23
TALES OF THE
UNEXPECTED
BY
H. G. WELLS
LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
.lair.
CONTENTS
FAGS
1H£ REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES 7
THE MOTH 20
â– HE STORY OF THE LATE MR KLVESHAM 33
UNDER THE KNIFE 5^
THE PLATTNER STORY 71
THE CRYSTAL EGG 96
'THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRAC
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON I40
THE NEW ACCELERATOR I72
HIE DOOR IN THE WALL
1 HE APFLK 211
TEMPTATION OF HARJ 221
SKELMERSDAIE IN FAIRYL 22>
THE INEXPERIENCED G:
THE STOLEN BODY 26l
52 477 7
THE REMARKABLE CASE OF
DAVIDSON'S EYES
The transitory mental aberration of Sidney Davidson,
remarkable enough in itself, is still more remarkable if
Wade's explanation is to be credited. It sets one
dreaming of the oddest possibilities of inter-communica-
tion in the future, of spending an intercalary five
minutes on the other side of the world, or being watched
in our most secret operations by unsuspected eyes. It
happened that I was the immediate witness of David-
son's seizure, and so it falls naturally to me to put the
story upon paper.
When I say that I was the immediate witness of his
seizure, I mean that I was the first on the scene. The
thing happened at the Harlow Technical College, just
beyond the Highgate Archway. He was alone in the
larger laboratory when the thing happened. I was in
a smaller room, where the balances are, writing up some
notes. The thunderstorm had completely upset my
work, of course. It was just after one of the louder
peals that I thought I heard some glass smash in the
other room. I stopped writing, and turned round to
listen. For a moment I heard nothing; the hail was
playing the devil's tattoo on the corrugated zinc of the
roof. Then came another sound, a smash — no doubt
of it this time. Something heavy had been knocked
off the bench. I jumped up at once and went and
opened the door leading into the big laboratory.
7
8 TAIES OF THE UNEXPECTED
I was surprised to hear a queer sort of laugh, and saw
Davidson standing unsteadily in the middle of the room,
with a dazzled look on his face. My first impression
was that he was drunk. He did not notice me. He was
clawing out at something invisible a yard in front of his
face. He put out his hand, slowly, rather hesitatingly,
and then clutched nothing. 'What's come to it?' he
said. He held up his hands to his face, fingers spread
out. 'Great Scott!' he said. The thing happened
three or four years ago, when every one swore by that
personage. Then he began raising his feet clumsily,
as though he had expected to find them glued to the
floor.
' Davidson ! ' cried I. ' What's the matter with you ? '
He turned round in my direction and looked about
for me. He looked over me and at me and on either
side of me, without the slightest sign of seeing me.
'Waves,' he said; 'and a remarkably neat schooner.
I'd swear that was Bellow's voice. Hallo !' He shouted
suddenly at the top of his voice.
I thought he was up to some foolery. Then I saw-
littered about his feet the shattered remains of the I
of our electrometers. ' What's up, man? ' said I. ' You've
smashed the electrometer ! '
' Bellows again ! ' said he. ' Friends left, if my hand^
are gone. Something about electrometers. Which
way arc you, Bellows?' He sudd I . ring
towards me. 'The damned stuff cuts like butter,' he
said. He walked straight into the bench and recoiled.
' None so buttery that ! ' he said, and stood
I felt scared. 'Davidson,' said I, 'what on earth's
r you? '
He looked round him in ion. 'I could
u that was Bellows. Why don't you show youj
• man, Bellows? '
It occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck
THE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES 9
blind. I walked round the table and laid my hand
upon his arm. I never saw a man more startled in my
life. He jumped away from me, and came round into
an attitude of self-defence, his face fairly distorted
with terror. 'Good God !' he cried. 'What was that?
'It's I — Bellows. Confound it, Davidson!'
He jumped when I answered him and stared — how
can I express it ? — right through me. He began talking,
not to me, but to himself. 'Here in broad daylight on
a clear beach. Not a place to hide in.' He looked about
him wildly. 'Here! I'm off' He suddenly turned
and ran headlong into the big electro-magnet — so
violently that, as we found afterwards, he bruised his
shoulder and jawbone cruelly. At that he stepped back
a pace, and cried out with almost a whimper, 'What,
in Heaven's name, has come over me ? ' He stood,
blanched with terror and trembling violently, with his
right arm clutching his left, where that had collided with
the magnet.
By that time I was excited and fairly scared. 'David-
son,' said I, 'don't be afraid.'
He was startled at my voice, but not so excessively as
before. I repeated my words in as clear and as firm a
tone as I could assume. 'Bellows,' he said, 'is that
you?'
'Can't you see it's me?'
He laughed. 'I can't even see it's myself. Where
the devil are we ? '
'Here,' said I, 'in the laboratory.'
' The laboratory ! ' he answered in a puzzled tone,
and put his hand to his forehead. I was in the labora-
tory — till that flash came, but I'm hanged if I'm there
now. What ship is that?'
'There's no ship,' said I. 'Do be sensible, old chap.'
'No ship,' he repeated, and seemed to forget my
denial forthwith. 'I suppose,' said he slowly, 'we're
io TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
both dead. But the rummy part is I feci just as though
I still had a body. Don't get used to it all at once,
I suppose. The old shop was struck by lightning, I
suppose. Jolly quick thing, Bellows — eh?'
'Don't talk nonsense. You're very much alive. You
are in the laboratory, blundering about. You've just
smashed a new electrometer. I don't envy you when
Boyce arrives.'
He stared away from me towards the diagrams of
cryohydrates. 'I must be deaf,' said he. 'They've
fired a gun, for there goes the puff of smoke, and I
never heard a sound.'
I put my hand on his arm again, and this time he was
less alarmed. 'We seem to have a sort of invisible
bodies,' said he. 'By Jove! there's a boat coming
round the headland. It's very much like the old life
after all — in a different climate.'
I shook his arm. 'Davidson,' I cried, 'wake up !'
II
It was just then that Boyce came in. So soon as he
spoke Davidson exclaimed : ' Old Boyce ! Dead too I
What a lark ! ' I hastened to explain that Davidson
was in a kind of somnambulistic trance. Boyce was
interested at once. We both did all we could to rouse
the fellow out of his extraordinary state. He answered
our questions, and asked us some of his own, but his
attention seemed distracted by his hallucination about
a beach and a ship. He kept interpolating observations
concerning some boat and the davits, and sails filling
with the wind. It made one feel queer, in the dusky
laboratory, to hear him saying such things.
He was blind and helpless. We had to walk him
down the passage, one at each elbow, to Boyce's private
THE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES n
room, and while Boyce talked to him there, and
humoured him about this ship idea, I went along the
corridor and asked old Wade to come and look at him.
The voice of our Dean sobered him a little, but not very
much. He asked where his hands were, and why he had
to walk about up to his waist in the ground. Wade
thought over him a long time — you know how he knits
his brows — and then made him feel the couch, guiding
his hands to it. 'That's a couch,' said Wade. 'The
couch in the private room of Professor Boyce. Horse-
hair stuffing. '
Davidson felt about, and puzzled over it, and
answered presently that he could feel it all right, but
he couldn't see it.
'What do you see?' asked Wade. Davidson said
he could see nothing but a lot of sand and broken-up
shells. Wade gave him some other things to feel, telling
him what they were, and watching him keenly.
'The ship is almost hull down,' said Davidson
presently, apropos of nothing.
'Never mind the ship,' said Wade. 'Listen to me,
Davidson. Do you know what hallucination means?'
'Rather,' said Davidson.
'Well, everything you see is hallucinatory.'
'Bishop Berkeley,' said Davidson.
'Don't mistake me,' said Wade. 'You are alive and
in this room of Boyce's. But something has happened
to your eyes. You cannot see; you can feel and hear,
but not see. Do you follow me?'
'It seems to me that I see too much.' Davidson
rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. 'Well?' he said.
'That's all. Don't let it perplex you. Bellows here
and I will take you home in a cab.'
'Wait a bit.' Davidson thought. 'Help me to sit
down,' said he presently; 'and now — I'm sorry to
trouble you— but will you tell me all that over again?'
12 TALES OF THE UNEXPECT1
Wade repeated it very patiently. Davidson shut his
eyes, and pressed his hands upon his forehead. 'Yes, 1
said he. 'It's quite right. Now my eyes are shut I
know you're right. That's you, Bellows, sitting by me
on the couch. I'm in England again. And we're in
the dark.'
Then he opened his eyes. 'And there,' said he, 'is
the sun just rising, and the yards of the ship, and a
tumbled sea, and a couple of birds flying. I never saw
anything so real. And I'm sitting up to my neck in a
bank of sand.'
He bent forward and covered his face with his hands.
Then he opened his eyes again. 'Dark sea and sunrise !
And yet I'm sitting on a sofa in old Boyce's room ! . . .
God help me ! '
in
That was the beginning. For three weeks this strange
affection of Davidson's eyes continued unabated. It
was far worse than being blind. He was absolutely
helpless, and had to be fed like a newly-hatched bird,
and led about and undressed. If he attempted to mi
he fell over things or struck himself against walls or
doors. After a day or so he got used to hearing our
voices without seeing us, and willingly admitted he
at home, and that Wade was right in what he told him.
My sister, to whom he was engaged, insisted on coming
to sec him, and would sit for hours every day while he
talked about this beach of his. Holding her hand
seemed to comfort him immensely. H tied that
when we left the College and drov lived in
Hampstead village — it appeared to him as if we di
right through a sandhill— it was perfectly black until he
emerged again — and through rocks and trees and solid
obstacles, and when he was taken to his own room it
THE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES 13
made him giddy and almost frantic with the fear of
falling, because going upstairs seemed to lift him thirty
or fort}' feet above the rocks of his imaginary island.
He kept saying he should smash all the eggs. The end
was that he had to be taken down into his father's
consulting room and laid upon a couch that stood there.
He described the island as being a bleak kind of place
on the whole, with very little vegetation, except some
peaty stuff, and a lot of bare rock. There were multi-
tudes of penguins, and they made the rocks white and
disagreeable to sec. The sea was often rough, and once
there was a thunderstorm, and he lay and shouted at
the silent flashes. Once or twice seals pulled up on
the beach, but only on the first two or three days.
He said it was very funny the way in which
the penguins used to waddle right through him,
and how he seemed to lie among them without dis-
turbing them.
I remember one odd thing, and that was when he
wanted very badly to smoke. We put a pipe in his
hands — he almost poked his eye out with it — and lit it.
But he couldn't taste anything. I've since found it's
the same with me — I don't know if it's the usual case —
that I cannot enjoy tobacco at all unless I can see the
smoke.
But the queerest part of his vision came when Wade
sent him out in a bath-chair to get fresh air. The
Davidsons hired a chair, and got that deaf and obstinate
dependant of theirs, Widgeiy, to attend to it. Widg-
ideas of healthy expeditions were peculiar. My sister,
who had been to the Dogs' Home, met them in Camden
Town, towards King's Cross, Widgery trotting along
complacently, and Davidson, evidently most distressed,
trying in his feeble, blind way to attract Widgery's
attention.
He positively wept when my sister spoke to him.
14 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'Oh, get me out of this horrible darkness!' he said,
feeling for her hand. 'I must get out of it, or I shall
die.' He was quite incapable of explaining what was
the matter, but my sister decided he must go home, and
presently, as they went uphill towards Hampstead,
the horror seemed to drop from him. He said it was
good to see the stars again, though it was then about
noon and a blazing day.
'It seemed,' he told me afterwards, 'as rf I was
being carried irresistibly towards the water. I was not
very much alarmed at first. Of course it was night
there — a lovely night.'
'Of course?' I asked, for that struck me as odd.
'Of course,' said he. 'It's always night there when
it is day here. . . . Well, we went right into the water,
which was calm and shining under the moonlight — just
a broad swell that seemed to grow broader and flatter
as I came down into it. The surface glistened just like
a skin — it might have been empty space underneath
for all I could tell to the contrary. Very slowly, for I
rode slanting into it, the water crept up to my eyes.
Then I went under and the skin seemed to break and
heal again about my eyes. The moon gave a jump up
in the sky and grew green and dim, and fish, faintly
glowing, came darting round me — and things that
seemed made of luminous glass; and I passed through
a tangle of seaweeds that shone witli an oily lustre.
And so I drove down into the sea, and the stars went
out one by one, and the moon grew greener and darker,
and the seaweed became a luminous purple-red. It
was all very faint and mysterious, and everything
led to quiver. And all the while I could hear the
wheels of the bath-chair creaking, and the footsteps
of people going by, and a man in the distance selling the
1 Vull Mall.
'I kept sinking down deeper and deeper into the
THE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES 15
water. It became inky black about me, not a ray from
above came clown into that darkness, and the phos-
phorescent things grew brighter and brighter. The
snaky branches of the deeper weeds flickered like the
flames of spirit-lamps; but, after a time, there were
no more weeds. The fishes came staring and gaping
towards me, and into me and through me, I never
imagined such fishes before. They had lines of fire
along the sides of them as though they had been out-
lined with a luminous pencil. And there was a ghastly
thing swimming backwards with a lot of twining arms.
And then I saw, coming very slowly towards me through
the gloom, a hazy mass of light that resolved itself as
it drew nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and
darting round something that drifted. I drove on
straight towards it, and presently I saw in the midst of
the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered
spar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and
some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken
and writhed as the fish bit at them. Then it was I
began to try to attract Widgery's attention. A horror
came upon me. Ugh ! I should have driven right into
those half-eaten things. If your sister had not
come ! They had great holes in them, Bellows, and . . .
Never mind. But it was ghastly ! '
IV
For three weeks Davidson remained in this singular
state, seeing what at the time we imagined was an
altogether phantasmal world, and stone blind to the
world around him. Then, one Tuesday, when I called I
met old Davidson in the passage. 'He can see his
thumb ! ' the old gentleman said, in a perfect transport.
He was struggling into his overcoat. 'He can see his
16 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
thumb, Bellows ! ' he said, with the tears in his eyes.
'The lad will be all right yet.'
I rushed in to Davidson. He was holding up a little
book before his face, and looking at it and laughing in a
weak kind of way.
'It's amazing,' said he. 'There's a kind of patch
come there.' He pointed with his finger. 'I'm on the
rocks as usual, and the penguins are staggering and
napping a.bout as usual, and there's been a whale show-
ing every now and then, but it's got too dark now to
make him out. But put something there, and I see it —
I do see it. It's very dim and broken in places, but I
see it all the same, like a faint spectre of itself. I found
it out this morning while they were dressing me. It's
like a hole in this infernal phantom world. Just put
your hand by mine. No — not there. Ah ! Yes ! I
see it. The base of your thumb and a bit of cuff ! It
looks like the ghost of a bit of your hand sticking out of
the darkling sky. Just by it there's a group of stars
like a cross coming out.'
From that time Davidson began to mend. His
account of the change, like his account of the vision,
was oddly convincing. Over patches of his field ol
vision, the phantom world grew fainter, grew trans-
parent, as it were, and through these translucent gaps
he began to see dimly the real world about him. The
patches grew in size and number, ran together and
spread until only here and there were blind spots left
upon his eyes. He was able to get up and steer himself
about, feed himself once more, read, smoke, and behave
like an ordinary ciu. in. At first it was very
confusing for him to have these two pictures over-
lapping each other like the changing views of a lantern,
but in a little while he began to distinguish the real
from the illusory.
At tirst he was unfeignedly glad, and seemed only
THE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES 17
too anxious to complete his cure by taking exercise and
tonics. But as that odd island of his began to fade
away from him, he became queerly interested in it. He
wanted particularly to go down in the deep sea again,
and would spend half his time wandering about the low-
lying parts of London, trying to find the water-logged
wreck he had seen drifting. The glare of real daylight
very soon impressed him so vividly as to blot out every-
thing of his shadowy world, but of a night-time, in a
darkened room, he could still see the white-splashed
rocks of the island, and the clumsy penguins staggering
to and fro. But even these grew fainter and fainter,
and, at last, soon after he married my sister, he saw
them for the last time.
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 incident-
ally he took out a kind of pocket photograph case to
show us a new rendering of his fiancee. '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 c&uld 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 year?, 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.
T.U. B
in TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
She was standing off an island that swarmed with
penguins, and she fired a gun.'
' Good Lord ! ' said Atkins, who had now 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 corre-
sponded, about this distant island. How is absolutely
a mystery.
That completes the remarkable story of Davidson's
eyes. It's perhaps the best authenticated case in
existence of 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
I of paper, and yet be brought together by bending
the paper round. The reader may grasp his argument,
but 1 certainly do not. His idea seems to be that
Davidson, stooping between th. poles oi the big electro-
net, had sonic extraordinary twist given to his
THE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES 19
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 had
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 instal-
lation 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 MOTH
Probably you have heard of Hapley — not \V. T
Hapley, the son, but the celebrated Hapley, the Hapley
of Peripluncla Hapliia, Hapley the entomologist.
If so you know at leait of the great feud between
Hapley and Professor Pawkins, though certain of its
equences may be new to you. For those who have
not, a word or two of explanation is necessary, which
the idle reader may go over with a glancing eye, if his
indolence so incline him.
It is amazing how very widely diffused is the ignorance
of such really important matters as this Hapley-Pawkins
feud. Those epoch-making controversies, again, that
have convulsed the Geological Society are, I verily
believe, almost entirely unknown outside the fellowship
of that body. I have heard men of fair general education,
even refer to the great scenes at these meetings as vestry-
meeting squa Vet the great hate of the English
and Scotch geologists has lasted now half a century,
and has 'left deep and abundant marks upon the body
of the science.' And this Hapley-Pawkins business,
though j a more personal affair, stirred passions
as profound, if not profounder. Your common man
has no conception of the zeal that animates a scientific
inve tigator, the fury of contradiction you can arouse
in him. It is the odium theologicum in a new form.
There are men, for instance, who would gladly burn
kestei at Smithfield for his treatment
of the Mollusca in the Encyclopaedia. That fantastic
THE MOTH 21
extension of the Cephalopods to cover the Pteroj*
. . . But I wander from Hapley and Pawkins.
It began years and years ago, with a revision of the
Microlepidoptera (whatever these may be) by Pawkins,
in which he extinguished a new species created by
Hapley. Hapley, who was always quarrelsome, replied
by a stinging impeachment of the entire classification
of Pawkins. 1 Pawkins in his 'Rejoinder' 3 suggested
that Hapley's microscope was as defective as his power
of observation, and called him an ' irresponsible meddler '
— Hapley was not a professor at that time. Hapley
in his retort, 3 spoke of 'blundering collectors,' and
described, as if inadvertently, Pawkins' revision as a
'miracle of ineptitude.' It was war to the knife. How-
ever, it would scarcely interest the reader to detail
how these two great men quarrelled, and how the split
between them widened until from tiie Microlepidoptera
they were at war upon every open question in ento-
mology. There were memorable occasions. At times
the Royal Entomological Society meetings resembled
nothing so much as the Chamber of Deputies. On the
whole, I fancy Pawkins was nearer the truth than
Hapley. But Hapley was skilful with his rhetoric, had
a turn for ridicule rare in a scientific man, was endowed
with vast energy, and had a line sense of injury in the
matter of the extinguished species; while Pawkins was
a man of dull presence, prosy of speech, in shape not
unlike a water-barrel, over conscientious with testi-
monials, and suspected of jobbing museum appointments.
So the young men gathered round Hapley and applauded
him. It was a long struggle, vicious from the beginning
1 "Remarks on a Recent Revision of Microlepidoptera. Quart,
fount. Entomological Soc, 1S63.
2 "Rejoinder to certain Remarks," etc. Ibid. 1S64.
3 'Further Remarks." etc. Hid.
22 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED }
and growing at last to pitiless antagonism. The suc-
cessive turns of fortune, now an advantage to one side
and now to another — now Hapley tormented by some
success of Pawkins, and now Pawkins outshone by
Hapley, belong rather to the history of entomology
than to this story.
But in 1 891 Pawkins, whose health had been bad for
some time, published some work upon the 'mesoblast'
of the Death's Head Moth. What the mesoblast of the
Death's Head Moth may be does not matter a rap in
this story. But the work was far below his usual
standard, and gave Hapley an opening he had coveted
for years. He must have worked night and day to make
the most of his advantage.
In an elaborate critique he rent Pawkins to tatters —
cue can fancy the man's disordered black hair, and his
queer dark eyts flashing as he went for his antagonist —
and Pawkins made a reply, halting, ineffectual, with
painful gaps of silence, and yet malignant. There was
no mistaking his will to wound Hapley, nor his incapacity
to do it. But few of those who heard him — I was
absent from that meeting — realised how ill the man was.
Hapley got his opponent down, and meant to finish
him. He followed with a simply brutal attack upon
Pawkins, in the form of a paper upon the development
of moths in general, a paper showing evidence of a
most extraordinary amount of mental labour, and yet
couched in a violently controversial tone. Violent as it
was, an editorial note witnesses that it was modified.
It must have covered Pawkins with shame and con-
fusion of face. It left no loophole; it was murderous
in argument, and utterly contemptuous in tone; an
awful thing for the declining years of a man's career.
The world of entomologists waited breathlessly for
the rejoinder from Pawkins. He would try one, for
Pawkins had always been game. But when it came
THE MOTH 23
it surprised them. For the rejoinder of Pawkins was to
catch influenza, proceed to pneumonia, and die.
It was perhaps as effectual a reply as he could make
under the circumstances, and largely turned the current
of feeling against Hapley. The very people who had
most gleefully cheered on those gladiators became
serious at the consequence. There could be no reason-
able doubt the fret of the defeat had contributed to the
death of Pawkins. There was a limit even to scientific
controversy, said serious people. Another crushing
attack was already in the Press and appeared on the
day before the funeral. I don't think Hapley exerted
himself to stop it. People remembered how Hapley
had hounded down his rival, and forgot that rival's
defects. Scathing satire reads ill over fresh mould.
The thing provoked comment in the daily papers.
This it was that made me think that you had probably
heard of Hapley and this controversy. But, as I have
already remarked, scientific workers live very much in
a world of their own; half the people, I dare say, who
go along Piccadilly to the Academy every year, could
not tell you where the learned societies abide. Many
even think that research is a kind of happy-family cage
in which all kinds of men lie down together in peace.
In his private thoughts Hapley could not forgive
Pawkins for dying. In the first place, it was a mean
dodge to escape the absolute pulverisation Hapley had
in hand for him, and in the second, it left Hapley's
mind with a queer gap in it. For twenty years he had
worked hard, sometimes far into the night, and seven
days a week, with microscope, scalpel, collecting-net,
and pen, and almost entirely with reference to Pawkins.
