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

“These happen to be a series of gestures⁠—connected with a certain branch of esoteric Masonry. Probably you know. Or else⁠—how?” He reflected still further. “I do not see I can do any harm in telling you just the proper twist. After all, if you know, you know; if you don’t, you don’t.”

“I know nothing,” said Clayton, “except what the poor devil let out last night.”

“Well, anyhow,” said Sanderson, and placed his churchwarden very carefully upon the shelf over the fireplace. Then very rapidly he gesticulated with his hands.

“So?” said Clayton, repeating.

“So,” said Sanderson, and took his pipe in hand again.

“Ah, now,” said Clayton, “I can do the whole thing⁠—right.”

He stood up before the waning fire and smiled at us all. But I think there was just a little hesitation in his smile. “If I begin⁠—” he said.

“I wouldn’t begin,” said Wish.

“It’s all right!” said Evans. “Matter is indestructible. You don’t think any jiggery-pokery of this sort is going to snatch Clayton into the world of shades. Not it! You may try, Clayton, so far as I’m concerned, until your arms drop off at the wrists.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Wish, and stood up and put his arm on Clayton’s shoulder. “You’ve made me half believe in that story somehow, and I don’t want to see the thing done!”

“Goodness!” said I, “here’s Wish frightened!”

“I am,” said Wish, with real or admirably feigned intensity. “I believe that if he goes through these motions right he’ll go.”

“He’ll not do anything of the sort,” I cried. “There’s only one way out of this world for men, and Clayton is thirty years from that. Besides⁠ ⁠… And such a ghost! Do you think⁠—?”

Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among our chairs and stopped beside the tole and stood there. “Clayton,” he said, “you’re a fool.”

Clayton, with a humorous light in his eyes, smiled back at him. “Wish,” he said, “is right and all you others are wrong. I shall go. I shall get to the end of these passes, and as the last swish whistles through the air, Presto!⁠—this hearthrug will be vacant, the room will be blank amazement, and a respectably dressed gentleman of fifteen stone will plump into the world of shades. I’m certain. So will you be. I decline to argue further. Let the thing be tried.”

“No,” said Wish, and made a step and ceased, and Clayton raised his hands once more to repeat the spirit’s passing.

By that time, you know, we were all in a state of tension⁠—largely because of the behaviour of Wish. We sat all of us with our eyes on Clayton⁠—I, at least, with a sort of tight, stiff feeling about me as though from the back of my skull to the middle of my thighs my body had been changed to steel. And there, with a gravity that was imperturbably serene, Clayton bowed and swayed and waved his hands and arms before us. As he drew towards the end one piled up, one tingled in one’s teeth. The last gesture, I have said, was to swing the arms out wide open, with the face held up. And when at last he swung out to this closing gesture I ceased even to breathe. It was ridiculous, of course, but you know that ghost-story feeling. It was after dinner, in a queer, old shadowy house. Would he, after all⁠—?

There he stood for one stupendous moment, with his arms open and his upturned face, assured and bright, in the glare of the hanging lamp. We hung through that moment as if it were an age, and then came from all of us something that was half a sigh of infinite relief and half a reassuring “No!” For visibly⁠—he wasn’t going. It was all nonsense. He had told an idle story, and carried it almost to conviction, that was all!⁠ ⁠… And then in that moment the face of Clayton, changed.

It changed. It changed as a lit house changes when its lights are suddenly extinguished. His eyes were suddenly eyes that were fixed, his smile was frozen on his lips, and he stood there still. He stood there, very gently swaying.

That moment, too, was an age. And then, you know, chairs were scraping, things were falling, and we were all moving. His knees seemed to give, and he fell forward, and Evans rose and caught him in his arms⁠ ⁠…

It stunned us all. For a minute I suppose no one said a coherent thing. We believed it, yet could not believe it⁠ ⁠… I came out of a muddled stupefaction to find myself kneeling beside him, and his vest and shirt were torn open, and Sanderson’s hand lay on his heart⁠ ⁠…

Well⁠—the simple fact before us could very well wait our convenience; there was no hurry for us to comprehend. It lay there for an hour; it lies athwart my memory, black and amazing still, to this day. Clayton had, indeed, passed into the world that lies so near to and so far from our own, and he had gone thither by the only road that mortal man may take. But whether he did indeed pass there by that poor ghost’s incantation, or whether he was stricken suddenly by apoplexy in the midst of an idle tale⁠—as the coroner’s jury would have us believe⁠—is no matter for my judging; it is just one of those inexplicable riddles that must remain unsolved until the final solution of all things shall come. All I certainly know is that, in the very moment, in the very instant, of concluding those passes, he changed, and staggered, and fell down before us⁠—dead!

The Door in the Wall I

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.

He told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that I could not do otherwise than