, I think, defending himself against an imputation of +slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to a great public movement +in which he had disappointed me. But he plunged suddenly. “I have” +he said, “a preoccupation—” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he went on, after a pause that he devoted to the study of +his cigar ash, “I have been negligent. The fact is—it isn’t a +case of ghosts or apparitions—but—it’s an odd thing to tell +of, Redmond—I am haunted. I am haunted by something—that rather +takes the light out of things, that fills me with longings . . . . .” +</p> + +<p> +He paused, checked by that English shyness that so often overcomes us when we +would speak of moving or grave or beautiful things. “You were at Saint +Athelstan’s all through,” he said, and for a moment that seemed to +me quite irrelevant. “Well”—and he paused. Then very +haltingly at first, but afterwards more easily, he began to tell of the thing +that was hidden in his life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness +that filled his heart with insatiable longings that made all the interests and +spectacle of worldly life seem dull and tedious and vain to him. +</p> + +<p> +Now that I have the clue to it, the thing seems written visibly in his face. I +have a photograph in which that look of detachment has been caught and +intensified. It reminds me of what a woman once said of him—a woman who +had loved him greatly. “Suddenly,” she said, “the interest +goes out of him. He forgets you. He doesn’t care a rap for +you—under his very nose . . . . .” +</p> + +<p> +Yet the interest was not always out of him, and when he was holding his +attention to a thing Wallace could contrive to be an extremely successful man. +His career, indeed, is set with successes. He left me behind him long ago; he +soared up over my head, and cut a figure in the world that I couldn’t +cut—anyhow. He was still a year short of forty, and they say now that he +would have been in office and very probably in the new Cabinet if he had lived. +At school he always beat me without effort—as it were by nature. We were +at school together at Saint Athelstan’s College in West Kensington for +almost all our school time. He came into the school as my co-equal, but he left +far above me, in a blaze of scholarships and brilliant performance. Yet I think +I made a fair average running. And it was at school I heard first of the Door +in the Wall—that I was to hear of a second time only a month before his +death. +</p> + +<p> +To him at least the Door in the Wall was a real door leading through a real +wall to immortal realities. Of that I am now quite assured. +</p> + +<p> +And it came into his life early, when he was a little fellow between five and +six. I remember how, as he sat making his confession to me with a slow gravity, +he reasoned and reckoned the date of it. “There was,” he said, +“a crimson Virginia creeper in it—all one bright uniform crimson in +a clear amber sunshine against a white wall. That came into the impression +somehow, though I don’t clearly remember how, and there were +horse-chestnut leaves upon the clean pavement outside the green door. They were +blotched yellow and green, you know, not brown nor dirty, so that they must +have been new fallen. I take it that means October. I look out for +horse-chestnut leaves every year, and I ought to know. +</p> + +<p> +“If I’m right in that, I was about five years and four months +old.” +</p> + +<p> +He was, he said, rather a precocious little boy—he learned to talk at an +abnormally early age, and he was so sane and “old-fashioned,” as +people say, that he was permitted an amount of initiative that most children +scarcely attain by seven or eight. His mother died when he was born, and he was +under the less vigilant and authoritative care of a nursery governess. His +father was a stern, preoccupied lawyer, who gave him little attention, and +expected great things of him. For all his brightness he found life a little +grey and dull I think. And one day he wandered. +</p> + +<p> +He could not recall the particular neglect that enabled him to get away, nor +the course he took among the West Kensington roads. All that had faded among +the incurable blurs of memory. But the white wall and the green door stood out +quite distinctly. +</p> + +<p> +As his memory of that remote childish experience ran, he did at the very first +sight of that door experience a peculiar emotion, an attraction, a desire to +get to the door and open it and walk in. And at the same time he had the +clearest conviction that either it was unwise or it was wrong of him—he +could not tell which—to yield to this attraction. He insisted upon it as +a curious thing that he knew from the very beginning—unless memory has +played him the queerest trick—that the door was unfastened, and that he +could go in as he chose. +</p> + +<p> +I seem to see the figure of that little boy, drawn and repelled. And it was +very clear in his mind, too, though why it should be so was never explained, +that his father would be very angry if he went through that door. +</p> + +<p> +Wallace described all these moments of hesitation to me with the utmost +particularity. He went right past the door, and then, with his hands in his +pockets, and making an infantile attempt to whistle, strolled right along +beyond the end of the wall. There he recalls a number of mean, dirty shops, and +particularly that of a plumber and decorator, with a dusty disorder of +earthenware pipes, sheet lead ball taps, pattern books of wall paper, and tins +of enamel. He stood pretending to examine these things, and coveting, +passionately desiring the green door. +</p> + +<p> +Then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. He made a run for it, lest hesitation +should grip him again, he went plump with outstretched hand through the green +door and let it slam behind him. And so, in a trice, he came into the garden +that has haunted all his life. +</p> + +<p> +It was very difficult for Wallace to give me his full sense of that garden into +which he came. +</p> + +<p> +There was something in the very air of it that exhilarated, that gave one a +sense of lightness and good happening and well being; there was something in +the sight of it that made all its colour clean and perfect and subtly luminous. +In the instant of coming into it one was exquisitely glad—as only in rare +moments and when one is young and joyful one can be glad in this world. And +everything was beautiful there . . . . . +</p> + +<p> +Wallace mused before he went on telling me. “You see,” he said, +with the doubtful inflection of a man who pauses at incredible things, +“there were two great panthers there . . . Yes, spotted panthers. And I +was not afraid. There was a long wide path with marble-edged flower borders on +either side, and these two huge velvety beasts were playing there with a ball. +One looked up and came towards me, a little curious as it seemed. It came right +up to me, rubbed its soft round ear very gently against the small hand I held +out and purred. It was, I tell you, an enchanted garden. I know. And the size? +Oh! it stretched far and wide, this way and that. I believe there were hills +far away. Heaven knows where West Kensington had suddenly got to. And somehow +it was just like coming home. +</p> + +<p> +“You know, in the very moment the door swung to behind me, I forgot the +road with its fallen chestnut leaves, its cabs and tradesmen’s carts, I +forgot the sort of gravitational pull back to the discipline and obedience of +home, I forgot all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion, forgot all the +intimate realities of this life. I became in a moment a very glad and +wonder-happy little boy—in another world. It was a world with a different +quality, a warmer, more penetrating and mellower light, with a faint clear +gladness in its air, and wisps of sun-touched cloud in the blueness of its sky. +And before me ran this long wide path, invitingly, with weedless beds on either +side, rich with untended flowers, and these two great panthers. I put my little +hands fearlessly on their soft fur, and caressed their round ears and the +sensitive corners under their ears, and played with them, and it was as though +they welcomed me home. There was a keen sense of home-coming in my mind, and +when presently a tall, fair girl appeared in the pathway and came to meet me, +smiling, and said Well?’ to me, and lifted me, and kissed me, and put me +down, and led me by the hand, there was no amazement, but only an impression of +delightful rightness, of being reminded of happy things that had in some +strange way been overlooked. There were broad steps, I remember, that came into +view between spikes of delphinium, and up these we went to a great avenue +between very old and shady dark trees. All down this avenue, you know, between +the red chapped stems, were marble seats of honour and statuary, and very tame +and friendly white doves . . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“And along this avenue my girl-friend led me, looking down—I recall +the pleasant lines, the finely-modelled chin of her sweet kind +face—asking me questions in a soft, agreeable voice, and telling me +things, pleasant things I know, though what they were I was never able to +recall . . . And presently a little Capuchin monkey, very clean, with a fur of +ruddy brown and kindly hazel eyes, came down a tree to us and ran beside me, +looking up at me and grinning, and presently leapt to my shoulder. So we went +on our way in great happiness . . . .” +</p> + +<p> +He paused. +</p> + +<p> +“Go on,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“I remember little things. We passed an old man musing among laurels, I +remember, and a place gay with paroquets, and came through a broad shaded +colonnade to a spacious cool palace, full of pleasant fountains, full of +beautiful things, full of the quality and promise of heart’s desire. And +there were many things and many people, some that still seem to stand out +clearly and some that are a little vague, but all these people were beautiful +and kind. In some way—I don’t know how—it was conveyed to me +that they all were kind to me, glad to have me there, and filling me with +gladness by their gestures, by the touch of their hands, by the welcome and +love in their eyes. Yes—” +</p> + +<p> +He mused for awhile. “Playmates I found there. That was very much to me, +because I was a lonely little boy. They played delightful games in a +grass-covered court where there was a sun-dial set about with flowers. And as +one played one loved . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“But—it’s odd—there’s a gap in my memory. I +don’t remember the games we played. I never remembered. Afterwards, as a +child, I spent long hours trying, even with tears, to recall the form of that +happiness. I wanted to play it all over again—in my nursery—by +myself. No! All I remember is the happiness and two dear playfellows who were +most with me . . . . Then presently came a sombre dark woman, with a grave, +pale face and dreamy eyes, a sombre woman wearing a soft long robe of pale +purple, who carried a book and beckoned and took me aside with her into a +gallery above a hall—though my playmates were loth to have me go, and +ceased their game and stood watching as I was carried away. ‘Come back to +us!’ they cried. ‘Come back to us soon!’ I looked up at her +face, but she heeded them not at all. Her face was very gentle and grave. She +took me to a seat in the gallery, and I stood beside her, ready to look at her +book as she opened it upon her knee. The pages fell open. She pointed, and I +looked, marvelling, for in the living pages of that book I saw myself; it was a +story about myself, and in it were all the things that had happened to me since +ever I was born . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“It was wonderful to me, because the pages of that book were not +pictures, you understand, but realities.” +</p> + +<p> +Wallace paused gravely—looked at me doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Go on,” I said. “I understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“They were realities—yes, they must have been; people moved and +things came and went in them; my dear mother, whom I had near forgotten; then +my father, stern and upright, the servants, the nursery, all the familiar +things of home. Then the front door and the busy streets, with traffic to and +fro: I looked and marvelled, and looked half doubtfully again into the +woman’s face and turned the pages over, skipping this and that, to see +more of this book, and more, and so at last I came to myself hovering and +hesitating outside the green door in the long white wall, and felt again the +conflict and the fear. +</p> + +<p> +“‘And next?’ I cried, and would have turned on, but the cool +hand of the grave woman delayed me. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Next?’ I insisted, and struggled gently with her hand, +pulling up her fingers with all my childish strength, and as she yielded and +the page came over she bent down upon me like a shadow and kissed my brow. +</p> + +<p> +“But the page did not show the enchanted garden, nor the panthers, nor +the girl who had led me by the hand, nor the playfellows who had been so loth +to let me go. It showed a long grey street in West Kensington, on that chill +hour of afternoon before the lamps are lit, and I was there, a wretched little +figure, weeping aloud, for all that I could do to restrain myself, and I was +weeping because I could not return to my dear play-fellows who had called after +me, ‘Come back to us! Come back to us soon!’ I was there. This was +no page in a book, but harsh reality; that enchanted place and the restraining +hand of the grave mother at whose knee I stood had gone—whither have they +gone?” +</p> + +<p> +He halted again, and remained for a time, staring into the fire. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! the wretchedness of that return!” he murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” I said after a minute or so. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor little wretch I was—brought back to this grey world again! As +I realised the fulness of what had happened to me, I gave way to quite +ungovernable grief. And the shame and humiliation of that public weeping and my +disgraceful homecoming remain with me still. I see again the benevolent-looking +old gentleman in gold spectacles who stopped and spoke to me—prodding me +first with his umbrella. ‘Poor little chap,’ said he; ‘and +are you lost then?’—and me a London boy of five and more! And he +must needs bring in a kindly young policeman and make a crowd of me, and so +march me home. Sobbing, conspicuous and frightened, I came from the enchanted +garden to the steps of my father’s house. +</p> + +<p> +“That is as well as I can remember my vision of that garden—the +garden that haunts me still. Of course, I can convey nothing of that +indescribable quality of translucent unreality, that difference from the common +things of experience that hung about it all; but that—that is what +happened. If it was a dream, I am sure it was a day-time and altogether +extraordinary dream . . . . . . H’m!—naturally there followed a +terrible questioning, by my aunt, my father, the nurse, the +governess—everyone . . . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“I tried to tell them, and my father gave me my first thrashing for +telling lies. When afterwards I tried to tell my aunt, she punished me again +for my wicked persistence. Then, as I said, everyone was forbidden to listen to +me, to hear a word about it. Even my fairy tale books were taken away from me +for a time—because I was ‘too imaginative.’ Eh? Yes, they did +that! My father belonged to the old school . . . . . And my story was driven +back upon myself. I whispered it to my pillow—my pillow that was often +damp and salt to my whispering lips with childish tears. And I added always to +my official and less fervent prayers this one heartfelt request: ‘Please +God I may dream of the garden. Oh! take me back to my garden! Take me back to +my garden!’ +</p> + +<p> +“I dreamt often of the garden. I may have added to it, I may have changed +it; I do not know . . . . . All this you understand is an attempt to +reconstruct from fragmentary memories a very early experience. Between that and +the other consecutive memories of my boyhood there is a gulf. A time came when +it seemed impossible I should ever speak of that wonder glimpse again.” +</p> + +<p> +I asked an obvious question. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “I don’t remember that I ever attempted +to find my way back to the garden in those early years. This seems odd to me +now, but I think that very probably a closer watch was kept on my movements +after this misadventure to prevent my going astray. No, it wasn’t until +you knew me that I tried for the garden again. And I believe there was a +period—incredible as it seems now—when I forgot the garden +altogether—when I was about eight or nine it may have been. Do you +remember me as a kid at Saint Athelstan’s?” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather!” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t show any signs did I in those days of having a secret +dream?” +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +He looked up with a sudden smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you ever play North-West Passage with me? . . . . . No, of course +you didn’t come my way!” +</p> + +<p> +“It was the sort of game,” he went on, “that every +imaginative child plays all day. The idea was the discovery of a North-West +Passage to school. The way to school was plain enough; the game consisted in +finding some way that wasn’t plain, starting off ten minutes early in +some almost hopeless direction, and working one’s way round through +unaccustomed streets to my goal. And one day I got entangled among some rather +low-class streets on the other side of Campden Hill, and I began to think that +for once the game would be against me and that I should get to school late. I +tried rather desperately a street that seemed a <i>cul de sac</i>, and found a +passage at the end. I hurried through that with renewed hope. ‘I shall do +it yet,’ I said, and passed a row of frowsy little shops that were +inexplicably familiar to me, and behold! there was my long white wall and the +green door that led to the enchanted garden! +</p> + +<p> +“The thing whacked upon me suddenly. Then, after all, that garden, that +wonderful garden, wasn’t a dream!” . . . . +</p> + +<p> +He paused. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose my second experience with the green door marks the world of +difference there is between the busy life of a schoolboy and the infinite +leisure of a child. Anyhow, this second time I didn’t for a moment think +of going in straight away. You see . . . For one thing my mind was full of the +idea of getting to school in time—set on not breaking my record for +punctuality. I must surely have felt <i>some</i> little desire at least to try +the door—yes, I must have felt that . . . . . But I seem to remember the +attraction of the door mainly as another obstacle to my overmastering +determination to get to school. I was immediately interested by this discovery +I had made, of course—I went on with my mind full of it—but I went +on. It didn’t check me. I ran past tugging out my watch, found I had ten +minutes still to spare, and then I was going downhill into familiar +surroundings. I got to school, breathless, it is true, and wet with +perspiration, but in time. I can remember hanging up my coat and hat . . . Went +right by it and left it behind me. Odd, eh?” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at me thoughtfully. “Of course, I didn’t know then that +it wouldn’t always be there. School boys have limited imaginations. I +suppose I thought it was an awfully jolly thing to have it there, to know my +way back to it, but there was the school tugging at me. I expect I was a good +deal distraught and inattentive that morning, recalling what I could of the +beautiful strange people I should presently see again. Oddly enough I had no +doubt in my mind that they would be glad to see me . . . Yes, I must have +thought of the garden that morning just as a jolly sort of place to which one +might resort in the interludes of a strenuous scholastic career. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t go that day at all. The next day was a half holiday, and +that may have weighed with me. Perhaps, too, my state of inattention brought +down impositions upon me and docked the margin of time necessary for the +detour. I don’t know. What I do know is that in the meantime the +enchanted garden was so much upon my mind that I could not keep it to myself. +</p> + +<p> +“I told—What was his name?—a ferrety-looking youngster we +used to call Squiff.” +</p> + +<p> +“Young Hopkins,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“Hopkins it was. I did not like telling him, I had a feeling that in some +way it was against the rules to tell him, but I did. He was walking part of the +way home with me; he was talkative, and if we had not talked about the +enchanted garden we should have talked of something else, and it was +intolerable to me to think about any other subject. So I blabbed. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he told my secret. The next day in the play interval I found +myself surrounded by half a dozen bigger boys, half teasing and wholly curious +to hear more of the enchanted garden. There was that big Fawcett—you +remember him?—and Carnaby and Morley Reynolds. You weren’t there by +any chance? No, I think I should have remembered if you were . . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“A boy is a creature of odd feelings. I was, I really believe, in spite +of my secret self-disgust, a little flattered to have the attention of these +big fellows. I remember particularly a moment of pleasure caused by the praise +of Crawshaw—you remember Crawshaw major, the son of Crawshaw the +composer?—who said it was the best lie he had ever heard. But at the same +time there was a really painful undertow of shame at telling what I felt was +indeed a sacred secret. That beast Fawcett made a joke about the girl in +green—.” +</p> + +<p> +Wallace’s voice sank with the keen memory of that shame. “I +pretended not to hear,” he said. “Well, then Carnaby suddenly +called me a young liar and disputed with me when I said the thing was true. I +said I knew where to find the green door, could lead them all there in ten +minutes. Carnaby became outrageously virtuous, and said I’d have +to—and bear out my words or suffer. Did you ever have Carnaby twist your +arm? Then perhaps you’ll understand how it went with me. I swore my story +was true. There was nobody in the school then to save a chap from Carnaby +though Crawshaw put in a word or so. Carnaby had got his game. I grew excited +and red-eared, and a little frightened, I behaved altogether like a silly +little chap, and the outcome of it all was that instead of starting alone for +my enchanted garden, I led the way presently—cheeks flushed, ears hot, +eyes smarting, and my soul one burning misery and shame—for a party of +six mocking, curious and threatening school-fellows. +</p> + +<p> +“We never found the white wall and the green door . . .” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean?—” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean I couldn’t find it. I would have found it if I could. +</p> + +<p> +“And afterwards when I could go alone I couldn’t find it. I never +found it. I seem now to have been always looking for it through my school-boy +days, but I’ve never come upon it again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did the fellows—make it disagreeable?” +</p> + +<p> +“Beastly . . . . . Carnaby held a council over me for wanton lying. I +remember how I sneaked home and upstairs to hide the marks of my blubbering. +But when I cried myself to sleep at last it wasn’t for Carnaby, but for +the garden, for the beautiful afternoon I had hoped for, for the sweet friendly +women and the waiting playfellows and the game I had hoped to learn again, that +beautiful forgotten game . . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“I believed firmly that if I had not told— . . . . . I had bad +times after that—crying at night and wool-gathering by day. For two terms +I slackened and had bad reports. Do you remember? Of course you would! It was +<i>you</i>—your beating me in mathematics that brought me back to the +grind again.” +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +For a time my friend stared silently into the red heart of the fire. Then he +said: “I never saw it again until I was seventeen. +</p> + +<p> +“It leapt upon me for the third time—as I was driving to Paddington +on my way to Oxford and a scholarship. I had just one momentary glimpse. I was +leaning over the apron of my hansom smoking a cigarette, and no doubt thinking +myself no end of a man of the world, and suddenly there was the door, the wall, +the dear sense of unforgettable and still attainable things. +</p> + +<p> +“We clattered by—I too taken by surprise to stop my cab until we +were well past and round a corner. Then I had a queer moment, a double and +divergent movement of my will: I tapped the little door in the roof of the cab, +and brought my arm down to pull out my watch. ‘Yes, sir!’ said the +cabman, smartly. ‘Er—well—it’s nothing,’ I cried. +‘<i>My</i> mistake! We haven’t much time! Go on!’ and he went +on . . . +</p> + +<p> +“I got my scholarship. And the night after I was told of that I sat over +my fire in my little upper room, my study, in my father’s house, with his +praise—his rare praise—and his sound counsels ringing in my ears, +and I smoked my favourite pipe—the formidable bulldog of +adolescence—and thought of that door in the long white wall. ‘If I +had stopped,’ I thought, ‘I should have missed my scholarship, I +should have missed Oxford—muddled all the fine career before me! I begin +to see things better!’ I fell musing deeply, but I did not doubt then +this career of mine was a thing that merited sacrifice. +</p> + +<p> +“Those dear friends and that clear atmosphere seemed very sweet to me, +very fine, but remote. My grip was fixing now upon the world. I saw another +door opening—the door of my career.” +</p> + +<p> +He stared again into the fire. Its red lights picked out a stubborn strength in +his face for just one flickering moment, and then it vanished again. +</p> + +<p> +“Well”, he said and sighed, “I have served that career. I +have done—much work, much hard work. But I have dreamt of the enchanted +garden a thousand dreams, and seen its door, or at least glimpsed its door, +four times since then. Yes—four times. For a while this world was so +bright and interesting, seemed so full of meaning and opportunity that the +half-effaced charm of the garden was by comparison gentle and remote. Who wants +to pat panthers on the way to dinner with pretty women and distinguished men? I +came down to London from Oxford, a man of bold promise that I have done +something to redeem. Something—and yet there have been disappointments . +. . . . +</p> + +<p> +“Twice I have been in love—I will not dwell on that—but once, +as I went to someone who, I know, doubted whether I dared to come, I took a +short cut at a venture through an unfrequented road near Earl’s Court, +and so happened on a white wall and a familiar green door. ‘Odd!’ +said I to myself, ‘but I thought this place was on Campden Hill. +It’s the place I never could find somehow—like counting +Stonehenge—the place of that queer day dream of mine.’ And I went +by it intent upon my purpose. It had no appeal to me that afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +“I had just a moment’s impulse to try the door, three steps aside +were needed at the most—though I was sure enough in my heart that it +would open to me—and then I thought that doing so might delay me on the +way to that appointment in which I thought my honour was involved. Afterwards I +was sorry for my punctuality—I might at least have peeped in I thought, +and waved a hand to those panthers, but I knew enough by this time not to seek +again belatedly that which is not found by seeking. Yes, that time made me very +sorry . . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“Years of hard work after that and never a sight of the door. It’s +only recently it has come back to me. With it there has come a sense as though +some thin tarnish had spread itself over my world. I began to think of it as a +sorrowful and bitter thing that I should never see that door again. Perhaps I +was suffering a little from overwork—perhaps it was what I’ve heard +spoken of as the feeling of forty. I don’t know. But certainly the keen +brightness that makes effort easy has gone out of things recently, and that +just at a time with all these new political developments—when I ought to +be working. Odd, isn’t it? But I do begin to find life toilsome, its +rewards, as I come near them, cheap. I began a little while ago to want the +garden quite badly. Yes—and I’ve seen it three times.” +</p> + +<p> +“The garden?