The European reputation he had won had come as an
incident in that great antipathy. He had gradually
worked up to a climax in this last controversy. It had
killed Pawkins, but it had also thrown Hapley out o
24 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
gear, so to speak, and his doctor advised him to give up
work for a time, and rest. So Hapley went down into a
quiet village in Kent, and thought day and night of
Pawkins, and good things it was now impossible to say
about him.
At last Hapley began to realise in what direction the
pre-occupation tended. He determined to make a
fight for it, and started by trying to read novels. But
he could not get his mind off Pawkins, white in the face
and making his last speech— every sentence a beautiful
opening for Hapley. He turned to fiction — and found
it had no grip on him. He read the Island Nights'
Entertainments until his sense of causation ' was shocked
beyond endurance by the Bottle Imp. Then he went
to Kipling, and found he 'proved nothing,' besides
being irreverent and vulgar. These scientific people
have their limitations. Then, unhappily, he tried
Besant's Inner House, and the opening chapter set his
mind upon learned societies and Pawkins at once.
So Hapley turned to chess, and found it a little more
soothing. He soon mastered the moves and the chief
gambits and commoner closing positions, and began
to beat the Vicar. But then the cylindrical contours
of the opposite king began to resemble Pawkins standing
up and gasping ineffectually against check-mate, and
Hapley decided to give up chess.
Perhaps the study of some new branch of science
would after all be better diversion. The best rest it.
change of occupation. Hapley determined to plunge
at diatoms, and had one of his smaller mia
Halibut's monograph sent down from London. He
thought that perhaps if he could get up a vigorous
quarrel with Halibut, he might be able to begin life
afresh and forget Pawkins. And very soon he was hard
at work in his habitual strenuoi n, at these micro-
scopic denizens of the wayside pool.
THE MOTH 25
It was on the third day of the diatoms that Hapley
became aware of a novel addition to the local fauna.
He was working late at the microscope, and the only
light in the room was the brilliant little lamp with the
special form of green shade. Like all experienced
microscopists, he kept both eyes open. It is the only
way to avoid excessive fatigue. One eye was over the
instrument, and bright and distinct before that was the
circular field of the microscope, across which a brown
diatom was slowly moving. With the other eye Hapley
saw, as it were, without seeing. He was only dimly
conscious of the brass side of the instrument, the
illuminated part of the table-cloth, a sheet of note-
paper, the foot of the lamp, and the darkened room
beyond.
Suddenly his attention drifted from one eye to the
other. The table-cloth was of the material called
tapestry by shopmen, and rather brightly coloured.
The pattern was in gold, with a small amount of crimson
and pale blue upon a grayish ground. At one point
the pattern seemed displaced, and there was a vibrating
movement of the colours at this point.
Hapley suddenly moved his head back and looked
with both eyes. His mouth fell open with astonishment.
It was a large moth or butterfly; its wings spread
in butterfly fashion !
It was strange it should be in the room at all, for the
windows were closed. Strange that it should not have
attracted his attention when fluttering to its present
position. Strange that it should match the table-
cloth. Stranger far that to him, Hapley, the great
entomologist, it was altogether unknown. There was
no delusion. It was crawling slowly towards the foot
of the lamp.
'New Genus, by heavens I And in England!' said
Hapley, staring.
26 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
Then he suddenly thought of Pawkins. Nothing
would have maddened Pawkins more Vnd Paw-
kins was dead !
Something about the head and body of the insect
became singularly suggestive of Pawkins, just as the
chess king had been.
' Confound Pawkins ! ' said Hapley. ' But I must
catch this.' And looking round him for some means
of capturing the moth, he rose slowly out of his chair.
Suddenly the insect rose, struck the edge of the lamp-
shade — Hapley heard the 'ping' — and vanished into
the shadow.
In a moment Hapley had whipped off the shade,
so that the whole room was illuminated. The thing
had disappeared, but soon his practised eye detected
it upon the wall-paper near the door. He went towards
it poising the lamp-shade for capture. Before he was
within striking distance, however, it had risen and was
fluttering round the room. After the fashion of its
kind, it flew with sudden starts and turns, seeming to
vanish here and reappear there. Once Hapley struck,
and missed; then again.
The third time lie hit his microscope. The instrument
swayed, struck and overturned the lamp, and fell
noisily upon the floor. The lamp turned over on the
table and, very luckily, went out. Hapley was left in
the dark. With a start he felt the strange moth blunder
into his face.
It was maddening. He had n<> lights. It he opened
the door of the room the thing would get away. In the
darkness he saw Pawkins quite distinctly laughing at
him. Pawkins had ever an oily laugh. He swore
furiously and stamped his foot on the floor.
Ther<- wa- a timid rapping at the door.
Then it opened, perhaps a foot, and very slowly. The
alarmed face of the landlady appeared behind a pink
THE MOTH 27
candle flame; she wore a night-cap over her gray hair
and had some purple garment over her shoulders. ' What
was that fearful smash? ' she said. 'Has anything '
The strange moth appeared fluttering about the chink
of the door. ' Shut that door ! ' said Hapley, and suddenly
rushed at her.
The door slammed hastily. Hapley was left alone
in the dark. Then, in the pause, he heard his landlady
scuttle upstairs, lock her door, and drag something
heavy across the room and put against it.
It became evident to Hapley that his conduct and
appearance had been strange and alarming. Confound
the moth ! and Pawkins ! However, it was a pity to
lose the moth now. He felt his way into the hall and
found the matches, after sending his hat down upon the
floor with a noise like a drum. With the lighted candle
he returned to the sitting-room. No moth was to be
seen. Yet once for a moment it seemed that the thing
was fluttering round his head. Hapley very suddenly
decided to give up the moth and go to bed. But he was
excited. All night long his sleep was broken by dreams
of the moth, Pawkins, and his landlady. Twice in the
night he turned out and soused his head in cold water.
One thing was very clear to him. His landlady could
not possibly understand about the strange moth,
especially as he had failed to catch it. No one but an
entomologist would understand quite how he felt. She
was probably frightened at his behaviour, and yet he
failed to see how he could explain it. He decided to say
nothing further about the events of last night. After
breakfast he saw her in her garden, and decided to go
out and talk to reassure her. He talked to her about
beans' and potatoes, bees, caterpillars, and the price of
fruit. She replied in her usual manner, but she looked
at him a little suspiciously, and kept walking as he
walked, so that there was always a bed of flowers, or
28 TALES F THE UNEXPECTED
a re ; something of the sort, between them.
After a while he began to feel singularly irritated at this,
and to conceal his vexation went indoors and presently
went out for a walk.
The moth, or butterfly, trailing an odd flavour of
Pawkins with it, kept coming into that walk, though
be did his best to keep his mind off it. Once he saw
it quite distinctly, with its wings flattened out, upon the
old stone wall that runs along the west edge of the park,
but going up to it he found it was only two lumps of
gray and yellow lichen. 'This,' said Hapley, 'is the
reverse of mimicry. Instead of a butterfly looking like
a stone, here is a stone looking like a butterfly ! ' Once
something hovered and fluttered round his head, but
by an effort of will he drove that impression out of his
mind again.
Tn the afternoon Hapley called upon the Vicar, and
;ed with him upon theological questions. The)' sat
in the little arbour covered with brier, and smoked as
they wrangled. 'Look at that moth!' said Hapley,
suddenly, pointing to the edge of the wooden table.
'Where?' said the Vicar.
' You don't see a moth on the edge of the table there? '
said Hapley.
'Certainly not, 'said the Vicar.
Hapley was thunderstruck. He gasped. I b e Vicar
was staring at him. Clearly the man saw nothing. ' The
eye of faith is no better than the eye of science,' said
Hapley awkwardly.
'I don't see your | id the Vicar, thin!
part of the argun
That night Hapley found the moth crawling over bis
counterpane. He sat on the edge oi the bid in his shirt
sleeves and reasoned with himself. Was it pure hallu-
cination? He knew he wa - lh< battled for
ith the same silent energy he had formerly
THE MOTH 29
displayed against Pawkins. So persistent is mental
habit, that he felt as if it were still a struggle with
Pawkins. He was well versed in psychology. He knew
that such visual illusions do come as a reLult of mental
strain. But the point was, he did not only see the moth,
he had heard it when it touched the edge of the lamp-
shade, and afterwards when it hit against the wall, and
he had felt it strike his face in the dark.
He looked at it. It was not at all dreamlike, but
perfectly clear and solid-looking in the candle-light.
He saw the hairy body, and the short feathery antenna?,
the jointed legs, even a place where the down was rubbed-
from the wing. He suddenly felt angry with himself for
being afraid of a little insect.
His landlady had got the servant to sleep with her
that night, because she was afraid to be alone. In
addition she had locked the door, and put the chest of
drawers against it. The}- listened and talked in whispers
after they had gone to bed, but nothing occurred to
alarm them. About eleven they had ventured to put
the candle out, and had both dozed off to sleep. 1 .
woke up with a start, and sat up in bed, listening in the
darkness.
Then they heard slippered feet going to and fro in
Hapley's room. A chair was overturned, and there was
a violent dab at the wall. Then a china mantel orna-
ment smashed upon the fender. Suddenly the door of
the room opened, and they heard him upon the landing.
They clung to one another, listening. He seemed to
be dancing upon the staircase. Now he would go down
three or four steps quickly, then up again, then hurry
down into the hail. They heard the umbrella stand go
over, and the fanlight break. Then the bolt shot and
the chain rattled. He was opening the door.
They hurried to the window. It was a dim gray night;
an almost unbroken sheet of watery cloud was sweeping
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
across the moon, and the bed ad tree in front of the
house were black against the pale roadway. They saw
Hapley, looking like a ghost in his shirt and white
trousers, running to and fro in the road, and beating
the air. Xow he would stop, now he would dart very
rapidly at something invisible, now he would move upon
it with stealthy strides. At last he went out of sight
up the road towards the down. Then, while they
argued who should go down and lock the door, he
returned. He was walking very fast, and he came
straight into the house, closed the door carefully, and
went quietly up to his bedroom. Then everything was
silent.
'Mrs Colville/ said Hapley, calling down the staircase
next morning, ' I hope I did not alarm you last night.'
'You may well ask that ! ' said Mrs Colville.
'The fact is, I am a sleep-walker, and the last two
nights I have been without my sleeping mixture. There
is nothing to be alarmed about, really. I am sorry I
made such an ass of myself. I will go over the down to
Shoreham, and get some stuff to make me sleep soundly.
I ought to have done that yesterday.'
But half-way over the down, by the chalk pits, the
moth came upon Hapley again. He went on, trying to
keep his mind upon chess problems, but it was no good.
The thing fluttered into his face, and he struck at it with
his hat in self-defence. Then rage, the old rage — the
rage he had so often felt against Pawkins — came upon
him again. 1 [e went on, leaping and striking at the eddy-
insect. Suddenly he trod on nothing, and fell
headlong.
There was a gap in his sensations, and Hapley found
himself sitting on the heap of Hints in front of the
opening of the chalk pits, with a leg twisted back under
him. The strange moth was still fluttering round his
head, fl struck at it with his hand, and turning his
THE MOTH 31
head saw two men approaching him. One was the
village doctor. It occurred to Hapley that this was
lucky. Then it came into his mind with extraordinary
vividness, that no one would ever be able to see the
strange moth except himself, and that it behoved him
to keep silent about it.
Late that night, however, after his broken leg was
set, he was feverish and forgot his self-restraint. He was
lying flat on his bed, and he began to run his eyes round
the room to see if the moth was still about. He tried
not to do this, but it was no good. He soon caught
sight of the thing resting close to his hand, by the night-
light, on the green table-cloth. The wings quivered.
With a sudden wave of anger he smote at it with his
fist, and the nurse woke up with a shriek. He had
missed it.
'That moth!' he said; and then, 'It was fancy.
Nothing ! '
All the time he could see quite clearly the insect going
round the cornice and darting across the room, and he
could also see that the nurse saw nothing of it and
looked at him strangely. He must keep himself in hand.
He knew he was a lost man if he did not keep himself in
hand. But as the night waned the fever grew upon him,
and the very dread he had of seeing the moth made him
see it. About five, just as the dawn was gray, he tried
to get out of bed and catch it, though his leg was afire
with pain. The nurse had to struggle with him.
On account of this, they tied him down to the bed.
At this the moth grew bolder, and once he felt it settle
in his hair. Then, because he struck out violently with
his arms, they tied these also. At this the moth came
and crawled over his face, and Hapley wept, swore,
screamed, prayed for them to take it off him, unavailingly.
The doctor was a blockhead, a just-qualified general
practitioner, and quite ignorant of mental science. He
32 TALES ECTED
.id there was no moth. Had he p^z-scsscd the
wit, he might still, perhaps, have saved Hapley from his
fate by entering into his delusion, and covering his face
with gauze, as he prayed might be done. But, as I say,
the doctor was a blockhead, and until the leg was healed
Hapley was kept tied to his bed, 2tad with the imaginary
moth crawling over him. It never left him while lie was
awake and it grew to a monster in his dreams. While he
was awake he longed for sleep, and from sleep he awoke
ling.
So now Hapley is spending the remainder of his days
in a padded room, worried by a moth that no one else
can see. The asylum doctor calls it hallucination; but
Hapley, when he is in his easier mood, and can talk,
says it is the ghost of Pawkins, and consequently a
unique specimer and well worth the trouble of catching.
THE STORY OF THE LATE
MR ELVESHAM
I set this story down, not expecting it will be believed,
but, if possible, to prepare a way of escape for the next
victim. He, perhaps, may profit by my misfortune.
My own case, I know, is hopeless, and I am now in some
measure prepared to meet my fate.
My name is Edward George Eden. I was born at
Trentham, in Staffordshire, my father being employed
in the gardens there. I lost my mother when I was
three years old, and my father when I was five, my uncle,
George Eden, then adopting me as his own son. He was
a single man, self-educated, and well-known in Birming-
ham as an enterprising journalist; he educated me
generously, fired my ambition to succeed in the world,
and at his death, which happened four years ago, left
me his entire fortune, a matter of about five hundred
pounds after all outgoing charges were paid. I was
then eighteen. He advised me in his will to expend
the money in completing my education. I had already
chosen the profession of medicine, and through his
posthumous generosity and my good fortune in a
scholarship competition, I became a medical student at
University College, London. At the time of the beginning
of my story I lodged at iia University Street in a little
upper room, very shabbily furnished and draughty,
overlooking the back of Shoolbred's premises. I used
this little room both to live in and sleep in, because I
was anxious to eke out my means to the very last
shillings^vorth.
33
T.U. C
34 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
I was taking a pair of shoes to be mended at a shop in
the Tottenham Court Road when I first encountered the
little old man with the yellow face, with whom my life
has now become so inextricably entangled. He was
standing on the kerb, and staring at the number on the
door in a doubtful way, as I opened it. His eyes — they
were dull gray eyes, and reddish under the rims — fell
to my face, and his countenance immediately assumed
an expression of corrugated amiability.
'You come,' he said, 'apt to the moment. I had
forgotten the number of vour house. How do you do,
Mr Eden?'
I was a little astonished at his familiar address, for I
had never set eyes on the man before. I was a little
annoyed, too, at his catching me with my boots under
my arm. He noticed my lack of cordiality.
'Wonder who the deuce I am, eh? A friend, let me
assure you. I have seen you before, though you haven't
seen me. Is there anywhere where I can talk to you? '
I hesitated. The shabbiness of my room upstairs was
not a matter for every stranger. 'Perhaps,' said I, 'we
might walk down the street. I'm unfortunately
prevented ' My gesture explained the sentence
before I had spoken it.
'The very thing,' he said, and faced this way, and
then that. 'The street? Which way shall we go?'
I slipped my boots down in the passage. ' Look here ! '
he said abruptly; 'this business of mine is a rigmarole.
Come and lunch with me, Mr Eden. I'm an old man,
a very old man, and not good at explanations, and what
with my piping voice and the clatter of the traffic '
He laid a persuasive skinny hand that trembled a
little upon my arm.
I was not so old that an old man might not treat me
to a lunch. Yet at the same time I was not altogether
■•1 by tlii— abrupt invitation. 'I had rather '
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 35
I began. 'But I had rather,' he said, catching me up,
'and a certain civility is surely due to my gray hairs.'
And so I consented, and went with him.
He took me to Blavitiski's; I had to walk slowly to
accommodate myself to his paces; and over such a lunch
as I had never tasted before, he fended off my leading
question, and I took a better note of his appear-
ance. His clean-shaven face was lean and wrinkled, his
shrivelled lips fell over a set of false teeth, and his white
hair was thin and rather long; he seemed small to me
— though indeed, most people seemed small to me — and
his shoulders were rounded and bent. And watching
him, I could not help but observe that he too was taking
note of me, running his eyes, with a curious touch of
greed in them, over me, from my broad shoulders to my
sun-tanned hands, and up to my freckled face again.
'And now,' said he, as we lit our cigarettes, 'I must tell
you of the business in hand.
' I must tell you, then, that I am an old man, a very
old man.' He paused momentarily. 'And it happens
that I have money that I must presently be leaving, and
never a child have I to leave it to.' I thought of the
confidence trick, and resolved I would be on the alert
for the vestiges of my five hundred pounds. He pro-
ceeded to enlarge on his loneliness, and the trouble he
had to find a proper disposition of his money. ' I have
weighed this plan and that plan, charities, institutions,
and scholarships, and libraries, and I have come to this
conclusion at last,' — he fixed his eyes on my face —
'that I will find some young fellow, ambitious, pure-
minded, and poor, healthy in body and healthy in mind,
and, in short, make him my heir, give him all that I
have.' He repeated, 'Give him all that I have. So
that he will suddenly be lifted out of all the trouble and
struggle in which his sympathies have been educated,
to freedom and influence.'
36 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
[ tried to seem disinterested. With a transparent
hypocrisy I said, 'And you want my help, my pro-
fessional sendees maybe, to find that person.'
He smiled, and looked at me over his cigarette, and
I laughed at his quiet exposure of my modest pretence.
'What a career such a man might have!' he said.
' It fills me with envy to think how I have accumulated
that another man may spend
'But there are conditions, of course, burdens to be
imposed. He must, for instance, take my name. You
cannot expect everything without sonic return. And
I must go into all the circumstances of his life before I
can accept him. He must be sound. I must know his
heredityi how his parents and grandparents died, have
the strictest inquiries made into his private morals.'
This modified my secret congratulations a little.
'And do I understand,' said I, 'that I '
'Yes,' he said, almost fiercely. 'You. You.'
I answered never a word. My imagination was dancing
wildly, my innate scepticism was useless to modify its
transports. There was not a particle of gratitude in
my mind — I did not know what to say nor how to say
it. 'But why me in particular?' I said at last.
He had chanced to hear of me from Professor Haslar,
he said, as a typically sound and sane young man, and
he wished, as far as possible, to leave his money where
health and integrity were assured.
That was my first meeting with the little old man.
He was mysterious about himself; he would not give
his name yet, he said, and after I had answered some
questions of his, he left me at the Blavitiski portal. J
noticed that he drew a handful of gold coins from his
pocket when it came to paying for the lunch. Ilk
insistence upon bodily health was curious. In accordance
with an arrangement we had made I applied that day
for a life policy in the loyal Insurance Company foi a
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 37
large sum, and I was exhaustively overhauled by the
medical advisers of that company in the subsequent
week. Even that did not satisfy him, and he insisted
I must be re-examined by the great Doctor Henderson.
It was Friday in Whitsun week before he came to a
decision. He called me down, quite late in the evening
— nearly nine it was — from cramming chemical equations
for my Preliminary Scientific examination. He was
standing in the passage under the feeble gas-lamp, and
his face was a grotesque interplay of shadows. He
seemed more bowed than when I had first seen him,
and his cheeks had sunk in a little.
His voice shook with emotion. 'Everything is satis-
factory, Mr Eden,' he said. 'Everything is quite, quite
satisfactory. And this night of all nights, you must
dine with me and celebrate your — accession.' He was
interrupted by a cough. 'You won't have long to wait,
either,' he said, wiping his handkerchief across his lips,
and gripping my hand with his long bony claw that
was disengaged. '-Certainly not very long to wait.'
We went into the street and called a cab. I remember
every incident of that drive vividly, the swift, easy
motion, the vivid contrast of gas and oil and electric
light, the crowds of people in the streets, the place in
Regent Street to which we went, and the sumptuous
dinner we were served with there. I was disconcerted
at first by the well-dressed waiter's glances at my rough
clothes, bothered by the stones of the olives, but as the
champagne warmed my blood, my confidence revived.
At first the old man talked of himself. He had already
told me his name in the cab; he was Egbert Elvesham,
the great philosopher, whose name I had known since
I was a lad at school. It seemed incredible to me that
this man, whose intelligence had so early dominated
mine, this great abstraction, should suddenly realise
itself as this decrepit, familiar figure. I dare say every
3& TALKS OF THE UNEXPECTED
young fellow who has suddenly fallen among cele-
brities has felt something of my disappointment. He
told me now of the future that the feeble streams of his
life would presently leave dry for me, houses, copyrights,
investments; I had never suspected that philosophers
were so rich. He watched me drink and eat with a touch
of envy. ' What a capacity for living you have ! ' he
said; and then with a sigh, a sigh of relief I could have
thought it, 'it will not be long.'
'Ay,' said I, my head swimming now with champagne;
'I have a future perhaps — of a passing agreeable sort,
thanks to you. I shall now have the honour of your
name. But you have a past. Such a past as is worth
all my future.'
He shook his head and smiled, as I thought, with
half sad appreciation of my flattering admiration.
'That future,' he said, 'would you in truth change it?'
The waiter came with liqueurs. ' You will not perhaps
mind taking my name, taking my position, but would
you indeed — willingly — take my years ? '
'With your achievements,' said I gallantly.
He smiled again. ' Kummel — both,' he said to the
waiter, and turned his attention to a little paper packet
he had taken from his pocket. 'This hour,' said he,
' this after-dinner hour is the hour of small things. Here
is a scrap of my unpublished wisdom.' He opened the
packet with his shaking yellow fingers, and showed a
little pinkish powder on the paper. 'This,' said he —
'well, you must guess what it is. But Kummel — put
but a dash of this powder in it — is Himmel.'
His large grayish eyes watched mine with an in-
scrutable expression.
It was a bit of a shock to me to find this great teacher
gave his mind to the flavour of liqueurs. However, I
feigned an interest in his weakness, tot 1 was drunk
h for such small y< -pliancy.
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 39
He parted the powder between the little glasses, and,
rising suddenly, with a strange unexpected dignity,
held out his hand towards me. I imitated his action,
and the glasses rang. 'To a quick succession/ said he,
and raised his glass towards his lips.
'Not that,' I said hastily. 'Not that.'
He paused with the liqueur at the level of his chin, and
his eyes blazing into mine.
'To a long life,' said I.
