The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells (rooftoppers TXT) 📗

of life, in due time. But he must feed chiefly on the splendid real; he shall have stories of travel through all the world, travels and adventures and how the world was won; he shall have stories of beasts, great books splendidly and clearly done of animals and birds and plants and creeping things, great books about the deeps of the sky and the mystery of the sea; he shall have histories and maps of all the empires the world has seen, pictures and stories of all the tribes and habits and customs of men. And he must have books and pictures to quicken his sense of beauty, subtle Japanese pictures to make him love the subtler beauties of bird and tendril and falling flower, and western pictures too, pictures of gracious men and women, sweet groupings, and broad views of land and sea. He shall have books on the building of houses and palaces; he shall plan rooms and invent cities—

“I think I must give him a little theatre.

“Then there is music!”

Redwood thought that over, and decided that his son might best begin with a very pure-sounding harmonicon of one octave, to which afterwards there could be an extension. “He shall play with this first, sing to it and give names to the notes,” said Redwood, “and afterwards—?”

He stared up at the window-sill overhead and measured the size of the room with his eye.

“They’ll have to build his piano in here,” he said. “Bring it in in pieces.”

He hovered about amidst his preparations, a pensive, dark, little figure. If you could have seen him there he would have looked to you like a ten-inch man amidst common nursery things. A great rug—indeed it was a Turkey carpet—four hundred square feet of it, upon which young Redwood was soon to crawl—stretched to the grill-guarded electric radiator that was to warm the whole place. A man from Cossar’s hung amidst scaffolding overhead, fixing the great frame that was to hold the transitory pictures. A blotting-paper book for plant specimens as big as a house door leant against the wall, and from it projected a gigantic stalk, a leaf edge or so and one flower of chickweed, all of that gigantic size that was soon to make Urshot famous throughout the botanical world ...

A sort of incredulity came to Redwood as he stood among these things.

“If it really is going on—” said Redwood, staring up at the remote ceiling.

From far away came a sound like the bellowing of a Mafficking bull, almost as if in answer.

“It’s going on all right,” said Redwood. “Evidently.”

There followed resounding blows upon a table, followed by a vast crowing shout, “Gooloo! Boozoo! Bzz ...”

“The best thing I can do,” said Redwood, following out some divergent line of thought, “is to teach him myself.”

That beating became more insistent. For a moment it seemed to Redwood that it caught the rhythm of an engine’s throbbing—the engine he could have imagined of some great train of events that bore down upon him. Then a descendant flight of sharper beats broke up that effect, and were repeated.

“Come in,” he cried, perceiving that some one rapped, and the door that was big enough for a cathedral opened slowly a little way. The new winch ceased to creak, and Bensington appeared in the crack, gleaming benevolently under his protruded baldness and over his glasses.

“I’ve ventured round to see,” he whispered in a confidentially furtive manner.

“Come in,” said Redwood, and he did, shutting the door behind him.

He walked forward, hands behind his back, advanced a few steps, and peered up with a bird-like movement at the dimensions about him. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“Every time I come in,” he said, with a subdued note in his voice, “it strikes me as—‘Big.’”

“Yes,” said Redwood, surveying it all again also, as if in an endeavour to keep hold of the visible impression. “Yes. They’re going to be big too, you know.”

“I know,” said Bensington, with a note that was nearly awe. “Very big.”

They looked at one another, almost, as it were, apprehensively.

“Very big indeed,” said Bensington, stroking the bridge of his nose, and with one eye that watched Redwood doubtfully for a confirmatory expression. “All of them, you know—fearfully big. I don’t seem able to imagine—even with this—just how big they’re all going to be.”