Thirty Strange Stories - H. G. Wells (best historical biographies TXT) 📗
- Author: H. G. Wells
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And now to tell of the queerest thing of all. About two years after his cure, I dined with the Davidsons, and after dinner a man named Atkins called in. He is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and a pleasant, talkative man. He was on friendly terms with my brother-in-law, and was soon on friendly terms with me. It came out that he was engaged to Davidson’s cousin, and incidentally he took out a kind of pocket photograph case to show us a new rendering of his fiancée. “And, by-the-by,” said he, “here’s the old Fulmar.”
Davidson looked at it casually. Then suddenly his face lit up. “Good heavens!” said he. “I could almost swear—”
“What?” said Atkins.
“That I had seen that ship before.”
“Don’t see how you can have. She hasn’t been out of the South Seas for six years, and before then—”
“But,” began Davidson, and then, “Yes—that’s the ship I dreamt of. I’m sure that’s the ship I dreamt of. She was standing off an island that swarmed with penguins, and she fired a gun.”
“Good Lord!” said Atkins, who had never heard the particulars of the seizure. “How the deuce could you dream that?”
And then, bit by bit, it came out that on the very day Davidson was seized, H. M. S. Fulmar had actually been off a little rock to the south of Antipodes Island. A boat had landed overnight to get penguins’ eggs, had been delayed, and a thunderstorm drifting up, the boat’s crew had waited until the morning before rejoining the ship. Atkins had been one of them, and he corroborated, word for word, the descriptions Davidson had given of the island and the boat. There is not the slightest doubt in any of our minds that Davidson has really seen the place. In some unaccountable way, while he moved hither and thither in London, his sight moved hither and thither in a manner that corresponded, about this distant island. How is absolutely a mystery.
That completes the remarkable story of Davidson’s eyes. It is perhaps the best authenticated case in existence of a real vision at a distance. Explanation there is none forthcoming, except what Professor Wade has thrown out. But his explanation invokes the Fourth Dimension, and a dissertation on theoretical kinds of space. To talk of there being “a kink in space” seems mere nonsense to me; it may be because I am no mathematician. When I said that nothing would alter the fact that the place is eight thousand miles away, he answered that two points might be a yard away on a sheet of paper and yet be brought together by bending the paper round. The reader may grasp his argument, but I certainly do not. His idea seems to be that Davidson, stooping between the poles of the big electro-magnet, had some extraordinary twist given to his retinal elements through the sudden change in the field of force due to the lightning.
He thinks, as a consequence of this, that it may be possible to live visually in one part of the world, while one lives bodily in another. He has even made some experiments in support of his views; but, so far, he has simply succeeded in blinding a few dogs. I believe that is the net result of his work, though I have not seen him for some weeks. Latterly, I have been so busy with my work in connection with the Saint Pancras installation that I have had little opportunity of calling to see him. But the whole of his theory seems fantastic to me. The facts concerning Davidson stand on an altogether different footing, and I can testify personally to the accuracy of every detail I have given.
The night was hot and overcast, the sky redrimmed with the lingering sunset of midsummer. They sat at the open window trying to fancy the air was fresher there. The trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas lamp burnt, bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening. Further were the three lights of the railway signal against the lowering sky. The man and woman spoke to one another in low tones.
“He does not suspect?” said the man, a little nervously.
“Not he,” she said peevishly, as though that too irritated her. “He thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel. He has no imagination, no poetry—”
“None of these men of iron have,” he said sententiously. “They have no hearts.”
“He has not,” she said. She turned her discontented face towards the window. The distant sound of a roaring and rushing drew nearer and grew in volume; the house quivered; one heard the metallic rattle of the tender. As the train passed there was a glare of light above the cutting and a driving tumult of smoke; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black oblongs—eight trucks—passed across the dim grey of the embankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of the tunnel, which, with the last, seemed to swallow down train, smoke, and sound in one abrupt gulp.
“This country was all fresh and beautiful once,” he said; “and now—it is Gehenna. Down that way—nothing but pot-banks and chimneys belching fire and dust into the face of heaven— But what does it matter? An end comes, an end to all this cruelty—to-morrow.” He spoke the last word in a whisper.
“To-morrow,” she said, speaking in a whisper too, and still staring out of the window.
“Dear!” he said, putting his hand on hers.
She turned with a start, and their eyes searched one another’s. Hers softened to his gaze. “My dear one,” she said, and then: “It seems so strange—that you should have come into my life like this—to open—” She paused.