He hesitated. 'To a long life,' said he, with a sudden
bark of laughter, and with eyes fixed on one another we
tilted the little glasses. His eyes looked straight into
mine, and as I drained the stuff off, I felt a curiously
intense sensation. The first touch of it set my brain
in a furious tumult; I seemed to feel an actual physical
stirring in my skull, and a seething humming filled my
ears. I did not notice the flavour in my mouth, the
aroma that filled my throat; I saw only the gray in-
tensity of his gaze that burnt into mine. The draught,
the mental confusion, the noise and stirring in my head,
seemed to last an interminable time. Curious vague
impressions of half-forgotten things danced and vanished
on the edge of my consciousness. At last he broke the
spell. With a sudden explosive sigh he put down his
glass.
'Well?' he said.
'It's glorious,' said I, though I had not tasted the
stuff.
My head was spinning. I sat down. My brain was
chaos. Then my perception grew clear and minute as
though I saw things in a concave mirror. His manner
seemed to have changed into something nervous and
hasty. He pulled out his watch and grimaced at it.
' Eleven-seven ! And to-night I must — Seven-twenty-
five. Waterloo ! I must go at once' He called for the
bill, and struggled with his coat. Officious waiters
40 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
came to our assistance. In another moment I was
wishing him good-bye, over the apron of a cab, and still
with an absurd feeling of minute distinctness, as though
— how can I express it ? — I not only saw but felt through
an inverted opera-glass.
'That stuff/ he said. He put his hand to his forehead.
' I ought not to have given it to you. It will make your
head split to-morrow. Wait a minute. Here.' He
handed me out a little flat thing like a seidlitz powder.
' Take that in water as you are going to bed. The other
thing was a drug. Not till you're ready to go to bed.
mind. It will clear your head. That's all. One more
shake — Futurus ! '
I gripped his shrivelled claw. 'Good-bye,' lie
and by the droop of his eyelids I judged he too was a
little under the influence of that brain-twisting cordial.
He recollected something else with a start, felt in his
breast-pocket, and produced another packet, this time
a cylinder the size and shape of a shaving-stick. 'Here.'
said he. 'I'd almost forgotten. Don't open this until
1 come to-morrow — but take it now.'
It was so heavy that I wellnigh dropped it. 'All
ri' ! ' said I, and he grinned at me through the cab
window as the cabman flieked his horse into wakeful..
It was a white packet he had given me, with red seals
at either end and along its edge. 'If this isn't money,'
said I, 'it's platinum or lead.'
I stuek it with elaborate eare into my pocket, and
with a whirling brain walked home through the Regent
Street loiterers and the dark baek streets be]
Portland Road. I remember the sensations of that walk-
very vividly, strange as they were. I was still so far
myself that I could notice my straj and
wonder whether this stuff I had hi drug
beyond my experience. It is hard now to describe the
peculiarity of my mental strangeness- mental doul
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 41
vaguely expresses it. As I was walking up Regent
Street I found in my mind a queer persuasion that it
was Waterloo Station, and had an odd impulse to get
into the Polytechnic as a man might get into a train.
I put a knuckle in my eye, and it was Regent Street.
How can I express it? You see a skilful actor looking
quietly at you, he pulls a grimace, and lo ! — another
person. Is it too extravagant if I tell you that it seemed
to me as if Regent Street had, for the moment, done
that? Then, being persuaded it was Regent Street
again, I was oddly muddled about some fant
reminiscences that cropped up. 'Thirty years ago,'
thought I, ' it was here that I quarrelled with my brother.'
Then I burst out laughing, to the astonishment and
encouragement of a group of night prowlers. Thirty
years ago I did not exist, and never in my life had I
boasted a brother. The stuff was surely liquid folly,
for the poignant regret for that lost brother still cl
to me. Along Portland Road the madness took another
turn. I began to recall vanished shops, and to compare
the street with what it used to be. Confused, troubled
thinking is comprehensible enough after the drink I had
taken, but what puzzled me were these curiously vivid
phantasm memories that had crept into my mind, and
not only the memories that had crept in, but also the
memories that had slipped out. I stopped opposite
Stevens's, die natural history dealer's, and cudgelled
my brains to think what he had to do with me. A 'bus
went by, and sounded exactly like the rumbling of a
train. I seemed to be dipping into some dark, remote
pit for the recollection. 'Of course,' said I, at last,
'he has promised me three frogs to-morrow. Odd I
should have forgotten.'
Do they still show children dissolving views? In
those I remember one view would begin like a faint ghost,
and grow and oust another. In just that way it seemed
42 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
to me that a ghostly set of new sensations was struggling
with those of my ordinary self.
I went on through Euston Road to Tottenham Court
Road, puzzled, and a little frightened, and scarcely
noticed the unusual way I was taking, for commonly I
used to cut through the intervening network of back
streets. I turned into University Street, to discover
that I had forgotten my number. Only by a strong
effort did I recall iia, and even then it seemed to me
that it was a thing some forgotten person had told me.
I tried to steady my mind by recalling the incidents
of the dinner, and for the life of me I could conjure
up no picture of my host's face; I saw him only as a
shadowy outline, as one might see oneself reflected in
a window through which one was looking. In his
place, however, I had a curious exterior vision of
myself, sitting at a table, flushed, bright-eyed, and
talkative.
'I must take this other powder,' said I. 'This is
getting impossible.'
I tried the wrong side of the hall for my candle and
the matches, and had a doubt of which landing my room
might be on. 'I'm drunk,' I said, 'that's certain,' and
blundered needlessly on the staircase to sustain the
proposition.
At the first glance my room seemed unfamiliar.
'What rot!' I said, and stared about me. I seemed
to bring myself back by the effort, and the odd phan-
tasmal quality passed into the concrete familiar. There
was the old glass still, with my notes on the albumens
stuck in the corner of the frame, my old everyday suit
of clothes pitched about the floor. And yet it was not
so real after all. I felt an idiotic persuasion trying to
creep into my mind, as it were, that I was in a railway
carriage in a train just Stopping, that 1 was peering out
oi the window at some unknown station. 1 gripped
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 43
the bed-rail firmly to reassure myself. 'It's clair-
voyance, perhaps,' I said. ' I must write to the Psychical
Research Society/
I put the rouleau on my dressing-table, sat on my
bed, and began to take off my boots. It was as if the
picture of my present sensations was painted over
some other picture that was trying to show through.
'Curse it !' said I; 'my wits are going, or am I in two
places at once?' Half-undressed, I tossed the powder
into a glass and drank it off. It effervesced, and became
a fluorescent amber colour. Before I was in bed my
mind was already tranquillised. I felt the pillow at my
cheek, and thereupon I must have fallen asleep.
I awoke abruptly out of a dream of strange beasts,
and found myself lying on my back. Probably every
one knows that dismal, emotional dream from which
one escapes, awake indeed, but strangely cowed. There
was a curious taste in my mouth, a tired feeling in my
limbs, a sense of cutaneous discomfort. I lay with my
head motionless on my pillow, expecting that my feeling
of strangeness and terror would pass away, and that
I should then doze off again to sleep. But instead of
that, my uncanny sensations increased. At first I
could perceive nothing wrong about me. There was a
faint light in the room, so faint that it was the very next
thing to darkness, and the furniture stood out in it as
vague blots of absolute darkness. I stared with my
eyes just over the bedclothes.
It came into my mind that some one had entered the
room to rob me of my rouleau of money, but after lying
for some moments, breathing regularly to simulate
sleep, I realised this was mere fancy. Nevertheless, the
uneasy assurance of something wrong kept fast hold of
me. With an effort I raised my head from the pillow,
and peered about me at the dark. What it was I could
44 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
not conceive. I looked at the dim shapes around me,
the greater and lesser darknesses that indicated curtains,
table, fireplace, bookshelves, and so forth. Then I
began to perceive something unfamiliar in the forms of
the darkness. Had the bed turned round? Yonder
should be the bookshelves, and something shrouded and
pallid rose there, something that would not answer to
the bookshelves, however I looked at it. It was far
too big to be my shirt thrown on a chair.
Overcoming a childish terror, I threw back the
clothes and thrust my leg out of bed. Instead of coming
out of my truckle-bed upon the floor, I found mj' foot
scarcely reached the edge of the mattress. I made
another step, as it were, and sat up on the edge of the
bed. By the side of my bed should be the candle, and
the matches upon the broken chair. I put out my
hand and touched — nothing. I waved my hand in the
darkness, and it came against some heavy hanging, soft
and thick in texture, which gave a rustling noise at un-
touch. I grasped this and pulled it; it appeared to
be a curtain suspended over the head of my bed.
I was now thoroughly awake, and beginning to realise
that I was in a strange room. I was puzzled. I tried
to recall the overnight circumstances, and I found them
now, curiously enough, vivid in my memory : the
supper, my reception of the little packages, my wonder
whether I was intoxicated, my slow undressing,
coolness to my flushed face of my pillow. I felt a sudden
distrust. Was that last night, or the night before?
At any rate, this room was strange to me, and I could
not imagine how I had got into it. The dim, pallid out-
line was growing paler, and I p< rceived it was a window,
with the dark shape of an oval toilet-glass against the
weal; intimation of the dawn that filtered through the
blind. I siood up, and was surprised by a curious feeling
of weakness and unsteadiness. With trembling hands
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 4 5
outstretched, I walked slowly towards the v/iiidow,
getting, nevertheless, a bruise on the knee from a chair
by the way. I fumbled round the glass, which was
large, with handsome brass sconces, to find the blind-
cord. I could not find any. By chance I took hold of
the tassel, and with the click of a spring the blind ran
up.
I found myself looking out upon a scene that was
altogether strange to me. The night was overcast, and
through the flocculent gray of the heaped clouds there
filtered a faint half-light of dawn. Just at the edge
of the sky the cloud-canopy had a blood-red rim.
Below, everything was dark and indistinct, dim hills
in the distance, a vague mass of buildings running up
into pinnacles, trees like spilt ink, and below the window
a tracery of black bushes and pale gray paths. It wos
so unfamiliar that for the moment I thought myself
still dreaming. I felt the toilet-table; it appeared to be
made of some polished wood, and was rather elaborately
furnished — there were little cut-glass bottles and a
brush upon it. There was also a queer little object,
horse-shoe shape it felt, with smooth, hard projections,
lying in a saucer. I could find no matches nor candl -
stick.
I turned my eyes to the room again. Now the blind
was up, faint spectres of its furnishing came out of the
darkness. There was a huge curtained bed, and the
fireplace at its foot had a large white mantel with some-
thing of the shimmer of marble.
I leant against the toilet-table, shut my eyes and
opened them again, and tried to think. The whole
thing was far too real for dreaming. I was inclined to
imagine there was still some hiatus in my memory, as a
consequence of my draught of that strange liqueur;
that I had come into my inheritance perhaps, and
suddenly lost my recollection of everything since my
46 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
good fortune had been announced. Perhaps if I waited a
little, things would be clearer to me again. Yet my
dinner with old Elvesham was now singularly vivid and
recent. The champagne, the observant waiters, the
powder, and the liqueurs — I could have staked my soul
it all happened a few hours ago.
And then occurred a thing so trivial and yet so terrible
to me that I shiver now to think of that moment. I
spoke aloud. I said, 'How the devil did I get here?'
. . . And the voice was not my o~*h.
It was not my own, it was thin, the articulation was
slurred, the resonance of my facial bones was different.
Then, to reassure myself I ran one hand over the other,
and felt loose^folds of skin, the bony laxity of age.
'Surely,' I said, in that horrible voice that had some-
how established itself in my throat, 'surely this thing
is a dream ! ' Almost as quickly as if I did it involun-
tarily, I thrust my fingers into my mouth. My teeth
had gone. My finger-tips ran on the flaccid surface of
an even row of shrivelled gums. I was sick with dismay
and disgust.
I felt then a passionate desire to see myself, to realise
at once in its full horror the ghastly change that had
come upon me. I tottered to the mantel, and felt along
it for matches. As I did so, a barking cough sprang up
in my throat, and I clutched the thick flannel nightdress
I found about me. There were no matches there,
and I suddenly realised that my extremities were cold.
Sniffing and coughing, whimpering a little, perhaps, I
fumbled back to bed. ' It is surely a dream,' I whispered
to myself as I clambered back, 'surely a dream.' It
was a senile repetition. I pulled the bedclothes over my
shoulders, over my ears, I thrust my withered hand
under Ihc pillow, and determined to compose myself
to sleep. Of course it was a dream. In the morning
liic dream would be over, and 1 should wake up strong
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 47
and vigorous again to my youth and studies. I shut
my eyes, breathed regularly, and, finding myself
wakeful, began to count slowly through the powers of
three.
But the thing I desired would not come. I could not
get to sleep. And the persuasion of the inexorable
reality of the change that had happened to me grew
steadily. Presently I found myself with my eyes wide
open, the powers of three forgotten, and my skinny
fingers upon my shrivelled gums. I was, indeed,
suddenly and abruptly, an old man. I had in some un-
accountable manner fallen through my life and come to
old age, in some way I had been cheated of all the best
of my life, of love, of struggle, of strength, and hope.
I grovelled into the pillow and tried to persuade myself
that such hallucination was possible. Imperceptibly,
steadily, the dawn grew clearer.
At last, despairing of further sleep, I sat up in bed and
looked about me. A chill twilight rendered the whole
chamber visible. It was spacious and well-furnished,
better furnished than any room I had ever slept in
before. A candle and matches became dimly visible
upon a little pedestal in a recess. I threw back the bed-
clothes, and, shivering with the rawness of the early
morning, albeit it was summer-time, I got out and lit the
candle. Then, trembling horribly, so that the extin-
guisher rattled on its spike — I tottered to the glass and
saw — Elvesham's face ! It was none the less horrible
because I had already dimly feared as much. He had
already seemed physically weak and pitiful to me,
but seen now, dressed only in a course flannel nightdress,
that fell apart and showed the stringy neck, seen now
as my own body, I cannot describe its desolate de-
crepitude. The hollow cheeks, the straggling tail of
dirty gray hair, the rheumy bleared eyes, the quivering,
shrivelled lips, the lower displaying a gleam of the pink
48 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
interior lining, and those horrible dark gums showing.
You who are mind and body together, at your natural
years, cannot imagine what this fiendish imprison-
ment meant to me. To be young and full of the
desire and energy of youth, and to be caught, and
presently to be crushed in this tottering ruin of a
body. . . .
But I wander from the course of my story. For some
time I must have been stunned at this change that had
come upon me. It was daylight when I did so far gather
myself together as to think. In some inexplicable way
I had been changed, though how, short of magic, the
thing had been done, I could not say. And as I thought,
the diabolical ingenuity of Elvesham came home to me.
It seemed plain to me that as I found myself in his, so
he must be in possession of my body, of my strength,
that is, and my future. But how to prove it ? Then, as
I thought, the thing became so incredible, even to me,
that my mind reeled, and I had to pinch myself, to feel
my toothless gums, to see myself in the glass, and touch
the things about me, before I could steady myself to
face the facts again. Was all life hallucination? Was I
indeed Elvesham, and he me? Had I been dreaming of
Eden overnight? Was there any Eden? But if I was
Elvesham, I should remember where I was on the
previous morning, the name of the town in which I
lived, what happened before the dream began. I
struggled with my thoughts. I recalled the queer
doubleness of my memories overnight. But now my
mind was clear. Not the ghost of any memories but
those proper to Eden could I raise.
'This way lies insanity !' I cried in my piping voice.
I staggered to my feet, dragged my feeble, heavy limbs
to the washhand-stand, and plunged my gray head into
a basin of cold water. Then, towelling myself, I tried
as no go- that
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 49
I was indeed Eden, not Elvesham. But Eden in
Elvesham's body !
Had I been a man of any other age, I might have
given myself up to my fate as one enchanted. But in
these sceptical days miracles do not pass current. Here
was some trick of psychology. What a drug and a
steady stare could do, a drug and a steady stare, or some
similar treatment, could surely undo. Men have lost'
their memories before. But to exchange memories as
one does umbrellas ! I laughed. Alas ! not a healthy
laugh, but a wheezing, senile titter. I could have
fancied old Elvesham laughing at my plight, and a gust
of petulant anger, unusual to me, swept across my
feelings. I began dressing eagerly in the clothes I found
lying about on the floor, and only realised when I was
dressed that it was an evening suit I had assumed. I
opened the wardrobe a.nd found some more ordinary
clothes, a pair of plaid trousers, and an old-fashioned
dressing-gown. I put a venerable smoking-cap on my
venerable head, and, coughing a little from my exertions,
tottered out upon the landing.
It was then, perhaps, a quarter to six, and the blinds
were closely drawn and the house quite silent. The
landing was a spacious one, a broad, richly-carpeted
staircase went down into the darkness of the hall below,
and before me a door ajar showed me a writing-desk,
a revolving bookcase, the back of a study chair, and a
fine array of bound books, shelf upon shelf.
'My study,' I mumbled, and walked across the land-
ing. Then at the sound of my voice a thought struck
me, and I went back to the bedroom and put in the set
of false teeth. They slipped in with the ease of old
habit. 'That's better,' said I, gnashing them, and so
returned to the study.
The drawers of the writing-desk were locked. Its
revolving top was also locked. I could see no indications
T.U. n
50 TALL. OF THE UNEXPECTED
and there were none in the pockets of my
trousers. I shuffled back at once to the bedroom, and
went through the dress-suit, and afterwards the pockets
of all the garments I could find. I was very eager,
and one might have imagined that burglars had been
at work, to see my room when I had done. Not only
were there no keys to be found, but not a coin, nor a
scrap of paper — save only the receipted bill of the over-
night dinner.
A curious weariness asserted itself. I sat down and
stared at the garments flung here and there, their pockets
turned inside out. My first frenzy had already flickered
out. Every moment I was beginning to realise the
immense intelligence of the plans of my enemy, to see
more and more clearly the hopelessness of my position.
With an effort I rose and hurried hobbling into the study
again. On the staircase was a housemaid pulling up
the blinds. She stared, I think, at the expression of
my face. I shut the door of the study behind me, and,
seizing a poker, began an attack upon the desk. That
is how they found me. The cover of the desk was split,
the lock smashed, the letters torn out of the pigeon-holes
and tossed about the room. In my senile rage I had
flung about the pens and other such light stationery,
and overturned the ink. Moreover, a large vase upon
the mantel had got broken — I do not know how. I
could find no cheque-book, no money, no indications of
the slightest use for the recovery of my body. I was
battering madly at the drawers, when the butler, backed
bv two women-servants, intruded upon me.
That simply is the story of my change. No one will
believe my frantic assertions. I am treated as one
demented, and even at this moment I am under restraint.
But I am sane, absolutely sane, and to prove it I have
sat down to write this story minutely as the things
happened to me. 1 appeal to the reader, whether there
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 51
is any trace of insanity in the style or method of the
story he has been reading. I am a young man locked
away in an old man's body. But the clear fact is in-
credible to every one. Naturally I appear demented to
those who will not believe this, naturally I do not know
the names of my secretaries, of the doctors who come to
see me, of my servants and neighbours, of this town
(wherever it is) where I find myself. Naturally I lose
myself in my own house, and suffer inconveniences of
every sort. Naturally I ask the oddest questions.
Naturally I weep and cry out, and have paroxysms of
despair. I have no money and no cheque-book. The
bank will not recognise my signature, for I suppose that,
allowing for the feeble muscles I now have, my hand-
writing is still Eden's. These people about me will not
let me go to the bank personally. It seems, indeed,
that there is no bank in this town, and that I have an
account in some part of London. It seems that Elve-
sham kept the name of his solicitor secret from all his
household. I can ascertain nothing. Elvesham was,
of course, a profound student of mental science, and all
my declarations of the facts of the case merely confirm
the theory that my insanity is the outcome of overmuch
brooding upon psychology. Dreams of the personal
identity indeed ! Two days ago I was a healthy young-
ster, with all life before me; now I am a furious old
man, unkempt, and desperate, and miserable, prowling
about a great, luxurious, strange house, watched,
feared, and avoided as a lunatic by every one about me.
And in London is Elvesham beginning life again in a
vigorous body, and with all the accumulated knowledge
and wisdom of threescore and ten. He has stolen my life.
What has happened I do not clearly know. In the
study are volumes of manuscript notes referring chiefly
to the psychology of memory, and parts of what may
be either calculations or ciphers in symbols absolutely
52 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
strange to me. In some passages there are indications
that he was also occupied with the philosophy of mathe-
matics. I take it he has transferred the whole of his
memories, the accumulation that makes up his person-
ality, from this old withered brain of his to mine, and,
similarly, that he has transferred mine to his discarded
tenement. Practically, that is, he has changed bodies.
But how such a change may be possible is without the
range of my philosophy. I have been a materialist
for all my thinking life, but here, suddenly, is a clear
case of man's detachability from matter.
One desperate experiment I am about to try. I sit
writing here before putting the matter to issue. This
morning, with the help of a table-knife that I had
secreted at breakfast, I succeeded in breaking open a
fairly obvious secret drawer in this wrecked writing-
desk. I discovered nothing save a little green glass
phial containing a white powder. Round the neck of
the phial was a label, and thereon was written this one
word, 'Release.' This may be — is most probably —
poison. I can understand Elvesham placing poison in
my way, and I should be sure that it was his intention
so to get rid of the only living witness against him, were
it not for this careful concealment. The man has
practically solved the problem of immortality. Save
for the spite of chance, he will live in my body until it
lias aged, and then, again, throwing aside, he will assume
some other victim's youth and strength. When one
remembers his heartlessness, it is terrible to think of the
ever-growing experience that . . . How long has he
been leaping from body to body? . . . But I tire of
writing. The powder appears to be soluble in water.
The taste is not unpleasant.
There the narrative found upon Mr Elvediam's desk
ends. His dead body lay between the desk and the
THE LATE MR ELVESHAM 53
chair. The latter had been pushed back, probably by
his last convulsions. The story was written in pencil,
and in a crazy hand, quite unlike his usual minute
characters. There remain only two curious facts to
record. Indisputably there was some connection
between Eden and Elvesham, since the whole of Elve-
sham's property was bequeathed to the young man.
But he never inherited. When Elvesham committed
suicide, Eden was, strangely enough, already dead.
Twenty-four hours before, he had been knocked down by
a cab and killed instantly, at the crowded crossing at
the intersection of Gower Street and Euston Road.
So that the only human being who could have thrown
light upon this fantastic narrative is beyond the reach
of questions. Without further comment I leave this
extraordinary matter to the reader's individual judgment.
