Tono-Bungay - H. G. Wells (my reading book txt) 📗

bricks and mortar, and crude roads and paths, the scaffolding and sheds, the general quality of unforeseeing outrage upon the peace of nature, I am reminded of a chat I had with the vicar one bleak day after he had witnessed a glide. He talked to me of aeronautics as I stood in jersey and shorts beside my machine, fresh from alighting, and his cadaverous face failed to conceal a peculiar desolation that possessed him.

“Almost you convince me,” he said, coming up to me, “against my will.⁠ ⁠… A marvellous invention! But it will take you a long time, sir, before you can emulate that perfect mechanism⁠—the wing of a bird.”

He looked at my sheds.

“You’ve changed the look of this valley, too,” he said.

“Temporary defilements,” I remarked, guessing what was in his mind.

“Of course. Things come and go. Things come and go. But⁠—H’m. I’ve just been up over the hill to look at Mr. Edward Ponderevo’s new house. That⁠—that is something more permanent. A magnificent place!⁠—in many ways. Imposing. I’ve never somehow brought myself to go that way before. Things are greatly advanced.⁠ ⁠… We find⁠—the great number of strangers introduced into the villages about here by these operations, workingmen chiefly, a little embarrassing. It put us out. They bring a new spirit into the place; betting⁠—ideas⁠—all sorts of queer notions. Our publicans like it, of course. And they come and sleep in one’s outhouses⁠—and make the place a little unsafe at nights. The other morning I couldn’t sleep⁠—a slight dyspepsia⁠—and I looked out of the window. I was amazed to see people going by on bicycles. A silent procession. I counted ninety-seven⁠—in the dawn. All going up to the new road for Crest Hill. Remarkable I thought it. And so I’ve been up to see what they were doing.”

“They would have been more than remarkable thirty years ago,” I said.

“Yes, indeed. Things change. We think nothing of it now at all⁠—comparatively. And that big house⁠—”

He raised his eyebrows. “Really stupendous!⁠ ⁠… Stupendous.

“All the hillside⁠—the old turf⁠—cut to ribbons!”

His eye searched my face. “We’ve grown so accustomed to look up to Lady Grove,” he said, and smiled in search of sympathy. “It shifts our centre of gravity.”

“Things will readjust themselves,” I lied.

He snatched at the phrase. “Of course,” he said.

“They’ll readjust themselves⁠—settle down again. Must. In the old way. It’s bound to come right again⁠—a comforting thought. Yes. After all, Lady Grove itself had to be built once upon a time⁠—was⁠—to begin with⁠—artificial.”

His eye returned to my aeroplane. He sought to dismiss his graver preoccupations. “I should think twice,” he remarked, “before I trusted myself to that concern.⁠ ⁠… But I suppose one grows accustomed to the motion.”

He bade me good morning and went his way, bowed and thoughtful.⁠ ⁠…

He had kept the truth from his mind a long time, but that morning it had forced its way to him with an aspect that brooked no denial that this time it was not just changes that were coming in his world, but that all his world lay open and defenceless, conquered and surrendered, doomed so far as he could see, root and branch, scale and form alike, to change.

III Soaring I

For nearly all the time that my uncle was incubating and hatching Crest Hill I was busy in a little transverse valley between that great beginning and Lady Grove with more and more costly and ambitious experiments in aerial navigation. This work was indeed the main substance of my life through all the great time of the Tono-Bungay symphony.

I have told already how I came to devote myself to this system of inquiries, how in a sort of disgust with the common adventure of life I took up the dropped ends of my college studies, taking them up again with a man’s resolution instead of a boy’s ambition. From the first I did well at this work. It⁠—was, I think, largely a case of special aptitude, of a peculiar irrelevant vein of faculty running through my mind. It is one of those things men seem to have by chance, that has little or nothing to do with their general merit, and which it is ridiculous to be either conceited or modest about. I did get through a very big mass of work in those years, working for a time with a concentrated fierceness that left little of such energy or capacity as I possess unused. I worked out a series of problems connected with the stability of bodies pitching in the air and the internal movements of the wind, and I also revolutionised one leading part at last of the theory of explosive engines. These things are to be found in the Philosophical Transactions, the Mathematical Journal, and less frequently in one or two other such publications, and they needn’t detain us here. Indeed, I doubt if I could write about them here. One acquires a sort of shorthand for one’s notes and mind in relation to such special work. I have never taught nor lectured, that is to say, I have never had to express my thoughts about mechanical things in ordinary everyday language, and I doubt very much if I could do so now without extreme tedium.

My work was, to begin with, very largely theoretical. I was able to attack such early necessities of verification as arose with quite little models, using a turntable to get the motion through the air, and cane, whalebone and silk as building material. But a time came when incalculable factors crept in, factors of human capacity and factors of insufficient experimental knowledge, when one must needs guess and try. Then I had to enlarge the scale of my operations, and soon I had enlarged them very greatly. I set to work almost concurrently on the balance and stability of gliders and upon the steering of inflated bags, the latter a particularly expensive branch of work. I was no doubt moved by something of the same spirit of lavish expenditure