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—the door! And I haven’t gone in!” +</p> + +<p> +He leaned over the table to me, with an enormous sorrow in his voice as he +spoke. “Thrice I have had my chance—<i>thrice!</i> If ever that +door offers itself to me again, I swore, I will go in out of this dust and +heat, out of this dry glitter of vanity, out of these toilsome futilities. I +will go and never return. This time I will stay . . . . . I swore it and when +the time came—<i>I didn’t go</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“Three times in one year have I passed that door and failed to enter. +Three times in the last year. +</p> + +<p> +“The first time was on the night of the snatch division on the +Tenants’ Redemption Bill, on which the Government was saved by a majority +of three. You remember? No one on our side—perhaps very few on the +opposite side—expected the end that night. Then the debate collapsed like +eggshells. I and Hotchkiss were dining with his cousin at Brentford, we were +both unpaired, and we were called up by telephone, and set off at once in his +cousin’s motor. We got in barely in time, and on the way we passed my +wall and door—livid in the moonlight, blotched with hot yellow as the +glare of our lamps lit it, but unmistakable. ‘My God!’ cried I. +‘What?’ said Hotchkiss. ‘Nothing!’ I answered, and the +moment passed. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I’ve made a great sacrifice,’ I told the whip as I +got in. They all have,’ he said, and hurried by. +</p> + +<p> +“I do not see how I could have done otherwise then. And the next occasion +was as I rushed to my father’s bedside to bid that stern old man +farewell. Then, too, the claims of life were imperative. But the third time was +different; it happened a week ago. It fills me with hot remorse to recall it. I +was with Gurker and Ralphs—it’s no secret now you know that +I’ve had my talk with Gurker. We had been dining at Frobisher’s, +and the talk had become intimate between us. The question of my place in the +reconstructed ministry lay always just over the boundary of the discussion. +Yes—yes. That’s all settled. It needn’t be talked about yet, +but there’s no reason to keep a secret from you . . . . . +Yes—thanks! thanks! But let me tell you my story. +</p> + +<p> +“Then, on that night things were very much in the air. My position was a +very delicate one. I was keenly anxious to get some definite word from Gurker, +but was hampered by Ralphs’ presence. I was using the best power of my +brain to keep that light and careless talk not too obviously directed to the +point that concerns me. I had to. Ralphs’ behaviour since has more than +justified my caution . . . . . Ralphs, I knew, would leave us beyond the +Kensington High Street, and then I could surprise Gurker by a sudden frankness. +One has sometimes to resort to these little devices. . . . . And then it was +that in the margin of my field of vision I became aware once more of the white +wall, the green door before us down the road. +</p> + +<p> +“We passed it talking. I passed it. I can still see the shadow of +Gurker’s marked profile, his opera hat tilted forward over his prominent +nose, the many folds of his neck wrap going before my shadow and Ralphs’ +as we sauntered past. +</p> + +<p> +“I passed within twenty inches of the door. ‘If I say good-night to +them, and go in,’ I asked myself, ‘what will happen?’ And I +was all a-tingle for that word with Gurker. +</p> + +<p> +“I could not answer that question in the tangle of my other problems. +‘They will think me mad,’ I thought. ‘And suppose I vanish +now!—Amazing disappearance of a prominent politician!’ That weighed +with me. A thousand inconceivably petty worldlinesses weighed with me in that +crisis.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he turned on me with a sorrowful smile, and, speaking slowly; “Here +I am!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Here I am!” he repeated, “and my chance has gone from me. +Three times in one year the door has been offered me—the door that goes +into peace, into delight, into a beauty beyond dreaming, a kindness no man on +earth can know. And I have rejected it, Redmond, and it has gone—” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know. I know. I am left now to work it out, to stick to the tasks that +held me so strongly when my moments came. You say, I have success—this +vulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing. I have it.” He had a walnut in his +big hand. “If that was my success,” he said, and crushed it, and +held it out for me to see. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me tell you something, Redmond. This loss is destroying me. For two +months, for ten weeks nearly now, I have done no work at all, except the most +necessary and urgent duties. My soul is full of inappeasable regrets. At +nights—when it is less likely I shall be recognised—I go out. I +wander. Yes. I wonder what people would think of that if they knew. A Cabinet +Minister, the responsible head of that most vital of all departments, wandering +alone—grieving—sometimes near audibly lamenting—for a door, +for a garden!” +</p> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p> +I can see now his rather pallid face, and the unfamiliar sombre fire that had +come into his eyes. I see him very vividly to-night. I sit recalling his words, +his tones, and last evening’s <i>Westminster Gazette</i> still lies on my +sofa, containing the notice of his death. At lunch to-day the club was busy +with him and the strange riddle of his fate. +</p> + +<p> +They found his body very early yesterday morning in a deep excavation near East +Kensington Station. It is one of two shafts that have been made in connection +with an extension of the railway southward. It is protected from the intrusion +of the public by a hoarding upon the high road, in which a small doorway has +been cut for the convenience of some of the workmen who live in that direction. +The doorway was left unfastened through a misunderstanding between two gangers, +and through it he made his way . . . . . +</p> + +<p> +My mind is darkened with questions and riddles. +</p> + +<p> +It would seem he walked all the way from the House that night—he has +frequently walked home during the past Session—and so it is I figure his +dark form coming along the late and empty streets, wrapped up, intent. And then +did the pale electric lights near the station cheat the rough planking into a +semblance of white? Did that fatal unfastened door awaken some memory? +</p> + +<p> +Was there, after all, ever any green door in the wall at all? +</p> + +<p> +I do not know. I have told his story as he told it to me. There are times when +I believe that Wallace was no more than the victim of the coincidence between a +rare but not unprecedented type of hallucination and a careless trap, but that +indeed is not my profoundest belief. You may think me superstitious if you +will, and foolish; but, indeed, I am more than half convinced that he had in +truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense, something—I know not +what—that in the guise of wall and door offered him an outlet, a secret +and peculiar passage of escape into another and altogether more beautiful +world. At any rate, you will say, it betrayed him in the end. But did it betray +him? There you touch the inmost mystery of these dreamers, these men of vision +and the imagination. We see our world fair and common, the hoarding and the +pit. By our daylight standard he walked out of security into darkness, danger +and death. But did he see like that? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>THE STAR</h2> + +<p> +It was on the first day of the New Year that the announcement was made, almost +simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, +the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very +erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its +velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest +a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence +of the planet Neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession did the +subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the +perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. Scientific people, however, +found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the +new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite +different from the orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection of +Neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind. +</p> + +<p> +Few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation of the +solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and +its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats the +imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is space, vacant so far as human +observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness, +for twenty million times a million miles. That is the smallest estimate of the +distance to be traversed before the very nearest of the stars is attained. And, +saving a few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had +ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf of space, until early in the +twentieth century this strange wanderer appeared. A vast mass of matter it was, +bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the sky into +the radiance of the sun. By the second day it was clearly visible to any decent +instrument, as a speck with a barely sensible diameter, in the constellation +Leo near Regulus. In a little while an opera glass could attain it. +</p> + +<p> +On the third day of the new year the newspaper readers of two hemispheres were +made aware for the first time of the real importance of this unusual apparition +in the heavens. “A Planetary Collision,” one London paper headed +the news, and proclaimed Duchaine’s opinion that this strange new planet +would probably collide with Neptune. The leader writers enlarged upon the +topic; so that in most of the capitals of the world, on January 3rd, there was +an expectation, however vague of some imminent phenomenon in the sky; and as +the night followed the sunset round the globe, thousands of men turned their +eyes skyward to see—the old familiar stars just as they had always been. +</p> + +<p> +Until it was dawn in London and Pollux setting and the stars overhead grown +pale. The Winter’s dawn it was, a sickly filtering accumulation of +daylight, and the light of gas and candles shone yellow in the windows to show +where people were astir. But the yawning policeman saw the thing, the busy +crowds in the markets stopped agape, workmen going to their work betimes, +milkmen, the drivers of news-carts, dissipation going home jaded and pale, +homeless wanderers, sentinels on their beats, and in the country, labourers +trudging afield, poachers slinking home, all over the dusky quickening country +it could be seen—and out at sea by seamen watching for the day—a +great white star, come suddenly into the westward sky! +</p> + +<p> +Brighter it was than any star in our skies; brighter than the evening star at +its brightest. It still glowed out white and large, no mere twinkling spot of +light, but a small round clear shining disc, an hour after the day had come. +And where science has not reached, men stared and feared, telling one another +of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fiery signs in the +Heavens. Sturdy Boers, dusky Hottentots, Gold Coast Negroes, Frenchmen, +Spaniards, Portuguese, stood in the warmth of the sunrise watching the setting +of this strange new star. +</p> + +<p> +And in a hundred observatories there had been suppressed excitement, rising +almost to shouting pitch, as the two remote bodies had rushed together; and a +hurrying to and fro, to gather photographic apparatus and spectroscope, and +this appliance and that, to record this novel astonishing sight, the +destruction of a world. For it was a world, a sister planet of our earth, far +greater than our earth indeed, that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death. +Neptune it was, had been struck, fairly and squarely, by the strange planet +from outer space and the heat of the concussion had incontinently turned two +solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence. Round the world that day, two +hours before the dawn, went the pallid great white star, fading only as it sank +westward and the sun mounted above it. Everywhere men marvelled at it, but of +all those who saw it none could have marvelled more than those sailors, +habitual watchers of the stars, who far away at sea had heard nothing of its +advent and saw it now rise like a pigmy moon and climb zenithward and hang +overhead and sink westward with the passing of the night. +</p> + +<p> +And when next it rose over Europe everywhere were crowds of watchers on hilly +slopes, on house-roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward for the rising of the +great new star. It rose with a white glow in front of it, like the glare of a +white fire, and those who had seen it come into existence the night before +cried out at the sight of it. “It is larger,” they cried. “It +is brighter!” And, indeed the moon a quarter full and sinking in the west +was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but scarcely in all its breadth had +it as much brightness now as the little circle of the strange new star. +</p> + +<p> +“It is brighter!” cried the people clustering in the streets. But +in the dim observatories the watchers held their breath and peered at one +another. “<i>It is nearer</i>,” they said. +“<i>Nearer!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +And voice after voice repeated, “It is nearer,” and the clicking +telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires, and in a +thousand cities grimy compositors fingered the type. “It is +nearer.” Men writing in offices, struck with a strange realisation, flung +down their pens, men talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a +grotesque possibility in those words, “It is nearer.” It hurried +along wakening streets, it was shouted down the frost-stilled ways of quiet +villages; men who had read these things from the throbbing tape stood in +yellow-lit doorways shouting the news to the passersby. “It is +nearer.” Pretty women, flushed and glittering, heard the news told +jestingly between the dances, and feigned an intelligent interest they did not +feel. “Nearer! Indeed. How curious! How very, very clever people must be +to find out things like that!” +</p> + +<p> +Lonely tramps faring through the wintry night murmured those words to comfort +themselves—looking skyward. “It has need to be nearer, for the +night’s as cold as charity. Don’t seem much warmth from it if it +<i>is</i> nearer, all the same.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is a new star to me?” cried the weeping woman kneeling beside +her dead. +</p> + +<p> +The schoolboy, rising early for his examination work, puzzled it out for +himself—with the great white star shining broad and bright through the +frost-flowers of his window. “Centrifugal, centripetal,” he said, +with his chin on his fist. “Stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its +centrifugal force, what then? Centripetal has it, and down it falls into the +sun! And this—! +</p> + +<p> +“Do <i>we</i> come in the way? I wonder—” +</p> + +<p> +The light of that day went the way of its brethren, and with the later watches +of the frosty darkness rose the strange star again. And it was now so bright +that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of itself, hanging huge in +the sunset. In a South African City a great man had married, and the streets +were alight to welcome his return with his bride. “Even the skies have +illuminated,” said the flatterer. Under Capricorn, two negro lovers, +daring the wild beasts and evil spirits, for love of one another, crouched +together in a cane brake where the fire-flies hovered. “That is our +star,” they whispered, and felt strangely comforted by the sweet +brilliance of its light. +</p> + +<p> +The master mathematician sat in his private room and pushed the papers from +him. His calculations were already finished. In a small white phial there still +remained a little of the drug that had kept him awake and active for four long +nights. Each day, serene, explicit, patient as ever, he had given his lecture +to his students, and then had come back at once to this momentous calculation. +His face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from his drugged activity. For +some time he seemed lost in thought. Then he went to the window, and the blind +went up with a click. Half way up the sky, over the clustering roofs, chimneys +and steeples of the city, hung the star. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy. “You +may kill me,” he said after a silence. “But I can hold +you—and all the universe for that matter—in the grip of this little +brain. I would not change. Even now.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at the little phial. “There will be no need of sleep +again,” he said. The next day at noon—punctual to the minute, he +entered his lecture theatre, put his hat on the end of the table as his habit +was, and carefully selected a large piece of chalk. It was a joke among his +students that he could not lecture without that piece of chalk to fumble in his +fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. +He came and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh +faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing. +“Circumstances have arisen—circumstances beyond my control,” +he said and paused, “which will debar me from completing the course I had +designed. It would seem, gentlemen, if I may put the thing clearly and briefly, +that—Man has lived in vain.” +</p> + +<p> +The students glanced at one another. Had they heard aright? Mad? Raised +eyebrows and grinning lips there were, but one or two faces remained intent +upon his calm grey-fringed face. “It will be interesting,” he was +saying, “to devote this morning to an exposition, so far as I can make it +clear to you, of the calculations that have led me to this conclusion. Let us +assume—” +</p> + +<p> +He turned towards the blackboard, meditating a diagram in the way that was +usual to him. “What was that about ‘lived in vain?’” +whispered one student to another. “Listen,” said the other, nodding +towards the lecturer. +</p> + +<p> +And presently they began to understand. +</p> + +<p> +That night the star rose later, for its proper eastward motion had carried it +some way across Leo towards Virgo, and its brightness was so great that the sky +became a luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden in its turn, save +only Jupiter near the zenith, Capella, Aldebaran, Sirius and the pointers of +the Bear. It was very white and beautiful. In many parts of the world that +night a pallid halo encircled it about. It was perceptibly larger; in the clear +refractive sky of the tropics it seemed as if it were nearly a quarter the size +of the moon. The frost was still on the ground in England, but the world was as +brightly lit as if it were midsummer moonlight. One could see to read quite +ordinary print by that cold clear light, and in the cities the lamps burnt +yellow and wan. +</p> + +<p> +And everywhere the world was awake that night, and throughout Christendom a +sombre murmur hung in the keen air over the country side like the belling of +bees in the heather, and this murmurous tumult grew to a clangour in the +cities. It was the tolling of the bells in a million belfry towers and +steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more, to sin no more, but to gather +in their churches and pray. And overhead, growing larger and brighter as the +earth rolled on its way and the night passed, rose the dazzling star. +</p> + +<p> +And the streets and houses were alight in all the cities, the shipyards glared, +and whatever roads led to high country were lit and crowded all night long. And +in all the seas about the civilised lands, ships with throbbing engines, and +ships with bellying sails, crowded with men and living creatures, were standing +out to ocean and the north. For already the warning of the master mathematician +had been telegraphed all over the world, and translated into a hundred tongues. +The new planet and Neptune, locked in a fiery embrace, were whirling headlong, +ever faster and faster towards the sun. Already every second this blazing mass +flew a hundred miles, and every second its terrific velocity increased. As it +flew now, indeed, it must pass a hundred million of miles wide of the earth and +scarcely affect it. But near its destined path, as yet only slightly perturbed, +spun the mighty planet Jupiter and his moons sweeping splendid round the sun. +Every moment now the attraction between the fiery star and the greatest of the +planets grew stronger. And the result of that attraction? Inevitably Jupiter +would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path, and the burning +star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush, would “describe a +curved path” and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to, +our earth. “Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, floods, +and a steady rise in temperature to I know not what limit”—so +prophesied the master mathematician. +</p> + +<p> +And overhead, to carry out his words, lonely and cold and livid, blazed the +star of the coming doom. +</p> + +<p> +To many who stared at it that night until their eyes ached, it seemed that it +was visibly approaching. And that night, too, the weather changed, and the +frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England softened +towards a thaw. +</p> + +<p> +But you must not imagine because I have spoken of people praying through the +night and people going aboard ships and people fleeing toward mountainous +country that the whole world was already in a terror because of the star. As a +matter of fact, use and wont still ruled the world, and save for the talk of +idle moments and the splendour of the night, nine human beings out of ten were +still busy at their common occupations. In all the cities the shops, save one +here and there, opened and closed at their proper hours, the doctor and the +undertaker plied their trades, the workers gathered in the factories, soldiers +drilled, scholars studied, lovers sought one another, thieves lurked and fled, +politicians planned their schemes. The presses of the newspapers roared through +the night, and many a priest of this church and that would not open his holy +building to further what he considered a foolish panic. The newspapers insisted +on the lesson of the year 1000—for then, too, people had anticipated the +end. The star was no star—mere gas—a comet; and were it a star it +could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. +Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to +persecute the obdurate fearful. That night, at seven-fifteen by Greenwich time, +the star would be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then the world would see the turn +things would take. The master mathematician’s grim warnings were treated +by many as so much mere elaborate self-advertisement. Common sense at last, a +little heated by argument, signified its unalterable convictions by going to +bed. So, too, barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about +their nightly business, and save for a howling dog here and there, the beast +world left the star unheeded. +</p> + +<p> +And yet, when at last the watchers in the European States saw the star rise, an +hour later it is true, but no larger than it had been the night before, there +were still plenty awake to laugh at the master mathematician—to take the +danger as if it had passed. +</p> + +<p> +But hereafter the laughter ceased. The star grew—it grew with a terrible +steadiness hour after hour, a little larger each hour, a little nearer the +midnight zenith, and brighter and brighter, until it had turned night into a +second day. Had it come straight to the earth instead of in a curved path, had +it lost no velocity to Jupiter, it must have leapt the intervening gulf in a +day, but as it was it took five days altogether to come by our planet. The next +night it had become a third the size of the moon before it set to English eyes, +and the thaw was assured. It rose over America near the size of the moon, but +blinding white to look at, and <i>hot</i>; and a breath of hot wind blew now +with its rising and gathering strength, and in Virginia, and Brazil, and down +the St. Lawrence valley, it shone intermittently through a driving reek of +thunder-clouds, flickering violet lightning, and hail unprecedented. In +Manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods. And upon all the mountains of the +earth the snow and ice began to melt that night, and all the rivers coming out +of high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon—in their upper +reaches—with swirling trees and the bodies of beasts and men. They rose +steadily, steadily in the ghostly brilliance, and came trickling over their +banks at last, behind the flying population of their valleys. +</p> + +<p> +And along the coast of Argentina and up the South Atlantic the tides were +higher than had ever been in the memory of man, and the storms drove the waters +in many cases scores of miles inland, drowning whole cities. And so great grew +the heat during the night that the rising of the sun was like the coming of a +shadow. The earthquakes began and grew until all down America from the Arctic +Circle to Cape Horn, hillsides were sliding, fissures were opening, and houses +and walls crumbling to destruction. The whole side of Cotopaxi slipped out in +one vast convulsion, and a tumult of lava poured out so high and broad and +swift and liquid that in one day it reached the sea. +</p> + +<p> +So the star, with the wan moon in its wake, marched across the Pacific, trailed +the thunderstorms like the hem of a robe, and the growing tidal wave that +toiled behind it, frothing and eager, poured over island and island and swept +them clear of men. Until that wave came at last—in a blinding light and +with the breath of a furnace, swift and terrible it came—a wall of water, +fifty feet high, roaring hungrily, upon the long coasts of Asia, and swept +inland across the plains of China. For a space the star, hotter now and larger +and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the +wide and populous country; towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, +roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless +terror at the incandescent sky; and then, low and growing, came the murmur of +the flood. And thus it was with millions of men that night—a flight +nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant, and the +flood like a wall swift and white behind. And then death. +</p> + +<p> +China was lit glowing white, but over Japan and Java and all the islands of +Eastern Asia the great star was a ball of dull red fire because of the steam +and smoke and ashes the volcanoes were spouting forth to salute its coming. +Above was the lava, hot gases and ash, and below the seething floods, and the +whole earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. Soon the immemorial +snows of Thibet and the Himalaya were melting and pouring down by ten million +deepening converging channels upon the plains of Burmah and Hindostan. The +tangled summits of the Indian jungles were aflame in a thousand places, and +below the hurrying waters around the stems were dark objects that still +struggled feebly and reflected the blood-red tongues of fire. And in a +rudderless confusion a multitude of men and women fled down the broad +river-ways to that one last hope of men—the open sea. +</p> + +<p> +Larger grew the star, and larger, hotter, and brighter with a terrible +swiftness now. The tropical ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the +whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged +incessantly, speckled with storm-tossed ships. +</p> + +<p> +And then came a wonder. It seemed to those who in Europe watched for the rising +of the star that the world must have ceased its rotation. In a thousand open +spaces of down and upland the people who had fled thither from the floods and +the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched for that rising in vain. +Hour followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the star rose not. Once +again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they had counted lost to +them forever. In England it was hot and clear overhead, though the