UNDER THE KNIFE
'What if I die under it?' The thought recurred again
and again, as I walked home from Haddon's. It was
a purely personal question. I was spared the deep
anxieties of a married man, and I knew there were few
of my intimate friends but would find my death trouble-
some chiefly on account of their duty of regret. I was
surprised indeed, and perhaps a little humiliated, as
I turned the matter over, to think how few could
possibly exceed the conventional requirement. Things
came before me stripped of glamour, in a clear dry light,
during that walk from Haddon's house over Primrose
Hill. There were the friends of my youth : I perceived
now that our affection was a tradition, which we fore-
gathered rather laboriously to maintain. There were
the rivals and helpers of my later career : I suppose I
had been cold-blooded or undemonstrative — one perhaps
implies the other. It may be that even the capacity for
friendship is a question of physique. There had been a
time in my own life when I had grieved bitterly enough at
the loss of a friend; but as I walked home that afternoon
the emotional side of my imagination was dormant. I
could not pity myself, nor feel sorry for my friends, nor
conceive of them as grieving for me.
I was interested in this deadness of my emotional
nature — no doubt a concomitant of my stagnating
physiology; and my thoughts wandered off along the
line it suggested. Once before, in my hot youth, I had
suffered a sudden loss of blood, and had been within an
54
UNDER THE KNIFE 55
ace of death. I remembered now that my affections
as well as my passions had drained out of me, leaving
scarce anything but a tranquil resignation, a dreg of
self-pity. It had been weeks before the old ambitions
and tendernesses and all the complex moral interplay
of a man had reasserted themselves. It occurred to me
that the real meaning of this numbness might be a
gradual slipping away from the pleasure-pain guidance
of the animal man. It has been proven, I take it, as
thoroughly as anything can be proven in this world,
that the higher emotions, the moral feelings, even the
subtle unselfishness of love, are evolved from the
elemental desires and fears of the simple animal : they
are the harness in which man's mental freedom goes.
And it may be that as death overshadows us, as our
possibility of acting diminishes, this complex growth of
balanced impulse, propensity and aversion, whose
interplay inspires our acts, goes with it. Leaving what?
I was suddenly brought back to reality by an imminent
collision with the butcher-boy's tray. I found that I was
crossing the bridge over the Regent's Park Canal, which
runs parallel with that in the Zoological Gardens. The
boy in blue had been looking over his shoulder at a black
barge advancing slowly, towed by a gaunt white horse.
In the Gardens a nurse was leading three happy little-
children over the bridge. The trees were bright green;
the spring hopefulness was still unstained by the dusts
of summer; the sky in the water was bright and clear,
but broken by long waves, by quivering bands of black,
as the barge drove through. The breeze was stirring;
but it did not stir me as the spring breeze used to do.
Was this dullness of feeling in itself an anticipation?
It was curious that 1 could reason and follow out a net-
work of suggestion as clearly as ever; so, at least, ii
seemed to me. It was calmness rather than dullness that
was coming upon me. Was there any ground for the
5* TALES OF THE UNh ^D
belief in the presentiment of death? Did a man near to
death begin instinctively to withdraw himself {mm the
meshes of matter and sense, even before the cold band
was laid upon hi^? I felt strangely isolated — isolated
without regret — from the life and existence about me.
The children playing in the sun and gathering strength
and experience for the business of life, the park-keeper
gossiping with a nursemaid, the nursing mother, the
young couple intent upon each other as they passed me,
the trees by the wayside spreading new pleading leaves
to the sunlight, the stir in their branches — I had been
part of it all, but I had nearly done with it now.
Some way down the Broad Walk I perceived that I
was tired, and that my feet were heavy. It was hot
that afternoon, and I turned aside and sat down on one
of the green chairs that line the way. In a minute I
had dozed into a dream, and the tide of my thoughts
washed up a vision of the resurrection. I was still
sitting in the chair, but I thought myself actually dead,
withered, tattered, dried, one eye (I saw) pecked out by
birds. 'Awake!' cried a voice; and incontinently the
dust of the path and the mould under the grass became
insurgent. I had never before thought of Regent's
Park as a cemetery, but now, through the trees, stretch-
ing as far as eye could see, I beheld a flat plain of writhing
graves and heeling tombstones. There seemed to be
some trouble; the rising dead appeared to stifle as they
struggled upward, they bled in their struggles, the red
flesh was torn away from the white bones. ' Awake ! '
cried a voice; but I determined I would not rise to such
horrors. 'Awake!' They would not let me alone.
' Wike up ! ' said an angry voice. A cockney angel !
The man who sells the tickets was shaking me, de-
manding my penny.
I paid my penny, pocketed my ticket, yawned.
stretched my legs, and, feeling now rather less torpid,
UNDER THE KNIFE 57
got up and walked on towards Langham Place. I
speedily lost myself again in a shifting maze of though 1 s
about death. Going across Marylebone Road into that
crescent at the end of Langham Place, I had the narrow-
est escape from the shaft of a cab, and went on my way
with a palpitating heart and a bruised shoulder. It
struck me that it would have been curious if my medita-
tions on my death on the morrow had led to my death
that day.
But I will not weary you with more of my experiences
that day and the next. I knew more and more certainly
that I should die under the operation; at times I think
I was inclined to pose to myself. The doctors were
coming at eleven, and I did not get up. It seemed scarce
worth while to trouble about washing and dressing, and
though I read my newspapers and the letters that came
by the first post, I did not find them very interesting.
There was a friendly note from Addison, my old school -
friend, calling my attention to two discrepancies and a
printer's error in my new book, with one from Langiidge
venting some vexation over Minton. The rest were
business communications. I breakfasted in bed. Tlu>
glow of pain at my side seemed more massive. I knew
it was pain, and yet, if you can understand, I did not
find it very painful. I had been awake and hot and
thirsty in the night, but in the morning bed felt comfort-
able. In the night-time I had lain thinking of things
that were past; in. the morning I dozed over the question
of immortality. Haddon came, punctual to the minute
with a neat black bag; and Mowbray soon followed.
Their arrival stirred me up a little. I began to take a
more personal interest in the proceedings. Haddon
moved the little octagonal table close to the bedside,
and, with his broad back to me, began taking things
out of his bag. I heard the light click of steel upon steel.
My imagination, I found, was not altogether stagnant.
58 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'Will you hurt me much?' I said in an off-hand
tone.
'Not a bit,' Haddon answered over his shoulder.
' We shall chloroform you. Your heart's as sound as a
bell.' And as he spoke, I had a whiff of the pungent
sweetness of the anaesthetic.
They stretched me out, with a convenient exposure
of my side, and, almost before I realised what was
happening, the chloroform was being administered. It
stings the nostrils, and there is a suffocating sensation
at first. I knew I should die — that this was the end of
consciousness for me. And suddenly I felt that I was
not prepared for death : I had a vague sense of a duty
overlooked — I knew not what. What was it I had not
done? I could think of nothing more to do, nothing
desirable left in life; and yet I had the strangest dis-
inclination to death. And the physical sensation was
painfully oppressive. Of course the doctors did not
know they were going to kill me. Possibly I struggled.
Then I fell motionless, and a great silence, a monstrous
silence, and an impenetrable blackness came upon me.
There must have been an interval of absolute un-
consciousness, seconds or minutes. Then with a chilly,
unemotional clearness, I perceived that I was not yet
dead. I was still in my body; but all the multitudinous
sensations that come sweeping from it to make up the
background of consciousness had gone, leaving me free
of it all. No, not free of it all; for as yet something still
held me to the poor stark flesh upon the bed — held me,
yet not so closely that I did not feel myself external to
it, independent of it, straining away from it. I do not
think I saw, I do not think I heard; but I perceived all
that was going on, and it was as if I both heard and saw.
Haddon was bending over me, Mowbray behind me;
the scalpel — it was a large scalpel — was cutting my
flesh at the side under the tl\ ing ribs. It was interesting
UNDER THE KNIFE 59
to see myself cut like cheese, without a pang, without even
a qualm. The interest was much of a quality with that
one might feel in a game of chess between strangers.
Haddon's face was firm and his hand steady; but I was
surprised to perceive [how I know not) that he w T as
feeling the gravest doubt as to his own wisdom in the
conduct of the operation.
Mowbray's thoughts, too, I could see. He was think-
ing that Haddon's manner showed too much of the
specialist. New suggestions came up like bubbles
through a stream of frothing meditation, and burst one
after another in the little bright spot of his consciousness.
He could not help noticing and admiring Haddon's
swift dexterity, in spite of his envious quality and his
disposition to detract. I saw my liver exposed. I was
puzzled at my own condition. I did not feel that I
was dead, but I was different in some way from my
living self. The gray depression, that had weighed on
me for a year or more and coloured all my thoughts, was
gone. I perceived and thought without any emotional
tint at all. I wondered if every one perceived things
in this way under chloroform, and forgot it again when
he came out of it. It would be inconvenient to look into
some heads, and not forget.
Although I did not think that I was dead, I still
perceived quite clearly that I was soon to die. This
brought me back to the consideration of Haddon's
proceedings. I looked into his mind, and saw that he
was afraid of cutting a branch of the portal vein. My
attention was distracted from details by the curious
changes going on in his mind. His consciousness was
like the quivering little spot of light which is thrown
by the mirror of a galvanometer. His thoughts ran
under it like a stream, some through the focus bright
and distinct, some shadowy in the half-light of the edge.
Just now the little glow was steady; but the least
60 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
movement on Mowbray's part, the slightest sound from
outside, even a faint difference in the slow movement
of the living flesh he was cutting, set the light-spot
shivering and spinning. A new sense-impression came
rushing up through the flow of thoughts; and lo !
the light-spot jerked away towards it, swifter than a
frightened fish. It was wonderful to think that upon that
unstable, fitful thing depended all the complex motions
of the man; that for the next five minutes, there-
fore, my life hung upon its movements. And he was
growing more and more nervous in his work. It was as
if a little picture of a cut vein grew brighter, and struggled
to oust from his brain another picture of a cut falling
short of the mark. He was afraid : his dread of cutting
too little was battling with his dread of cutting too far.
Then, suddenly, like an escape of water from under
a lock-gate, a great uprush of horrible realisation set
all his thoughts swirling, and simultaneously I per-
ceived that the vein was cut. He started back with a
hoarse exclamation, and I saw the brown-purple blood
gather in a swift bead, and run trickling. He was
horrified. He pitched the red-stained scalpel on to the
octagonal table; and instantly both doctors flung
themselves upon me, making hasty and ill-conceived
efforts to remedy the disaster. ' Ice ! ' said Mowbray,
gasping. But I knew that I was killed, though my body
still clung to me.
I will not describe their belated endeavours to save
me, though I perceived every detail. My perceptions
were sharper and swifter than they had ever been in
life; my thoughts rushed through my mind with in-
credible swiftness, but with perfect definition. I can
only compare their crowded clarity to the effects of a
reasonable dose of opium. In a moment it would all
be over, and I should be free. I knew I was immortal,
what would happen I did not know. Should I drift off
UNDER THE KNIFE 61
presently, like a puff of smoke from a gun, in some kind
of half-material body, an attenuated version of my
material self? Should I find myself suddenly among
the innumerable hosts of the dead, and know the world
about me for the phantasmagoria it had always seemed ?
Should I drift to some spiritualistic seance, and there
make foolish, incomprehensible attempts to affect a
purblind medium? It was a state of unemotional
curiosity, of colourless expectation. And then I realised
a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge
human magnet was drawing me upward out of my body.
The stress grew and grew. I seemed an atom for which
monstrous forces were fighting. For one brief, terrible
moment sensation came back to me. That feeling of
falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that
feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black
horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. Then
the two doctors, the naked body with its cut side, the
little room, swept away from under me and vanished,
as a speck of foam vanishes down an eddy.
I was in mid-air. Far below was the West End of
London, receding rapidly — for I seemed to be flying
swiftly upward— and as it receded, passing westward
like a panorama. I could see, through the faint haze
of smoke, the innumerable roofs chimney-set, the narrow
roadways, stippled with people and conveyances, the
little specks of squares, and the church steeples like
thorns sticking out of the fabric. But it spun away
as the earth rotated on its axis, and in a few seconds
(as it seemed) I was over the scattered clumps of town
about Ealing, the little Thames a thread of blue to the
south, and the Chiltern Hills and the North Downs
coming up like the rim of a basin, far away and faint
with haze. Up I rushed. And at first I had not the
faintest conception what this headlong rush upward
could mean.
62 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
Every moment the circle of scenery beneath me grew
wider and wider, and the details of town and field, of
hill and valley, got more and more hazy and pale and
indistinct, a luminous gray was mingled more and more
with the blue of the hills and the green of the open
meadows; and a little patch of cloud, low and far to the
west, shone ever more dazzlingly white. Above, as the
veil of atmosphere between myself and outer space grew
thinner, the sky, which had been a fair springtime blue
at first, grew deeper and richer in colour, passing steadily
through the intervening shades, until presently it was
as dark as the blue sky of midnight, and presentl} 7 as
black as the blackness of a frosty starlight, and at last
as black as no blackness I had ever beheld. And first
one star, and then many, and at last an innumerable
host broke out upon the sky : more stars than any one
has ever seen from the face of the earth. For the blue-
ness of the sky is the light of the sun and stars sifted
and spread abroad blindingly : there is diffused light
even in the darkest skies of winter, and we do not see
the stars by day only because of the dazzling irradiation
of the sun. But now I saw things — I know not how;
assuredly with no mortal eyes — and that defect of
bedazzlement blinded me no longer. The sun was
incredibly strange and wonderful. The body of it was
a disc of blinding white light : not yellowish, as it
seems to those who live upon the earth, but livid white,
all streaked with scarlet streaks and rimmed about
with a fringe of writhing tongues of red fire. And
shooting half-way across the heavens from either side
of it and brighter than the Milk)- Way, were two pinions
of silver white, making it look more like those winged
globes 1 have seen in Egyptian sculpture than anything
else I ran remember upon earth. These 1 know for the
solar corona, though 1 had never seen anything of it
but a picture during the days of my earthly life.
UNDER THE KNIFE 63
When my attention came back to the earth again,
I saw that it had fallen very far away from me. Field
and town were long since indistinguishable, and all the
varied hues of the country were merging into a uniform
bright gray, broken only by the brilliant white of the
clouds that lay scattered in flocculent masses over
Ireland and the west of England. For now I could see
the outlines of the north of France and Ireland, and all
this Island of Britain, save where Scotland passed over
the horizon to the north, or where the coast was blurred
or obliterated by cloud. The sea was a dull gray and
darker than the land; and the whole panorama was
rotating slowly towards the east.
All this had happened so swiftly that until I was some
thousand miles or so from the earth I had no thought
for myself. But now I perceived I had neither hands
nor feet, neither parts nor organs, and that I felt neither
alarm nor pain. All about me I perceived that the
vacancy (for I had already left the air behind) was cold
beyond the imagination of man; but it troubled me not.
The sun's rays shot through the void, powerless to light
or heat until they should strike on matter in their
course. I saw things with a serene self-forgetfulness,
even as if I were God. And down below there, rushing
away from me— countless miles in a second — where a
little dark spot on the gray marked the position of
London, two doctors were struggling to restore life to
the poor hacked and outworn shell I had abandoned.
I felt then such release, such serenity as I can compare
to no mortal delight I have ever known.
It was only after I had perceived all these things that
the meaning of that headlong rush of the earth grew
into comprehension. Yet it was so simple, so obvious,
that I was amazed at my never anticipating the thing
that was happening to me. I had suddenly been cut
adrift from matter : all that was material of me was
64 TALES OF rffe UNEXPECTED
there upon earth, whirling away through space, held
to the earth by gravitation, partaking of the earth-
inertia, moving in its wreath of epicycles round the sun,
and with the sun and the planets on their vast march
through space. But the immaterial has no inertia, feels
nothing of the pull of matter for matter : where it parts
from its garments of flesh, there it remains (so far as
space concerns it any longer) immovable in space. /
was not leaving the earth : the earth was leaving me,
and not only the earth but the whole solar system was
streaming past. And about me in space, invisible to me,
scattered in the wake of the earth upon its journey,
there must be an innumerable multitude of souls,
stripped like myself of the material, stripped like myself
of the passions of the individual and the generous
emotions of the gregarious brute, naked intelligences,
things of new-born wonder and thought, marvelling at
the strange release that had suddenly come on them !
As I receded faster and faster from the strange white
sun in the black heavens, and from the broad and
shining earth upon which my being had begun, I seemed
to grow in some incredible manner vast : vast as regards
this world I had left, vast as regards the moments and
periods of a human life. Very soon I saw the full circle
of the earth, slightly gibbous, like the moon when she
nears her full, but very large; and the silvery shape of
America was now in the noonday blaze wherein (as it
seemed) little England had been basking but a few
minutes ago. At first the earth was large; and shone
in the heavens, filling a great part of them; but every
moment she grew smaller and more distant. As she
shrank, the broad moon in its third quarter crept into
view over the rim of her disc. I looked for the constel-
lations. Only that part of Aries directly behind the
sun and the Lion, which the earth covered, were hidden.
I u cognised the tortuous, tattered band of the Milky
UNDER THE KNIFE 65
Way with Vega very bright between sun and earth;
and Sirius and Orion shone splendid against the un-
fathomable blackness in the opposite quarter of the
heavens. The Pole Star was overhead, and the Great
Bear hung over the circle of the earth. And away
beneath and beyond the shining corona of the sun were
strange groupings of stars I had never seen in my life —
notably a dagger-shaped group that I knew for the
Southern Cross. All these were no larger than when
they had shone on earth, but the little stars that one
scarce sees shone now against the setting of black
vacancy as brightly as the first-magnitudes had done,
while the larger worlds were points of indescribable
glory and colour. Aldebaran was a spot of blood-red
fire, and Sirius condensed to one point the light of
innumerable sapphires. And they shone steadily :
they did not scintillate, they were calmly glorious. My
impressions had an adamantine hardness and brightness :
there was no blurring softness, no atmosphere, nothing
but infinite darkness set with the myriads of these
acute and brilliant points and specks of light. Presently
when I looked again, the little earth seemed no bigger
than the sun, and it dwindled and turned as I looked,
until in a second's space (as it seemed to me), it was
halved; and so it went on swiftly dwindling. Far away
in the opposite direction, a little pinkish pin's head of
light, shining steadily, was the planet Mars. I swam
motionless in vacancy, and, without a trace of terror
or astonishment, watched the speck of cosmic dust we
call the world fall away from me.
Presently it dawned upon me that my sense of duration
had changed; that my mind was moving not faster but
infinitely slower, that between each separate impression
there was a period of many days. The moon spun once
round the earth as I noted this; and I perceived clearly
the motion of Mars in his orbit. Moreover, it appeared
T.U. E
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
as if the time between thought and thought grew
steadily greater, until at last a thousand years was but
a moment in my perception.
At first the constellations had shone motionless against
the black background of infinite space; but presently
it seemed as though the group of stars about Hercules
and the Scorpion was contracting, while Orion and
Aldebaran and their neighbours were scattering apart.
Flashing suddenly out of the darkness there came a
flying multitude of particles of rock, glittering like dust-
specks in a sunbeam, and encompassed in a faintly
luminous cloud. They swirled all about me, and vanished
again in a twinkling far behind. And then I saw that a
bright spot of light, that shone a little to one side of my
path, was growing very rapidly larger, and perceived
that it was the planet Saturn rushing towards me.
Larger and larger it grew, swallowing up the heavens
behind it, and hiding every moment a fresh multitude
of stars. I perceived its flattened, whirling body, its
disc-like belt, and seven of its little satellites. It grew
and grew, till it towered enormous; and then I plunged
amid a streaming multitude of clashing stones and
dancing dust-particles and gas-eddies, and saw for a
moment the mighty triple belt like three concentric
arches of moonlight above me, its shadow black on the
boiling tumult below. These things happened in one-
tenth of the time it takes to tell them. The planet
it by like a flash of lightning; for a few seconds it
blotted out the sun, and there and then became a mere
black, dwindling, winged patch against the light. The
earth, the mother mote of my being, I could no longer
So with a stately swiftness, in the profoundest silence
the solar system fell from me as it had been a garment,
until the sun was a mere star amid the multitude of stars,
with its eddy ol planet-specks lobt in the confused
UNDER THE KNIFE 67
glittering of the remoter light. I was no longer a denizen
of the solar system : I had come to the outer Universe,
I seemed to grasp and comprehend the whole world
of matter. Ever more swiftly the stars closed in about
the spot where Antares and Vega had vanished in a
phosphorescent haze, until that part of the sky had
the semblance of a whirling mass of nebulae, and ever
before me yawned vaster gaps of vacant blackness, and
the stars shone fewer and fewer. It seemed as if I
moved towards a point between Orion's belt and sword;
and the void about that region opened vaster and vaster
every second, an incredible gulf of nothingness into
which I was falling. Faster and ever faster the universe
rushed by, a hurry of whirling motes at last, speeding
silently into the void. Stars glowing brighter and
brighter, with their circling planets catching the light
in a ghostly fashion as I neared them, shone out and
vanished again into in existence; faint comets, clusters
of meteorites, winking specks of matter, eddying light-
points, whizzed past, some perhaps a hundred millions
of miles or so from me at most, few nearer, travelling
with unimaginable rapidity, shooting constellations,
momentary darts of lire, through that black, enormous
night. More than anything else it was like a dusty
draught, sunbeam-lit. Broader and wider and deeper
grew the starless space, the vacant Beyond, into which
I was being drawn. At last a quarter of the heavens
was black and blank, and the whole headlong rush of
stellar universe closed in behind me like a veil of light
that is gathered together. It drove away from mc like
a monstrous jack-o'-lantern driven by the wind. I had
come out into the wilderness of space. Ever the
vacant blackness grew broader, until the hosts of the
stars seemed only like a swarm of fiery specks hurrying
away from me, inconceivably remote, and the darkness,
the nothingness and emptiness, was about me on every
68 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
side. Soon the little universe of matter, the cage of
points in which I had begun to be, was dwindling, now
to a whirling disc of luminous glittering, and now to
one minute disc of haz.y light. In a little while it would
shrink to a point, and at last would vanish altogether.
Suddenly feeling came back to mc — feeling in the
shape of overwhelming terror; such a dread of those
dark vastitudes as no words can describe, a passionate
resurgence of sympathy and social desire. Were there
other souls, invisible to me as I to them, about me in
the blackness? or was I indeed, even as I felt, alone?
Had I passed out of being into something that was
neither being nor not-being? The covering of the body,
the covering of matter, had been torn from me, and the
hallucinations of companionship and security. Every-
thing was black and silent. I had ceased to be. I was
nothing. There was nothing, save only that infinitesimal
dot of light that dwindled in the gulf. I strained myself
to hear and see, and for a while there was naught but
infinite silence, intolerable darkness, horror, and despair.
Then 1 saw that about the spot of light into which
the whole world of matter had shrunk there was a faint
glow. And in a band on either side of that the darkness
was not absolute. I watched it for ages, as it seemed
to me, and through the long waiting the haze grew
imperceptibly more distinct. And then about the
band appeared an irregular cloud of the faintest, palest
brown. I felt a passionate impatience; but the things
grew brighter so slowly that they scarce seemed
to change. What was unfolding itself? What was
this strange reddish dawn in the interminable night
of space?
