Short Fiction - H. G. Wells (funny books to read .TXT) 📗

Short Fiction

By H. G. Wells.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint In the Modern Vein The Triumphs of a Taxidermist The Stolen Bacillus The Hammerpond Park Burglary The Jilting of Jane The Flowering of the Strange Orchid In the Avu Observatory The Diamond Maker The Treasure in the Forest Through a Window The Lord of the Dynamos Aepyornis Island A Deal in Ostriches The Flying Man The Temptation of Harringay The Moth The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes I II III IV V A Catastrophe Pollock and the Porroh Man The Cone The Argonauts of the Air A Slip Under the Microscope Under the Knife The Red Room The Plattner Story The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham In the Abyss The Apple The Purple Pileus The Sea Raiders I II III The Crystal Egg The Lost Inheritance A Story of the Stone Age I: Ugh-Lomi and Uya II: The Cave Bear III: The First Horseman IV: Uya the Lion V: The Fight in the Lion’s Thicket A Story of the Days to Come I: The Cure for Love II: The Vacant Country III: The Ways of the City IV: Underneath V: Bindon Intervenes The Star The Man Who Could Work Miracles Miss Winchelsea’s Heart Mr. Ledbetter’s Vacation The Stolen Body Jimmy Goggles the God Mr. Brisher’s Treasure A Vision of Judgment I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX A Dream of Armageddon The New Accelerator Filmer Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland The Valley of Spiders The Truth About Pyecraft The Magic Shop The Country of the Blind The Obliterated Man The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost The Door in the Wall I II III IV The Empire of the Ants I II III IV The Beautiful Suit The Pearl of Love Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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In the Modern Vein An Unsympathetic Love Story

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

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

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

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

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