ground +quivered perpetually, but in the tropics, Sirius and Capella and Aldebaran +showed through a veil of steam. And when at last the great star rose near ten +hours late, the sun rose close upon it, and in the centre of its white heart +was a disc of black. +</p> + +<p> +Over Asia it was the star had begun to fall behind the movement of the sky, and +then suddenly, as it hung over India, its light had been veiled. All the plain +of India from the mouth of the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges was a shallow +waste of shining water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces, +mounds and hills, black with people. Every minaret was a clustering mass of +people, who fell one by one into the turbid waters, as heat and terror overcame +them. The whole land seemed a-wailing and suddenly there swept a shadow across +that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind, and a gathering of clouds, +out of the cooling air. Men looking up, near blinded, at the star, saw that a +black disc was creeping across the light. It was the moon, coming between the +star and the earth. And even as men cried to God at this respite, out of the +East with a strange inexplicable swiftness sprang the sun. And then star, sun +and moon rushed together across the heavens. +</p> + +<p> +So it was that presently, to the European watchers, star and sun rose close +upon each other, drove headlong for a space and then slower, and at last came +to rest, star and sun merged into one glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. +The moon no longer eclipsed the star but was lost to sight in the brilliance of +the sky. And though those who were still alive regarded it for the most part +with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair engender, there +were still men who could perceive the meaning of these signs. Star and earth +had been at their nearest, had swung about one another, and the star had +passed. Already it was receding, swifter and swifter, in the last stage of its +headlong journey downward into the sun. +</p> + +<p> +And then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky, the thunder +and lightning wove a garment round the world; all over the earth was such a +downpour of rain as men had never before seen, and where the volcanoes flared +red against the cloud canopy there descended torrents of mud. Everywhere the +waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud-silted ruins, and the earth +littered like a storm-worn beach with all that had floated, and the dead bodies +of the men and brutes, its children. For days the water streamed off the land, +sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the way, and piling huge dykes and +scooping out Titanic gullies over the country side. Those were the days of +darkness that followed the star and the heat. All through them, and for many +weeks and months, the earthquakes continued. +</p> + +<p> +But the star had passed, and men, hunger-driven and gathering courage only +slowly, might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries, and sodden +fields. Such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came stunned and +shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and shoals of +once familiar ports. And as the storms subsided men perceived that everywhere +the days were hotter than of yore, and the sun larger, and the moon, shrunk to +a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between its new and new. +</p> + +<p> +But of the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws +and books and machines, of the strange change that had come over Iceland and +Greenland and the shores of Baffin’s Bay, so that the sailors coming +there presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce believe their +eyes, this story does not tell. Nor of the movement of mankind now that the +earth was hotter, northward and southward towards the poles of the earth. It +concerns itself only with the coming and the passing of the Star. +</p> + +<p> +The Martian astronomers—for there are astronomers on Mars, although they +are very different beings from men—were naturally profoundly interested +by these things. They saw them from their own standpoint of course. +“Considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung +through our solar system into the sun,” one wrote, “it is +astonishing what a little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has +sustained. All the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas +remain intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the +white discoloration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole.” +Which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a +distance of a few million miles. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON</h2> + +<p> +The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. He moved slowly in +spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on the platform +I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner over against me with a +sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became +motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense +of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his +newspaper. Then he glanced again in my direction. +</p> + +<p> +I feigned to read. I feared I had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in a moment +I was surprised to find him speaking. +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“That book,” he repeated, pointing a lean finger, “is about +dreams.” +</p> + +<p> +“Obviously,” I answered, for it was Fortnum Roscoe’s Dream +States, and the title was on the cover. +</p> + +<p> +He hung silent for a space as if he sought words. “Yes,” he said at +last, “but they tell you nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +I did not catch his meaning for a second. +</p> + +<p> +“They don’t know,” he added. +</p> + +<p> +I looked a little more attentively at his face. +</p> + +<p> +“There are dreams,” he said, “and dreams.” +</p> + +<p> +That sort of proposition I never dispute. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose—” he hesitated. “Do you ever dream? I mean +vividly.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dream very little,” I answered. “I doubt if I have three +vivid dreams in a year.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” he said, and seemed for a moment to collect his thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“Your dreams don’t mix with your memories?” he asked +abruptly. “You don’t find yourself in doubt; did this happen or did +it not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Hardly ever. Except just for a momentary hesitation now and then. I +suppose few people do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does he say—?” He indicated the book. +</p> + +<p> +“Says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation about intensity +of impression and the like to account for its not happening as a rule. I +suppose you know something of these theories—” +</p> + +<p> +“Very little—except that they are wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +His emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for a time. I prepared +to resume reading, and that seemed to precipitate his next remark. He leant +forward almost as though he would touch me. +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t there something called consecutive dreaming—that goes +on night after night?” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe there is. There are cases given in most books on mental +trouble.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mental trouble! Yes. I daresay there are. It’s the right place for +them. But what I mean—” He looked at his bony knuckles. “Is +that sort of thing always dreaming? Is it dreaming? Or is it something else? +Mightn’t it be something else?” +</p> + +<p> +I should have snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawn anxiety of +his face. I remember now the look of his faded eyes and the lids red +stained—perhaps you know that look. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not just arguing about a matter of opinion,” he said. +“The thing’s killing me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dreams?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you call them dreams. Night after night. Vivid!—so vivid . . . +. this—” (he indicated the landscape that went streaming by the +window) “seems unreal in comparison! I can scarcely remember who I am, +what business I am on . . . .” +</p> + +<p> +He paused. “Even now—” +</p> + +<p> +“The dream is always the same—do you mean?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s over.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“I died.” +</p> + +<p> +“Died?” +</p> + +<p> +“Smashed and killed, and now, so much of me as that dream was, is dead. +Dead forever. I dreamt I was another man, you know, living in a different part +of the world and in a different time. I dreamt that night after night. Night +after night I woke into that other life. Fresh scenes and fresh +happenings—until I came upon the last—” +</p> + +<p> +“When you died?” +</p> + +<p> +“When I died.” +</p> + +<p> +“And since then—” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “Thank God! That was the end of the dream . . +.” +</p> + +<p> +It was clear I was in for this dream. And after all, I had an hour before me, +the light was fading fast, and Fortnum Roscoe has a dreary way with him. +“Living in a different time,” I said: “do you mean in some +different age?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Past?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, to come—to come.” +</p> + +<p> +“The year three thousand, for example?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what year it was. I did when I was asleep, when I was +dreaming, that is, but not now—not now that I am awake. There’s a +lot of things I have forgotten since I woke out of these dreams, though I knew +them at the time when I was—I suppose it was dreaming. They called the +year differently from our way of calling the year . . . What did they call +it?” He put his hand to his forehead. “No,” said he, “I +forget.” +</p> + +<p> +He sat smiling weakly. For a moment I feared he did not mean to tell me his +dream. As a rule I hate people who tell their dreams, but this struck me +differently. I proffered assistance even. “It began—” I +suggested. +</p> + +<p> +“It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up in it suddenly. And +it’s curious that in these dreams I am speaking of I never remembered +this life I am living now. It seemed as if the dream life was enough while it +lasted. Perhaps—But I will tell you how I find myself when I do my best +to recall it all. I don’t remember anything clearly until I found myself +sitting in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. I had been dozing, and +suddenly I woke up—fresh and vivid—not a bit +dreamlike—because the girl had stopped fanning me.” +</p> + +<p> +“The girl?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, the girl. You must not interrupt or you will put me out.” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped abruptly. “You won’t think I’m mad?” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” I answered. “You’ve been dreaming. Tell me your +dream.” +</p> + +<p> +“I woke up, I say, because the girl had stopped fanning me. I was not +surprised to find myself there or anything of that sort, you understand. I did +not feel I had fallen into it suddenly. I simply took it up at that point. +Whatever memory I had of this life, this nineteenth-century life, faded as I +woke, vanished like a dream. I knew all about myself, knew that my name was no +longer Cooper but Hedon, and all about my position in the world. I’ve +forgotten a lot since I woke—there’s a want of connection—but +it was all quite clear and matter of fact then.” +</p> + +<p> +He hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting his face forward and +looking up to me appealingly. +</p> + +<p> +“This seems bosh to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no!” I cried. “Go on. Tell me what this loggia was +like!” +</p> + +<p> +“It was not really a loggia—I don’t know what to call it. It +faced south. It was small. It was all in shadow except the semicircle above the +balcony that showed the sky and sea and the corner where the girl stood. I was +on a couch—it was a metal couch with light striped cushions—and the +girl was leaning over the balcony with her back to me. The light of the sunrise +fell on her ear and cheek. Her pretty white neck and the little curls that +nestled there, and her white shoulder were in the sun, and all the grace of her +body was in the cool blue shadow. She was dressed—how can I describe it? +It was easy and flowing. And altogether there she stood, so that it came to me +how beautiful and desirable she was, as though I had never seen her before. And +when at last I sighed and raised myself upon my arm she turned her face to +me—” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“I have lived three-and-fifty years in this world. I have had mother, +sisters, friends, wife and daughters—all their faces, the play of their +faces, I know. But the face of this girl—it is much more real to me. I +can bring it back into memory so that I see it again—I could draw it or +paint it. And after all—” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped—but I said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“The face of a dream—the face of a dream. She was beautiful. Not +that beauty which is terrible, cold, and worshipful, like the beauty of a +saint; nor that beauty that stirs fierce passions; but a sort of radiation, +sweet lips that softened into smiles, and grave gray eyes. And she moved +gracefully, she seemed to have part with all pleasant and gracious +things—” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden. Then he looked up at me and +went on, making no further attempt to disguise his absolute belief in the +reality of his story. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, I had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown up all I had +ever worked for or desired for her sake. I had been a master man away there in +the north, with influence and property and a great reputation, but none of it +had seemed worth having beside her. I had come to the place, this city of sunny +pleasures with her, and left all those things to wreck and ruin just to save a +remnant at least of my life. While I had been in love with her before I knew +that she had any care for me, before I had imagined that she would +dare—that we should dare, all my life had seemed vain and hollow, dust +and ashes. It was dust and ashes. Night after night and through the long days I +had longed and desired—my soul had beaten against the thing forbidden! +</p> + +<p> +“But it is impossible for one man to tell another just these things. +It’s emotion, it’s a tint, a light that comes and goes. Only while +it’s there, everything changes, everything. The thing is I came away and +left them in their Crisis to do what they could.” +</p> + +<p> +“Left whom?” I asked, puzzled. +</p> + +<p> +“The people up in the north there. You see—in this dream, +anyhow—I had been a big man, the sort of man men come to trust in, to +group themselves about. Millions of men who had never seen me were ready to do +things and risk things because of their confidence in me. I had been playing +that game for years, that big laborious game, that vague, monstrous political +game amidst intrigues and betrayals, speech and agitation. It was a vast +weltering world, and at last I had a sort of leadership against the +Gang—you know it was called the Gang—a sort of compromise of +scoundrelly projects and base ambitions and vast public emotional stupidities +and catch-words—the Gang that kept the world noisy and blind year by +year, and all the while that it was drifting, drifting towards infinite +disaster. But I can’t expect you to understand the shades and +complications of the year—the year something or other ahead. I had it +all—down to the smallest details—in my dream. I suppose I had been +dreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline of some queer new +development I had imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes. It was some +grubby affair that made me thank God for the sunlight. I sat up on the couch +and remained looking at the woman and rejoicing—rejoicing that I had come +away out of all that tumult and folly and violence before it was too late. +After all, I thought, this is life—love and beauty, desire and delight, +are they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague, gigantic ends? And I +blamed myself for having ever sought to be a leader when I might have given my +days to love. But then, thought I, if I had not spent my early days sternly and +austerely, I might have wasted myself upon vain and worthless women, and at the +thought all my being went out in love and tenderness to my dear mistress, my +dear lady, who had come at last and compelled me—compelled me by her +invincible charm for me—to lay that life aside. +</p> + +<p> +“‘You are worth it,’ I said, speaking without intending her +to hear; ‘you are worth it, my dearest one; worth pride and praise and +all things. Love! to have you is worth them all together.’ And at the +murmur of my voice she turned about. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Come and see,’ she cried—I can hear her +now—‘come and see the sunrise upon Monte Solaro.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I remember how I sprang to my feet and joined her at the balcony. She +put a white hand upon my shoulder and pointed towards great masses of +limestone, flushing, as it were, into life. I looked. But first I noted the +sunlight on her face caressing the lines of her cheeks and neck. How can I +describe to you the scene we had before us? We were at Capri—” +</p> + +<p> +“I have been there,” I said. “I have clambered up Monte +Solaro and drunk vero Capri—muddy stuff like cider—at the +summit.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said the man with the white face; “then perhaps you can +tell me—you will know if this is indeed Capri. For in this life I have +never been there. Let me describe it. We were in a little room, one of a vast +multitude of little rooms, very cool and sunny, hollowed out of the limestone +of a sort of cape, very high above the sea. The whole island, you know, was one +enormous hotel, complex beyond explaining, and on the other side there were +miles of floating hotels, and huge floating stages to which the flying machines +came. They called it a pleasure city. Of course, there was none of that in your +time—rather, I should say, is none of that now. Of course. +Now!—yes. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, this room of ours was at the extremity of the cape, so that one +could see east and west. Eastward was a great cliff—a thousand feet high +perhaps—coldly gray except for one bright edge of gold, and beyond it the +Isle of the Sirens, and a falling coast that faded and passed into the hot +sunrise. And when one turned to the west, distinct and near was a little bay, a +little beach still in shadow. And out of that shadow rose Solaro straight and +tall, flushed and golden crested, like a beauty throned, and the white moon was +floating behind her in the sky. And before us from east to west stretched the +many-tinted sea all dotted with little sailing boats. +</p> + +<p> +“To the eastward, of course, these little boats were gray and very minute +and clear, but to the westward they were little boats of gold—shining +gold—almost like little flames. And just below us was a rock with an arch +worn through it. The blue sea-water broke to green and foam all round the rock, +and a galley came gliding out of the arch.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know that rock.” I said. “I was nearly drowned there. It +is called the Faraglioni.” +</p> + +<p> +“I Faraglioni? Yes, she called it that,” answered the man with the +white face. “There was some story—but that—” +</p> + +<p> +He put his hand to his forehead again. “No,” he said, “I +forget that story.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that is the first thing I remember, the first dream I had, that +little shaded room and the beautiful air and sky and that dear lady of mine, +with her shining arms and her graceful robe, and how we sat and talked in half +whispers to one another. We talked in whispers not because there was any one to +hear, but because there was still such a freshness of mind between us that our +thoughts were a little frightened, I think, to find themselves at last in +words. And so they went softly. +</p> + +<p> +“Presently we were hungry and we went from our apartment, going by a +strange passage with a moving floor, until we came to the great breakfast +room—there was a fountain and music. A pleasant and joyful place it was, +with its sunlight and splashing, and the murmur of plucked strings. And we sat +and ate and smiled at one another, and I would not heed a man who was watching +me from a table near by. +</p> + +<p> +“And afterwards we went on to the dancing-hall. But I cannot describe +that hall. The place was enormous—larger than any building you have ever +seen—and in one place there was the old gate of Capri, caught into the +wall of a gallery high overhead. Light girders, stems and threads of gold, +burst from the pillars like fountains, streamed like an Aurora across the roof +and interlaced, like—like conjuring tricks. All about the great circle +for the dancers there were beautiful figures, strange dragons, and intricate +and wonderful grotesques bearing lights. The place was inundated with +artificial light that shamed the newborn day. And as we went through the throng +the people turned about and looked at us, for all through the world my name and +face were known, and how I had suddenly thrown up pride and struggle to come to +this place. And they looked also at the lady beside me, though half the story +of how at last she had come to me was unknown or mistold. And few of the men +who were there, I know, but judged me a happy man, in spite of all the shame +and dishonour that had come upon my name. +</p> + +<p> +“The air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full of the rhythm +of beautiful motions. Thousands of beautiful people swarmed about the hall, +crowded the galleries, sat in a myriad recesses; they were dressed in splendid +colours and crowned with flowers; thousands danced about the great circle +beneath the white images of the ancient gods, and glorious processions of +youths and maidens came and went. We two danced, not the dreary monotonies of +your days—of this time, I mean—but dances that were beautiful, +intoxicating. And even now I can see my lady dancing—dancing joyously. +She danced, you know, with a serious face; she danced with a serious dignity, +and yet she was smiling at me and caressing me—smiling and caressing with +her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“The music was different,” he murmured. “It went—I +cannot describe it; but it was infinitely richer and more varied than any music +that has ever come to me awake. +</p> + +<p> +“And then—it was when we had done dancing—a man came to speak +to me. He was a lean, resolute man, very soberly clad for that place, and +already I had marked his face watching me in the breakfasting hall, and +afterwards as we went along the passage I had avoided his eye. But now, as we +sat in a little alcove, smiling at the pleasure of all the people who went to +and fro across the shining floor, he came and touched me, and spoke to me so +that I was forced to listen. And he asked that he might speak to me for a +little time apart. +</p> + +<p> +“‘No,’ I said. ‘I have no secrets from this lady. What +do you want to tell me?’ +</p> + +<p> +“He said it was a trivial matter, or at least a dry matter, for a lady to +hear. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Perhaps for me to hear,’ said I. +</p> + +<p> +“He glanced at her, as though almost he would appeal to her. Then he +asked me suddenly if I had heard of a great and avenging declaration that +Evesham had made? Now, Evesham had always before been the man next to myself in +the leadership of that great party in the north. He was a forcible, hard, and +tactless man, and only I had been able to control and soften him. It was on his +account even more than my own, I think, that the others had been so dismayed at +my retreat. So this question about what he had done reawakened my old interest +in the life I had put aside just for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I have taken no heed of any news for many days,’ I said. +What has Evesham been saying?’ +</p> + +<p> +“And with that the man began, nothing loth, and I must confess even I was +struck by Evesham’s reckless folly in the wild and threatening words he +had used. And this messenger they had sent to me not only told me of +Evesham’s speech, but went on to ask counsel and to point out what need +they had of me. While he talked, my lady sat a little forward and watched his +face and mine. +</p> + +<p> +“My old habits of scheming and organising reasserted themselves. I could +even see myself suddenly returning to the north, and all the dramatic effect of +it. All that this man said witnessed to the disorder of the party indeed, but +not to its damage. I should go back stronger than I had come. And then I +thought of my lady. You see—how can I tell you? There were certain +peculiarities of our relationship—as things are I need not tell you about +that—which would render her presence with me impossible. I should have +had to leave her; indeed, I should have had to renounce her clearly and openly, +if I was to do all that I could do in the north. And the man knew that, even as +he talked to her and me, knew it as well as she did, that my steps to duty +were—first, separation, then abandonment. At the touch of that thought my +dream of a return was shattered. I turned on the man suddenly, as he was +imagining his eloquence was gaining ground with me. +</p> + +<p> +“‘What have I to do with these things now?’ I said. ‘I +have done with them. Do you think I am coquetting with your people in coming +here?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘No,’ he said. ‘But—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Why cannot you leave me alone. I have done with these things. I +have ceased to be anything but a private man.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘But have you thought?—this +talk of war, these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions—’ +</p> + +<p> +“I stood up. +</p> + +<p> +“‘No,’ I cried. ‘I won’t hear you. I took count +of all those things, I weighed them—and I have come away.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He seemed to consider the possibility of persistence. He looked from me +to where the lady sat regarding us. +</p> + +<p> +“‘War,’ he said, as if he were speaking to himself, and then +turned slowly from me and walked away. +</p> + +<p> +“I stood, caught in the whirl of thoughts his appeal had set going. +</p> + +<p> +“I heard my lady’s voice. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Dear,’ she said; ‘but if they had need of +you—’ +</p> + +<p> +“She did not finish her sentence, she let it rest there. I turned to her +sweet face, and the balance of my mood swayed and reeled. +</p> + +<p> +“‘They want me only to do the thing they dare not do +themselves,’ I said. ‘If they distrust Evesham they must settle +with him themselves.’ +</p> + +<p> +“She looked at me doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +“‘But war—’ she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw a doubt on her face that I had seen before, a doubt of herself and +me, the first shadow of the discovery that, seen strongly and completely, must +drive us apart for ever. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, I was an older mind than hers, and I could sway her to this belief +or that. +</p> + +<p> +“‘My dear one,’ I said, ‘you must not trouble over +these things. There will be no war. Certainly there will be no war. The age of +wars is past. Trust me to know the justice of this case. They have no right +upon me, dearest, and no one has a right upon me. I have been free to choose my +life, and I have chosen this.