The cloud's shape was grotesque. It seemed to be
looped along its lower side into four projecting masses,
and, above, it ended in a straight line. What phantom
was it? I felt assured I had seen that figure before;
UNDER THE KNIFE 69
but I could not think what, nor where, nor when it
was. Then the realisation rushed upon me. It was a
clenched Hand. I was alone in space, alone with this
huge, shadowy Hand, upon which the whole Universe
of Matter lay like an unconsidered speck of dust. It
seemed as though I watched it through vast periods of
time. On the forefinger glittered a ring; and the universe
from which I had come was but a spot of light upon the
ring's curvature. And the thing that the hand gripped
had the likeness of a black rod. Through a long eternity
I watched this Hand, with the ring and the rod, marvel-
ling and fearing and waiting helplessly on what might
follow. It seemed as though nothing could follow :
that I should watch for ever, seeing only the Hand and
the thing it held, and understanding nothing of its
import. Was the whole universe but a refracting speck
upon some greater Being? Were our worlds but the
atoms of another universe, and those again of another,
and so on through an endless progression? And what
was I ? Was I indeed immaterial ? A vague persuasion
of a body gathering about me came into my suspense.
The abysmal darkness about the Hand filled with
impalpable suggestions, with uncertain, fluctuating
shapes.
Then, suddenly, came a sound, like the sound of a
tolling bell : faint, as if infinitely far; muffled, as
though heard through thick swathings of darkness :
a deep, vibrating resonance, with vast gulfs of silence
between each stroke. And the Hand appeared to
tighten on the rod. And I saw far above the Hand,
towards the apex of the darkness, a circle of dim phos-
phorescence, a ghostly sphere whence these sounds came
throbbing; and at the last stroke the Hand vanished,
for the hour had come, and I heard a noise of many
waters. But the black rod remained as a great band
across the sky. And then a voice, which seemed to run
70 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
to the uttermost parts of space, spoke, saying, 'There
will be no more pain.'
At that an almost intolerable gladness and radiance
rushed in upon me, and I saw the circle shining white
and bright, and the rod black and shining, and many
things else distinct and clear. And the circle was the
face of the clock, and the rod the rail of my bed. Haddon
was standing at the foot, against the rail, with a small
pair of scissors on his fingers; and the hands of my
clock on the mantel over his shoulder were clasped
together over the hour of twelve. Mowbray was washing
something in a basin at the octagonal tabic, and at my
side I felt a subdued feeling that could scarce be spoken
of as pain.
The operation had not killed me. And I perceived,
suddenly, that the dull melancholy of half a year was
iifted from my mind
THE PLATTNER STORY
Whether the story of Gottfried Plattner is to be
credited or not is a pretty question in the value of
evidence. On the one hand, we have seven witnesses —
to be perfectly exact, we have six and a half pairs of
eyes, and one undeniable fact; and on the other we have
— what is it? — prejudice, common sense, the inertia of
opinion. Never were there seven more honest-seeming
witnesses; never was there a more undeniable fact than
the inversion of Gottfried Plattner 's anatomical struc-
ture, and — never was there a more preposterous story
than the one they have to tell ! The most preposterous
part of the story is the worthy Gottfried's contribution
(for I count him as one of the seven). Heaven forbid
that I should be led into giving countenance to super-
stition by a passion for impartiality, and so come to
share the fate of Eusapia's patrons ! Frankly, I believe
there is something crooked about this business of Gott-
fried Plattner; but what that crooked factor is, I will
admit as frankly, I do not know. I have been surprised
at the credit accorded to the story in the most unexpected
and authoritative quarters. The fairest way to the
reader, however, will be for me to tell it without furthei
comment.
Gottfried Plattner is, in spite of his name, a freeborn
Englishman. His father was an Alsatian who came
to England in the 'sixties, married a respectable English
girl of unexceptional antecedents, and died, after a
wholesome and uneventful life (devoted, I understand,
7*
72 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
chiefly to the laying of parquet flooring), in 1887.
Gottfried's age is seven-and-twenty. He is, by virtue
of his heritage of three languages, Modern Languages
Master in a small private school in the south of England.
To the casual observer he is singularly like any other
Modern Languages Master in any other small private
school. His costume is neither very costly nor very
fashionable, but, on the other hand, it is not markedly
cheap or shabby; his complexion, like his height and
his bearing, is inconspicuous. You would notice, perhaps,
that, like the majority of people, his face was not
absolutely symmetrical, his right eye a little larger than
the left, and his jaw a trifle heavier on the right side.
If you, as an ordinary careless person, were to bare his
chest and feel his heart beating, you would probably
find it quite like the heart of any one else. But here you
and the trained observer would part company. If you
found his heart quite ordinary, the trained observer
would find it quite otherwise. And once the thing was
pointed out to you, you too would perceive the peculi-
arity easily enough. It is that Gottfried's heart beats
on the right side of his body.
Now, that is not the only singularity of Gottfried's
structure, although it is the only one that would appeal
to the untrained mind. Careful sounding of Gottfried's
internal arrangements by a well-known surgeon seems
to point to the fact thnt all the other unsymmetrical
parts of his body are similarly misplaced. The right
lobe of his liver is on the left side, the left on his right ;
while his lungs, too, are similarly contraposed. What is
still more singular, unless Gottfried is a consummate
actor, we must believe that his right hand has recently
become his left. Since the occurrences we are about to
consider (as impartially as possible), he has found the
utmost difficulty in writing, except from right to left
across the paper with his left hand. He cannot throw
THE PLATTNER STORY 73
with his right hand, he is perplexed at meal-times
between knife and fork, and his ideas of the rule of the
road — he is a cyclist — are still a dangerous confusion.
And there is not a scrap of evidence to show that
before these occurrences Gottfried was at all left-
handed.
There is yet another wonderful fact in this preposterous
business. Gottfried produces three photographs of
himself. You have him at the age of five or six, thrusting
fat legs at you from under a plaid frock, and scowling.
In that photograph his left eye is a little larger than his
right, and his jaw is a trifle heavier on the left side.
This is the reverse of his present living condition. The
photograph of Gottfried at fourteen seems to contradict
these facts, but that is because it is one of those cheap
'Gem' photographs that were then in vogue, taken
direct upon metal, and therefore reversing things just
as a looking-glass would. The third photograph re-
presents him at one- and- twenty, and confirms the
record of the others. There seems here evidence of the
strongest confirmatory character that Gottfried has
exchanged his left side for his right. Yet how a
human being can be so changed, short of a fantastic
and pointless miracle, it is exceedingly hard to
suggest.
In one way, of course, these facts might be explicable
on the supposition that Plattner has undertaken an
elaborate mystification, on the strength of his heart's
displacement. Photographs may be faked, and left-
handedness imitated. But the character of the man does
not lend itself to any such theory. He is quiet, practical,
unobtrusive, and thoroughly sane, from the Nordau
standpoint. He likes beer, and smokes moderately,
takes walking exercise daily, and has a healthily high
estimate of the value of his teaching. He has a good
but untrained tenor voice, and takes a pleasure in singing
74 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
airs of a popular and cheerful character. He is fond,
but not morbidly fond, of reading — chiefly fiction
pervaded with a vaguely pious optimism — sleeps well,
and rarely dreams. He is, in fact, the very last person
to evolve a fantastic fable. Indeed, so far from forcing
this story upon the world, he has been singularly
reticent on the matter. He meets inquirers with a
certain engaging — bashfulness is almost the word, that
disarms the most suspicious. He seems genuinely
ashamed that anything so unusual has occurred to him.
It is to be regretted that Plattner's aversion to the
idea of post-mortem dissection may postpone, perhaps
for ever, the positive proof that his entire body has had
its left and right sides transposed. Upon that fact
mainly the credibility of his story hangs. There is no
way of taking a man and moving him about in space
as ordinary people understand space, that will result in
our changing his sides. Whatever you do, his
right is still his right, his left his left. You can do
that with a perfectly thin and flat thing, of course.
If you were to cut a figure out of paper, any figure with
a right and left side, you could change its sides simply
by lifting it up and turning it over. But with a solid
it is different. Mathematical theorists tell us that the
only way in which the right and left sides of a solid body
can be changed is by taking that body clean out of
space as we know it — taking it out of ordinary existence,
that is, and turning it somewhere outside space. This
is a little abstruse, no doubt, but any one with ac-
knowledge of mathematical theory will assure the
reader of its truth. To put the thing in technical
language, the curious inversion of Plattner's right and
left sides is proof that he has moved out of our space
into what is called the Fourth Dimension, and that he
has returned again to our world. Unless we choose i«»
consider ourselves the victims of an elaborate and
THE PLATTNER STORY 75
motiveless fabrication, we are almost bound to believe
that this has occurred.
So much for the tangible facts. We come now to
the account of the phenomena that attended his tem-
porary disappearance from the world. It appears that
in the Sussexville Proprietary School, Plattner not only
discharged the duties of Modern Languages Master, but
also taught chemistry, commercial geography, book-
keeping, shorthand, drawing, and any other additional
subject to which the changing fancies of the boys'
parents might direct attention. He knew little or nothing
of these various subjects, but in secondary as dis-
tinguished from Board or elementary schools, knowledge
in the teacher is, very properly, by no means so necessary
as high moral character and gentlemanly tone. In
chemistry he was particularly deficient, knowing, he
says, nothing beyond the Three Gases (whatever the
three gases may be). As, however, his pupils be.ean by
knowing nothing, and derived all their information from
him, this caused him (or any one) but little inconvenience
for several terms. Then a little boy named Whibblc
joined the school, who had been educated (it seems)
by some mischievous relative into an inquiring habit
of mind. This little boy followed Plattner's lessons
with marked and sustained interest, and in order t"
exhibit his zeal on the subject, brought, at various times,
substances for Plattner to analyse. Plattner, flattered
by this evidence of his power of awakening interest, and
trusting to the boy's ignorance, analysed these, and
even made general statements as to their composition.
Indeed, he was so far stimulated by his pupil as to obtain
a work upon analytical chemistry, and study it during
his supervision of the evening's preparation. He was
surprised to find chemistry quite an interesting subject.
So far the story is absolutely commonplace. But
now the greenish powder comes upon the scene. The
76 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
source of that greenish powder seems, unfortunately,
lost. Master Whibble tells a tortuous story of finding
it done up in a packet in a disused limekiln near the
Downs. It would have been an excellent thing for
Plattner, and possibly for Master Whibble's family, if
a match could have been applied to that powder there
and then. The young gentleman certainly did not
bring it to school in a packet, but in a common eight-
ounce graduated medicine bottle, plugged with masti-
cated newspaper. He gave it to Plattner at the end
of the afternoon school. Four boys had been detained
after school prayers in order to complete some neglected
tasks, and Plattner was supervising these in the small
class-room in which the chemical teaching was conducted.
The appliances for the practical teaching of chemistry
in the Sussexville Proprietary School, as in most small
schools in this country, are characterised by a severe
simplicity. They are kept in a small cupboard standing
in a recess, and having about the same capacity as a
common travelling trunk. Plattner, being bored with
his passive superintendence, seems to have welcomed
the intervention of Whibble with his green powder as
an agreeable diversion, and, unlocking this cupboard,
proceeded at once with his analytical experiments.
Whibble sat, luckily for himself, at a safe distance,
regarding him. The four malefactors, feigning a pro-
found absorption in their work, watched him furtively
with the keenest interest. F^or even within the limits
of the Three Gases, Plattner 's practical chemistry was,
I understand, temerarious.
They are practically unanimous in their account of
Plattner's proceedings. He poured a little of the green
powder into a test-tube, and tried the substance with
water, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, and sulphuric acid
in succession. Getting no result, he emptied out a little
heap — nearly half the bottleful, in fact — upon a slate
THE PLATTNER STORY 77
and tned a match. He held the medicine bottle 111 his
left hand. The stuff began to smoke and melt, and then
exploded with deafening violence and a blinding flash.
The five boys, seeing the flash and being prepared
for catastrophes, ducked below their desks, and were
none of them seriously hurt. The window was blown
out into the playground, and the blackboard on its
easel was upset. The slate was smashed to atoms.
Some plaster fell from the ceiling. No other damage
was done to the school edifice or appliances, and the
boys at first, seeing nothing of Plattner, fancied he
was knocked down and lying out of their sight below
the desks. They jumped out of their places to go to
his assistance, and were amazed to find the space empty.
Being still confused by the sudden violence of the
report, they hurried to the open door, under the im-
pression that he must have been hurt, and have rushed
out of the room. But Carson, the foremost, nearly
collided in the doorway with the principal, Mr Lidgett.
Mr Lidgett is a corpulent, excitable man with one
eye. The boys describe him as stumbling into the room
mouthing some of those tempered expletives irritable
schoolmasters accustom themselves to use — lest worse
befall. 'Wretched mumchancer!' he said. 'Where's
Mr Plattner? ' The boys are agreed on the very words.
('Wobbler,' 'snivelling puppy,' and 'mumchancer'
are, it seems, among the ordinary small change of Mr
Lidgett's scholastic commerce.)
Where's Mr Plattner? That was a question that
was to be repeated many times in the next few days.
It really seemed as though that frantic hyperbole,
'blown to atoms,' had for once realised itself. There
was not a visible particle of Plattner to be seen; not
a drop of blood nor a stitch of clothing to be found.
Apparently he had been blown clean out of existence
and left not a wrack behind. Not so much as would
7& TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
cover a sixpenny piece, to quote a proverbial expression !
The evidence of his absolute disappearance as a conse-
quence of that explosion is indubitable.
It is not necessary to enlarge here upon the commotion
excited in the Sussexville Proprietary School, and in
Sussexville and elsewhere, by this event. It is quite
possible, indeed, that some of the readers of these pages
may recall the hearing of some remote and dying
version of that excitement during the last summer
holidays. Lidgett, it would seem, did everything in his
power to suppress and minimise the story. He instituted
a penalty of twenty-five lines for any mention of
Plattner's name among the boys, and stated in the
schoolroom that he was clearly aware of his assistant's
whereabouts. He was afraid, he explains, that the
possibility of an explosion happening, in spite of the
elaborate precautions taken to minimise the practical
teaching of chemistry, might injure the reputation of
the school; and so might any mysterious quality in
Plattner's departure. Indeed, he did everything in his
power to make the occurrence seem as ordinary as possible.
In particular, he cross-examined the five eye-witnesses
of the occurrence so searchingly that they began to
doubt the plain evidence of their senses. But, in spite
of these efforts, the tale, in a magnified and distorted
state, made a nine days' wonder in the district, ;iih1
ral parents withdrew their sons on colourable
pretexts. Not the least remarkable point in the matter
is the fact that a large number of people in the neigh-
bourhood dreamed singularly vivid dreams of Plattner
during the period of excitement before his return, and
that these dreams had a curious uniformity. In almost
all of them Plattner was seen, sometimes singly, some-
times in company, wandering about through a corus-
i ating iridescence. In all cases his face was pale and
distressed, and in some lie gesticulated towards the
THE PLATTNER STORY 79
dreamer. One or two of the boys, evidently under
the influence of nightmare, fancied that Plattner
approached them with remarkable swiftness, and
seemed to look closely into their very eyes. Others
fled with Plattner from the pursuit of vague and
extraordinary creatures of a globular shape. But all
these fancies were forgotten in inquiries and speculations
when on the Wednesday next but one after the Monday
of the explosion, Plattner returned.
The circumstances of his return were as singular
as those of his departure. So far as Mr Lidgett's some-
what choleric outline can be filled in from Plattner's
hesitating statements, it would appear that on Wednes-
day evening, towards the hour of sunset, the former
gentleman, having dismissed evening preparation, was
engaged in his garden, picking and eating strawberries,
a fruit of which he is inordinately fond. It is a large
old-fashioned garden, secured from observation, fortu-
nately, by a high and ivy-covered red-brick wall.
Just as he was stooping over a particularly prolific
plant, there was a flash in the air and a heavy thud, and
before he could look round, some heavy body struck
him violently from behind. He was pitched forward,
crushing the strawberries he held in his hand, and that
so roughly, that his silk hat — Mr Lidgett adheres to
the older ideas of scholastic costume — was driven
violently down upon his forehead, and almost over one
eye. This heavy missile, which slid over him sideways
and collapsed into a sitting posture among the straw-
berry plants, proved to be our long-lost Mr Gottfried
Plattner, in an extremely dishevelled condition. He
was collarless and hatless, his linen was dirty, and
there was blood upon his hands. Mr Lidgett
was so indignant and surprised that he remained
on all-fours, and with his hat jammed down on
his eye, while he expostulated vehemently with
80 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
Plattner for his disrespectful and unaccountable
conduct.
This scarcely idyllic scene completes what I may
call the exterior version of the Plattner story — its
exoteric aspect. It is quite unnecessary to enter here
into all the details, of his dismissal by Mr Lidgett,
such details, with the full names and dates and
references, will be found in the larger report of these
occurrences that was laid before the Society for the
Investigation of Abnormal Phenomena. The singular
transposition of Plattner's right and left sides was
scarcely observed for the first day or so, and then first
in connection with his disposition to write from right
to left across the blackboard. He concealed rather
than ostended this curious confirmatory circumstance,
as he considered it would unfavourably affect his
prospects in a new situation. The displacement of
his heart was discovered some months after, when
he was having a tooth extracted under anaesthetic.-.
He then, very unwillingly, allowed a cursory surgical
examination to be made of himself, with a view to a
brief account in the Journal of Anatomy. That exhausts
the statement of the material facts; and we may
now go on to consider Plattner's account of the
matter.
But first let us clearly differentiate between the
preceding portion of this story and what is to follow.
All I have told thus far is established by such evidence
as even a criminal lawyer would approve. Every one
of the witnesses is still alive; the reader, if he have the
leisure, may hunt the lads out to-morrow, or even
brave the terrors of the redoubtable Lidgett, and
cross-examine and trap and test to his heart's content;
Gottfried Plattner himself, and his twisted heart and
his three photographs, are producible. It may be
taken as proved that he did disappear for nine days
THE PLATTNER STORY 81
as the consequence of an explosion; that he returned
almost as violently, under circumstances in their nature
annoying to Mr Lidgett, whatever the details of those
circumstances may be; and that he returned inverted,
just as a reflection returns from a mirror. From the
last fact, as I have already stated, it follows almost
inevitably that Plattner, during those nine days, must
have been in some state of existence altogether out of
space. The evidence to these statements is, indeed,
far stronger than that upon which most murderers are
hanged. But for his own particular account of where
he had been, with its confused explanations and well-
nigh self-contradictory details, we have only Mr Gott-
fried Plattner 's word. I do not wish to discredit that,
but I must point out — what so many writers upon
obscure psychic phenomena fail to do — that we are
passing here from the practically undeniable to that
kind of matter which any reasonable man is entitled to
believe or reject as he thinks proper. The previous
statements render it plausible; its discordance with
common experience tilts it towards the incredible.
I would prefer not to sway the beam of the reader's
judgment cither way, but simply to tell the story as
Plattner told it to me.
He gave me his narrative, I may state, at my house
at Chislehurst, and so soon as he had left me that
evening, I went into my study and wrote down every-
thing as I remembered it. Subsequently he was good
enough to read over a typewritten copy, so that its
substantial correctness is undeniable.
He states that at the moment of the explosion he
distinctly thought he was killed. He felt lifted off his
feet and driven forcibly backward. It is a curious fact
for psychologists that he thought clearly during his
backward flight, and wondered whether he should hit
the chemistry cupboard or the blackboard easel. His
T.u. F
8-2 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
heels struck ground, and he staggered and fell heavily
into a sitting position on something soft and firm.
For a moment the concussion stunned him. He became
aware at once of a vivid scent of singed hair, and he
seemed to hear the voice of Lidgett asking for him.
You will understand that for a time his mind was
greatly confused.
At first he was under the impression that he was
still standing in the class-room. He perceived quite
distinctly the surprise of the boys and the entry of
Mr Lidgett. He is quite positive upon that score.
He did not hear their remarks; but that he ascribed
to the deafening effect of the experiment. Things about
him seemed curiously dark and faint, but his mind
explained that on the obvious but mistaken idea that
the explosion had engendered a huge volume of dark
smoke. Through the dimness the figures of Lidgett
and the boys moved, as faint and silent as ghosts.
Plattner's face still tingled with the stinging heat of
the flash. He was, he says, 'all muddled.' His first
definite thoughts seem to have been of his personal
safety. He thought he was perhaps blinded and
deafened. He felt his limbs and face in a gingerly
manner. Then his perceptions grew clearer, and he
was astonished to miss the old familiar desks and other
schoolroom furniture about him. Only dim, uncertain,
gray shapes stood in the place of these. Then came a
thing that made him shout aloud, and awoke his stunned
faculties to instant activity. Two of the boys, gesticu-
lating, walked one after the other clean through him !
Neither manifested the slightest consciousness of his
presence. It is difficult to imagine the sensation he
felt. They came against him, he says, with no more
force than a wisp of mist.
Plattner's first thought after that was that he was
dead. Having been brought up with thoroughly sound
THE PLATTNER STORY 83
views in these matters, however, he was a little surprised
to find his body still about him. His second conclusion
was that he was not dead, but that the others were :
that the explosion had destroyed the Sussexville
Proprietary School and every soul in it except himself.
But that, too, was scarcely satisfactory. He was
thrown back upon astonished observation.
Everything about him was profoundly dark : at
first it seemed to have an altogether ebony blackness.
Overhead was a black firmament. The only touch of
light in the scene was a faint greenish glow at the edge
of the sky in one direction, which threw into prominence
a horizon of undulating black hills. This, I say, was his
impression at first. As his eye grew accustomed to the
darkness, he began to distinguish a faint quality of
differentiating greenish colour in the circumambient
night. Against this background the furniture and
occupants of the class-room, it seems, stood out like
phosphorescent spectres, faint and impalpable. He
extended his hand, and thrust it without an effort
through the wall of the room by the fireplace.
He describes himself as making a strenuous effort
to attract attention. He shouted to Lidgett, and tried
to seize the boys as they went to and fro. He only
desisted from these attempts when Mrs Lidgett, whom
he (as an Assistant Master) naturally disliked, entered
the room. He says the sensation of being in the world
and yet not a part of it, was an extraordinarily dis-
agreeable one. He compared his feelings, not inaptly,
to those of a cat watching a mouse through a window.
Whenever he made a motion to communicate with the
dim, familiar world about him, he found an invisible,
incomprehensible barrier preventing intercourse.
He then turned his attention to his solid environment.
He found the medicine bottle still unbroken in his
hand, with the remainder of the green powder therein.
84 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
He put this in his pocket, and began to feel about him.
Apparently he was sitting on a boulder of rock covered
with a velvety moss. The dark country about him he
was unable to see, the faint, misty picture of the school-
room blotting it out, but he had a feeling (due perhaps
lo a cold wind) that he was near the crest of a hill, and
that a steep valley fell away beneath his feet. The
green glow along the edge of the sky seemed to be
growing in extent and intensity. He stood up,
rubbing his eyes.
