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

fancied I was standing too much. He took to me altogether too conspicuously. I could never go into the smoking-room but he would come wallowing towards me, and sometimes he came and gormandised round and about me while I had my lunch. He seemed at times almost to be clinging to me. He was a bore, but not so fearful a bore as to be limited to me and from the first there was something in his manner⁠—almost as though he knew, almost as though he penetrated to the fact that I might⁠—that there was a remote, exceptional chance in me that no one else presented.

“I’d give anything to get it down,” he would say⁠—“anything,” and peer at me over his vast cheeks and pant. Poor old Pyecraft! He has just gonged; no doubt to order another buttered teacake!

He came to the actual thing one day. “Our pharmacopoeia,” he said, “our Western pharmacopoeia, is anything but the last word of medical science. In the East, I’ve been told⁠—”

He stopped and stared at me. It was like being at an aquarium.

I was quite suddenly angry with him. “Look here,” I said, “who told you about my great-grandmother’s recipes?”

“Well,” he fenced.

“Every time we’ve met for a week,” I said⁠—“and we’ve met pretty often⁠—you’ve given me a broad hint or so about that little secret of mine.”

“Well,” he said, “now the cat’s out of the bag, I’ll admit, yes, it is so. I had it⁠—”

“From Pattison?”

“Indirectly,” he said, which I believe was lying, “yes.”

“Pattison,” I said, “took that stuff at his own risk.” He pursed his mouth and bowed.

“My great-grandmother’s recipes,” I said, “are queer things to handle. My father was near making me promise⁠—”

“He didn’t?”

“No. But he warned me. He himself used one⁠—once.”

“Ah!⁠ ⁠… But do you think⁠—? Suppose⁠—suppose there did happen to be one⁠—”

“The things are curious documents,” I said. “Even the smell of ’em⁠ ⁠… No!”

But after going so far Pyecraft was resolved I should go farther. I was always a little afraid if I tried his patience too much he would fall on me suddenly and smother me. I own I was weak. But I was also annoyed with Pyecraft. I had got to that state of feeling for him that disposed me to say, “Well, take the risk!” The little affair of Pattison to which I have alluded was a different matter altogether. What it was doesn’t concern us now, but I knew, anyhow, that the particular recipe I used then was safe. The rest I didn’t know so much about, and, on the whole, I was inclined to doubt their safety pretty completely.

Yet even if Pyecraft got poisoned⁠—

I must confess the poisoning of Pyecraft struck me as an immense undertaking.

That evening I took that queer, odd-scented sandalwood box out of my safe, and turned the rustling skins over. The gentleman who wrote the recipes for my great-grandmother evidently had a weakness for skins of a miscellaneous origin, and his handwriting was cramped to the last degree. Some of the things are quite unreadable to me⁠—though my family, with its Indian Civil Service associations, has kept up a knowledge of Hindustani from generation to generation⁠—and none are absolutely plain sailing. But I found the one that I knew was there soon enough, and sat on the floor by my safe for some time looking at it.

“Look here,” said I to Pyecraft next day, and snatched the slip away from his eager grasp.

“So far as I can make it out, this is a recipe for Loss of Weight.” (“Ah!” said Pyecraft.) “I’m not absolutely sure, but I think it’s that. And if you take my advice you’ll leave it alone. Because, you know⁠—I blacken my blood in your interest, Pyecraft⁠—my ancestors on that side were, so far as I can gather, a jolly queer lot. See?”

“Let me try it,” said Pyecraft.

I leant back in my chair. My imagination made one mighty effort and fell flat within me. “What in Heaven’s name, Pyecraft,” I asked, “do you think you’ll look like when you get thin?”

He was impervious to reason, I made him promise never to say a word to me about his disgusting fatness again whatever happened⁠—never, and then I handed him that little piece of skin.

“It’s nasty stuff,” I said.

“No matter,” he said, and took it.

He goggled at it. “But⁠—but⁠—” he said.

He had just discovered that it wasn’t English.

“To the best of my ability,” I said, “I will do you a translation.”

I did my best. After that we didn’t speak for a fortnight. Whenever he approached me I frowned and motioned him away, and he respected our compact, but at the end of the fortnight he was as fat as ever. And then he got a word in.

“I must speak,” he said, “It isn’t fair. There’s something wrong. It’s done me no good. You’re not doing your great-grandmother justice.”

“Where’s the recipe?”

He produced it gingerly from his pocketbook.

I ran my eye over the items. “Was the egg addled?” I asked.

“No. Ought it to have been?”

“That,” I said, “goes without saying in all my poor dear great-grandmother’s recipes. When condition or quality is not specified you must get the worst. She was drastic or nothing⁠ ⁠… And there’s one or two possible alternatives to some of these other things. You got fresh rattlesnake venom?”

“I got a rattlesnake from Jamrach’s. It cost⁠—it cost⁠—”

“That’s your affair anyhow. This last item⁠—”

“I know a man who⁠—”

“Yes. H’m. Well, I’ll write the alternatives down. So far as I know the language, the spelling of this recipe is particularly atrocious. By the by, dog here probably means pariah dog.”

For a month after that I saw Pyecraft constantly at the club and as fat and anxious as ever. He kept our treaty, but at times he broke the spirit of it by shaking his head despondently. Then one day in the cloakroom he said, “Your great-grandmother⁠—”

“Not a word against her,” I said; and he held his peace.

I could have fancied he had desisted, and I saw him one day talking to