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘But war—,’ she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I sat down beside her. I put an arm behind her and took her hand in +mine. I set myself to drive that doubt away—I set myself to fill her mind +with pleasant things again. I lied to her, and in lying to her I lied also to +myself. And she was only too ready to believe me, only too ready to forget. +</p> + +<p> +“Very soon the shadow had gone again, and we were hastening to our +bathing-place in the Grotta del Bovo Marino, where it was our custom to bathe +every day. We swam and splashed one another, and in that buoyant water I seemed +to become something lighter and stronger than a man. And at last we came out +dripping and rejoicing and raced among the rocks. And then I put on a dry +bathing-dress, and we sat to bask in the sun, and presently I nodded, resting +my head against her knee, and she put her hand upon my hair and stroked it +softly and I dozed. And behold! as it were with the snapping of the string of a +violin, I was awakening, and I was in my own bed in Liverpool, in the life of +to-day. +</p> + +<p> +“Only for a time I could not believe that all these vivid moments had +been no more than the substance of a dream. +</p> + +<p> +“In truth, I could not believe it a dream for all the sobering reality of +things about me. I bathed and dressed as it were by habit, and as I shaved I +argued why I of all men should leave the woman I loved to go back to fantastic +politics in the hard and strenuous north. Even if Evesham did force the world +back to war, what was that to me? I was a man with the heart of a man, and why +should I feel the responsibility of a deity for the way the world might go? +</p> + +<p> +“You know that is not quite the way I think about affairs, about my real +affairs. I am a solicitor, you know, with a point of view. +</p> + +<p> +“The vision was so real, you must understand, so utterly unlike a dream +that I kept perpetually recalling little irrelevant details; even the ornament +of the book-cover that lay on my wife’s sewing-machine in the +breakfast-room recalled with the utmost vividness the gilt line that ran about +the seat in the alcove where I had talked with the messenger from my deserted +party. Have you ever heard of a dream that had a quality like that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Like—?” +</p> + +<p> +“So that afterwards you remembered little details you had +forgotten.” +</p> + +<p> +I thought. I had never noticed the point before, but he was right. +</p> + +<p> +“Never,” I said. “That is what you never seem to do with +dreams.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he answered. “But that is just what I did. I am a +solicitor, you must understand, in Liverpool, and I could not help wondering +what the clients and business people I found myself talking to in my office +would think if I told them suddenly I was in love with a girl who would be born +a couple of hundred years or so hence, and worried about the politics of my +great-great-great-grandchildren. I was chiefly busy that day negotiating a +ninety-nine-year building lease. It was a private builder in a hurry, and we +wanted to tie him in every possible way. I had an interview with him, and he +showed a certain want of temper that sent me to bed still irritated. That night +I had no dream. Nor did I dream the next night, at least, to remember. +</p> + +<p> +“Something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. I began to +feel sure it was a dream. And then it came again. +</p> + +<p> +“When the dream came again, nearly four days later, it was very +different. I think it certain that four days had also elapsed in the dream. +Many things had happened in the north, and the shadow of them was back again +between us, and this time it was not so easily dispelled. I began I know with +moody musings. Why, in spite of all, should I go back, go back for all the rest +of my days to toil and stress, insults and perpetual dissatisfaction, simply to +save hundreds of millions of common people, whom I did not love, whom too often +I could do no other than despise, from the stress and anguish of war and +infinite misrule? And after all I might fail. They all sought their own narrow +ends, and why should not I—why should not I also live as a man? And out +of such thoughts her voice summoned me, and I lifted my eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I found myself awake and walking. We had come out above the Pleasure +City, we were near the summit of Monte Solaro and looking towards the bay. It +was the late afternoon and very clear. Far away to the left Ischia hung in a +golden haze between sea and sky, and Naples was coldly white against the hills, +and before us was Vesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering at last +towards the south, and the ruins of Torre dell’ Annunziata and +Castellammare glittering and near.” +</p> + +<p> +I interrupted suddenly: “You have been to Capri, of course?” +</p> + +<p> +“Only in this dream,” he said, “only in this dream. All +across the bay beyond Sorrento were the floating palaces of the Pleasure City +moored and chained. And northward were the broad floating stages that received +the aeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell out of the sky every afternoon, each bringing +its thousands of pleasure-seekers from the uttermost parts of the earth to +Capri and its delights. All these things, I say, stretched below. +</p> + +<p> +“But we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusual sight that +evening had to show. Five war aeroplanes that had long slumbered useless in the +distant arsenals of the Rhinemouth were manoeuvring now in the eastward sky. +Evesham had astonished the world by producing them and others, and sending them +to circle here and there. It was the threat material in the great game of bluff +he was playing, and it had taken even me by surprise. He was one of those +incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by heaven to create disasters. +His energy to the first glance seemed so wonderfully like capacity! But he had +no imagination, no invention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a +mad faith in his stupid idiot ‘luck’ to pull him through. I +remember how we stood upon the headland watching the squadron circling far +away, and how I weighed the full meaning of the sight, seeing clearly the way +things must go. And then even it was not too late. I might have gone back, I +think, and saved the world. The people of the north would follow me, I knew, +granted only that in one thing I respected their moral standards. The east and +south would trust me as they would trust no other northern man. And I knew I +had only to put it to her and she would have let me go . . . . Not because she +did not love me! +</p> + +<p> +“Only I did not want to go; my will was all the other way about. I had so +newly thrown off the incubus of responsibility: I was still so fresh a renegade +from duty that the daylight clearness of what I ought to do had no power at all +to touch my will. My will was to live, to gather pleasures and make my dear +lady happy. But though this sense of vast neglected duties had no power to draw +me, it could make me silent and preoccupied, it robbed the days I had spent of +half their brightness and roused me into dark meditations in the silence of the +night. And as I stood and watched Evesham’s aeroplanes sweep to and +fro—those birds of infinite ill omen—she stood beside me watching +me, perceiving the trouble indeed, but not perceiving it clearly—her eyes +questioning my face, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her face was gray +because the sunset was fading out of the sky. It was no fault of hers that she +held me. She had asked me to go from her, and again in the night time and with +tears she had asked me to go. +</p> + +<p> +“At last it was the sense of her that roused me from my mood. I turned +upon her suddenly and challenged her to race down the mountain slopes. +‘No,’ she said, as if I had jarred with her gravity, but I was +resolved to end that gravity, and make her run—no one can be very gray +and sad who is out of breath—and when she stumbled I ran with my hand +beneath her arm. We ran down past a couple of men, who turned back staring in +astonishment at my behaviour—they must have recognised my face. And half +way down the slope came a tumult in the air, clang-clank, clang-clank, and we +stopped, and presently over the hill-crest those war things came flying one +behind the other.” +</p> + +<p> +The man seemed hesitating on the verge of a description. +</p> + +<p> +“What were they like?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“They had never fought,” he said. “They were just like our +ironclads are nowadays; they had never fought. No one knew what they might do, +with excited men inside them; few even cared to speculate. They were great +driving things shaped like spear-heads without a shaft, with a propeller in the +place of the shaft.” +</p> + +<p> +“Steel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not steel.” +</p> + +<p> +“Aluminum?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, nothing of that sort. An alloy that was very common—as +common as brass, for example. It was called—let me see—” He +squeezed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. “I am forgetting +everything,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And they carried guns?” +</p> + +<p> +“Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired the guns +backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and rammed with the beak. +That was the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. No one could +tell exactly what was going to happen. And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine +to go whirling through the air like a flight of young swallows, swift and easy. +I guess the captains tried not to think too clearly what the real thing would +be like. And these flying war machines, you know, were only one sort of the +endless war contrivances that had been invented and had fallen into abeyance +during the long peace. There were all sorts of these things that people were +routing out and furbishing up; infernal things, silly things; things that had +never been tried; big engines, terrible explosives, great guns. You know the +silly way of these ingenious sort of men who make these things; they turn +‘em out as beavers build dams, and with no more sense of the rivers +they’re going to divert and the lands they’re going to flood! +</p> + +<p> +“As we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again, in the twilight, +I foresaw it all: I saw how clearly and inevitably things were driving for war +in Evesham’s silly, violent hands, and I had some inkling of what war was +bound to be under these new conditions. And even then, though I knew it was +drawing near the limit of my opportunity, I could find no will to go +back.” +</p> + +<p> +He sighed. +</p> + +<p> +“That was my last chance. +</p> + +<p> +“We didn’t go into the city until the sky was full of stars, so we +walked out upon the high terrace, to and fro, and—she counselled me to go +back. +</p> + +<p> +“‘My dearest,’ she said, and her sweet face looked up to me, +this is Death. This life you lead is Death. Go back to them, go back to your +duty—’ +</p> + +<p> +“She began to weep, saying, between her sobs, and clinging to my arm as +she said it, ‘Go back—Go back.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Then suddenly she fell mute, and, glancing down at her face, I read in +an instant the thing she had thought to do. It was one of those moments when +one sees. +</p> + +<p> +“‘No!’ I said. +</p> + +<p> +“‘No?’ she asked, in surprise and I think a little fearful at +the answer to her thought. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘shall send me back. Nothing! I +have chosen. Love, I have chosen, and the world must go. Whatever happens I +will live this life—I will live for you! It—nothing shall turn me +aside; nothing, my dear one. Even if you died—even if you +died—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Yes?’ she murmured, softly. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Then—I also would die.’ +</p> + +<p> +“And before she could speak again I began to talk, talking +eloquently—as I could do in that life—talking to exalt love, to +make the life we were living seem heroic and glorious; and the thing I was +deserting something hard and enormously ignoble that it was a fine thing to set +aside. I bent all my mind to throw that glamour upon it, seeking not only to +convert her but myself to that. We talked, and she clung to me, torn too +between all that she deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet. And at last +I did make it heroic, made all the thickening disaster of the world only a sort +of glorious setting to our unparalleled love, and we two poor foolish souls +strutted there at last, clad in that splendid delusion, drunken rather with +that glorious delusion, under the still stars. +</p> + +<p> +“And so my moment passed. +</p> + +<p> +“It was my last chance. Even as we went to and fro there, the leaders of +the south and east were gathering their resolve, and the hot answer that +shattered Evesham’s bluffing for ever, took shape and waited. And, all +over Asia, and the ocean, and the South, the air and the wires were throbbing +with their warnings to prepare—prepare. +</p> + +<p> +“No one living, you know, knew what war was; no one could imagine, with +all these new inventions, what horror war might bring. I believe most people +still believed it would be a matter of bright uniforms and shouting charges and +triumphs and flags and bands—in a time when half the world drew its food +supply from regions ten thousand miles away—” +</p> + +<p> +The man with the white face paused. I glanced at him, and his face was intent +on the floor of the carriage. A little railway station, a string of loaded +trucks, a signal-box, and the back of a cottage, shot by the carriage window, +and a bridge passed with a clap of noise, echoing the tumult of the train. +</p> + +<p> +“After that,” he said, “I dreamt often. For three weeks of +nights that dream was my life. And the worst of it was there were nights when I +could not dream, when I lay tossing on a bed in this accursed life; and +there—somewhere lost to me—things were happening—momentous, +terrible things . . . I lived at nights—my days, my waking days, this +life I am living now, became a faded, far-away dream, a drab setting, the cover +of the book.” +</p> + +<p> +He thought. +</p> + +<p> +“I could tell you all, tell you every little thing in the dream, but as +to what I did in the daytime—no. I could not tell—I do not +remember. My memory—my memory has gone. The business of life slips from +me—” +</p> + +<p> +He leant forward, and pressed his hands upon his eyes. For a long time he said +nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“And then?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“The war burst like a hurricane.” +</p> + +<p> +He stared before him at unspeakable things. +</p> + +<p> +“And then?” I urged again. +</p> + +<p> +“One touch of unreality,” he said, in the low tone of a man who +speaks to himself, “and they would have been nightmares. But they were +not nightmares—they were not nightmares. No!” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent for so long that it dawned upon me that there was a danger of +losing the rest of the story. But he went on talking again in the same tone of +questioning self-communion. +</p> + +<p> +“What was there to do but flight? I had not thought the war would touch +Capri—I had seemed to see Capri as being out of it all, as the contrast +to it all; but two nights after the whole place was shouting and bawling, every +woman almost and every other man wore a badge—Evesham’s +badge—and there was no music but a jangling war-song over and over again, +and everywhere men enlisting, and in the dancing halls they were drilling. The +whole island was awhirl with rumours; it was said, again and again, that +fighting had begun. I had not expected this. I had seen so little of the life +of pleasure that I had failed to reckon with this violence of the amateurs. And +as for me, I was out of it. I was like the man who might have prevented the +firing of a magazine. The time had gone. I was no one; the vainest stripling +with a badge counted for more than I. The crowd jostled us and bawled in our +ears; that accursed song deafened us; a woman shrieked at my lady because no +badge was on her, and we two went back to our own place again, ruffled and +insulted—my lady white and silent, and I aquiver with rage. So furious +was I, I could have quarrelled with her if I could have found one shade of +accusation in her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked up and down our rock +cell, and outside was the darkling sea and a light to the southward that flared +and passed and came again. +</p> + +<p> +“‘We must get out of this place,’ I said over and over. +‘I have made my choice, and I will have no hand in these troubles. I will +have nothing of this war. We have taken our lives out of all these things. This +is no refuge for us. Let us go.’ +</p> + +<p> +“And the next day we were already in flight from the war that covered the +world. +</p> + +<p> +“And all the rest was Flight—all the rest was Flight.” +</p> + +<p> +He mused darkly. +</p> + +<p> +“How much was there of it?” +</p> + +<p> +He made no answer. +</p> + +<p> +“How many days?” +</p> + +<p> +His face was white and drawn and his hands were clenched. He took no heed of my +curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +I tried to draw him back to his story with questions. +</p> + +<p> +“Where did you go?” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“When?” +</p> + +<p> +“When you left Capri.” +</p> + +<p> +“South-west,” he said, and glanced at me for a second. “We +went in a boat.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I should have thought an aeroplane?” +</p> + +<p> +“They had been seized.” +</p> + +<p> +I questioned him no more. Presently I thought he was beginning again. He broke +out in an argumentative monotone: +</p> + +<p> +“But why should it be? If, indeed, this battle, this slaughter and stress +is life, why have we this craving for pleasure and beauty? If there is no +refuge, if there is no place of peace, and if all our dreams of quiet places +are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams? Surely it was no ignoble +cravings, no base intentions, had brought us to this; it was Love had isolated +us. Love had come to me with her eyes and robed in her beauty, more glorious +than all else in life, in the very shape and colour of life, and summoned me +away. I had silenced all the voices, I had answered all the questions—I +had come to her. And suddenly there was nothing but War and Death!” +</p> + +<p> +I had an inspiration. “After all,” I said, “it could have +been only a dream.” +</p> + +<p> +“A dream!” he cried, flaming upon me, “a dream—when, +even now—” +</p> + +<p> +For the first time he became animated. A faint flush crept into his cheek. He +raised his open hand and clenched it, and dropped it to his knee. He spoke, +looking away from me, and for all the rest of the time he looked away. +“We are but phantoms!” he said, “and the phantoms of +phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; +the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of +its lights—so be it! But one thing is real and certain, one thing is no +dream-stuff, but eternal and enduring. It is the centre of my life, and all +other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I loved her, that +woman of a dream. And she and I are dead together! +</p> + +<p> +“A dream! How can it be a dream, when it drenched a living life with +unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all that I have lived for and cared for, +worthless and unmeaning? +</p> + +<p> +“Until that very moment when she was killed I believed we had still a +chance of getting away,” he said. “All through the night and +morning that we sailed across the sea from Capri to Salerno, we talked of +escape. We were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope for the +life together we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle and struggle, +the wild and empty passions, the empty arbitrary ‘thou shalt’ and +‘thou shalt not’ of the world. We were uplifted, as though our +quest was a holy thing, as though love for another was a mission . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great rock +Capri—already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and +hiding-places that were to make it a fastness—we reckoned nothing of the +imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about in the puffs and +clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst the gray; but, indeed, I made a text +of that and talked. There, you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its +scars, with its countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a +thousand feet, a vast carving of gray, broken by vine-clad terraces, and lemon +and orange groves, and masses of agave and prickly pear, and puffs of almond +blossom. And out under the archway that is built over the Piccola Marina other +boats were coming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of the +mainland, another little string of boats came into view, driving before the +wind towards the south-west. In a little while a multitude had come out, the +remoter just little specks of ultramarine in the shadow of the eastward cliff. +</p> + +<p> +“‘It is love and reason,’ I said, ‘fleeing from all +this madness of war.’ +</p> + +<p> +“And though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flying across the +southern sky we did not heed it. There it was—a line of little dots in +the sky—and then more, dotting the south-eastern horizon, and then still +more, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with blue specks. Now they +were all thin little strokes of blue, and now one and now a multitude would +heel and catch the sun and become short flashes of light. They came, rising and +falling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls or rooks or +such-like birds, moving with a marvellous uniformity, and ever as they drew +nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. The southward wind flung itself +in an arrow-headed cloud athwart the sun. And then suddenly they swept round to +the eastward and streamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller and clearer and +clearer again until they vanished from the sky. And after that we noted to the +northward and very high Evesham’s fighting machines hanging high over +Naples like an evening swarm of gnats. +</p> + +<p> +“It seemed to have no more to do with us than a flight of birds. +</p> + +<p> +“Even the mutter of guns far away in the south-east seemed to us to +signify nothing . . . +</p> + +<p> +“Each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted, still seeking +that refuge where we might live and love. Fatigue had come upon us, pain and +many distresses. For though we were dusty and stained by our toilsome tramping, +and half starved and with the horror of the dead men we had seen and the flight +of the peasants—for very soon a gust of fighting swept up the +peninsula—with these things haunting our minds it still resulted only in +a deepening resolution to escape. Oh, but she was brave and patient! She who +had never faced hardship and exposure had courage for herself and me. We went +to and fro seeking an outlet, over a country all commandeered and ransacked by +the gathering hosts of war. Always we went on foot. At first there were other +fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. Some escaped northward, some were +caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept along the main roads; many gave +themselves into the hands of the soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the +men were impressed. But we kept away from these things; we had brought no money +to bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands of these +conscript crowds. We had landed at Salerno, and we had been turned back from +Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto by a pass over Mount Alburno, +but we had been driven back for want of food, and so we had come down among the +marshes by Paestum, where those great temples stand alone. I had some vague +idea that by Paestum it might be possible to find a boat or something, and take +once more to sea. And there it was the battle overtook us. +</p> + +<p> +“A sort of soul-blindness had me. Plainly I could see that we were being +hemmed in; that the great net of that giant Warfare had us in its toils. Many +times we had seen the levies that had come down from the north going to and +fro, and had come upon them in the distance amidst the mountains making ways +for the ammunition and preparing the mounting of the guns. Once we fancied they +had fired at us, taking us for spies—at any rate a shot had gone +shuddering over us. Several times we had hidden in woods from hovering +aeroplanes. +</p> + +<p> +“But all these things do not matter now, these nights of flight and pain +. . . We were in an open place near those great temples at Paestum, at last, on +a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat +that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. How I can +see it! My lady was sitting down under a bush resting a little, for she was +very weak and weary, and I was standing up watching to see if I could tell the +distance of the firing that came and went. They were still, you know, fighting +far from each other, with those terrible new weapons that had never before been +used: guns that would carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would +do—What they would do no man could foretell. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew together. +I knew we were in danger, and that we could not stop there and rest! +</p> + +<p> +“Though all these things were in my mind, they were in the background. +They seemed to be affairs beyond our concern. Chiefly, I was thinking of my +lady. An aching distress filled me. For the first time she had owned herself +beaten and had fallen a-weeping. Behind me I could hear her sobbing, but I +would not turn round to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and had +held herself so far and so long for me. It was well, I thought, that she would +weep and rest and then we would toil on again, for I had no inkling of the +thing that hung so near. Even now I can see her as she sat there, her lovely +hair upon her shoulder, can mark again the deepening hollow of her cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“‘If we had parted,’ she said, ‘if I had let you +go.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘No,’ said I. ‘Even now, I do not repent. I will not +repent; I made my choice, and I will hold on to the end.’ +</p> + +<p> +“And then— +</p> + +<p> +“Overhead in the sky flashed something and burst, and all about us I +heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown. They +chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks and passed . +. . .” +</p> + +<p> +He put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips. +</p> + +<p> +“At the flash I had turned about . . . +</p> + +<p> +“You know—she stood up— +</p> + +<p> +“She stood up, you know, and moved a step towards me—as though she +wanted to reach me— +</p> + +<p> +“And she had been shot through the heart.” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish incapacity an Englishman +feels on such occasions. I met his eyes for a moment, and then stared out of +the window. For a long space we kept silence. When at last I looked at him he +was sitting back in his corner, his arms folded, and his teeth gnawing at his +knuckles. +</p> + +<p> +He bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it. +</p> + +<p> +“I carried her,” he said, “towards the temples, in my +arms—as though it mattered. I don’t know why. They seemed a sort of +sanctuary, you know, they had lasted so long, I suppose. +</p> + +<p> +“She must have died almost instantly. Only—I talked to her all the +way.” +</p> + +<p> +Silence again. +</p> + +<p> +“I have seen those temples,” I said abruptly, and indeed he had +brought those still, sunlit arcades of worn sandstone very vividly before me. +</p> + +<p> +“It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillar +and held her in my arms . . . Silent after the first babble was over. And after +a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though nothing +unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed . . . It was tremendously +still there, the sun high and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds +upon the entablature were still—in spite of the thudding and banging that +went all about the sky. +</p> + +<p> +“I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and +that the battle went away to the west. One aeroplane was struck, and overset +and fell. I remember that—though it didn’t interest me in the +least. It didn’t seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull, you +know—flapping for a time in the water. I could see it down the aisle of +the temple—a black thing in the bright blue water. +</p> + +<p> +“Three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased. +Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in and hid for a space. That +was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed the stone +hard by—made just a fresh bright surface. +</p> + +<p> +“As the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater. +</p> + +<p> +“The curious thing,” he remarked, with the manner of a man who +makes a trivial conversation, “is that I didn’t +<i>think</i>—at all. I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones—in +a sort of lethargy—stagnant. +</p> + +<p> +“And I don’t remember waking up. I don’t remember dressing +that day. I know I found myself in my office, with my letters all slit open in +front of me, and how I was struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing that +in reality I was sitting, stunned, in that Paestum Temple with a dead woman in +my arms. I read my letters like a machine. I have forgotten what they were +about.” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped, and there was a long silence. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline from Chalk Farm to +Euston. I started at this passing of time. I turned on him with a brutal +question, with the tone of “Now or never.” +</p> + +<p> +“And did you dream again?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was very low. +</p> + +<p> +“Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed to have +suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen into a sitting position, +and the body lay there on the stones beside me. A gaunt body. Not her, you +know. So soon—it was not her . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly that men +were coming into the solitude and that that was a last outrage. +</p> + +<p> +“I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into +sight—first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform of dirty +white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to the crest of the old +wall of the vanished city, and crouching there. They were little bright figures +in the sunlight, and there they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before +them. +</p> + +<p> +“And further away I saw others and then more at another point in the +wall. It was a long lax line of men in open order. +</p> + +<p> +“Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a command, and +his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds towards the temple. +He scrambled down with them and led them. He came facing towards me, and when +he saw me he stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when I had +seen they meant to come to the temple I was moved to forbid them. I shouted to +the officer. +</p> + +<p> +“‘You must not come here,’ I cried, ‘<i>I</i> am here. +I am here with my dead.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some unknown +tongue. +</p> + +<p> +“I repeated what I had said. +</p> + +<p> +“He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood still. Presently he +spoke to his men and came forward. He carried a drawn sword. +</p> + +<p> +“I signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance. I told him +again very patiently and clearly: ‘You must not come here. These are old +temples and I am here with my dead.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Presently he was so close I could see his face clearly. It was a narrow +face, with dull gray eyes, and a black moustache. He had a scar on his upper +lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. He kept shouting unintelligible things, +questions, perhaps, at me. +</p> + +<p> +“I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did not occur +to me. As I tried to explain to him, he interrupted me in imperious tones, +bidding me, I suppose, stand aside. +</p> + +<p> +“He made to go past me, and I caught hold of him. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw his face change at my grip. +</p> + +<p> +“‘You fool,’ I cried. ‘Don’t you know? She is +dead!’ +</p> + +<p> +“He started back. He looked at me with cruel eyes. I saw a sort of +exultant resolve leap into them—delight. Then, suddenly, with a scowl, he +swept his sword back—<i>so</i>—and thrust.” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +I became aware of a change in the rhythm of the train. The brakes lifted their +voices and the carriage jarred and jerked. This present world insisted upon +itself, became clamourous. I saw through the steamy window huge electric lights +glaring down from tall masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages +passing by, and then a signal-box hoisting its constellation of green and red +into the murky London twilight, marched after them. I looked again at his drawn +features. +</p> + +<p> +“He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort of astonishment—no +fear, no pain—but just amazement, that I felt it pierce me, felt the +sword drive home into my body. It didn’t hurt, you know. It didn’t +hurt at all.” +</p> + +<p> +The yellow platform lights came into the field of view, passing first rapidly, +then slowly, and at last stopping with a jerk. Dim shapes of men passed to and +fro without. +</p> + +<p> +“Euston!” cried a voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean—?” +</p> + +<p> +“There was no pain, no sting or smart. Amazement and then darkness +sweeping over everything. The hot, brutal face before me, the face of the man +who had killed me, seemed to recede. It swept out of existence—” +</p> + +<p> +“Euston!” clamoured the voices outside; “Euston!” +</p> + +<p> +The carriage door opened admitting a flood of sound, and a porter stood +regarding us. The sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof-clatter of cab-horses, +and behind these things the featureless remote roar of the London +cobble-stones, came to my ears. A truckload of lighted lamps blazed along the +platform. +</p> + +<p> +“A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out +all things.” +</p> + +<p> +“Any luggage, sir?” said the porter. +</p> + +<p> +“And that was the end?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +He seemed to hesitate. Then, almost inaudibly, he answered, +“<i>no</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t get to her. She was there on the other side of the +temple— And then—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” I insisted. “Yes?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nightmares,” he cried; “nightmares indeed! My God! Great +birds that fought and tore.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>THE CONE</h2> + +<p> +The night was hot and overcast, the sky red, rimmed with the lingering sunset +of mid-summer. 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. +</p> + +<p> +“He does not suspect?” said the man, a little nervously. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“None of these men of iron have,” he said sententiously. +“They have no hearts.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>He</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 . . . . . +<i>To-morrow</i>.” He spoke the last word in a whisper. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>To-morrow</i>,” she said, speaking in a whisper too, and still +staring out of the window. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear!” he said, putting his hand on hers. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“To open?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“All this wonderful world—” she hesitated, and spoke still +more softly—“this world of <i>love</i> to me.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The new-comer’s voice came at last, after a pause that seemed +interminable. “Well?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It was the husband’s voice that broke the silence at last. +</p> + +<p> +“You wanted to see me?” he said to Raut. +</p> + +<p> +Raut started as he spoke. “I came to see you,” he said, resolved to +lie to the last. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Horrocks. +</p> + +<p> +“You promised,” said Raut, “to show me some fine effects of +moonlight and smoke.” +</p> + +<p> +“I promised to show you some fine effects of moonlight and smoke,” +repeated Horrocks in a colourless voice. +</p> + +<p> +“And I thought I might catch you to-night before you went down to the +works,” proceeded Raut, “and come with you.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If I am troubling you—” began Raut. +</p> + +<p> +Horrocks started again. A new light had suddenly come into the sultry gloom of +his eyes. “Not in the least,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am slow to make discoveries,” said Horrocks grimly, damping her +suddenly. “But what I discover . . . . .” He stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing;” and suddenly he rose to his feet. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite,” said Raut, and stood up also. +</p> + +<p> +There was another pause. Each of them peered through the indistinctness of the +dusk at the other two. Horrocks’ 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. +</p> + +<p> +“My hat?” Raut looked round in the half-light. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Got it?” said Horrocks, standing with the door half open. +</p> + +<p> +Raut stepped towards him. “Better say good-bye to Mrs. Horrocks,” +said the ironmaster, even more grimly quiet in his tone than before. +</p> + +<p> +Raut started and turned. “Good-evening, Mrs. Horrocks,” he said, +and their hands touched. +</p> + +<p> +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 lamp-light 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly you get some fine effects of colour with your furnaces,” +said Raut, breaking a silence that had become apprehensive. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Raut hung back. Their eyes met and saw a thousand things in a moment that their +eyes came near to say. Horrocks’ 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>him</i>. 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!” +</p> + +<p> +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’ pull with all his strength. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How?” said Raut. “Cones?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But every now and then,” said Raut, “you get a burst of fire +and smoke up there.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see,” said Raut. He looked over his shoulder. “The moon +gets brighter,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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’ 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Horrocks answered with a grunt. “The cone,” he said, and then, as +one who recovers himself, “I thought you did not hear.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t,” said Raut. +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t have had you run over then for the world,” said +Horrocks. +</p> + +<p> +“For a moment I lost my nerve,” said Raut. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Suppose this slouching, scowling monster <i>did</i> 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 any +rate, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” said Raut. “Rather! The haze in the moonlight. +Fine!” +</p> + +<p> +“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 . . .” +</p> + +<p> +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 tuyeres 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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 tuyeres, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 vapor 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, halfway 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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’ voice. But the thing had to be gone through +now. Perhaps, after all . . . +</p> + +<p> +“In the middle,” bawled Horrocks, “temperature near a +thousand degrees. If <i>you</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Three hundred degrees!” said Raut. +</p> + +<p> +“Three hundred centigrade, mind!” said Horrocks. “It will +boil the blood out of you in no time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eigh?” said Raut, and turned. +</p> + +<p> +“Boil the blood out of you in . . . No, you don’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me go!” screamed Raut. “Let go my arm!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of the truck, and flung it +deliberately, lump after lump, at Raut. +</p> + +<p> +“Horrocks!” cried Raut. “Horrocks!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“God have mercy upon me!” he cried. “O God! what have I +done?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then he staggered back, and stood trembling, clinging to the rail with both +hands. His lips moved, but no words came to them. +</p> + +<p> +Down below was the sound of voices and running steps. The clangour of rolling +in the shed ceased abruptly. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>A MOONLIGHT FABLE</h2> + +<p> +There was once a little man whose mother made him a beautiful suit of clothes. +It was green and gold and woven so that I cannot describe how delicate and fine +it was, and there was a tie of orange fluffiness that tied up under his chin. +And the buttons in their newness shone like stars. He was proud and pleased by +his suit beyond measure, and stood before the long looking-glass when first he +put it on, so astonished and delighted with it that he could hardly turn +himself away. +</p> + +<p> +He wanted to wear it everywhere and show it to all sorts of people. He thought +over all the places he had ever visited and all the scenes he had ever heard +described, and tried to imagine what the feel of it would be if he were to go +now to those scenes and places wearing his shining suit, and he wanted to go +out forthwith into the long grass and the hot sunshine of the meadow wearing +it. Just to wear it! But his mother told him, “No.” She told him he +must take great care of his suit, for never would he have another nearly so +fine; he must save it and save it and only wear it on rare and great occasions. +It was his wedding suit, she said. And she took his buttons and twisted them up +with tissue paper for fear their bright newness should be tarnished, and she +tacked little guards over the cuffs and elbows and wherever the suit was most +likely to come to harm. He hated and resisted these things, but what could he +do? And at last her warnings and persuasions had effect and he consented to +take off his beautiful suit and fold it into its proper creases and put it +away. It was almost as though he gave it up again. But he was always thinking +of wearing it and of the supreme occasion when some day it might be worn +without the guards, without the tissue paper on the buttons, utterly and +delightfully, never caring, beautiful beyond measure. +</p> + +<p> +One night when he was dreaming of it, after his habit, he dreamed he took the +tissue paper from one of the buttons and found its brightness a little faded, +and that distressed him mightily in his dream. He polished the poor faded +button and polished it, and if anything it grew duller. He woke up and lay +awake thinking of the brightness a little dulled and wondering how he would +feel if perhaps when the great occasion (whatever it might be) should arrive, +one button should chance to be ever so little short of its first glittering +freshness, and for days and days that thought remained with him, distressingly. +And when next his mother let him wear his suit, he was tempted and nearly gave +way to the temptation just to fumble off one little bit of tissue paper and see +if indeed the buttons were keeping as bright as ever. +</p> + +<p> +He went trimly along on his way to church full of this wild desire. For you +must know his mother did, with repeated and careful warnings, let him wear his +suit at times, on Sundays, for example, to and fro from church, when there was +no threatening of rain, no dust nor anything to injure it, with its buttons +covered and its protections tacked upon it and a sunshade in his hand to shadow +it if there seemed too strong a sunlight for its colours. And always, after +such occasions, he brushed it over and folded it exquisitely as she had taught +him, and put it away again. +</p> + +<p> +Now all these restrictions his mother set to the wearing of his suit he obeyed, +always he obeyed them, until one strange night he woke up and saw the moonlight +shining outside his window. It seemed to him the moonlight was not common +moonlight, nor the night a common night, and for a while he lay quite drowsily +with this odd persuasion in his mind. Thought joined on to thought like things +that whisper warmly in the shadows. Then he sat up in his little bed suddenly, +very alert, with his heart beating very fast and a quiver in his body from top +to toe. He had made up his mind. He knew now that he was going to wear his suit +as it should be worn. He had no doubt in the matter. He was afraid, terribly +afraid, but glad, glad. +</p> + +<p> +He got out of his bed and stood a moment by the window looking at the +moonshine-flooded garden and trembling at the thing he meant to do. The air was +full of a minute clamor of crickets and murmurings, of the infinitesimal +shouting of little living things. He went very gently across the creaking +boards, for fear that he might wake the sleeping house, to the big dark +clothes-press wherein his beautiful suit lay folded, and he took it out garment +by garment and softly and very eagerly tore off its tissue-paper covering and +its tacked protections, until there it was, perfect and delightful as he had +seen it when first his mother had given it to him—a long time it seemed +ago. Not a button had tarnished, not a thread had faded on this dear suit of +his; he was glad enough for weeping as in a noiseless hurry he put it on. And +then back he went, soft and quick, to the window and looked out upon the garden +and stood there for a minute, shining in the moonlight, with his buttons +twinkling like stars, before he got out on the sill and, making as little of a +rustling as he could, clambered down to the garden path below. He stood before +his mother’s house, and it was white and nearly as plain as by day, with +every window-blind but his own shut like an eye that sleeps. The trees cast +still shadows like intricate black lace upon the wall. +</p> + +<p> +The garden in the moonlight was very different from the garden by day; +moonshine was tangled in the hedges and stretched in phantom cobwebs from spray +to spray. Every flower was gleaming white or crimson black, and the air was +aquiver with the thridding of small crickets and nightingales singing unseen in +the depths of the trees. +</p> + +<p> +There was no darkness in the world, but only warm, mysterious shadows; and all +the leaves and spikes were edged and lined with iridescent jewels of dew. The +night was warmer than any night had ever been, the heavens by some miracle at +once vaster and nearer, and spite of the great ivory-tinted moon that ruled the +world, the sky was full of stars. +</p> + +<p> +The little man did not shout nor sing for all his infinite gladness. He stood +for a time like one awe-stricken, and then, with a queer small cry and holding +out his arms, he ran out as if he would embrace at once the whole warm round +immensity of the world. He did not follow the neat set paths that cut the +garden squarely, but thrust across the beds and through the wet, tall, scented +herbs, through the night stock and the nicotine and the clusters of phantom +white mallow flowers and through the thickets of southern-wood and lavender, +and knee-deep across a wide space of mignonette. He came to the great hedge and +he thrust his way through it, and though the thorns of the brambles scored him +deeply and tore threads from his wonderful suit, and though burs and goosegrass +and havers caught and clung to him, he did not care. He did not care, for he +knew it was all part of the wearing for which he had longed. “I am glad I +put on my suit,” he said; “I am glad I wore my suit.” +</p> + +<p> +Beyond the hedge he came to the duck-pond, or at least to what was the +duck-pond by day. But by night it was a great bowl of silver moonshine all +noisy with singing frogs, of wonderful silver moonshine twisted and clotted +with strange patternings, and the little man ran down into its waters between +the thin black rushes, knee-deep and waist-deep and to his shoulders, smiting +the water to black and shining wavelets with either hand, swaying and shivering +wavelets, amid which the stars were netted in the tangled reflections of the +brooding trees upon the bank. He waded until he swam, and so he crossed the +pond and came out upon the other side, trailing, as it seemed to him, not +duckweed, but very silver in long, clinging, dripping masses. And up he went +through the transfigured tangles of the willow-herb and the uncut seeding grass +of the farther bank. And so he came glad and breathless into the highroad. +“I am glad,” he said, “beyond measure, that I had clothes +that fitted this occasion.” +</p> + +<p> +The highroad ran straight as an arrow flies, straight into the deep blue pit of +sky beneath the moon, a white and shining road between the singing +nightingales, and along it he went, running now and leaping, and now walking +and rejoicing, in the clothes his mother had made for him with tireless, loving +hands. The road was deep in dust, but that for him was only soft whiteness, and +as he went a great dim moth came fluttering round his wet and shimmering and +hastening figure. At first he did not heed the moth, and then he waved his +hands at it and made a sort of dance with it as it circled round his head. +“Soft moth!” he cried, “dear moth! And wonderful night, +wonderful night of the world! Do you think my clothes are beautiful, dear moth? +As beautiful as your scales and all this silver vesture of the earth and +sky?” +</p> + +<p> +And the moth circled closer and closer until at last its velvet wings just +brushed his lips . . . . . +</p> + +<p> +And next morning they found him dead with his neck broken in the bottom of the +stone pit, with his beautiful clothes a little bloody and foul and stained with +the duckweed from the pond. But his face was a face of such happiness that, had +you seen it, you would have understood indeed how that he had died happy, never +knowing the cool and streaming silver for the duckweed in the pond. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>THE DIAMOND MAKER</h2> + +<p> +Some business had detained me in Chancery Lane until nine in the evening, and +thereafter, having some inkling of a headache, I was disinclined either for +entertainment or further work. So much of the sky as the high cliffs of that +narrow canon of traffic left visible spoke of a serene night, and I determined +to make my way down to the Embankment, and rest my eyes and cool my head by +watching the variegated lights upon the river. Beyond comparison the night is +the best time for this place; a merciful darkness hides the dirt of the waters, +and the lights of this transitional age, red glaring orange, gas-yellow, and +electric white, are set in shadowy outlines of every possible shade between +grey and deep purple. Through the arches of Waterloo Bridge a hundred points of +light mark the sweep of the Embankment, and above its parapet rise the towers +of Westminster, warm grey against the starlight. The black river goes by with +only a rare ripple breaking its silence, and disturbing the reflections of the +lights that swim upon its surface. +</p> + +<p> +“A warm night,” said a voice at my side. +</p> + +<p> +I turned my head, and saw the profile of a man who was leaning over the parapet +beside me. It was a refined face, not unhandsome, though pinched and pale +enough, and the coat collar turned up and pinned round the throat marked his +status in life as sharply as a uniform. I felt I was committed to the price of +a bed and breakfast if I answered him. +</p> + +<p> +I looked at him curiously. Would he have anything to tell me worth the money, +or was he the common incapable—incapable even of telling his own story? +There was a quality of intelligence in his forehead and eyes, and a certain +tremulousness in his nether lip that decided me. +</p> + +<p> +“Very warm,” said I; “but not too warm for us here.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, still looking across the water, “it is +pleasant enough here . . . . just now.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is good,” he continued after a pause, “to find anything +so restful as this in London. After one has been fretting about business all +day, about getting on, meeting obligations, and parrying dangers, I do not know +what one would do if it were not for such pacific corners.” He spoke with +long pauses between the sentences. “You must know a little of the irksome +labour of the world, or you would not be here. But I doubt if you can be so +brain-weary and footsore as I am . . . . Bah! Sometimes I doubt if the game is +worth the candle. I feel inclined to throw the whole thing over—name, +wealth and position—and take to some modest trade. But I know if I +abandoned my ambition—hardly as she uses me—I should have nothing +but remorse left for the rest of my days.” +</p> + +<p> +He became silent. I looked at him in astonishment. If ever I saw a man +hopelessly hard-up it was the man in front of me. He was ragged and he was +dirty, unshaven and unkempt; he looked as though he had been left in a dust-bin +for a week. And he was talking to <i>me</i> of the irksome worries of a large +business. I almost laughed outright. Either he was mad or playing a sorry jest +on his own poverty. +</p> + +<p> +“If high aims and high positions,” said I, “have their +drawbacks of hard work and anxiety, they have their compensations. Influence, +the power of doing good, of assisting those weaker and poorer than ourselves; +and there is even a certain gratification in display . . . . . ” +</p> + +<p> +My banter under the circumstances was in very vile taste. I spoke on the spur +of the contrast of his appearance and speech. I was sorry even while I was +speaking. +</p> + +<p> +He turned a haggard but very composed face upon me. Said he: “I forgot +myself. Of course you would not understand.” +</p> + +<p> +He measured me for a moment. “No doubt it is very absurd. You will not +believe me even when I tell you, so that it is fairly safe to tell you. And it +will be a comfort to tell someone. I really have a big business in hand, a very +big business. But there are troubles just now. The fact is . . . . I make +diamonds.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose,” said I, “you are out of work just at +present?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sick of being disbelieved,” he said impatiently, and suddenly +unbuttoning his wretched coat he pulled out a little canvas bag that was +hanging by a cord round his neck. From this he produced a brown pebble. +“I wonder if you know enough to know what that is?” He handed it to +me. +</p> + +<p> +Now, a year or so ago, I had occupied my leisure in taking a London science +degree, so that I have a smattering of physics and mineralogy. The thing was +not unlike an uncut diamond of the darker sort, though far too large, being +almost as big as the top of my thumb. I took it, and saw it had the form of a +regular octahedron, with the curved faces peculiar to the most precious of +minerals. I took out my penknife and tried to scratch it—vainly. Leaning +forward towards the gas-lamp, I tried the thing on my watch-glass, and scored a +white line across that with the greatest ease. +</p> + +<p> +I looked at my interlocutor with rising curiosity. “It certainly is +rather like a diamond. But, if so, it is a Behemoth of diamonds. Where did you +get it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you I made it,” he said. “Give it back to me.” +</p> + +<p> +He replaced it hastily and buttoned his jacket. “I will sell it you for +one hundred pounds,” he suddenly whispered eagerly. With that my +suspicions returned. The thing might, after all, be merely a lump of that +almost equally hard substance, corundum, with an accidental resemblance in +shape to the diamond. Or if it was a diamond, how came he by it, and why should +he offer it at a hundred pounds? +</p> + +<p> +We looked into one another’s eyes. He seemed eager, but honestly eager. +At that moment I believed it was a diamond he was trying to sell. Yet I am a +poor man, a hundred pounds would leave a visible gap in my fortunes and no sane +man would buy a diamond by gaslight from a ragged tramp on his personal +warranty only. Still, a diamond that size conjured up a vision of many +thousands of pounds. Then, thought I, such a stone could scarcely exist without +being mentioned in every book on gems, and again I called to mind the stories +of contraband and light-fingered Kaffirs at the Cape. I put the question of +purchase on one side. +</p> + +<p> +“How did you get it?