It would seem that he made a few steps, going steeply
downhill, and then stumbled, nearly fell, and sat down
again upon a jagged mass of rock to watch the dawn.
He became aware that the world about him was
absolutely silent. It was as still as it was dark, and
though there was a cold wind blowing up the hill-face,
the rustle of grass, the soughing of the boughs that
should have accompanied it, were absent. He could
hear, therefore, if he could not see, that the hillside upon
which he stood was rocky and desolate. The green
grew brighter every moment, and as it did so a faint,
transparent blood-red mingled with, but did not
mitigate, the blackness of the sky overhead and the
rocky desolations about him. Having regard to what
follows, I am inclined to think that that redness may
have been an optical effect due to contrast. Something
black fluttered momentarily against the livid yellow-
green of the lower sky, and then the thin and penetrating
voice of a bell rose out of the black gulf below him. An
oppressive expectation grew with the growing light.
It is probable that an hour or more elapsed while he
there, the strange green light growing brighter
(very moment, and spreading slowly, in flamboyant
lingers, upward towards the zenith. As it grew, the
ctraj vision of our world became relatively or
absolutely fainter. Probably both, for the time mu^t
THE PLATTNER STORY 85
have been about that of our earthly sunset. So far as
his vision of our world went, Plattner, by his few
steps downhill, had passed through the floor of
the class-room, and was now, it seemed, sitting in mid-
air in the larger schoolroom downstairs. He saw the
boarders distinctly, but much more faintly than he had
seen Lidgett. They were preparing their evening tasks,
and he noticed with interest that several were cheating
with their Euclid riders by means of a crib, a compilation
whose existence he had hitherto never suspected. As
the time passed, they faded steadily, as steadily as the
light of the green dawn increased.
Looking down into the valley, he saw that the light
had crept far down its rocky sides, and that the pro-
found blackness of the abyss was now broken by a
minute green glow, like the light of a glow-worm. And
almost immediately the limb of a huge heavenly body
of blazing green rose over the basaltic undulations of
the distant hills, and the monstrous hill-masses about
him came out gaunt and desolate, in green light and
deep, ruddy black shadows. He became aware of a
vast number of ball-shaped objects drifting as thistle-
down drifts over the high ground. There were nonr
of these nearer to him than the opposite side of the
gorge. The bell below twanged quicker and quicker,
with something like impatient insistence, and several
lights moved hither and thither. The fyoys at work
at their desks were now almost imperceptibly
faint.
This extinction of oui world, when the green sun
of this other universe rose, is a curious point upon
which Plattner insists. During the Other-World night
it is difficult to move about, on account of the vividness
with which the things of this world are visible. It
becomes a riddle to explain why, if this is the case, we
in this world catch no glimpse of the Other-World.
86 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
It is due, perhaps, to the comparatively vivid illumina-
tion of this world of ours. Plattner describes the mid-
day of the Other-World, at its brightest, as not being
nearly so bright as this world at full moon, while its
night is profoundly black. Consequently, the amount
of light, even in an ordinary dark room, is sufficient to
render the things of the Other-World invisible, on
the same principle that faint phosphorescence is only
visible in the profoundest darkness. I have tried, since
he told me his story, to see something of the Other-
World by sitting for a long space in a photographer's
dark room at night. I have certainly seen indistinctly
the form of greenish slopes and rocks, but only, I must
admit, very indistinctly indeed. The reader may
possibly be more successful. Plattner tells me that,
since his return he has dreamt and seen and recognised
places in the Other- World, but this is probably due to
his memory of these scenes. It seems quite possible
that people with unusually keen eyesight may occasion-
ally catch a glimpse of this strange Other-World
about us.
However, this is a digression. As the green sun rose,
a long street of black buildings became perceptible
though only darkly and indistinctly, in the gorge, and
after some hesitation, Plattner began to clamber down
the precipitous descent towards them. The descent
was long and exceedingly tedious, being so not only
by the extraordinary steepness, but also by reason of
the looseness of the boulders with which the whole face
of the hill was strewn. The noise of his descent — now
and then his heels struck fire from the rucks— seemed
now the only sound in the universe, for the beating of
the bell had ceased. As he drew nearer, he perceived
that the various edihees had a singular resemblance
to tombs and mausoleums and monuments, saving only
that they were all uniformly black instead of being white,
Â¥k
THE PLATTNER STORY 87
as most sepulchres are. And then he saw, crowding out
of the largest building, very much as people disperse
from church, a number of pallid, rounded, pale-green
figures. These dispersed in several directions about the
broad street of the place, some going through side
alleys and reappearing upon the steepness of the hill,
others entering some of the small black buildings which
lined the way.
At the sight of these things drifting up towards him,
Plattner stopped, staring. They were not walking, they
were indeed limbless, and they had the appearance of
human heads, beneath which a tadpole-like body swung.
He was too astonished at their strangeness, too full,
indeed, of strangeness, to be seriously alarmed by
them. They drove towards him, in front of the chill
wind that was blowing uphill, much as soap-bubbles
drive before a draught. And as he looked at the nearest
of those approaching, he saw it was indeed a human
head, albeit with singularly large eyes, and wearing such
an expression of distress and anguish as he had never
seen before upon mortal countenance. He was surprised
to find that it did not turn to regard him, but seemed
to be watching and following some unseen moving thing.
For a moment he was puzzled, and then it occurred to
him that this creature was watching with its enormous
eyes something that was happening in the world he had
just left. Nearer it came, and nearer, and he was too
astonished to cry out. It made a very faint fretting
sound as it came close to him. Then it struck his face
with a gentle pat — its touch was very cold — and
drove past him, and upward towards the crest of
the hill.
An extraordinary conviction flashed across Plattner's
mind that this head had a strong likeness to Lidgett.
Then he turned his attention to the other heads that
were now swarming thickly up the hill-side. None
8S TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
made the slightest sign of recognition. One or two,
indeed, came close to his head and almost followed
the example of the first, but he dodged convulsively
out ot the way. Upon most of them he saw the same
expression of unavailing regret he had seen upon the
first, and heard the same faint sounds of wretchedness
from them. One or two wept, and one rolling swiftly
uphill wore an expression of diabolical rage. But others
were cold, and several had a look of gratified interest in
their eyes. One, at least, was almost in an ecstasy of
happiness. Plattner does not remember that he
recognised any more likenesses in those he saw at this
time.
For several hours, perhaps, Plattner watched these
strange things dispersing themselves over the hills,
and not till long after they had ceased to issue from
the clustering black buildings in the gorge, did he
resume his downward climb. The darkness about him
increased so much that he had a difficulty in stepping
true. Overhead the sky was now a bright, pale green.
He felt neither hunger nor thirst. Later, when he did
he found a chilly stream running down the centre of
the gorge, and the rare moss upon the boulders,
when he tried it at last in desperation, was good
to cat.
He groped about among the tombs that ran down
the gorge, seeking vaguely for some clue to these in-
explicable things. After a long time he came to the
en trance of the big mausoleum-like building front
which the heads had issued. In this he found a group
of green lights burning upon a kind of basaltic altar,
and a bell-rope from a belfry overhead hanging down
into the centre of the place. Round the wall ran a
lettering of fire in a character unknown to him. While
lie was still wondering at the purport of these things
he heard the receding tramp of heavy feet echoing far
THE PLATTNER STORY 8q
down the street. He ran out into the darkness again,
but he could see nothing. He had a mind to pull the
bell-rope, and finally decided to follow the footsteps.
But, although he ran far, he never overtook them;
and his shouting was of no avail. The gorge seemed
to extend an interminable distance. It was as dark
as earthly starlight throughout its length, while the
ghastly green day lay along the upper edge of it 5
precipices. There were none of the heads, now, below.
They were all, it seemed, busily occupied along the
upper slopes. Looking up, he saw them drifting hither
and thither, some hovering stationary, some flying
swiftly through the air. It reminded him, he said, of
'big snowflakes'; only these were black and pale
green.
In pursuing the firm, undeviating footsteps that
he never overtook, in groping into new regions of this
endless devil's dyke, in clambering up and down the
pitiless heights, in wandering about the summits, and
in watching the drifting faces, Plattner states that he
spent the better part of seven or eight days. He did not
keep count, he says. Though once or twice he found
eyes watching him, he had word with no living soul.
He slept among the rocks on the hillside. In the
gorge things earthly were invisible, because, from the
earthly standpoint, it was far underground. On the
altitudes, so soon as the earthly day began, the world
became visible to him. He found himself sometimes
stumbling over the dark green rocks, or arresting
himself on a precipitous brink, while all about him the
green branches of the Sussexville lanes were swaying;
or, again, he seemed to be walking through the Sussex-
ville streets, or watching unseen the private business of
some household. And then it was he discovered, that
to almost every human being in our world there per-
tained some of these drifting heads; that every one in
90 TALES OB THE UNEXPECTED
the world is watched intermittently by these helpless
disembodiments.
What are they — these Watchers of the Living?
Plattner never learned. But two, that presently found
and followed him, were like his childhood's memory
of his father and mother. Now and then other faces
turned their eyes upon him : eyes like those of dead
people who had swayed him, or injured him, or helped
him in his youth and manhood. Whenever they looked
at him, Plattner was overcome with a strange sense of
responsibility. To his mother he ventured to speak,
but she made no answer. She looked sadly, steadfastly,
and tenderly — a little reproachfully, too, it seemed —
into his eyes.
He simply tells this story : he does not endeavour
to explain. We are left to surmise who these Watchers
of the Living may be, or, if they are indeed the Dead,
why they should so closely and passionately watch a
world they have left for ever. It may be — indeed to
my mind it seems just — that, when our life has closed,
when evil or good is no longer a choice for us, we may
still have to witness the working out of the train of
consequences we have laid. If human souls continue
after death, then surely human interests continue
after death. But that is merely my own guess at the
meaning of the things seen. Plattner offers no inter-
pretation, for none was given him. It is well the reader
should understand this clearly. Day after day, with
his head reeling, he wandered about this strange lit
world outside the world, weary and, towards the end,
weak and hungry. By day — by our earthly day, that
is — the ghostly vision of the old familiar scenery of
Sussexville, ail about him, irked and worried him.
He could not see where to put his feet, and ever and
again with a chilly touch one of t] atching Souls
would come against his face. And after dark the
THE PLATTNER STORY 91
multitude of these Watchers about him, and their
intent distress, confused his mind beyond describing.
A great longing to return to the earthly life that was
so near and yet so remote consumed him. The un-
earthliness of things about him produced a positively
painful mental distress. He was worried beyond
describing by his own particular followers. He would
shout at them to desist from staring at him, scold at
them, hurry- away from them. They were always mute
and intent. Run as he might over the uneven ground,
they followed his destinies.
On the ninth day, towards evening, Plattner heard
the invisible footsteps approaching, far away down the
gorge. He was then wandering over the broad crest
of the same hill upon which he had fallen in his entry
into this strange Other-World of his. He turned to
hurry down into the gorge, feeling his way hastily,
and was arrested by the sight of the thing that was
happening in a room in a back street near the school.
Both of the people in the room he knew by sight. The
windows were open, the blinds up, and the setting sun
shone clearly into it, so that it came out quite brightly
at first, a vivid oblong of room, lying like a magic-
lantern picture upon the black landscape and the livid
green dawn. In addition to the sunlight, a candle had
just been lit in the room.
On the bed lay a lank man, his ghastly white face
terrible upon the tumbled pillow. His clenched hands
were raised above his head. A little table beside the
bed carried a few medicine bottles, some toast and
water, and an empty glass. Every now and then the
lank man's lips fell apart, to indicate a word he could
not articulate. But the woman did not notice that he
wanted anything, because she was busy turning out
papers from an old-fashioned bureau in the opposite
corner of the room. At hrst the picture was very vivid
92 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
indeed, but as the green dawn behind it grew brighter
and brighter, so it became fainter and more and more
transparent.
As the echoing footsteps paced nearer and nearer,
those footsteps that sound so loud in that Other-World
and come so silently in this, Plattner perceived about
him a great multitude of dim faces gathering together
out of the darkness and watching the two people in
the room. Never before had he seen so many of the
Watchers of the Living. A multitude had eyes only
for the sufferer in the room, another multitude, in
infinite anguish, watched the woman as she hunted
with greedy eyes for something she could not find. They
crowded about Plattner, they came across his sight and
buffeted his face, the noise of their unavailing regrets
was all about him. He saw clearly only now and then.
At other times the picture quivered dimly, through
the veil of green reflections upon their movements.
In the room it must have been very still, and Plattner
says the candle flame streamed up into a perfectly
vertical line of smoke, but in his ears each footfall and
its echoes beat like a clap of thunder. And the faces !
Two, more particularly near the woman's : one a
woman's also, white and clear-featured, a face which
might have once been cold and hard, but which was
now softened by the touch of a wisdom strange to earth.
The other might have been the woman's father. Both
were evidently absorbed in the contemplation of some
act of hateful meanness, so it seemed, which they could
no longer guard against and prevent. Behind were
others, teachers, it may be, who had taught ill, friends
whose influence had failed. And over the man, too —
a multitude, but none that seemed to be parents or
teachers ! Faces that might once have been coarse,
now purged to strength by sorrow ! And in the fore-
front one face, a girlish one, neither angry nor remorseful,
THE PLATTNER STORY 03
but merely patient and weary, and, as it seemed to
Plattner, waiting for relief. His powers of description
fail him at the memory of this multitude of ghastly
countenances. They gathered on the stroke of the bell.
He saw them all in the space of a second. It would
seem that he was so worked on by his excitement that,
quite involuntarily, his restless ringers took the bottle
of green powder out of his pocket and held it before him.
But he does not remember that.
Abruptly the footsteps ceased. He waited for the
next, and there was silence, and then suddenly, cutting
through the unexpected stillness like a keen, thin blade,
came the first stroke of the bell. At that the multi-
tudinous faces swayed to and fro, and a louder crying
began all about him. The woman did not hear; she
was burning something now in the candle flame. At the
second stroke everything grew dim, and a breath of
wind, icy cold, blew through the host of watcher?.
They swirled about him like an eddy of dead leaves in
the spring, and at the third stroke something was
extended through them to the bed. You have heard
of a beam of light. This was like a beam of darkness,
and looking again at it, Plattner saw that it was a
shadowy arm and hand.
The green sun was now topping the black desolations
of the horizon, and the vision of the room was very faint.
Plattner could see that the white of the bed struggled,
and was convulsed; and that the woman looked round
over her shoulder at it, startled.
The cloud of watchers lifted high like a puff of green
dust before the wind, and swept swiftly downward
towards the temple in the gorge. Then suddenly
Plattner understood the meaning of the shadowy black
arm that stretched across his shoulder and clutched
its prey. He did not dare turn his head to see the
Shadow behind the arm. With a violent effort, and
94 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
covering his eyes, he set himself to run, made, perhaps,
twenty strides, then slipped on a boulder, and fell.
He fell forward on his hands; and the bottle smashed
and exploded as he touched the ground.
In another moment he found himself, stunned and
bleeding, sitting face to face with Lidgett in the old
walled garden behind the school.
There the story of Plattner's experiences ends. I
have resisted, I believe successfully, the natural dis-
position of a writer of fiction to dress up incidents of
this sort. I have told the thing as far as possible in
the order in which Plattner told it to me. I have care-
fully avoided any attempt at style, effect, or construction.
It would have been easy, for instance, to have worked
the scene of the death-bed into a kind of plot in which
Plattner might have been involved. But, quite apart
from the objectionableness of falsifying a most extra-
ordinary true story, any such trite devices would spoil,
to my mind, the peculiar effect of this dark world, with
its livid green illumination and its drifting Watchers
of the Living, which, unseen and unapproachable to
us, is yet lying all about us.
It remains to add that a death did actually occur in
Vincent Terrace, just beyond the school garden, and,
so far as can be proved, at the moment of Plattner's
return. Deceased was a rate-collector and insurance
agent. His widow, who was much younger than him-
self, married last month a Mr YVhymper, a veterinary
surgeon of Allbeeding. As the portion of this story
given here has in various forms circulated orally in
Sussexville, she has consented to my use of her name,
on condition that I make it distinctly known that she
emphatically contradicts every detail of Plattner's
account of her husband's last moments. She burnt no
will, she says, although Plattner never accused her of
THE PLATTNER STORY 95
doing so; her husband made but one will, and that just
after their marriage. Certainly, from a man who had
never seen it, Plattner's account of the furniture of the
room was curiously accurate.
One other thing, even at the risk of an irksome
repetition, I must insist upon, lest I seem to favour the
credulous, superstitious view. Plattner's absence from
the world for nine days is, I think, proved. But that
does not prove his story. It is quite conceivable that
even outside space hallucinations may be possible.
That, at least, the reader must bear distinctly in mind.
THE CRYSTAL EGG
There was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-
looking shop near Seven Dials, over which, in weather-
worn yellow lettering, the name of X. Cave, Naturalist
and Dealer in Antiquities,' was inscribed. The contents
of its window were curiously variegated. They com-
prised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of
chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls
of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed
monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet,
a fly-blown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and
an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass fish-tank. There
was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of
< rystal, worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly
polished. And at that two people who stood outside
the window were looking, one of them a tall, thin
clergyman, the other a black-bearded young man of
dusky complexion and unobtrusive costume. The
dusky young man spoke with eager gesticulation, and
seemed anxious for his companion to purchase the
article.
While they were there, Mr Cave came into his shop,
his beard still wagging with the bn ad and butter of his
tea. When he saw these men and the object of their
regard, his countenance fell. He glanced guiltily over
his shoulder, and softly shut the door. He was a little
old man, with pale face and peculiar watery blue eyes;
his hair \\a> a dirty gray, and he wore a shabby blue
frock-coat, an ancient silk hat, and carpet slippers very
96
THE CRYSTAL EGG 97
much down at heel. He remained watching the two
men as they talked. The clergyman went deep into
his trouser pocket, examined a handful of money, and
showed his teeth in an agreeable smile. Mr Cave
seemed still more depressed when they came into the
shop.
The clergyman, without any ceremony, asked the
price of the crystal egg. Mr Cave glanced nervously
towards the door leading into the parlour, and said five
pounds. The clergyman protested that the price was
high, to his companion as well as to Mr Cave — it was,
indeed, very much more than Mr Cave had intended
to ask when he had stocked the article — and an attempt
at bargaining ensued. Mr Cave stepped to the shop
door, and held it open. 'Five pounds is my price,' he
said, as though he wished to save himself the trouble
of unprofitable discussion. As he did so, the upper
portion of a woman's face appeared above the blind in
the glass upper panel of the door leading into the
parlour, and stared curiously at the two customers.
'Five pounds is my price,' said Mr Cave, with a quiver
in his voice.
The swarthy young man had so far remained a
spectator, watching Cave keenly. Now he spoke.
' Give him five pounds,' he said. The clergyman glanced
at him to see if he were in earnest, and when he looked
at Mr Cave again, he saw that the latter's face was white.
'It's a lot of money,' said the clergyman, and, diving
into his pocket, began counting his resources. He had
little more than thirty shillings, and he appealed to his
companion, with whom he seemed to be on terms of
considerable intimacy. This gave Mr Cave an opportunity
of collecting his thoughts, and he began to explain in
an agitated manner that the crystal was not, as a
matter of fact, entirely free for sale. His two customers
were naturally surprised at this, and inquired why he had
T.U. G
98 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
not thought of that before he began to bargain. Mr
Cave became confused, but he stuck to his story, that
the crystal was not in the market that afternoon, that
a probable purchaser of it had already appeared. The
two, treating this as an attempt to raise the price
still further, made as if they would leave the shop.
But at this point the parlour door opened, and
the owner of the dark fringe and the little eyes
appeared.
She was a coarse-featured, corpulent woman,
younger and very much larger than Mr Cave;
she walked heavily, and her face was flushed.
'That crystal is for sale,' she said. 'And five
pounds is a good enough price for it. I can't
think what you're about, Cave, not to take the
gentleman's offer ! '
Mr Cave, greatly perturbed by the irruption, looked
angrily at her over the rims of his spectacles, and, with-
out excessive assurance, asserted his right to manage
his business in his own way. An altercation began.
The two customers watched the scene with interest and
some amusement, occasionally assisting Mrs Cave with
suggestions. Mr Cave, hard driven, persisted in a
confused and impossible story of an inquiry for the
crystal that morning, and his agitation became painful.
But he stuck to his point with extraordinary persistence.
It was the young Oriental who ended this curious
controversy. He proposed that they should call again
in the course of two days — so as to give the alleged
inquirer a fair chance. 'And then we must insist,' said
the clergyman. 'Five pounds.' Mrs Cave took it on
herself to apologise for her husband, explaining that he
was sometimes 'a little odd,' and as the two customeis
left, the couple prepared for a free discussion of the
incident in all its bearings.
Mrs Cave talked to her husband with singular
THE CRYSTAL EGG 99
directness. The poor little man, quivering v. ith emotion,
muddlei himself between his stories, maintaining on
the one hand that he had another customer in view, and
on the other asserting that the crystal was honestly
worth ten guineas. ' Why did you ask five pounds ? ' said
his wife. ' Do let me manage my business my own way ! '
said Mr Cave.
Mr Cave had living with him a stepdaughter and a
stepson, and at supper that night the transaction was
re-discussed. None of them had a high opinion of Mr
Cave's business methods, and this action seemed a
culminating folly.
'It's my opinion he's refused that crystal
before,' said the stepson, a loose-limbed lout of
eighteen.
' But Five Pounds I ' said the stepdaughter, an
argumentative young woman of six-and-twenty.
Mr Cave's answers were wretched; he could only
mumble weak assertions that he knew his own business
best. They drove him from his half-eaten supper into
the shop, to close it for the night, his ears aflame and
tears of vexation behind his spectacles. Why had he
left the crystal in the window so long? The folly of it !
That was the trouble closest in his mind. For a time
he could see no way of evading sale.
After supper his stepdaughter and stepson smartened
themselves up and went out and his wife retired upstairs
to reflect upon the business aspects of the crystal, over
a little sugar and lemon and so forth in hot water. Mr
Cave went into the shop, and stayed there until late,
ostensibly to make ornamental rockeries for gold-fish
cases, but really for a private purpose that will be better
explained later. The next day Mrs Cave found that the
crystal had been removed from the window, and was
lying behind some second-hand books on angling. She
replaced it in a conspicuous position. But she did
ioo TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
not argue further about it, as a nervous headache
disinclined her from debate. Mr Cave was always
disinclined. The day passed disagreeably. Mr Cave
was, if anything, more absent-minded than usual, and
uncommonly irritable withal. In the afternoon, when
his wife was taking her customary sleep, he removed the
crystal from the window again.