“To open?” he said.
“All this wonderful world—” she hesitated and spoke still more softly—“this world of love to me.”
Then suddenly the door clicked and closed. They turned their heads, and he started violently back. In the shadow of the room stood a great shadowy figure—silent. They saw the face dimly in the half-light, with unexpressive dark patches under the pent-house brows. Every muscle in Raut’s body suddenly became tense. When could the door have opened? What had he heard? Had he heard all? What had he seen? A tumult of questions.
The new-comer’s voice came at last, after a pause that seemed interminable. “Well?” he said.
“I was afraid I had missed you, Horrocks,” said the man at the window, gripping the window-ledge with his hand. His voice was unsteady.
The clumsy figure of Horrocks came forward out of the shadow. He made no answer to Raut’s remark. For a moment he stood above them.
The woman’s heart was cold within her. “I told Mr. Raut it was just possible you might come back,” she said, in a voice that never quivered.
Horrocks, still silent, sat down abruptly in the chair by her little work-table. His big hands were clenched; one saw now the fire of his eyes under the shadow of his brows. He was trying to get his breath. His eyes went from the woman he had trusted to the friend he had trusted, and then back to the woman.
By this time and for the moment all three half understood one another. Yet none dared say a word to ease the pent-up things that choked them.
It was the husband’s voice that broke the silence at last.
“You wanted to see me?” he said to Raut.
Raut started as he spoke. “I came to see you,” he said, resolved to lie to the last.
“Yes?” said Horrocks.
“You promised,” said Raut, “to show me some fine effects of moonlight and smoke.”
“I promised to show you some fine effects of moonlight and smoke,” repeated Horrocks, in a colourless voice.
“And I thought I might catch you to-night before you went down to the works,” proceeded Raut, “and come with you.”
There was another pause. Did the man mean to take the thing coolly? Did he after all know? How long had he been in the room? Yet even at the moment when they heard the door, their attitudes—Horrocks glanced at the profile of the woman, shadowy pallid in the half-light. Then he glanced at Raut, and seemed to recover himself suddenly. “Of course,” he said, “I promised to show you the works under their proper dramatic conditions. It’s odd how I could have forgotten.”
“If I’m troubling you—” began Raut.
Horrocks started again. A new light had suddenly come into the sultry gloom of his eyes. “Not in the least,” he said.
“Have you been telling Mr. Raut of all these contrasts of flame and shadow you think so splendid?” said the woman, turning now to her husband for the first time, her confidence creeping back again, her voice just one half-note too high. “That dreadful theory of yours that machinery is beautiful and everything else in the world ugly. I thought he would not spare you, Mr. Raut. It’s his great Theory, his one discovery in Art—”
“I am slow to make discoveries,” said Horrocks, grimly, damping her suddenly. “But what I discover—” He stopped.
“Well?” she said.
“Nothing,” and suddenly he rose to his feet.
“I promised to show you the works,” he said to Raut, and put his big, clumsy hand on his friend’s shoulder. “And you are ready to go?”
“Quite,” said Raut, and stood up also.
There was another pause. Each of them peered through the indistinctness of the dusk at the other two. Horrocks’s hand still rested on Raut’s shoulder. Raut half fancied still that the incident was trivial after all. But Mrs. Horrocks knew her husband better, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the confusion in her mind took a vague shape of physical evil. “Very well,” said Horrocks, and, dropping his hand, turned towards the door.
“My hat?” Raut looked round in the half-light.
“That’s my work-basket,” said Mrs. Horrocks, with a gust of hysterical laughter. The hands came together on the back of the chair. “Here it is!” he said. She had an impulse to warn him in an undertone, but she could not frame a word. “Don’t go!” and “Beware of him!” struggled in her mind, and the swift moment passed.
“Got it?” said Horrocks, standing with door half open.
Raut stepped towards him. “Better say good-bye to Mrs. Horrocks,” said the ironmaster, even more grimly quiet in his tone than before.
Raut started and turned. “Good evening, Mrs. Horrocks,” he said, and their hands touched.
Horrocks held the door open with a ceremonial politeness unusual in him towards men. Raut went out and then, after a wordless look at her, her husband followed. She stood motionless while Raut’s light footfall and her husband’s heavy tread, like bass and treble, passed down the passage together. The front door slammed heavily. She went to the window, moving slowly, and stood watching—leaning forward. The two men appeared for a moment at
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