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“I made it.” +</p> + +<p> +I had heard something of Moissan, but I knew his artificial diamonds were very +small. I shook my head. +</p> + +<p> +“You seem to know something of this kind of thing. I will tell you a +little about myself. Perhaps then you may think better of the purchase.” +He turned round with his back to the river, and put his hands in his pockets. +He sighed. “I know you will not believe me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Diamonds,” he began—and as he spoke his voice lost its faint +flavour of the tramp and assumed something of the easy tone of an educated +man—“are to be made by throwing carbon out of combination in a +suitable flux and under a suitable pressure; the carbon crystallises out, not +as black-lead or charcoal-powder, but as small diamonds. So much has been known +to chemists for years, but no one yet had hit upon exactly the right flux in +which to melt up the carbon, or exactly the right pressure for the best +results. Consequently the diamonds made by chemists are small and dark, and +worthless as jewels. Now I, you know, have given up my life to this +problem—given my life to it. +</p> + +<p> +“I began to work at the conditions of diamond making when I was +seventeen, and now I am thirty-two. It seemed to me that it might take all the +thought and energies of a man for ten years, or twenty years, but, even if it +did, the game was still worth the candle. Suppose one to have at last just hit +the right trick before the secret got out and diamonds became as common as +coal, one might realize millions. Millions!” +</p> + +<p> +He paused and looked for my sympathy. His eyes shone hungrily. “To +think,” said he, “that I am on the verge of it all, and here! +</p> + +<p> +“I had,” he proceeded, “about a thousand pounds when I was +twenty-one, and this, I thought, eked out by a little teaching, would keep my +researches going. A year or two was spent in study, at Berlin chiefly, and then +I continued on my own account. The trouble was the secrecy. You see, if once I +had let out what I was doing, other men might have been spurred on by my belief +in the practicability of the idea; and I do not pretend to be such a genius as +to have been sure of coming in first, in the case of a race for the discovery. +And you see it was important that if I really meant to make a pile, people +should not know it was an artificial process and capable of turning out +diamonds by the ton. So I had to work all alone. At first I had a little +laboratory, but as my resources began to run out I had to conduct my +experiments in a wretched unfurnished room in Kentish Town, where I slept at +last on a straw mattress on the floor among all my apparatus. The money simply +flowed away. I grudged myself everything except scientific appliances. I tried +to keep things going by a little teaching, but I am not a very good teacher, +and I have no university degree, nor very much education except in chemistry, +and I found I had to give a lot of time and labour for precious little money. +But I got nearer and nearer the thing. Three years ago I settled the problem of +the composition of the flux, and got near the pressure by putting this flux of +mine and a certain carbon composition into a closed-up gun-barrel, filling up +with water, sealing tightly, and heating.” +</p> + +<p> +He paused. +</p> + +<p> +“Rather risky,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. It burst, and smashed all my windows and a lot of my apparatus; but +I got a kind of diamond powder nevertheless. Following out the problem of +getting a big pressure upon the molten mixture from which the things were to +crystallise, I hit upon some researches of Daubree’s at the Paris +<i>Laboratorie des Poudres et Salpetres</i>. He exploded dynamite in a tightly +screwed steel cylinder, too strong to burst, and I found he could crush rocks +into a muck not unlike the South African bed in which diamonds are found. It +was a tremendous strain on my resources, but I got a steel cylinder made for my +purpose after his pattern. I put in all my stuff and my explosives, built up a +fire in my furnace, put the whole concern in, and—went out for a +walk.” +</p> + +<p> +I could not help laughing at his matter-of-fact manner. “Did you not +think it would blow up the house? Were there other people in the place?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was in the interest of science,” he said, ultimately. +“There was a costermonger family on the floor below, a begging-letter +writer in the room behind mine, and two flower-women were upstairs. Perhaps it +was a bit thoughtless. But possibly some of them were out. +</p> + +<p> +“When I came back the thing was just where I left it, among the white-hot +coals. The explosive hadn’t burst the case. And then I had a problem to +face. You know time is an important element in crystallisation. If you hurry +the process the crystals are small—it is only by prolonged standing that +they grow to any size. I resolved to let this apparatus cool for two years, +letting the temperature go down slowly during the time. And I was now quite out +of money; and with a big fire and the rent of my room, as well as my hunger to +satisfy, I had scarcely a penny in the world. +</p> + +<p> +“I can hardly tell you all the shifts I was put to while I was making the +diamonds. I have sold newspapers, held horses, opened cab-doors. For many weeks +I addressed envelopes. I had a place as assistant to a man who owned a barrow, +and used to call down one side of the road while he called down the other. +</p> + +<p> +“Once for a week I had absolutely nothing to do, and I begged. What a +week that was! One day the fire was going out and I had eaten nothing all day, +and a little chap taking his girl out, gave me sixpence—to show off. +Thank heaven for vanity! How the fish-shops smelt! But I went and spent it all +on coals, and had the furnace bright red again, and then—Well, hunger +makes a fool of a man. +</p> + +<p> +“At last, three weeks ago, I let the fire out. I took my cylinder and +unscrewed it while it was still so hot that it punished my hands, and I scraped +out the crumbling lava-like mass with a chisel, and hammered it into a powder +upon an iron plate. And I found three big diamonds and five small ones. As I +sat on the floor hammering, my door opened, and my neighbour, the +begging-letter writer came in. He was drunk—as he usually is. +‘Nerchist,’ said he. ‘You’re drunk,’ said I. +‘’Structive scoundrel,’ said he. ‘Go to your +father,’ said I, meaning the Father of Lies. ‘Never you +mind,’ said he, and gave me a cunning wink, and hiccuped, and leaning up +against the door, with his other eye against the door-post, began to babble of +how he had been prying in my room, and how he had gone to the police that +morning, and how they had taken down everything he had to +say—‘’siffiwas a ge’m,’ said he. Then I suddenly +realised I was in a hole. Either I should have to tell these police my little +secret, and get the whole thing blown upon, or be lagged as an Anarchist. So I +went up to my neighbour and took him by the collar, and rolled him about a bit, +and then I gathered up my diamonds and cleared out. The evening newspapers +called my den the Kentish Town Bomb Factory. And now I cannot part with the +things for love or money. +</p> + +<p> +“If I go in to respectable jewellers they ask me to wait, and go and +whisper to a clerk to fetch a policeman, and then I say I cannot wait. And I +found out a receiver of stolen goods, and he simply stuck to the one I gave him +and told me to prosecute if I wanted it back. I am going about now with several +hundred thousand pounds-worth of diamonds round my neck, and without either +food or shelter. You are the first person I have taken into my confidence. But +I like your face and I am hard-driven.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked into my eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“It would be madness,” said I, “for me to buy a diamond under +the circumstances. Besides, I do not carry hundreds of pounds about in my +pocket. Yet I more than half believe your story. I will, if you like, do this: +come to my office to-morrow . . . .” +</p> + +<p> +“You think I am a thief!” said he keenly. “You will tell the +police. I am not coming into a trap.” +</p> + +<p> +“Somehow I am assured you are no thief. Here is my card. Take that, +anyhow. You need not come to any appointment. Come when you will.” +</p> + +<p> +He took the card, and an earnest of my good-will. +</p> + +<p> +“Think better of it and come,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +He shook his head doubtfully. “I will pay back your half-crown with +interest some day—such interest as will amaze you,” said he. +“Anyhow, you will keep the secret? . . . . Don’t follow me.” +</p> + +<p> +He crossed the road and went into the darkness towards the little steps under +the archway leading into Essex Street, and I let him go. And that was the last +I ever saw of him. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards I had two letters from him asking me to send bank-notes—not +cheques—to certain addresses. I weighed the matter over and took what I +conceived to be the wisest course. Once he called upon me when I was out. My +urchin described him as a very thin, dirty, and ragged man, with a dreadful +cough. He left no message. That was the finish of him so far as my story goes. +I wonder sometimes what has become of him. Was he an ingenious monomaniac, or a +fraudulent dealer in pebbles, or has he really made diamonds as he asserted? +The latter is just sufficiently credible to make me think at times that I have +missed the most brilliant opportunity of my life. He may of course be dead, and +his diamonds carelessly thrown aside—one, I repeat, was almost as big as +my thumb. Or he may be still wandering about trying to sell the things. It is +just possible he may yet emerge upon society, and, passing athwart my heavens +in the serene altitude sacred to the wealthy and the well-advertised, reproach +me silently for my want of enterprise. I sometimes think I might at least have +risked five pounds. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS</h2> + +<p> +The chief attendant of the three dynamos that buzzed and rattled at Camberwell, +and kept the electric railway going, came out of Yorkshire, and his name was +James Holroyd. He was a practical electrician, but fond of whisky, a heavy +red-haired brute with irregular teeth. He doubted the existence of the deity, +but accepted Carnot’s cycle, and he had read Shakespeare and found him +weak in chemistry. His helper came out of the mysterious East, and his name was +Azuma-zi. But Holroyd called him Pooh-bah. Holroyd liked a nigger because he +would stand kicking—a habit with Holroyd—and did not pry into the +machinery and try to learn the ways of it. Certain odd possibilities of the +negro mind brought into abrupt contact with the crown of our civilisation +Holroyd never fully realised, though just at the end he got some inkling of +them. +</p> + +<p> +To define Azuma-zi was beyond ethnology. He was, perhaps, more negroid than +anything else, though his hair was curly rather than frizzy, and his nose had a +bridge. Moreover, his skin was brown rather than black, and the whites of his +eyes were yellow. His broad cheekbones and narrow chin gave his face something +of the viperine V. His head, too, was broad behind, and low and narrow at the +forehead, as if his brain had been twisted round in the reverse way to a +European’s. He was short of stature and still shorter of English. In +conversation he made numerous odd noises of no known marketable value, and his +infrequent words were carved and wrought into heraldic grotesqueness. Holroyd +tried to elucidate his religious beliefs, and—especially after +whisky—lectured to him against superstition and missionaries. Azuma-zi, +however, shirked the discussion of his gods, even though he was kicked for it. +</p> + +<p> +Azuma-zi had come, clad in white but insufficient raiment, out of the stokehole +of the <i>Lord Clive</i>, from the Straits Settlements, and beyond, into +London. He had heard even in his youth of the greatness and riches of London, +where all the women are white and fair, and even the beggars in the streets are +white, and he arrived, with newly earned gold coins in his pocket, to worship +at the shrine of civilisation. The day of his landing was a dismal one; the sky +was dun, and a wind-worried drizzle filtered down to the greasy streets, but he +plunged boldly into the delights of Shadwell, and was presently cast up, +shattered in health, civilised in costume, penniless and, except in matters of +the direst necessity, practically a dumb animal, to toil for James Holroyd and +to be bullied by him in the dynamo shed at Camberwell. And to James Holroyd +bullying was a labour of love. +</p> + +<p> +There were three dynamos with their engines at Camberwell. The two that had +been there since the beginning were small machines; the larger one was new. The +smaller machines made a reasonable noise; their straps hummed over the drums, +every now and then the brushes buzzed and fizzled, and the air churned +steadily, whoo! whoo! whoo! between their poles. One was loose in its +foundations and kept the shed vibrating. But the big dynamo drowned these +little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core, which +somehow set part of the ironwork humming. The place made the visitor’s +head reel with the throb, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation of the big +wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and +over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the big dynamo. This last noise +was from an engineering point of view a defect, but Azuma-zi accounted it unto +the monster for mightiness and pride. +</p> + +<p> +If it were possible we would have the noises of that shed always about the +reader as he reads, we would tell all our story to such an accompaniment. It +was a steady stream of din, from which the ear picked out first one thread and +then another; there was the intermittent snorting, panting, and seething of the +steam engines, the suck and thud of their pistons, the dull beat on the air as +the spokes of the great driving-wheels came round, a note the leather straps +made as they ran tighter and looser, and a fretful tumult from the dynamos; and +over all, sometimes inaudible, as the ear tired of it, and then creeping back +upon the senses again, was this trombone note of the big machine. The floor +never felt steady and quiet beneath one’s feet, but quivered and jarred. +It was a confusing, unsteady place, and enough to send anyone’s thoughts +jerking into odd zigzags. And for three months, while the big strike of the +engineers was in progress, Holroyd, who was a blackleg, and Azuma-zi, who was a +mere black, were never out of the stir and eddy of it, but slept and fed in the +little wooden shanty between the shed and the gates. +</p> + +<p> +Holroyd delivered a theological lecture on the text of his big machine soon +after Azuma-zi came. He had to shout to be heard in the din. “Look at +that,” said Holroyd; “where’s your ‘eathen idol to +match ‘im?” And Azuma-zi looked. For a moment Holroyd was +inaudible, and then Azuma-zi heard: “Kill a hundred men. Twelve per cent. +on the ordinary shares,” said Holroyd, “and that’s something +like a Gord!” +</p> + +<p> +Holroyd was proud of his big dynamo, and expatiated upon its size and power to +Azuma-zi until heaven knows what odd currents of thought that and the incessant +whirling and shindy set up within the curly black cranium. He would explain in +the most graphic manner the dozen or so ways in which a man might be killed by +it, and once he gave Azuma-zi a shock as a sample of its quality. After that, +in the breathing-times of his labour—it was heavy labour, being not only +his own, but most of Holroyd’s—Azuma-zi would sit and watch the big +machine. Now and then the brushes would sparkle and spit blue flashes, at which +Holroyd would swear, but all the rest was as smooth and rhythmic as breathing. +The band ran shouting over the shaft, and ever behind one as one watched was +the complacent thud of the piston. So it lived all day in this big airy shed, +with him and Holroyd to wait upon it; not prisoned up and slaving to drive a +ship as the other engines he knew—mere captive devils of the British +Solomon—had been, but a machine enthroned. Those two smaller dynamos, +Azuma-zi by force of contrast despised; the large one he privately christened +the Lord of the Dynamos. They were fretful and irregular, but the big dynamo +was steady. How great it was! How serene and easy in its working! Greater and +calmer even than the Buddhas he had seen at Rangoon, and yet not motionless, +but living! The great black coils spun, spun, spun, the rings ran round under +the brushes, and the deep note of its coil steadied the whole. It affected +Azuma-zi queerly. +</p> + +<p> +Azuma-zi was not fond of labour. He would sit about and watch the Lord of the +Dynamos while Holroyd went away to persuade the yard porter to get whisky, +although his proper place was not in the dynamo shed but behind the engines, +and, moreover, if Holroyd caught him skulking he got hit for it with a rod of +stout copper wire. He would go and stand close to the colossus and look up at +the great leather band running overhead. There was a black patch on the band +that came round, and it pleased him somehow among all the clatter to watch this +return again and again. Odd thoughts spun with the whirl of it. Scientific +people tell us that savages give souls to rocks and trees—and a machine +is a thousand times more alive than a rock or a tree. And Azuma-zi was +practically a savage still; the veneer of civilisation lay no deeper than his +slop suit, his bruises, and the coal grime on his face and hands. His father +before him had worshipped a meteoric stone, kindred blood it may be had +splashed the broad wheels of Juggernaut. +</p> + +<p> +He took every opportunity Holroyd gave him of touching and handling the great +dynamo that was fascinating him. He polished and cleaned it until the metal +parts were blinding in the sun. He felt a mysterious sense of service in doing +this. He would go up to it and touch its spinning coils gently. The gods he had +worshipped were all far away. The people in London hid their gods. +</p> + +<p> +At last his dim feelings grew more distinct, and took shape in thoughts and at +last in acts. When he came into the roaring shed one morning he salaamed to the +Lord of the Dynamos, and then when Holroyd was away, he went and whispered to +the thundering machine that he was its servant, and prayed it to have pity on +him and save him from Holroyd. As he did so a rare gleam of light came in +through the open archway of the throbbing machine-shed, and the Lord of the +Dynamos, as he whirled and roared, was radiant with pale gold. Then Azuma-zi +knew that his service was acceptable to his Lord. After that he did not feel so +lonely as he had done, and he had indeed been very much alone in London. And +even when his work time was over, which was rare, he loitered about the shed. +</p> + +<p> +Then, the next time Holroyd maltreated him, Azuma-zi went presently to the Lord +of the Dynamos and whispered, “Thou seest, O my Lord!” and the +angry whir of the machinery seemed to answer him. Thereafter it appeared to him +that whenever Holroyd came into the shed a different note came into the sounds +of the dynamo. “My Lord bides his time,” said Azuma-zi to himself. +“The iniquity of the fool is not yet ripe.” And he waited and +watched for the day of reckoning. One day there was evidence of short +circuiting, and Holroyd, making an unwary examination—it was in the +afternoon—got a rather severe shock. Azuma-zi from behind the engine saw +him jump off and curse at the peccant coil. +</p> + +<p> +“He is warned,” said Azuma-zi to himself. “Surely my Lord is +very patient.” +</p> + +<p> +Holroyd had at first initiated his “nigger” into such elementary +conceptions of the dynamo’s working as would enable him to take temporary +charge of the shed in his absence. But when he noticed the manner in which +Azuma-zi hung about the monster he became suspicious. He dimly perceived his +assistant was “up to something,” and connecting him with the +anointing of the coils with oil that had rotted the varnish in one place, he +issued an edict, shouted above the confusion of the machinery, +“Don’t ‘ee go nigh that big dynamo any more, Pooh-bah, or +a’ll take thy skin off!” Besides, if it pleased Azuma-zi to be near +the big machine, it was plain sense and decency to keep him away from it. +</p> + +<p> +Azuma-zi obeyed at the time, but later he was caught bowing before the Lord of +the Dynamos. At which Holroyd twisted his arm and kicked him as he turned to go +away. As Azuma-zi presently stood behind the engine and glared at the back of +the hated Holroyd, the noises of the machinery took a new rhythm, and sounded +like four words in his native tongue. +</p> + +<p> +It is hard to say exactly what madness is. I fancy Azuma-zi was mad. The +incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shed may have churned up his little store +of knowledge and his big store of superstitious fancy, at last, into something +akin to frenzy. At any rate, when the idea of making Holroyd a sacrifice to the +Dynamo Fetich was thus suggested to him, it filled him with a strange tumult of +exultant emotion. +</p> + +<p> +That night the two men and their black shadows were alone in the shed together. +The shed was lit with one big arc light that winked and flickered purple. The +shadows lay black behind the dynamos, the ball governors of the engines whirled +from light to darkness, and their pistons beat loud and steady. The world +outside seen through the open end of the shed seemed incredibly dim and remote. +It seemed absolutely silent, too, since the riot of the machinery drowned every +external sound. Far away was the black fence of the yard with grey shadowy +houses behind, and above was the deep blue sky and the pale little stars. +Azuma-zi suddenly walked across the centre of the shed above which the leather +bands were running, and went into the shadow by the big dynamo. Holroyd heard a +click, and the spin of the armature changed. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you dewin’ with that switch?” he bawled in +surprise. “Han’t I told you—” +</p> + +<p> +Then he saw the set expression of Azuma-zi’s eyes as the Asiatic came out +of the shadow towards him. +</p> + +<p> +In another moment the two men were grappling fiercely in front of the great +dynamo. +</p> + +<p> +“You coffee-headed fool!” gasped Holroyd, with a brown hand at his +throat. “Keep off those contact rings.” In another moment he was +tripped and reeling back upon the Lord of the Dynamos. He instinctively +loosened his grip upon his antagonist to save himself from the machine. +</p> + +<p> +The messenger, sent in furious haste from the station to find out what had +happened in the dynamo shed, met Azuma-zi at the porter’s lodge by the +gate. Azuma-zi tried to explain something, but the messenger could make nothing +of the black’s incoherent English, and hurried on to the shed. The +machines were all noisily at work, and nothing seemed to be disarranged. There +was, however, a queer smell of singed hair. Then he saw an odd-looking crumpled +mass clinging to the front of the big dynamo, and, approaching, recognised the +distorted remains of Holroyd. +</p> + +<p> +The man stared and hesitated a moment. Then he saw the face, and shut his eyes +convulsively. He turned on his heel before he opened them, so that he should +not see Holroyd again, and went out of the shed to get advice and help. +</p> + +<p> +When Azuma-zi saw Holroyd die in the grip of the Great Dynamo he had been a +little scared about the consequences of his act. Yet he felt strangely elated, +and knew that the favour of the Lord Dynamo was upon him. His plan was already +settled when he met the man coming from the station, and the scientific manager +who speedily arrived on the scene jumped at the obvious conclusion of suicide. +This expert scarcely noticed Azuma-zi, except to ask a few questions. Did he +see Holroyd kill himself? Azuma-zi explained that he had been out of sight at +the engine furnace until he heard a difference in the noise from the dynamo. It +was not a difficult examination, being untinctured by suspicion. +</p> + +<p> +The distorted remains of Holroyd, which the electrician removed from the +machine, were hastily covered by the porter with a coffee-stained tablecloth. +Somebody, by a happy inspiration, fetched a medical man. The expert was chiefly +anxious to get the machine at work again, for seven or eight trains had stopped +midway in the stuffy tunnels of the electric railway. Azuma-zi, answering or +misunderstanding the questions of the people who had by authority or impudence +come into the shed, was presently sent back to the stoke-hole by the scientific +manager. Of course a crowd collected outside the gates of the yard—a +crowd, for no known reason, always hovers for a day or two near the scene of a +sudden death in London; two or three reporters percolated somehow into the +engine-shed, and one even got to Azuma-zi; but the scientific expert cleared +them out again, being himself an amateur journalist. +</p> + +<p> +Presently the body was carried away, and public interest departed with it. +Azuma-zi remained very quietly at his furnace, seeing over and over again in +the coals a figure that wriggled violently and became still. An hour after the +murder, to anyone coming into the shed it would have looked exactly as if +nothing had ever happened there. Peeping presently from his engine-room the +black saw the Lord Dynamo spin and whirl beside his little brothers, and the +driving wheels were beating round, and the steam in the pistons went thud, +thud, exactly as it had been earlier in the evening. After all, from the +mechanical point of view, it had been a most insignificant incident—the +mere temporary deflection of a current. But now the slender form and slender +shadow of the scientific manager replaced the sturdy outline of Holroyd +travelling up and down the lane of light upon the vibrating floor under the +straps between the engines and the dynamos. +</p> + +<p> +“Have I not served my Lord?” said Azuma-zi inaudibly, from his +shadow, and the note of the great dynamo rang out full and clear. As he looked +at the big whirling mechanism the strange fascination of it that had been a +little in abeyance since Holroyd’s death, resumed its sway. +</p> + +<p> +Never had Azuma-zi seen a man killed so swiftly and pitilessly. The big humming +machine had slain its victim without wavering for a second from its steady +beating. It was indeed a mighty god. +</p> + +<p> +The unconscious scientific manager stood with his back to him, scribbling on a +piece of paper. His shadow lay at the foot of the monster. +</p> + +<p> +“Was the Lord Dynamo still hungry? His servant was ready.” +</p> + +<p> +Azuma-zi made a stealthy step forward; then stopped. The scientific manager +suddenly stopped writing, and walked down the shed to the endmost of the +dynamos, and began to examine the brushes. +</p> + +<p> +Azuma-zi hesitated, and then slipped across noiselessly into shadow by the +switch. There he waited. Presently the manager’s footsteps could be heard +returning. He stopped in his old position, unconscious of the stoker crouching +ten feet away from him. Then the big dynamo suddenly fizzled, and in another +moment Azuma-zi had sprung out of the darkness upon him. +</p> + +<p> +First, the scientific manager was gripped round the body and swung towards the +big dynamo, then, kicking with his knee and forcing his antagonist’s head +down with his hands, he loosened the grip on his waist and swung round away +from the machine. Then the black grasped him again, putting a curly head +against his chest, and they swayed and panted as it seemed for an age or so. +Then the scientific manager was impelled to catch a black ear in his teeth and +bite furiously. The black yelled hideously. +</p> + +<p> +They rolled over on the floor, and the black, who had apparently slipped from +the vice of the teeth or parted with some ear—the scientific manager +wondered which at the time—tried to throttle him. The scientific manager +was making some ineffectual attempts to claw something with his hands and to +kick, when the welcome sound of quick footsteps sounded on the floor. The next +moment Azuma-zi had left him and darted towards the big dynamo. There was a +splutter amid the roar. +</p> + +<p> +The officer of the company who had entered, stood staring as Azuma-zi caught +the naked terminals in his hands, gave one horrible convulsion, and then hung +motionless from the machine, his face violently distorted. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m jolly glad you came in when you did,” said the +scientific manager, still sitting on the floor. +</p> + +<p> +He looked at the still quivering figure. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not a nice death to die, apparently—but it is +quick.” +</p> + +<p> +The official was still staring at the body. He was a man of slow apprehension. +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +The scientific manager got up on his feet rather awkwardly. He ran his fingers +along his collar thoughtfully, and moved his head to and fro several times. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor Holroyd! I see now.” Then almost mechanically he went towards +the switch in the shadow and turned the current into the railway circuit again. +As he did so the singed body loosened its grip upon the machine and fell +forward on its face. The core of the dynamo roared out loud and clear, and the +armature beat the air. +</p> + +<p> +So ended prematurely the Worship of the Dynamo Deity, perhaps the most +short-lived of all religions. Yet withal it could at least boast a Martyrdom +and a Human Sacrifice. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND</h2> + +<p> +Three hundred miles and more from Chimborazo, one hundred from the snows of +Cotopaxi, in the wildest wastes of Ecuador’s Andes, there lies that +mysterious mountain valley, cut off from all the world of men, the Country of +the Blind. Long years ago that valley lay so far open to the world that men +might come at last through frightful gorges and over an icy pass into its +equable meadows, and thither indeed men came, a family or so of Peruvian +half-breeds fleeing from the lust and tyranny of an evil Spanish ruler. Then +came the stupendous outbreak of Mindobamba, when it was night in Quito for +seventeen days, and the water was boiling at Yaguachi and all the fish floating +dying even as far as Guayaquil; everywhere along the Pacific slopes there were +land-slips and swift thawings and sudden floods, and one whole side of the old +Arauca crest slipped and came down in thunder, and cut off the Country of the +Blind for ever from the exploring feet of men. But one of these early settlers +had chanced to be on the hither side of the gorges when the world had so +terribly shaken itself, and he perforce had to forget his wife and his child +and all the friends and possessions he had left up there, and start life over +again in the lower world. He started it again but ill, blindness overtook him, +and he died of punishment in the mines; but the story he told begot a legend +that lingers along the length of the Cordilleras of the Andes to this day. +</p> + +<p> +He told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness, into which he had +first been carried lashed to a llama, beside a vast bale of gear, when he was a +child. The valley, he said, had in it all that the heart of man could +desire—sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil +with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great +hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches high. Far overhead, on three +sides, vast cliffs of grey-green rock were capped by cliffs of ice; but the +glacier stream came not to them, but flowed away by the farther slopes, and +only now and then huge ice masses fell on the valley side. In this valley it +neither rained nor snowed, but the abundant springs gave a rich green pasture, +that irrigation would spread over all the valley space. The settlers did well +indeed there. Their beasts did well and multiplied, and but one thing marred +their happiness. Yet it was enough to mar it greatly. A strange disease had +come upon them and had made all the children born to them there—and, +indeed, several older children also—blind. It was to seek some charm or +antidote against this plague of blindness that he had with fatigue and danger +and difficulty returned down the gorge. In those days, in such cases, men did +not think of germs and infections, but of sins, and it seemed to him that the +reason of this affliction must lie in the negligence of these priestless +immigrants to set up a shrine so soon as they entered the valley. He wanted a +shrine—a handsome, cheap, effectual shrine—to be erected in the +valley; he wanted relics and such-like potent things of faith, blessed objects +and mysterious medals and prayers. In his wallet he had a bar of native silver +for which he would not account; he insisted there was none in the valley with +something of the insistence of an inexpert liar. They had all clubbed their +money and ornaments together, having little need for such treasure up there, he +said, to buy them holy help against their ill. I figure this dim-eyed young +mountaineer, sunburnt, gaunt, and anxious, hat brim clutched feverishly, a man +all unused to the ways of the lower world, telling this story to some +keen-eyed, attentive priest before the great convulsion; I can picture him +presently seeking to return with pious and infallible remedies against that +trouble, and the infinite dismay with which he must have faced the tumbled +vastness where the gorge had once come out. But the rest of his story of +mischances is lost to me, save that I know of his evil death after several +years. Poor stray from that remoteness! The stream that had once made the gorge +now bursts from the mouth of a rocky cave, and the legend his poor, ill-told +story set going developed into the legend of a race of blind men somewhere +“over there” one may still hear to-day. +</p> + +<p> +And amidst the little population of that now isolated and forgotten valley the +disease ran its course. The old became groping, the young saw but dimly, and +the children that were born to them never saw at all. But life was very easy in +that snow-rimmed basin, lost to all the world, with neither thorns nor briers, +with no evil insects nor any beasts save the gentle breed of llamas they had +lugged and thrust and followed up the beds of the shrunken rivers in the gorges +up which they had come. The seeing had become purblind so gradually that they +scarcely noticed their loss. They guided the sightless youngsters hither and +thither until they knew the whole valley marvellously, and when at last sight +died out among them the race lived on. They had even time to adapt themselves +to the blind control of fire, which they made carefully in stoves of stone. +They were a simple strain of people at the first, unlettered, only slightly +touched with the Spanish civilisation, but with something of a tradition of the +arts of old Peru and of its lost philosophy. Generation followed generation. +They forgot many things; they devised many things. Their tradition of the +greater world they came from became mythical in colour and uncertain. In all +things save sight they were strong and able, and presently chance sent one who +had an original mind and who could talk and persuade among them, and then +afterwards another. These two passed, leaving their effects, and the little +community grew in numbers and in understanding, and met and settled social and +economic problems that arose. Generation followed generation. Generation +followed generation. There came a time when a child was born who was fifteen +generations from that ancestor who went out of the valley with a bar of silver +to seek God’s aid, and who never returned. Thereabout it chanced that a +man came into this community from the outer world. And this is the story of +that man. +</p> + +<p> +He was a mountaineer from the country near Quito, a man who had been down to +the sea and had seen the world, a reader of books in an original way, an acute +and enterprising man, and he was taken on by a party of Englishmen who had come +out to Ecuador to climb mountains, to replace one of their three Swiss guides +who had fallen ill. He climbed here and he climbed there, and then came the +attempt on Parascotopetl, the Matterhorn of the Andes, in which he was lost to +the outer world. The story of that accident has been written a dozen times. +Pointer’s narrative is the best. He tells how the little party worked +their difficult and almost vertical way up to the very foot of the last and +greatest precipice, and how they built a night shelter amidst the snow upon a +little shelf of rock, and, with a touch of real dramatic power, how presently +they found Nunez had gone from them. They shouted, and there was no reply; +shouted and whistled, and for the rest of that night they slept no more. +</p> + +<p> +As the morning broke they saw the traces of his fall. It seems impossible he +could have uttered a sound. He had slipped eastward towards the unknown side of +the mountain; far below he had struck a steep slope of snow, and ploughed his +way down it in the midst of a snow avalanche. His track went straight to the +edge of a frightful precipice, and beyond that everything was hidden. Far, far +below, and hazy with distance, they could see trees rising out of a narrow, +shut-in valley—the lost Country of the Blind. But they did not know it +was the lost Country of the Blind, nor distinguish it in any way from any other +narrow streak of upland valley. Unnerved by this disaster, they abandoned their +attempt in the afternoon, and Pointer was called away to the war before he +could make another attack. To this day Parascotopetl lifts an unconquered +crest, and Pointer’s shelter crumbles unvisited amidst the snows. +</p> + +<p> +And the man who fell survived. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of the slope he fell a thousand feet, and came down in the midst of +a cloud of snow upon a snow-slope even steeper than the one above. Down this he +was whirled, stunned and insensible, but without a bone broken in his body; and +then at last came to gentler slopes, and at last rolled out and lay still, +buried amidst a softening heap of the white masses that had accompanied and +saved him. He came to himself with a dim fancy that he was ill in bed; then +realized his position with a mountaineer’s intelligence and worked +himself loose and, after a rest or so, out until he saw the stars. He rested +flat upon his chest for a space, wondering where he was and what had happened +to him. He explored his limbs, and discovered that several of his buttons were +gone and his coat turned over his head. His knife had gone from his pocket and +his hat was lost, though he had tied it under his chin. He recalled that he had +been looking for loose stones to raise his piece of the shelter wall. His +ice-axe had disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +He decided he must have fallen, and looked up to see, exaggerated by the +ghastly light of the rising moon, the tremendous flight he had taken. For a +while he lay, gazing blankly at the vast, pale cliff towering above, rising +moment by moment out of a subsiding tide of darkness. Its phantasmal, +mysterious beauty held him for a space, and then he was seized with a paroxysm +of sobbing laughter . . . . +</p> + +<p> +After a great interval of time he became aware that he was near the lower edge +of the snow. Below, down what was now a moon-lit and practicable slope, he saw +the dark and broken appearance of rock-strewn turf. He struggled to his feet, +aching in every joint and limb, got down painfully from the heaped loose snow +about him, went downward until he was on the turf, and there dropped rather +than lay beside a boulder, drank deep from the flask in his inner pocket, and +instantly fell asleep . . . . +</p> + +<p> +He was awakened by the singing of birds in the trees far below. +</p> + +<p> +He sat up and perceived he was on a little alp at the foot of a vast precipice +that sloped only a little in the gully down which he and his snow had come. +Over against him another wall of rock reared itself against the sky. The gorge +between these precipices ran east and west and was full of the morning +sunlight, which lit to the westward the mass of fallen mountain that closed the +descending gorge. Below him it seemed there was a precipice equally steep, but +behind the snow in the gully he found a sort of chimney-cleft dripping with +snow-water, down which a desperate man might venture. He found it easier than +it seemed, and came at last to another desolate alp, and then after a rock +climb of no particular difficulty, to a steep slope of trees. He took his +bearings and turned his face up the gorge, for he saw it opened out above upon +green meadows, among which he now glimpsed quite distinctly a cluster of stone +huts of unfamiliar fashion. At times his progress was like clambering along the +face of a wall, and after a time the rising sun ceased to strike along the +gorge, the voices of the singing birds died away, and the air grew cold and +dark about him. But the distant valley with its houses was all the brighter for +that. He came presently to talus, and among the rocks he noted—for he was +an observant man—an unfamiliar fern that seemed to clutch out of the +crevices with intense green hands. He picked a frond or so and gnawed its +stalk, and found it helpful. +</p> + +<p> +About midday he came at last out of the throat of the gorge into the plain and +the sunlight. He was stiff and weary; he sat down in the shadow of a rock, +filled up his flask with water from a spring and drank it down, and remained +for a time, resting before he went on to the houses. +</p> + +<p> +They were very strange to his eyes, and indeed the whole aspect of that valley +became, as he regarded it, queerer and more unfamiliar. The greater part of its +surface was lush green meadow, starred with many beautiful flowers, irrigated +with extraordinary care, and bearing evidence of systematic cropping piece by +piece. High up and ringing the valley about was a wall, and what appeared to be +a circumferential water channel, from which the little trickles of water that +fed the meadow plants came, and on the higher slopes above this flocks of +llamas cropped the scanty herbage. Sheds, apparently shelters or feeding-places +for the llamas, stood against the boundary wall here and there. The irrigation +streams ran together into a main channel down the centre of the valley, and +this was enclosed on either side by a wall breast high. This gave a singularly +urban quality to this secluded place, a quality that was greatly enhanced by +the fact that a number of paths paved with black and white stones, and each +with a curious little kerb at the side, ran hither and thither in an orderly +manner. The houses of the central village were quite unlike the casual and +higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of the mountain villages he knew; they stood in +a continuous row on either side of a central street of astonishing cleanness, +here and there their parti-coloured facade was pierced by a door, and not a +solitary window broke their even frontage. They were parti-coloured with +extraordinary irregularity, smeared with a sort of plaster that was sometimes +grey, sometimes drab, sometimes slate-coloured or dark brown; and it was the +sight of this wild plastering first brought the word “blind” into +the thoughts of the explorer. “The good man who did that,” he +thought, “must have been as blind as a bat.” +</p> + +<p> +He descended a steep place, and so came to the wall and channel that ran about +the valley, near where the latter spouted out its surplus contents into the +deeps of the gorge in a thin and wavering thread of cascade. He could now see a +number of men and women resting on piled heaps of grass, as if taking a siesta, +in the remoter part of the meadow, and nearer the village a number of recumbent +children, and then nearer at hand three men carrying pails on yokes along a +little path that ran from the encircling wall towards the houses. These latter +were clad in garments of llama cloth and boots and belts of leather, and they +wore caps of cloth with back and ear flaps. They followed one another in single +file, walking slowly and yawning as they walked, like men who have been up all +night. There was something so reassuringly prosperous and respectable in their +bearing that after a moment’s hesitation Nunez stood forward as +conspicuously as possible upon his rock, and gave vent to a mighty shout that +echoed round the valley. +</p> + +<p> +The three men stopped, and moved their heads as though they were looking about +them. They turned their faces this way and that, and Nunez gesticulated with +freedom. But they did not appear to see him for all his gestures, and after a +time, directing themselves towards the mountains far away to the right, they +shouted as if in answer. Nunez bawled again, and then once more, and as he +gestured ineffectually the word “blind” came up to the top of his +thoughts. “The fools must be blind,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +When at last, after much shouting and wrath, Nunez crossed the stream by a +little bridge, came through a gate in the wall, and approached them, he was +sure that they were blind. He was sure that this was the Country of the Blind +of which the legends told. Conviction had sprung upon him, and a sense of great +and rather enviable adventure. The three stood side by side, not looking at +him, but with their ears directed towards him, judging him by his unfamiliar +steps. They stood close together like men a little afraid, and he could see +their eyelids closed and sunken, as though the very balls beneath had shrunk +away. There was an expression near awe on their faces. +</p> + +<p> +“A man,” one said, in hardly recognisable Spanish. “A man it +is—a man or a spirit—coming down from the rocks.” +</p> + +<p> +But Nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who enters upon life. +All the old stories of the lost valley and the Country of the Blind had come +back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were +a refrain:— +</p> + +<p> +“In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King.” +</p> + +<p> +“In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King.” +</p> + +<p> +And very civilly he gave them greeting. He talked to them and used his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Where does he come from, brother Pedro?” asked one. +</p> + +<p> +“Down out of the rocks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Over the mountains I come,” said Nunez, “out of the country +beyond there—where men can see. From near Bogota—where there are a +hundred thousands of people, and where the city passes out of sight.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sight?” muttered Pedro. “Sight?” +</p> + +<p> +“He comes,” said the second blind man, “out of the +rocks.” +</p> + +<p> +The cloth of their coats, Nunez saw was curious fashioned, each with a +different sort of stitching. +</p> + +<p> +They startled him by a simultaneous movement towards him, each with a hand +outstretched. He stepped back from the advance of these spread fingers. +</p> + +<p> +“Come hither,” said the third blind man, following his motion and +clutching him neatly. +</p> + +<p> +And they held Nunez and felt him over, saying no word further until they had +done so. +</p> + +<p> +“Carefully,” he cried, with a finger in his eye, and found they +thought that organ, with its fluttering lids, a queer thing in him. They went +over it again. +</p> + +<p> +“A strange creature, Correa,” said the one called Pedro. +“Feel the coarseness of his hair. Like a llama’s hair.” +</p> + +<p> +“Rough he is as the rocks that begot him,” said Correa, +investigating Nunez’s unshaven chin with a soft and slightly moist hand. +“Perhaps he will grow finer.” +</p> + +<p> +Nunez struggled a little under their examination, but they gripped him firm. +</p> + +<p> +“Carefully,” he said again. +</p> + +<p> +“He speaks,” said the third man. “Certainly he is a +man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ugh!” said Pedro, at the roughness of his coat. +</p> + +<p> +“And you have come into the world?” asked Pedro. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Out</i> of the world. Over mountains and glaciers; right over above +there, half-way to the sun. Out of the great, big world that goes down, twelve +days’ journey to the sea.” +</p> + +<p> +They scarcely seemed to heed him. “Our fathers have told us men may be +made by the forces of Nature,” said Correa. “It is the warmth of +things, and moisture, and rottenness—rottenness.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let us lead him to the elders,” said Pedro. +</p> + +<p> +“Shout first,” said Correa, “lest the children be afraid. +This is a marvellous occasion.” +</p> + +<p> +So they shouted, and Pedro went first and took Nunez by the hand to lead him to +the houses. +</p> + +<p> +He drew his hand away. “I can see,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“See?” said Correa. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; see,” said Nunez, turning towards him, and stumbled against +Pedro’s pail. +</p> + +<p> +“His senses are still imperfect,” said the third blind man. +“He stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. Lead him by the hand.” +</p> + +<p> +“As you will,” said Nunez, and was led along laughing. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed they knew nothing of sight. +</p> + +<p> +Well, all in good time he would teach them. +</p> + +<p> +He heard people shouting, and saw a number of figures gathering together in the +middle roadway of the village. +</p> + +<p> +He found it tax his nerve and patience more than he had anticipated, that first +encounter with the population of the Country of the Blind. The place seemed +larger as he drew near to it, and the smeared plasterings queerer, and a crowd +of children and men and women (the women and girls he was pleased to note had, +some of them, quite sweet faces, for all that their eyes were shut and sunken) +came about him, holding on to him, touching him with soft, sensitive hands, +smelling at him, and listening at every word he spoke. Some of the maidens and +children, however, kept aloof as if afraid, and indeed his voice seemed coarse +and rude beside their softer notes. They mobbed him. His three guides kept +close to him with an effect of proprietorship, and said again and again, +“A wild man out of the rocks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bogota,” he said. “Bogota. Over the mountain crests.” +</p> + +<p> +“A wild man—using wild words,” said Pedro. “Did you +hear that— +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Bogota?</i> His mind has hardly formed yet. He has only the +beginnings of speech.” +</p> + +<p> +A little boy nipped his hand. “Bogota!” he said mockingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Aye! A city to your village. I come from the great world—where men +have eyes and see.” +</p> + +<p> +“His name’s Bogota,” they said. +</p> + +<p> +“He stumbled,” said Correa—“stumbled twice as we came +hither.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bring him in to the elders.” +</p> + +<p> +And they thrust him suddenly through a doorway into a room as black as pitch, +save at the end there faintly glowed a fire. The crowd closed in behind him and +shut out all but the faintest glimmer of day, and before he could arrest +himself he had fallen headlong over the feet of a seated man. His arm, +outflung, struck the face of someone else as he went down; he felt the soft +impact of features and heard a cry of anger, and for a moment he struggled +against a number of hands that clutched him. It was a one-sided fight. An +inkling of the situation came to him and he lay quiet. +</p> + +<p> +“I fell down,” he said; “I couldn’t see in this pitchy +darkness.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause as if the unseen persons about him tried to understand his +words. Then the voice of Correa said: “He is but newly formed. He +stumbles as he walks and mingles words that mean nothing with his +speech.” +</p> + +<p> +Others also said things about him that he heard or understood imperfectly. +</p> + +<p> +“May I sit up?” he asked, in a pause. “I will not struggle +against you again.” +</p> + +<p> +They consulted and let him rise. +</p> + +<p> +The voice of an older man began to question him, and Nunez found himself trying +to explain the great world out of which he had fallen, and the sky and +mountains and such-like marvels, to these elders who sat in darkness in the +Country of the Blind. And they would believe and understand nothing whatever +that he told them, a thing quite outside his expectation. They would not even +understand many of his words. For fourteen generations these people had been +blind and cut off from all the seeing world; the names for all the things of +sight had faded and changed; the story of the outer world was faded and changed +to a child’s story; and they had ceased to concern themselves with +anything beyond the rocky slopes above their circling wall. Blind men of genius +had arisen among them and questioned the shreds of belief and tradition they +had brought with them from their seeing days, and had dismissed all these +things as idle fancies and replaced them with new and saner explanations. Much +of their imagination had shrivelled with their eyes, and they had made for +themselves new imaginations with their ever more sensitive ears and +finger-tips. Slowly Nunez realised this: that his expectation of wonder and +reverence at his origin and his gifts was not to be borne out; and after his +poor attempt to explain sight to them had been set aside as the confused +version of a new-made being describing the marvels of his incoherent +sensations, he subsided, a little dashed, into listening to their instruction. +And the eldest of the blind men explained to him life and philosophy and +religion, how that the world (meaning their valley) had been first an empty +hollow in the rocks, and then had come first inanimate things without the gift +of touch, and llamas and a few other creatures that had little sense, and then +men, and at last angels, whom one could hear singing and making fluttering +sounds, but whom no one could touch at all, which puzzled Nunez greatly until +he thought of the birds. +</p> + +<p> +He went on to tell Nunez how this time had been divided into the warm and the +cold, which are the blind equivalents of day and night, and how it was good to +sleep in the warm and work during the cold, so that now, but for his advent, +the whole town of the blind would have been asleep. He said Nunez must have +been specially created to learn and serve the wisdom they had acquired, and +that for all his mental incoherency and stumbling behaviour he must have +courage and do his best to learn, and at that all the people in the door-way +murmured encouragingly. He said the night—for the blind call their day +night—was now far gone, and it behooved everyone to go back to sleep. He +asked Nunez if he knew how to sleep, and Nunez said he did, but that before +sleep he wanted food. They brought him food, llama’s milk in a bowl and +rough salted bread, and led him into a lonely place to eat out of their +hearing, and afterwards to slumber until the chill of the mountain evening +roused them to begin their day again. But Nunez slumbered not at all. +</p> + +<p> +Instead, he sat up in the place where they had left him, resting his limbs and +turning the unanticipated circumstances of his arrival over and over in his +mind. +</p> + +<p> +Every now and then he laughed, sometimes with amusement and sometimes with +indignation. +</p> + +<p> +“Unformed mind!” he said. “Got no senses yet! They little +know they’ve been insulting their Heaven-sent King and master . . . . . +</p> + +<p> +“I see I must bring them to reason. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me think. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me think.” +</p> + +<p> +He was still thinking when the sun set. +</p> + +<p> +Nunez had an eye for all beautiful things, and it seemed to him that the glow +upon the snow-fields and glaciers that rose about the valley on every side was +the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. His eyes went from that inaccessible +glory to the village and irrigated fields, fast sinking into the twilight, and +suddenly a wave of emotion took him, and he thanked God from the bottom of his +heart that the power of sight had been given him. +</p> + +<p> +He heard a voice calling to him from out of the village. +</p> + +<p> +“Yaho there, Bogota! Come hither!” +</p> + +<p> +At that he stood up, smiling. He would show these people once and for all what +sight would do for a man. They would seek him, but not find him. +</p> + +<p> +“You move not, Bogota,” said the voice. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed noiselessly and made two stealthy steps aside from the path. +</p> + +<p> +“Trample not on the grass, Bogota; that is not allowed.” +</p> + +<p> +Nunez had scarcely heard the sound he made himself. He stopped, amazed. +</p> + +<p> +The owner of the voice came running up the piebald path towards him. +</p> + +<p> +He stepped back into the pathway. “Here I am,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you not come when I called you?” said the blind man. +“Must you be led like a child? Cannot you hear the path as you +walk?” +</p> + +<p> +Nunez laughed. “I can see it,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“There is no such word as <i>see</i>,” said the blind man, after a +pause. “Cease this folly and follow the sound of my feet.” +</p> + +<p> +Nunez followed, a little annoyed. +</p> + +<p> +“My time will come,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll learn,” the blind man answered. “There is much +to learn in the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Has no one told you, ‘In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man +is King?’” +</p> + +<p> +“What is blind?” asked the blind man, carelessly, over his +shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +Four days passed and the fifth found the King of the Blind still incognito, as +a clumsy and useless stranger among his subjects. +</p> + +<p> +It was, he found, much more difficult to proclaim himself than he had supposed, +and in the meantime, while he meditated his <i>coup d’etat</i>, he did +what he was told and learnt the manners and customs of the Country of the +Blind. He found working and going about at night a particularly irksome thing, +and he decided that that should be the first thing he would change. +</p> + +<p> +They led a simple, laborious life, these people, with all the elements of +virtue and happiness as these things can be understood by men. They toiled, but +not oppressively; they had food and clothing sufficient for their needs; they +had days and seasons of rest; they made much of music and singing, and there +was love among them and little children. It was marvellous with what confidence +and precision they went about their ordered world. Everything, you see, had +been made to fit their needs; each of the radiating paths of the valley area +had a constant angle to the others, and was distinguished by a special notch +upon its kerbing; all obstacles and irregularities of path or meadow had long +since been cleared away; all their methods and procedure arose naturally from +their special needs. Their senses had become marvellously acute; they could +hear and judge the slightest gesture of a man a dozen paces away—could +hear the very beating of his heart. Intonation had long replaced expression +with them, and touches gesture, and their work with hoe and spade and fork was +as free and confident as garden work can be. Their sense of smell was +extraordinarily fine; they could distinguish individual differences as readily +as a dog can, and they went about the tending of llamas, who lived among the +rocks above and came to the wall for food and shelter, with ease and +confidence. It was only when at last Nunez sought to assert himself that he +found how easy and confident their movements could be. +</p> + +<p> +He rebelled only after he had tried persuasion. +</p> + +<p> +He tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight. “Look you +here, you people,” he said. “There are things you do not understand +in me.” +</p> + +<p> +Once or twice one or two of them attended to him; they sat with faces downcast +and ears turned intelligently towards him, and he did his best to tell them +what it was to see. Among his hearers was a girl, with eyelids less red and +sunken than the others, so that one could almost fancy she was hiding eyes, +whom especially he hoped to persuade. He spoke of the beauties of sight, of +watching the mountains, of the sky and the sunrise, and they heard him with +amused incredulity that presently became condemnatory. They told him there were +indeed no mountains at all, but that the end of the rocks where the llamas +grazed was indeed the end of the world; thence sprang a cavernous roof of the +universe, from which the dew and the avalanches fell; and when he maintained +stoutly the world had neither end nor roof such as they supposed, they said his +thoughts were wicked. So far as he could describe sky and clouds and stars to +them it seemed to them a hideous void, a terrible blankness in the place of the +smooth roof to things in which they believed—it was an article of faith +with them that the cavern roof was exquisitely smooth to the touch. He saw that +in some manner he shocked them, and gave up that aspect of the matter +altogether, and tried to show them the practical value of sight. One morning he +saw Pedro in the path called Seventeen and coming towards the central houses, +but still too far off for hearing or scent, and he told them as much. “In +a little while,” he prophesied, “Pedro will be here.” An old +man remarked that Pedro had no business on path Seventeen, and then, as if in +confirmation, that individual as he drew near turned and went transversely into +path Ten, and so back with nimble paces towards the outer wall. They mocked +Nunez when Pedro did not arrive, and afterwards, when he asked Pedro questions +to clear his character, Pedro denied and outfaced him, and was afterwards +hostile to him. +</p> + +<p> +Then he induced them to let him go a long way up the sloping meadows towards +the wall with one complaisant individual, and to him he promised to describe +all that happened among the houses. He noted certain goings and comings, but +the things that really seemed to signify to these people happened inside of or +behind the windowless houses—the only things they took note of to test +him by—and of those he could see or tell nothing; and it was after the +failure of this attempt, and the ridicule they could not repress, that he +resorted to force. He thought of seizing a spade and suddenly smiting one or +two of them to earth, and so in fair combat showing the advantage of eyes. He +went so far with that resolution as to seize his spade, and then he discovered +a new thing about himself, and that was that it was impossible for him to hit a +blind man in cold blood. +</p> + +<p> +He hesitated, and found them all aware that he had snatched up the spade. They +stood all alert, with their heads on one side, and bent ears towards him for +what he would do next. +</p> + +<p> +“Put that spade down,” said one, and he felt a sort of helpless +horror. He came near obedience. +</p> + +<p> +Then he had thrust one backwards against a house wall, and fled past him and +out of the village. +</p> + +<p> +He went athwart one of their meadows, leaving a track of trampled grass behind +his feet, and presently sat down by the side of one of their ways. He felt +something of the buoyancy that comes to all men in the beginning of a fight, +but more perplexity. He began to realise that you cannot even fight happily +with creatures who stand upon a different mental basis to yourself. Far away he +saw a number of men carrying spades and sticks come out of the street of houses +and advance in a spreading line along the several paths towards him. They +advanced slowly, speaking frequently to one another, and ever and again the +whole cordon would halt and sniff the air and listen. +</p> + +<p> +The first time they did this Nunez laughed. But afterwards he did not laugh. +</p> + +<p> +One struck his trail in the meadow grass and came stooping and feeling his way +along it. +</p> + +<p> +For five minutes he watched the slow extension of the cordon, and then his +vague disposition to do something forthwith became frantic. He stood up, went a +pace or so towards the circumferential wall, turned, and went back a little +way. There they all stood in a crescent, still and listening. +</p> + +<p> +He also stood still, gripping his spade very tightly in both hands. Should he +charge them? +</p> + +<p> +The pulse in his ears ran into the rhythm of “In the Country of the Blind +the One-Eyed Man is King.” +</p> + +<p> +Should he charge them? +</p> + +<p> +He looked back at the high and unclimbable wall behind—unclimbable +because of its smooth plastering, but withal pierced with many little doors and +at the approaching line of seekers. Behind these others were now coming out of +the street of houses. +</p> + +<p> +Should he charge them? +</p> + +<p> +“Bogota!” called one. “Bogota! where are you?” +</p> + +<p> +He gripped his spade still tighter and advanced down the meadows towards the +place of habitations, and directly he moved they converged upon him. +“I’ll hit them if they touch me,” he swore; “by Heaven, +I will. I’ll hit.” He called aloud, “Look here, I’m +going to do what I like in this valley! Do you hear? I’m going to do what +I like and go where I like.” +</p> + +<p> +They were moving in upon him quickly, groping, yet moving rapidly. It was like +playing blind man’s buff with everyone blindfolded except one. “Get +hold of him!” cried one. He found himself in the arc of a loose curve of +pursuers. He felt suddenly he must be active and resolute. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t understand,” he cried, in a voice that was meant +to be great and resolute, and which broke. “You are blind and I can see. +Leave me alone!” +</p> + +<p> +“Bogota! Put down that spade and come off the grass!” +</p> + +<p> +The last order, grotesque in its urban familiarity, produced a gust of anger. +“I’ll hurt you,” he said, sobbing with emotion. “By +Heaven, I’ll hurt you! Leave me alone!” +</p> + +<p> +He began to run—not knowing clearly where to run. He ran from the nearest +blind man, because it was a horror to hit him. He stopped, and then made a dash +to escape from their closing ranks. He made for where a gap was wide, and the +men on either side, with a quick perception of the approach of his paces, +rushed in on one another. He sprang forward, and then saw he must be caught, +and <i>swish!</i> the spade had struck. He felt the soft thud of hand and arm, +and the man was down with a yell of pain, and he was through. +</p> + +<p> +Through! And then he was close to the street of houses again, and blind men, +whirling spades and stakes, were running with a reasoned swiftness hither and +thither. +</p> + +<p> +He heard steps behind him just in time, and found a tall man rushing forward +and swiping at the sound of him. He lost his nerve, hurled his spade a yard +wide of this antagonist, and whirled about and fled, fairly yelling as he +dodged another. +</p> + +<p> +He was panic-stricken. He ran furiously to and fro, dodging when there was no +need to dodge, and, in his anxiety to see on every side of him at once, +stumbling. For a moment he was down and they heard his fall. Far away in the +circumferential wall a little doorway looked like Heaven, and he set off in a +wild rush for it. He did not even look round at his pursuers until it was +gained, and he had stumbled across the bridge, clambered a little way among the +rocks, to the surprise and dismay of a young llama, who went leaping out of +sight, and lay down sobbing for breath. +</p> + +<p> +And so his <i>coup d’etat</i> came to an end. +</p> + +<p> +He stayed outside the wall of the valley of the blind for two nights and days +without food or shelter, and meditated upon the Unexpected. During these +meditations he repeated very frequently and always with a profounder note of +derision the exploded proverb: “In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed +Man is King.” He thought chiefly of ways of fighting and conquering these +people, and it grew clear that for him no practicable way was possible. He had +no weapons, and now it would be hard to get one. +</p> + +<p> +The canker of civilisation had got to him even in Bogota, and he could not find +it in himself to go down and assassinate a blind man. Of course, if he did +that, he might then dictate terms on the threat of assassinating them all. +But—Sooner or later he must sleep! . . . . +</p> + +<p> +He tried also to find food among the pine trees, to be comfortable under pine +boughs while the frost fell at night, and—with less confidence—to +catch a llama by artifice in order to try to kill it—perhaps by hammering +it with a stone—and so finally, perhaps, to eat some of it. But the +llamas had a doubt of him and regarded him with distrustful brown eyes and spat +when he drew near. Fear came on him the second day and fits of shivering. +Finally he crawled down to the wall of the Country of the Blind and tried to +make his terms. He crawled along by the stream, shouting, until two blind men +came out to the gate and talked to him. +</p> + +<p> +“I was mad,” he said. “But I was only newly made.” +</p> + +<p> +They said that was better. +</p> + +<p> +He told them he was wiser now, and repented of all he had done. +</p> + +<p> +Then he wept without intention, for he was very weak and ill now, and they took +that as a favourable sign. +</p> + +<p> +They asked him if he still thought he could “<i>see</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said. “That was folly. The word means nothing. Less +than nothing!” +</p> + +<p> +They asked him what was overhead. +</p> + +<p> +“About ten times ten the height of a man there is a roof above the +world—of rock—and very, very smooth. So smooth—so beautifully +smooth . .” He burst again into hysterical tears. “Before you ask +me any more, give me some food or I shall die!” +</p> + +<p> +He expected dire punishments, but these blind people were capable of +toleration. They regarded his rebellion as but one more proof of his general +idiocy and inferiority, and after they had whipped him they appointed him to do +the simplest and heaviest work they had for anyone to do, and he, seeing no +other way of living, did submissively what he was told. +</p> + +<p> +He was ill for some days and they nursed him kindly. That refined his +submission. But they insisted on his lying in the dark, and that was a great +misery. And blind philosophers came and talked to him of the wicked levity of +his mind, and reproved him so impressively for his doubts about the lid of rock +that covered their cosmic <i>casserole</i> that he almost doubted whether +indeed he was not the victim of hallucination in not seeing it overhead. +</p> + +<p> +So Nunez became a citizen of the Country of the Blind, and these people ceased +to be a generalised people and became individualities to him, and familiar to +him, while the world beyond the mountains became more and more remote and +unreal. There was Yacob, his master, a kindly man when not annoyed; there was +Pedro, Yacob’s nephew; and there was Medina-sarote, who was the youngest +daughter of Yacob. She was little esteemed in the world of the blind, because +she had a clear-cut face and lacked that satisfying, glossy smoothness that is +the blind man’s ideal of feminine beauty, but Nunez thought her beautiful +at first, and presently the most beautiful thing in the whole creation. Her +closed eyelids were not sunken and red after the common way of the valley, but +lay as though they might open again at any moment; and she had long eyelashes, +which were considered a grave disfigurement. And her voice was weak and did not +satisfy the acute hearing of the valley swains. So that she had no lover. +</p> + +<p> +There came a time when Nunez thought that, could he win her, he would be +resigned to live in the valley for all the rest of his days. +</p> + +<p> +He watched her; he sought opportunities of doing her little services and +presently he found that she observed him. Once at a rest-day gathering they sat +side by side in the dim starlight, and the music was sweet. His hand came upon +hers and he dared to clasp it. Then very tenderly she returned his pressure. +And one day, as they were at their meal in the darkness, he felt her hand very +softly seeking him, and as it chanced the fire leapt then, and he saw the +tenderness of her face. +</p> + +<p> +He sought to speak to her. +</p> + +<p> +He went to her one day when she was sitting in the summer moonlight spinning. +The light made her a thing of silver and mystery. He sat down at her feet and +told her he loved her, and told her how beautiful she seemed to him. He had a +lover’s voice, he spoke with a tender reverence that came near to awe, +and she had never before been touched by adoration. She made him no definite +answer, but it was clear his words pleased her. +</p> + +<p> +After that he talked to her whenever he could take an opportunity. The valley +became the world for him, and the world beyond the mountains where men lived by +day seemed no more than a fairy tale he would some day pour into her ears. Very +tentatively and timidly he spoke to her of sight. +</p> + +<p> +Sight seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she listened to his +description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet white-lit beauty +as though it was a guilty indulgence. She did not believe, she could only half +understand, but she was mysteriously delighted, and it seemed to him that she +completely understood. +</p> + +<p> +His love lost its awe and took courage. Presently he was for demanding her of +Yacob and the elders in marriage, but she became fearful and delayed. And it +was one of her elder sisters who first told Yacob that Medina-sarote and Nunez +were in love. +</p> + +<p> +There was from the first very great opposition to the marriage of Nunez and +Medina-sarote; not so much because they valued her as because they held him as +a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing below the permissible level of a +man. Her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old +Yacob, though he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, +shook his head and said the thing could not be. The young men were all angry at +the idea of corrupting the race, and one went so far as to revile and strike +Nunez. He struck back. Then for the first time he found an advantage in seeing, +even by twilight, and after that fight was over no one was disposed to raise a +hand against him. But they still found his marriage impossible. +</p> + +<p> +Old Yacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter, and was grieved to +have her weep upon his shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, my dear, he’s an idiot. He has delusions; he can’t +do anything right.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” wept Medina-sarote. “But he’s better than he +was. He’s getting better. And he’s strong, dear father, and +kind—stronger and kinder than any other man in the world. And he loves +me—and, father, I love him.” +</p> + +<p> +Old Yacob was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable, and, +besides—what made it more distressing—he liked Nunez for many +things. So he went and sat in the windowless council-chamber with the other +elders and watched the trend of the talk, and said, at the proper time, +“He’s better than he was. Very likely, some day, we shall find him +as sane as ourselves.” +</p> + +<p> +Then afterwards one of the elders, who thought deeply, had an idea. He was a +great doctor among these people, their medicine-man, and he had a very +philosophical and inventive mind, and the idea of curing Nunez of his +peculiarities appealed to him. One day when Yacob was present he returned to +the topic of Nunez. “I have examined Nunez,” he said, “and +the case is clearer to me. I think very probably he might be cured.” +</p> + +<p> +“This is what I have always hoped,” said old Yacob. +</p> + +<p> +“His brain is affected,” said the blind doctor. +</p> + +<p> +The elders murmured assent. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, <i>what</i> affects it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said old Yacob. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>This</i>,” said the doctor, answering his own question. +“Those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an +agreeable depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Nunez, in such a +way as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and +his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant +irritation and distraction.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” said old Yacob. “Yes?” +</p> + +<p> +“And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure +him complete, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical +operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then he will be sane?” +</p> + +<p> +“Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank Heaven for science!” said old Yacob, and went forth at once +to tell Nunez of his happy hopes. +</p> + +<p> +But Nunez’s manner of receiving the good news struck him as being cold +and disappointing. +</p> + +<p> +“One might think,” he said, “from the tone you take that you +did not care for my daughter.” +</p> + +<p> +It was Medina-sarote who persuaded Nunez to face the blind surgeons. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> do not want me,” he said, “to lose my gift of +sight?” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head. +</p> + +<p> +“My world is sight.” +</p> + +<p> +Her head drooped lower. +</p> + +<p> +“There are the beautiful things, the beautiful little things—the +flowers, the lichens amidst the rocks, the light and softness on a piece of +fur, the far sky with its drifting dawn of clouds, the sunsets and the stars. +And there is <i>you</i>. For you alone it is good to have sight, to see your +sweet, serene face, your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded +together. . . . . It is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to +you, that these idiots seek. Instead, I must touch you, hear you, and never see +you again. I must come under that roof of rock and stone and darkness, that +horrible roof under which your imaginations stoop . . . <i>No</i>; <i>you</i> +would not have me do that?” +</p> + +<p> +A disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. He stopped and left the thing a +question. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish,” she said, “sometimes—” She paused. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” he said, a little apprehensively. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish sometimes—you would not talk like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like what?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know it’s pretty—it’s your imagination. I love it, +but <i>now</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +He felt cold. “<i>Now?</i>” he said, faintly. +</p> + +<p> +She sat quite still. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean—you think—I should be better, better +perhaps—” +</p> + +<p> +He was realising things very swiftly. He felt anger perhaps, anger at the dull +course of fate, but also sympathy for her lack of understanding—a +sympathy near akin to pity. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Dear</i>,” he said, and he could see by her whiteness how +tensely her spirit pressed against the things she could not say. He put his +arms about her, he kissed her ear, and they sat for a time in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“If I were to consent to this?” he said at last, in a voice that +was very gentle. +</p> + +<p> +She flung her arms about him, weeping wildly. “Oh, if you would,” +she sobbed, “if only you would!” +</p> + +<p> +For a week before the operation that was to raise him from his servitude and +inferiority to the level of a blind citizen Nunez knew nothing of sleep, and +all through the warm, sunlit hours, while the others slumbered happily, he sat +brooding or wandered aimlessly, trying to bring his mind to bear on his +dilemma. He had given his answer, he had given his consent, and still he was +not sure. And at last work-time was over, the sun rose in splendour over the +golden crests, and his last day of vision began for him. He had a few minutes +with Medina-sarote before she went apart to sleep. +</p> + +<p> +“To-morrow,” he said, “I shall see no more.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear heart!” she answered, and pressed his hands with all her +strength. +</p> + +<p> +“They will hurt you but little,” she said; “and you are going +through this pain, you are going through it, dear lover, for <i>me</i> . . . . +Dear, if a woman’s heart and life can do it, I will repay you. My dearest +one, my dearest with the tender voice, I will repay.” +</p> + +<p> +He was drenched in pity for himself and her. +</p> + +<p> +He held her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers and looked on her sweet +face for the last time. “Good-bye!” he whispered to that dear +sight, “good-bye!” +</p> + +<p> +And then in silence he turned away from her. +</p> + +<p> +She could hear his slow retreating footsteps, and something in the rhythm of +them threw her into a passion of weeping. +</p> + +<p> +He walked away. +</p> + +<p> +He had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful +with white narcissus, and there remain until the hour of his sacrifice should +come, but as he walked he lifted up his eyes and saw the morning, the morning +like an angel in golden armour, marching down the steeps . . . . +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to him that before this splendour he and this blind world in the +valley, and his love and all, were no more than a pit of sin. +</p> + +<p> +He did not turn aside as he had meant to do, but went on and passed through the +wall of the circumference and out upon the rocks, and his eyes were always upon +the sunlit ice and snow. +</p> + +<p> +He saw their infinite beauty, and his imagination soared over them to the +things beyond he was now to resign for ever! +</p> + +<p> +He thought of that great free world that he was parted from, the world that was +his own, and he had a vision of those further slopes, distance beyond distance, +with Bogota, a place of multitudinous stirring beauty, a glory by day, a +luminous mystery by night, a place of palaces and fountains and statues and +white houses, lying beautifully in the middle distance. He thought how for a +day or so one might come down through passes drawing ever nearer and nearer to +its busy streets and ways. He thought of the river journey, day by day, from +great Bogota to the still vaster world beyond, through towns and villages, +forest and desert places, the rushing river day by day, until its banks +receded, and the big steamers came splashing by and one had reached the +sea—the limitless sea, with its thousand islands, its thousands of +islands, and its ships seen dimly far away in their incessant journeyings round +and about that greater world. And there, unpent by mountains, one saw the +sky—the sky, not such a disc as one saw it here, but an arch of +immeasurable blue, a deep of deeps in which the circling stars were floating . +. . . +</p> + +<p> +His eyes began to scrutinise the great curtain of the mountains with a keener +inquiry. +</p> + +<p> +For example; if one went so, up that gully and to that chimney there, then one +might come out high among those stunted pines that ran round in a sort of shelf +and rose still higher and higher as it passed above the gorge. And then? That +talus might be managed. Thence perhaps a climb might be found to take him up to +the precipice that came below the snow; and if that chimney failed, then +another farther to the east might serve his purpose better. And then? Then one +would be out upon the amber-lit snow there, and half-way up to the crest of +those beautiful desolations. And suppose one had good fortune! +</p> + +<p> +He glanced back at the village, then turned right round and regarded it with +folded arms. +</p> + +<p> +He thought of Medina-sarote, and she had become small and remote. +</p> + +<p> +He turned again towards the mountain wall down which the day had come to him. +</p> + +<p> +Then very circumspectly he began his climb. +</p> + +<p> +When sunset came he was not longer climbing, but he was far and high. His +clothes were torn, his limbs were bloodstained, he was bruised in many places, +but he lay as if he were at his ease, and there was a smile on his face. +</p> + +<p> +From where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit and nearly a mile +below. Already it was dim with haze and shadow, though the mountain summits +around him were things of light and fire. The mountain summits around him were +things of light and fire, and the little things in the rocks near at hand were +drenched with light and beauty, a vein of green mineral piercing the grey, a +flash of small crystal here and there, a minute, minutely-beautiful orange +lichen close beside his face. There were deep, mysterious shadows in the gorge, +blue deepening into purple, and purple into a luminous darkness, and overhead +was the illimitable vastness of the sky. But he heeded these things no longer, +but lay quite still there, smiling as if he were content now merely to have +escaped from the valley of the Blind, in which he had thought to be King. And +the glow of the sunset passed, and the night came, and still he lay there, +under the cold, clear stars. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOOR IN THE WALL AND OTHER STORIES ***</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 456-h.htm or 456-h.zip</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/456/</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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