The next day Mr Cave had to deliver a consignment
of dog-fish at one of the hospital schools, where they
were needed for dissection. In his absence Mrs Cave's
mind reverted to the topic of the crystal, and the
methods of expenditure suitable to a windfall of five
pounds. She had already devised some very agreeable
expedients, among others a dress of green silk for
herself and a trip to Richmond, when a jangling of the
front door bell summoned her into the shop. The
customer was an examination coach who came to com-
plain of the non-delivery of certain frogs asked for the
previous day. Mrs Cave did not approve of this parti-
cular branch of Mr Cave's business, and the gentleman,
who had called in a somewhat aggressive mood, retired
after a brief exchange of words — entirely civil, so far
as he was concerned. Mrs Cave's eye then naturally
turned to the window; for the sight of the crystal was
an assurance of the five pounds and of her dreams.
What was her surprise to find it gone !
She went to the place behind the locker on the counter
where she had discovered it the day before. It was not
there; and she immediately began an eager search about
the shop.
When Mr Cave returned from his business with the
dogfish, about a quarter to two in the afternoon, he
found the shop in some confusion, and his wife, extremely
exasperated and on her knees behind the counter,
routing among his taxickrmic material. Her face came
up hot and angry over the counter, as the jangling bell
THE CRYSTAL EGG 101
announced his return, and she forthwith accused him
of 'hiding it/
'Hid what}' asked Mr Cave.
' The crystal ! '
At that Mr Cave, apparently much surprised, rushed
to the window. 'Isn't it here?' he said. 'Great
Heavens ! what has become of it ? '
Just then Mr Cave's stepson re-entered the shop
from the inner room — he had come home a minute or
so before Mr Cave — and he was blaspheming freely.
He was apprenticed to a second-hand furniture dealer
down the road, but he had his meals at home,
and he was naturally annoyed to find no dinner
ready.
But when he heard of the loss of the crystal, he forgot
his meal, and his anger was diverted from his mother to
his stepfather. Their first idea, of course, was that he-
had hidden it. But Mr Cave stoutly denied all knowledge
of its fate, freely offering his bedabbled affidavit in the
matter — and at last was worked up to the point of
accusing, first, his wife and then his stepson of having
taken it with a view to a private sale. So began an
exceedingly acrimonious and emotional discussion,
which ended for Mrs Cave in a peculiar nervous con-
dition midway between hysterics and amuck, and
caused the stepson to be half an hour late at
the furniture establishment in the afternoon. Mr
Cave took refuge from his wife's emotions in the
shop.
In the evening the matter was resumed, with less
passion and in a judicial spirit, under the presidency of
the stepdaughter. The supper passed unhappily and
culminated in a painful scene. Mr Cave gave way at
last to extreme exasperation, and went out banging the
front door violently. The rest of the family, having
discussed him with the freedom his absence warranted,
102 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
hunted the house from garret to cellar, hoping to light
upon the crystal.
The next day the two customers called again. They
were received by Mrs Cave almost in tears. It trans-
pired that no one could imagine all that she had stood
from Cave at various times in her married pilgrimage.
. . . She also gave a garbled account of the disappearance.
The clergyman and the Oriental laughed silently at one
another, and said it was very extraordinary. As Mrs
Cave seemed disposed to give them the complete history
of her life they made to leave the shop. Thereupon
Mrs Cave, still clinging to hope, asked for the clergyman's
address, so that, if she could get anything out of Cave,
she might communicate it. The address was duly given,
but apparently was afterwards mislaid. Mrs Cave can
remember nothing about it.
In the evening of that day the Caves seem to have
exhausted their emotions, and Mr Cave, who had been
out in the afternoon, supped in a gloomy isolation that
contrasted pleasantly with the impassioned controversy
of the previous days. For some time matters were very
badly strained in the Cave household, but neither
crystal nor customer reappeared.
Now, without mincing the matter, we must admit that
Mr Cave was a liar. He knew perfectly well where the
crystal was. It was in the rooms of Mr Jacoby Wace,
Assistant Demonstrator at St Catherine's Hospital,
Wcstbourne Street. It stood on the sideboard partially
covered by a black velvet cloth, and beside a decanter
of American whisky. It is from Mr Wace, indeed, that
the particulars upon which this narrative is based were
derived. Cave had taken off the thing to the hospital
hidden in the dog-fish sack, and there had pressed the
young Investigator to keep it for him. Mr Wace was
a little dubious at first. His relationship to Cave was
peculiar. He had a taste for singular characters, and
THE CRYSTAL EGG 103
he had more than once invited the old man to smoke
and drink in his rooms, and to unfold his rather amusing
views of life in general and of his wife in particular.
Mr Wace had encountered Mrs Cave, too, on occasions
when Mr Cave was not at home to attend to him. He
knew the constant interference to which Cave was
subjected, and having weighed the story judicially, he
decided to give the crystal a refuge. Mr Cave promised
to explain the reasons for his remarkable affection for
the crystal more fully on a later occasion, but he spoke
distinctly of seeing visions therein. He called on Mr
Wace the same evening.
He told a complicated story. The crystal he said
had come into his possession with other oddments at
the forced sale of another curiosity dealer's effects, and
not knowing what its value might be, he had ticketed
it at ten shillings. It had hung upon his hands at
that price for some months, and he was thinking
of 'reducing the figure/ when he made a singular
discovery.
At that time his health was very bad — and it must
be borne in mind that, throughout all this experience
his physical condition was one of ebb — and he was in
considerable distress by reason of the negligence, the
positive ill-treatment even, he received from his wife
and stepchildren. His wife was vain, extravagant, un-
feeling, and had a growing taste for private drinking:
his stepdaughter was mean and over-reaching; and
his stepson had conceived a violent dislike for him,
and lost no chance of showing it. The requirements
of his business pressed heavily upon him, and Mr Wace
does not think that he was altogether free from occasional
intemperance. He had begun life in a comfortable
position, he was a man of fair education, and he suffered,
for weeks at a stretch, from melancholia and insomnia.
Afraid to disturb his family, he would slip quietly from
104 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
his wife's side, when his thoughts became intolerable,
and wander about the house. And about three o'clock
one morning, late in August, chance directed him into
the shop.
The dirty little place was impenetrably black except
in one spot, where he perceived an unusual glow of light.
Approaching this, he discovered it to be the crystal egg,
which was standing on the corner of the counter towards
the window. A thin ray smote through a crack in the
shutters, impinged upon the object, and seemed as it
were to fill its entire interior.
It occurred to Mr Cave that this was not in accordance
with the laws of optics as he had known them in his
younger days. He could understand the rays being
refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its
interior, but this diffusion jarred with his physical
conceptions. He approached the crystal nearly, peering
into it and round it, with a transient revival of thr
scientific curiosity that in his youth had determined his
choice of a calling. He was surprised to find the light
not steady, but writhing within the substance of the egg,
as though that object was a hollow sphere of some
luminous vapour. In moving about to get different
points of view, he suddenly found that he had come
between it and the ray, and that the crystal none
the less remained luminous. Greatly astonished, he
lifted it out of the light ray and carried it to
the darkest part of the shop. It remained bright
for some four or five minutes, when it slowly
faded and went out. He placed it in the thin
streak of daylight, and its luminousness was almost
immediately restori d.
So far, at least, Mr Wace was able to verify the
remarkable story «>| Mr Cave, lb- has himself repeatedlv
held this crystal in a ray of light (which had to be of a
less diameter than one millimetre). And in a peri
THE CRYSTAL EGG 105
darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping,
the crystal did undoubtedly appear very faintly phos-
phorescent. It would seem, however, that the luminous-
ness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally
visible to all eyes; for Mr Harbinger — whose name will
be familiar to the scientific reader in connection with
the Pasteur Institute — was quite unable to see any light
whatever. And Mr Wace's own capacity for its
appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of
Mr Cave's. Even with Mr Cave the power varied very
considerably : his vision was most vivid during states
of extreme weakness and fatigue.
Now, from the outset, this light in the crystal
exercised a curious fascination upon Mr Cave. And it
says more for his loneliness of soul than a volume of
pathetic writing could do, that he told no human bein
of his curious observations. He seems to have been
living in such an atmosphere of petty spite that to
admit the existence of a pleasure would have been
to risk the loss of it. He found that as the dawn
advanced, and the amount of diffused light increased,
the crystal became to all appearance non-luminous.
And for some time he was unable to see anything
in it, except at night-time, in dark corners of the
shop.
But the use of an old velvet cloth, which he used as
a background for a collection of minerals, occurred to
him, and by doubling this, and putting it over his head
and hands, he was able to get a sight of the luminous
movement within the crystal even in the day-time. He
was very cautious lest he should be thus discovered by
his wife, and he practised this occupation only in the
afternoons, while she was asleep upstairs, and then
circumspectly in a hollow under the counter. And one
day, turning the crystal about in his hands, he saw
omething. It came and went like a flash, but it
io6 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
gave him the impression that the object had for
a moment opened to him the view of a wide
and spacious and strange country; and turning
it about, he did, just as the light faded, sec the
same vision again.
Now it would be tedious and unnecessary to state all
the phases of Mr Cave's discovery from this point.
Suffice that the effect was this : the crystal, being
peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the
direction of the illuminating ray, gave a clear and con-
sistent picture of a wide and peculiar countryside.
It was not dream-like at all : it produced a definite
impression of reality, and the better the light the more
real and solid it seemed. It was a moving picture :
that is to say, certain objects moved in it, but slowly in
an orderly manner like real things, and, according as
the direction of the lighting and vision changed, the
picture changed also. It must, indeed, have been like
looking through an oval glass at a view, and turning the
glass about to get at different aspects.
Mr Cave's statements, Mr Wace assures me, were
extremely circumstantial, and entirely free from any of
that emotional quality that taints hallucinatory impres-
sions. But it must be remembered that all the efforts
of Mr Wace to see any similar clarity in the faint
opalescence of the crystal were wholly unsuccessful,
try as he would. The difference in intensity of the
impressions received by the two men was very
great, and it is quite conceivable that what was a
view to Mr Cave was a mere blurred nebulosity to
Mr Wace.
The view, a^ Mr Cave described it, was invariably of
an extensive plain, and he seemed always to be looking
at it hum a considerable height, as if from a tower or a
mast. To the east and to the west the plain was bounded
at a remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which
THE CRYSTAL EGG 107
reminded him of those he had seen in some picture; but
what the picture was Mr Wace was unable to ascertain.
These cliffs passed north and south — he could tell the
points of the compass by the stars that were visible of a
night — receding in an almost illimitable perspective
and fading into the mists of the distance before they
met. He was nearer the eastern set of cliffs; on the
occasion of his first vision the sun was rising over them,
and black against the sunlight and pale against their
shadow appeared a multitude of soaring forms that Mr
Cave regarded as birds. A vast range of buildings
spread below him; he seemed to be looking down upon
them ; and as they approached the blurred and refracted
edge of the picture they became indistinct. There were
also trees curious in shape, and in colouring a deep
mossy green and an exquisite gray, beside a wide and
shining canal. And something great and brilliantly
coloured flew across the picture. But the first time Mr
Cave saw these pictures he saw only in flashes, his
hands shook, his head moved, the vision came and
went, and grew foggy and indistinct. And at first he
had the greatest difficulty in finding the picture again
once the direction of it was lost.
His next clear vision, which came about a week after
the first, the interval having yielded nothing but
tantalising glimpses and some useful experience, showed
him the view down the length of the valley. The view
was different, but he had a curious persuasion, which
his subsequent observations abundantly confirmed,
that he was regarding the strange world from exactly
the same spot, although he was looking in a different
direction. The long facade of the great building, whose
roof he had looked down upon before, was now receding
in perspective. He recognised the roof. In the front
of the facade was a terrace of massive proportions and
extraordinary length, and down the middle of the
ioR TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
terrace, at certain intervals, stood huge but very graceful
masts, bearing small shiny objects which reflected the
setting sun. The import of these small objects did
not occur to Mr Cave until some time after, as he was
describing the scene to Mr YVaee. The terrace over-
hung a thicket of the most luxuriant and graceful
vegetation, and beyond this was a wide grassy lawn
on which certain broad creatures, in form like beetles
but enormously larger, reposed. Beyond this again
was a richly decorated causeway of pinkish stone; and
beyond that, and lined with dense red weeds, and
passing up the valley exactly parallel with the distant
cliffs, was a broad and mirror-like expanse of water.
The air seemed full of squadrons of great birds, man-
oeuvring in stately curves; and across the river was a
multitude of splendid buildings, richly coloured and
glittering with metallic tracery and facets, among a
forest of moss-like and lichenous trees. And suddenly
something flapped repeatedly across the vision, like
the fluttering of a jewelled fan or the beating of a wing,
and a face, or rather the upper part of a face with very
large eyes, came as it were close to his own and as if on
the other side of the crystal. Mr Cave was so startled
and so impressed by the absolute reality of these eyes
that he drew his head back from the crystal to look
behind it. He had become so absorbed in watching
that he was quite surprised to find himself in the
cool darkness of his little shop, with its familiar
odour of methyl, mustiness, and decay. And os he
blinked about him, the glowing crystal laded and
went out.
Such were the first general impressions oi Ml Cave.
The story is curiously direct and circumstantial. From
the outset, when the valley first flashed momentarily on
his senses, his imagination was strangely affected, and
as he began to appreciate the details of the scene he
THE CRYSTAL EGG 109
saw, his wonder rose to the point of a passion. He went
about his business listless and distraught, thinking only
of the time when he should be able to return to his
watching. And then a few weeks after his first sight
of the valley came the two customers, the stress and
excitement of their offer, and the narrow escape of the
crystal from sale, as I have already told.
Now, while the thing was Mr Cave's secret, it remained
a mere wonder, a thing to creep to covertly and peep
at, as a child might peep upon a forbidden garden. But
Mr Wace has, for a 3 r oung scientific investigator, a
particularly lucid and consecutive habit of mind.
Directly the crystal and its story came to him, and he
had satisfied himself, by seeing the phosphorescence
with his own eyes, that there really was a certain
evidence for Mr Cave's statements, he proceeded to
develop the matter systematically. Mr Cave was only
too eager to come and feast his eyes on this wonderland
he saw, and he came every night from half-past eight
until half-past ten, and sometimes, in Mr Wacc's
absence, during the day. On Sunday afternoons, also,
he came. From the outset Mr Wace made copious
notes, and it was due to his scientific method that the
relation between the direction from which the initiating
ray entered the crystal and the orientation of the
picture were proved. And, by covering the crystal in a
box perforated only with a small aperture to admit the
exciting ray, and by substituting black holland for his
buff blinds, he greatly improved the conditions of the
observations; so that in a little while they were able
to survey the valley in any direction they desired.
So having cleared the way, we may give a brief
account of this visionary world within the crystal. The
things were in all cases seen by Mr Cave, and the method
of working was invariably for him to watch the crystal
and report what he saw, while Mr Wace (who as a
no TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
science student had learnt the trick of writing in the
dark) wrote a brief note of his report. When the crystal
faded, it was put into its box in the proper position and
the electric light turned on. Mr Wace asked questions,
and suggested observations to clear up difficult points.
Nothing, indeed, could have been less visionary and
more matter-of-fact.
The attention of Mr Cave had been speedily directed
to the bird-like creatures he had seen so abundantly
present in each of his earlier visions. His first impression
was soon corrected, and he considered for a time that
they might represent a diurnal species of bat. Then he
thought, grotesquely enough, that they might be
cherubs. Their heads were round and curiously human,
and it was the eyes of one of them that had so startled
him on his second observation. They had broad,
silvery wings, not feathered, but glistening almost as
brilliantly as new-killed fish and with the same subtle
play of colour, and these wings were not built on the
plan of bird-wing or bat, Mr Wace learned, but supported
by curved ribs radiating from the body. (A sort of
butterfly wing with curved ribs seems best to express
their appearance.) The body was small, but fitted with
two bunches of prehensile organs, like long tentacles,
immediately under the mouth. Incredible as it appeared
to Mr Wace, the persuasion at last became irresistible
that it was these creatures which owned the great quasi-
human buildings and the magnificent garden that made
the broad valley so splendid. And Mr Cave perceived
that the buildings, with other peculiarities, had no
doors, but that the great circular windows, which
opened freely, gave the creatures ind entrance.
They would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings
to a smallness almost rod-like, and hop into the interior.
But among them was a multitude of smaller-winged
creatures, like g. Lnd moths and flying
THE CRYSTAL EGG in
beftties, and across the greensward brilliantly-coloured
gigantic ground-beetles crawled lazily to and fro.
Moreover, on the causeways and terraces, large-headed
creatures similar to the greater winged flies, but wingless,
were visible, hopping busily upon their hand-like tangle
of tentacles.
Allusion has already been made to the glittering
objects upon masts that stood upon the terrace of the
nearer building. It dawned upon Mr Cave, after regard-
ing one of these masts very fixedly on one particularly
vivid day that the glittering object there was a crystal
exactly like that into which he peered. And a still
more careful scrutiny convinced him that each one in a
vista of nearly twenty carried a similar object.
Occasionally one of the large flying creatures would
flutter up to one, and folding its wings and coiling a
number of its tentacles about the mast, would regard
the crystal fixedly for a space — sometimes for as long
as fifteen minutes. And a series of observations, made
at the suggestion of Mr Wace, convinced both watchers
that, so far as this visionary world was concerned, the
crystal into which they peered actually stood at the
summit of the endmost mast on the terrace, and that on
one occasion at least one of these inhabitants of this
other world had looked into Mr Cave's face while he
was making these observations.
So much for the essential facts of this very singular
story. Unless we dismiss it all as the ingenious fabrica-
tion of Mr Wace, we have to believe one of two things :
either that Mr Cave's crystal was in two worlds at once,
and that while it was carried about in one, it remained
stationary in the other, which seems altogether absurd;
or else that it had some peculiar relation of sympathy
with another and exactly similar crystal in this other
world, so that what was seen in the interior of the one
in this world was, under suitable conditions, visible to
ri2 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
an observer in the corresponding crystal in the other
world; and vice versa. At present, indeed, we do not
know of any way in which two crystals could so come
en rapport, but nowadays we know enough to understand
that the thing is not altogether impossible. This view
of the crystals as en rapport was the supposition that
occurred to Mr Wace, and to me at least it seems
extremely plausible. . . .
And where was this other world? On this, also, the
alert intelligence of Mr Wace speedily threw light. After
sunset, the sky darkened rapidly — there was a very
brief twilight interval indeed — and the stars shone out.
They were recognisably the same as those we see,
arranged in the same constellations. Mr Cave recognised
the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and Sirius; so that
the other world must be somewhere in the solar system,
and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of
miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr Wace
learned that the midnight sky was a darker blue even
than our midwinter sky, and that the sun seemed a
little smaller. And there were two small moons! 'like
our moon but smaller, and quite differently marked,"
one of which moved so rapidly that its motion was
clearly visible, as one regarded it. These moons were
never high in the sky, but vanished as they rose : that
is, every time they revolved they were eclipsed becajise
they were so near their primary planet. And all this
answers quite completely, although Mr Cave did not
know it, to what must be the condition of things on Mars.
Indeed, it seems an exceedingly plausible conclusion
that peering into this crystal Mr Cave did actually see
the planet Mars and its inhabitants. And if that be the
i ase, then the evening star that shone so brilliantly in
the sky of that distant vision was neither more nor less
than our own familiar earth.
For a time the Martians — if thev were Martians — do
THE CRYSTAL EGG 113
not seem to have known of Mr Cave'- inspection. Once
or twice one would come to peer, and go away very
shortly to some other mast, as though the vision was
unsatisfactory. During this time Mr Cave was able to
watch the proceedings of these winged people without
being disturbed by their attentions, and although his
report is necessarily vague and fragmentary, it is
nevertheless very suggestive. Imagine the impression
of humanity a Martian observer would get who, after a
difficult process of preparation and with considerable
fatigue to the eyes, was able to peer at London from the
steeple of St Martin's Church for stretches, at longest,
of four minutes at a time. Mr Cave was unable to
ascertain if the winged Martians were the same as the
Martians who hopped about the causeways and terraces,
and if the latter could put on wings at will. He several
times saw certain clumsy bipeds, dimly suggestive of apes,
white and partially translucent, feeding among certain
of the lichenous trees, and once some of these fled
before one of the hopping, round-headed Martians. The
latter caught one in its tentacles, and then the picture
faded suddenly and left Mr Cave most tantalisingly in
the dark. On another occasion a vast thing, that Mr
Cave thought at first was some gigantic insect, appeared
advancing along the causeway beside the canal with
extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer Mr Cave
perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals
and of extraordinary complexity. And then, when he
looked again, it had passed out of sight.
After a time Mr Wace aspired to attract the attention
of the Martians, and the next time that the strange eyes
of one of them appeared close to the crystal Mr Cave
cried out and sprang away, and they immediately
turned on the light and began to gesticulate in a manner
suggestive of signalling. But when at last Mr Cave
examined the crystal again the Martian had departed.
T.U. H
H4 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
Thus far these observations had progressed in early
November, and then Mr Cave, feeling that the suspicions
of his family about the crystal were allayed, began to
take it to and fro with him in order that, as occasion
arose in the daytime or night, he might comfort himself
with what was fast becoming the most real thing in
his existence.
In December Mr Wace's work in connection with a
forthcoming examination became heavy, the sittings
were reluctantly suspended for a week, and for ten or
eleven days — he is not quite sure which — he saw nothing
of Cave. He then grew anxious to resume these in-
vestigations, and, the stress of his seasonal labours being
abated, he went down to Seven Dials. At the corner he
noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's window, and
then another at a cobbler's. Mr Cave's shop was closed.
He rapped and the door was opened by the stepson in
black. He at once called Mrs Cave, who was, Mr VVace
could not but observe, in cheap but ample widow's
weeds of the most imposing pattern. Without any very
great surprise Mr Wace learnt that Cave was dead and
already buried. She was in tears, and her voice was a
little thick. She had just returned from Highgate. Her
mind seemed occupied with her own prospects and the
honourable details of the obsequies, but Mr Wace was at
last able to learn the particulars of Cave's death. He
had been found dead in his shop in the early morning,
the day after his last visit to Mr Wace, and the
tal had been clasped in his stone-cold hands. His
face was smiling, said Mrs Cave, and the velvet cloth
from the minerals lay on the floor at his feet. He
must have been dead five or six hours when he was
found.
This came as a great shock to Wace, and he began
to reproach himself bitterly for having neglected the
plain symptoms of the old man's ill-health. 13ut his
THE CRYSTAL EGG 115
chief thought was of the crystal. He approached that
topic in a gingerly manner, because he knew Mrs Cave's
peculiarities. He was dumbfounded to learn that it
was sold.
Mrs Cave's first impulse, directly Cave's body had
been taken upstairs, had been to write to the mad clergy-
man who had offered rive pounds for the crystal, in-
forming him of its recovery; but after a violent hunt, in
which her daughter joined her, they were convinced of
the loss of his address. As they were without the means
required to mourn and bury Cave in the elaborate style
the dignity of an old Seven Dials inhabitant demands,
they had appealed to a friendly fellow-tradesman in
Great Portland Street. He had very kindly taken over
a portion of the stock at a valuation. The valuation
was his own, and the crystal egg was included in one of
the lots. Mr Wace, after a few suitable condolences, a
little offhandedly proffered perhaps, hurried at once to
Great Portland Street. But there he learned that the
crystal egg had already been sold to a tall, dark man in
gray. And there the material facts in this curious, and
to me at least very suggestive, story come abruptly to
an end. The Great Portland Street dealer did not know
who the tall dark man in gray was, nor had he observed
him with sufficient attention to describe him minutely.
He did not even know which way this person had gone
after leaving the shop. For a time Mr Wace remained
in the shop, trying the dealer's patience with hopeless
questions, venting his own exasperation. And at last,
realising abruptly that the whole thing had passed out of
his hands, had vanished like a vision of the night, he
returned to his own rooms, a little astonished to find
the notes he had made still tangible and visible upon
his untidy table.
His annoyance and disappointment were naturally
very great. He made a second call (equally ineffectual)
H6 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
upon the Great Portland Street dealer, and he resorted
to advertisements in such periodicals as were likely to
come into the hands of a bric-a-brac collector. He also
wrote letters to The Daily Chronicle and Nature, but
both those periodicals, suspecting a hoax, asked him to
reconsider his action before they printed, and he was
advised that such a strange story, unfortunately so bare
of supporting evidence, might imperil his reputation as
an investigator. Moreover, the calls of his proper work
were urgent. So that after a month or so, save for an
occasional reminder to certain dealers, he had reluctantly
to abandon the quest for the crystal egg, and from that
day to this it remains undiscovered. Occasionally,
however, he tells me, and I can quite believe him, he
has bursts of zeal, in which he abandons his more urgent
occupation and resumes the search.
Whether or not it will remain lost for ever, with the
material and origin- of it, are things equally speculative
at the present time. If the present purchaser is a
collector, one would have expected the inquiries of Mr
Wace to have reached him through the dealers. He has
been able to discover Mr Cave's clergyman and ' Oriental '
— no other than the Rev. James Parker and the young
Prince of Bosso-Kuni in Java. I am obliged to them for
certain particulars. The object of the Prince was simply
curiosity — and extravagance. He was so eager to buy
because Cave was so oddly reluctant to sell. It, is just as
possible that the buyer in the second instance was
simply a casual purchaser, and not a collector at all, and
the crystal e^,g, for all I know, may at the present
moment be within a mile of me, decorating a drawing-
room or serving as a paper-weight — its remarkable
functions all unknown. Indeed, it is partly with the
idea of such a possibility that I have thrown this
narrative into a form that will give it a chance of being
read by the ordinary consumer of fiction.
THE CRYSTAL EGG 117
My own ideas in the matter are practically identical
with those of Mr Wace. I believe the crystal on the
mast in Mars and the crystal egg of Mr Cave's to be in
some physical, but at present quite inexplicable, way
en rapport, and we both believe further that the ter-
restrial crystal must have been — possibly at some remote
date — sent hither from that planet, in order to give the
Martians a near view of our affairs. Possibly the
fellows to the crystals on the other masts are also on
our globe. No theory of hallucination suffices for the
facts.
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK
MIRACLES
A PANTOUM IN PROSE
It is doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my
own part, I think it came to him suddenly. Indeed,
until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did not believe
in miraculous powers. And here, since it is the most
convenient place, I must mention that he was a little
man. and had eyes of a hot brown, very erect red hair,
a moustache with ends that he twisted up, and freckles.
His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay — not
the sort of name by any means to lead to any expectation
of miracles — and he was clerk at Gomshott's. He was
greatly addicted to assertive argument. It was while
he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he
had his first intimation of his extraordinary powers.
This particular argument was being held in the bar of
the Long Dragon, and Toddy Beamish was conducting
the opposition by a monotonous but effective 'So you
say,' that drove Mr Fotheringay to the very limit of hi>
patience.
XJiere were present, besides these two. a very dusty
i yclist, landlord Cox, and Miss Maybridge, the perfectly
•• viable and rather portly barmaid of the Dragon.
Miss Maybridge was standing with her back to Mr
Fotheringay, washing the others were watching
him, more or less amused by the present ineffectiveness
of the assertive method. Goaded by the Torres Vedras
tactics of Mr Beamish, Mr Fotheringay determined to
118
THE .MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES iig
make an unusual rhetorical effort. 'Looky here, Mi-
Beamish,' said Mr Fotheringay. 'Let us clearly under-
stand what a miracle is. It's something contrariwise
to the course of nature, done by power of will,
something what couldn't happen without being
specially willed.'
'So you say,' said Mr Beamish, repulsing him.
Mr Fotheringay appealed to the cyclist: who had
hitherto been a silent auditor, and received his assent —
given with a hesitating cough and a glance at Mr
Beamish. The landlord would express no opinion, and
Mr Fotheringay, returning to Mr Beamish, received
the unexpected concession of a qualified assent to his
definition of a miracle.
'For instance,' said Mr Fotheringay, greatly en-
couraged. 'Here would be a miracle. That lamp, in
the natural course of nature, couldn't burn like that
upsy-down, could it, Beamish?'
' You say it couldn't,' said Beamish.
'And you?' said Fotheringay. 'You don*t mean to
say — eh? '
'No,' said Beamish reluctantly. 'No, it couldn't.'
'Very well,' said Mr Fotheringay. 'Then here comes
some one, as it might be me, along here, and stand
it might be here, and says to that lamp, as I might do,
collecting all my will -Turn upsy-down without break-
ing, and go on burning steady, and — Hallo ! '
It was enough to make any one say ' Hallo ! ' The
impossible, the incredible, was visible to them all. The
lamp hung inverted in the air, burning quietly with its
flame pointing down. It was as solid, as indisputable
as ever a lamp was, the prosaic common lamp of the
Long Dragon bar.
Mr Fotheringay stood with an extended forefinger
and the knitted brows of one anticipating a catastrophic
smash. The cyclist, who was sitting next the lamp,
120 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
ducked and jumped across the bar. Everybody jumped,
more or less. Miss May bridge turned and screamed.
For nearly three seconds the lamp remained still. A
faint cry of mental distress came from Mr Fotheringay.
' I can't keep it up/ he said, 'any longer.' He staggered
back, and the inverted lamp suddenly flared, fell against
the corner of the bar, bounced aside, smashed upon the
floor, and went out.
It was lucky it had a metal receiver, or the whole
place would have been in a blaze. Mr Cox was the
first to speak, and his remark, shorn of needless ex-
crescences, was to the effect that Fotheringay was a
fool. Fotheringay was beyond disputing even so
fundamental a proposition as that ! He was astonished
beyond measure at the thing that had occurred. The
subsequent conversation threw absolutely no light on the
matter so far as Fotheringay was concerned; the
general opinion not only followed Mr Cox very closely
but very vehemently. Every one accused Fotheringay
of a sill\- trick, and presented him to himself as a foolish
destroyer of comfort and security- His mind was in
a tornado of perplexity, he was himself inclined to agree
with them, and he made a remarkably ineffectual
opposition to the proposal of his departure.
He went home flushed and heated, coat-collar
crumpled, eyes smarting, and ears red. He watched each
of the ten street lamps nervously as he passed it. It
was only when he found himself alone in his little
bedroom in Church Row that he was able to grapple
eriously with his memories of the occurrence, and ask,
1 What on earth happened ? '
He had removed his coat and boots, and was sitting
oil the bed with his hands in his pockets repeating the
text of his defence for the seventeenth time, '/ didn't
want the confounded thing to upset/ when it occurred
to him that at the precise moment he had said the
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 121
commanding words he had inadvertently willed the
thing he said, and that when he had seen the lamp in the
air he had felt that it depended on him to maintain it
there without being clear how this was to be done. He
had not a particularly complex mind, or he might have
stuck for a tune at that 'inadvertently willed/ em-
bracing, as it does, the abstrusest problems of voluntary
action; but as it was, the idea came to him with a
quite acceptable haziness. And from that, following,
as I must admit, no clear logical path, he came to the
tost of experiment.
He pointed resolutely to his candle and collected
his mind, though he felt he did a foolish thing. 'Be
raised up,' he said. But in a second that feeling
vanished. The candle was raised, hung in the air one
giddy moment, and as Mr Fotheringay gasped, fell
with a smash on his toilet-table, leaving him in dark;
save for the expiring glow of its wick.
For a time Mr Fotheringay sat in the darkness,
perfectly still. 'It did happen, after all,' he said.
'And 'ow I'm to explain it I don't know.' He sighed
heavily, and began feeling in his pockets for a ma
He could find none, and he rose and groped about the
toilet-table. 'I wish I had a match/ he said. He
resorted to his coat, and there was none there, and then
it dawned upon him that miracles were possible even
with matches. He extended a hand and scowled at it
in the dark. 'Let there be a match in that hand/ he
said. He felt some light object fall across his palm and
his ringers closed upon a match.
After several ineffectual attempts to light this, he
discovered it was a safety match. He threw it down.
and then it occurred to him that he might have willed
it lit. He did, and perceived it burning in the midst
of his toilet- table mat. He caught it up hastily, and
it went out. His perception of possibilities enlarged,
122 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candle-
stick. 'Here! you be lit,' said Mr Fotheringay, and
forthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a little
black hole in the toilet-cover, with a wisp of
smoke rising from it. For a time he stared from
this to the little flame and back, and then looked
up and met his own gaze in the looking-glass. By
this help he communed with himself in silence for
a time.
'How about miracles now?' said Mr Fotheringay
at last, addressing his reflection.
The subsequent meditations of Mr Fotheringay were
of a severe but confused description. So far, he could
see it was a case of pure willing with him. The nature
of his experiences so far disinclined him for any further
experiments, at least until he had reconsidered them.
But he lifted a sheet of paper, and turned a glass of
water pink and then green, and he created a snail,
which he miraculously annihilated, and got himself a
miraculous new tooth-brush. Somewhere in the small
hours he had reached the fact that his will-power must
be of a particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact
which he had indeed had inklings before, but no certain
assurance. The scare and perplexity of his first dis-
covery was now qualified by pride in this evidence of
singularity and by vague intimations of advantage.
He became aware that the church clock was striking
one, and as it did not occur to him that his daily
duties at Gomshott's might be miraculously dispensed
with, he resumed undressing, in order to get to bed
without further delay. A- he struggled to get his
shirt over his head, he was struck with a brilliant
idea. 'Let me be in bed,' he said, and found himself
so. 'Undressed,' he stipulated; and. finding the
sheets cold, added hastily, 'and in my nightshirt — no,
in a nice soft woollen nightshirt. Ah!' he said with
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 123
immense enjoyment. 'And now let me be comfortably
asleep. . . .'
He awoke at his usual hour and was pensive all
through breakfast-time, wondering whether his over-
night experience might not be a particularly vivid
dream. At length his mind turned again to cautious
experiments. For instance, he had three eggs for break-
fast; two his landlady had supplied, good, but shoppy,
and one was a delicious fresh goose egg, laid, cooked,
and served by his extraordinary will. He hurried off
to Gomshott's in a state of profound but carefully con-
cealed excitement, and only remembered the shell of
the third egg when his landlady spoke of it that night.
All day he could do no work because of this astonishing
new self-knowledge, but this caused him no incon-
venience, because he made up for it miraculously in his
last ten minutes.
As the day wore on his state of mind passed from
wonder to elation, albeit the circumstances of his
dismissal from the Long Dragon were still disagreeable
to recall, and a garbled account of the matter that had
reached his colleagues led to some badinage. It was
evident he must be careful how he lifted frangible
articles, but in other ways his gift promised more and
more as he turned it over in his mind. He intended
among other things to increase his personal property
by unostentatious acts of creation. He called into
existence a pair of very splendid diamond studs, and
hastily annihilated them again as young Gomshott
came across the counting-house to his desk. He was
afraid young Gomshott might wonder how he had come
by them. He saw quite clearly the gift required caution
and watchfulness in its exercise, but so far as he could
judge the difficulties attending its mastery would be no
greater than those he had already faced in the study of
cycling. It was that analogy, perhaps, quite as much
124 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
as the feeling that he would be unwelcome in the Long
Dragon, that drove him out after supper into the lane
beyond the gasworks, to rehearse a few miracles in
private.
There was possibly a certain want of originality in
his attempts, for, apart from his will-power, Mr Fother-
ingay was not a \ i ptional man. The miracle of
Moses' rod came to his mind, but the night was dark and
unfavourable to the proper control of large miraculous
snakes. Then he recollected the story of 'Tannhauser'
that he had read on the back of the Philharmonic
programme. That seemed to him singularly attractive
and harmless. He stuck his walking-stick — a very nice
Poona-Penang lawyer — into the turf that edged the
footpath, and commanded the dry wood to blossom. The
air was immediately full of the scent of roses, and by
means of a match he saw for himself that this beautiful
miracle was indeed accomplished. His satisfaction
was ended by advancing footsteps. Afraid of a prema-
ture discovery of his powers, he addressed the blossoming
stick hastily: 'Go back.' What he meant was
'Change back'; but of course he was confused. The
stick receded at a considerable velocity, and inconti-
nently came a cry of anger and a bad word from the
approaching person. 'Who are you throwing bramble^
at, you fool? ' cried a voice. 'That got me on the shin.'
'I'm sorry, old chap,' said Mr Fotheringay, and
then, realising the awkward nature of the explana-
tion, caught nervously at his moustache. He
saw Winch, one of the three Immering constables,
advancing.
'What d'yer mean by it?' asked the constable.
' Jl.illn! it's you, is it? The gent that broke the lamp
at the Long Dragon ! '
'I don't mean anything by it," said Mr Fotheringay.
'Nothing at all.'
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 125
'What dyer do it for then?'
'Oh, bother!' said Mr Fotheringay.
'Bother indeed ! D'yer know that stick hurt? What
d'yer do it for, eh?'
For the moment Mr Fotheringay could not think
what he had done it for. His silence seemed to irritate
Mr Winch. 'You've been assaulting the police, young
man, this time. That's what yon done.'
' Look here, Mr Winch,' said Mr Fotheringay,
annoyed and confused. 'I'm sorry, very. The fact
is '
'Well?'
He could think of no way but the truth. 'I was
working a miracle.' He tried to speak in an offhand
way, but try as he would he couldn't.
'Working a ! 'Ere, don't you talk rot. Working
a miracle, indeed ! Miracle ! Well, that's downright
funny ! Why, you's the chap that don't believe in
miracles. . . . Fact is, this is another of your silly
conjuring tricks — that's what this is. Now, I tell
you '
But Mr Fotheringay never heard what Mr Winch
was going to tell him. He realised he had given himself
away, flung his valuable secret to all the winds of
heaven. A violent gust of irritation swept him to
action. He turned on the constable swiftly and fiercely.
'Here,' he said, 'I've had enough of this, I have ! I'll
show you a silly conjuring trick, I will ! Go to Hades !
Go, now ! '
He was alone !
Mr Fotheringay performed no more miracles that
night, nor did he trouble to see what had become of
his flowering stick. He returned to the town, scared
and very quiet, and went to his bedroom. 'Lord!'
he said, 'it's a powerful gift — an extremely
powerful gift. I didn't hardly mean as much
126 .LES OF THE UNEXPECTED
as that. Not really. ... I wonder what Hades is
like ! '
He sat on the bed taking off his boots. Struck by a
happy thought he transferred the constable to San
Francisco, and without any more interference with
normal causation went soberly to bed. In the night he
dreamt of the anger of Winch.
The next day Mr Fotheringay heard two interesting
items of news. Some one had planted a most beautiful
climbing rose against the elder Mr Gomshott's private
house in the Lullaborough Road, and the river as far
as Rawling's Mill was to be dragged for Constable
Winch.
Mr Fotheringay was abstracted and thoughtful all
that day, and performed no miracles except certain
provisions for Winch, and the miracle of completing
his day's work with punctual perfection in spite of all
the bee-swarm of thoughts that hummed through his
mind. And the extraordinary abstraction and meekness
of his manner was remarked by several people, and
made a matter for jesting. For the most part he was
thinking of Winch.
On Sunday evening he went to chapel, and, oddly
enough, Mr Maydig, who took a certain interest in
occult matters, preached about 'things that are not
lawful.' Mr Fotheringay was not a regular chapel-goer,
but the system of assertive scepticism, to which I have
already alluded, was now very much shaken. The
tenor of the sermon threw an entirely new light on
these novel gifts, and he suddenly decided to consult
Mr Maydig immediately alter the service. So soon as
that was determined he found himself wondering why
he had not done so before.
Mr Mayi man with quite re-
markably long wrists ai I at a
request for a private conversation from a young man
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 127
whose carelessness in religious matters was a subject
for general remark in the town. After a few necessary
delays, he conducted him to the study of the manse,
which was contiguous to the chapel, seated him com-
fortably, and, standing in front of a cheerful fire —
his legs threw a Rhodian arch of shadow on the opposite
wall — requested Mr Fotheringay to state his business.
At first Mr Fotheringay was a little abashed, and
found some difficulty in opening the matter. 'You
will scarcely believe me, Mr Maydig, I am afraid' —
and so forth for some time. He tried a question at last,
and asked Mr Maydig his opinion of miracles.
Mr Maydig was still saying 'Well' in an extremely
judicial tone, when Mr Fotheringay interrupted again :
'You don't believe, I suppose, that some common sort
of person — like myself, for instance— as it might be
sitting here now, might have some sort of twist
inside him that made him able to do things by his
will.'
'It's possible,' said Mr Maydig. 'Something of the
sort, perhaps, is possible.'
'If I might make free with something here, I think
I might show you by a sort of experiment,' said Mr
Fotheringay. 'Now, take that tobacco-jar on the
table, for instance. What I want to know is whether
what I am going to do with it is a miracle or not. Just
half a minute, Mr Maydig, please.'
He knitted his brows, pointed to the tobacco- jar and
said : 'Be a bowl of vi'lets.'
The tobacco-jar did as it was ordered.
Mr Maydig started violently at the change, and
stood looking from the thaumaturgist to the bowl of
flowers. He said nothing. Presently he ventured to
lean over the table and smell the violets; they were
fresh-picked and very fine ones. Then he stared at
Mr Fotheringuy again.
128 TAT.ES OF THE UNEXPECTED
' How did you do that ? ' ho t i>ked.
Mr Fotheringay pulled his moustache. 'Just told
it — and there you are. Is that a miracle, or is it black
art, or what is it? And what do you thinks the matter
with me? That's what I wont to ask.'
'It's a most extraordinary occurrence.'
' And this day last week I knew no more that I could
d< i things like that than you did. It came quite sudden.
It's something odd about my will, I suppose, and that's
as far as I can see.'
'Is that — the only thing. Could you do other things
besides that ? '
'Lord, yes!' said Mr Fotheringay. 'Just anything.'
He thought, and suddenly recalled a conjuring entertain-
ment he had seen. 'Here !' he pointed, 'change into a
bowl of fish — no, not that — change into a glass bowl
full of water with goldfish swimming in it. That's
better ! You see that, Mr Maydig?'
'It's astonishing. It's incredible. You are either
a most extraordinary . . . But no '
'I could change it into anything/ said Mr Fotheringay.
'Just anything. Here ! be a pigeon, will you? '
In another moment a blue pigeon was fluttering
round the room and making Mr Maydig duck every
time it came near him. 'Stop there, will you?' said
Mr Fotheringay; and the pigeon hung motionless in
the air. 'I could change it back to a bowl of flowers,'
he said, and after replacing the pigeon on the table
worked that miracle. ' I expect you will want your
pipe in a bit/ he said, and restored the tobacco-
jar.
Mr Maydig had followed all these later changes in a
sort of ejaculatory silence. He stared at Mr Fotheringay
and in a very gingerly manner picked up the tobacco-
jar, examined it, replaced it on the table. ' Well /' was
the only expression of his feelings.
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 129
'Now, after that it's easier to explain what I came
about/ said Mr Fotheringay; and proceeded to a
lengthy and involved narrative of his strange experiences,
beginning with the affair of the lamp in the Long
Dragon and complicated by persistent allusions to
Winch. As he went on, the transient pride Mr Maydig's
consternation had caused passed away; he became the
very ordinary Mr Fotheringay of everyday intercourse
again. Mr May dig listened intently, the tobacco- jar in
his hand, and his bearing changed also with the course
of the narrative. Presently, while Mr Fotheringay
was dealing with the miracle of the third egg,
the minister interrupted with a fluttering, extended
hand.
1 It is possible,' he said. ' It is credible. It is amazing,
of course, but it reconciles a number of amazing diffi-
culties. The power to work miracles is a gift — a peculiar
quality like genius or second sight; hitherto it has come
very rarely and to exceptional people. But in this
case ... I have always wondered at the miracles of
Mahomet, and at Yogi's miracles, and the miracles of
Madame Blavatsky. But, of course Yes, it is
simply a gift ! It carries out so beautifully the arguments
of that great thinker'— Mr Maydig's voice sank —
'his Grace the Duke of Argyll. Here we plumb some
profounder law — deeper than the ordinary laws of
nature. Yes — yes. Go on. Go on ! '
Mr Fotheringay proceeded to tell of his misadventure
with Winch, and Mr Maydig, no longer overawed or
scared, began to jerk his limbs about and interject
astonishment. 'It's this what troubled me most,'
proceeded Mr Fotheringay; 'it's this I'm most mijitly
in want of advice for; of course he's at San Francisco —
wherever San Francisco may be — but of course it's
awkward for both of us, as you'll see, Mr Maydig. I
don't see how he can understand what has happened,
T.U. I
130 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
and I dare say he's scared and exasperated something
tremendous, and trying to get at me. I dare say he
keeps on starting off to come here. I send him back,
by a miracle, every few hours, when I think of it. And
of course, that's a thing he won't be able to understand,
and it's bound to annoy him; and, of course, if he takes
a ticket every time it will cost him a lot of money.
I done the best I could for him, but, of course, it's
difficult for him to put himself in my place. I thought
afterwards that his clothes might have got scorched,
you know — if Hades is all it's supposed to be — before
I shifted him. In that case I suppose they'd have
locked him up in San Francisco. Of course I willed
him a new suit of clothes on him directly I thought
of it. But, you see, I'm already in a deuce of a
tangle '
Mr May dig looked serious. ' I see you are in a tangle.
Yes, it's a difficult position. How you are to end it . . .'
He became diffuse and inconclusive.
'However, we'll leave Winch for a little and discuss
the larger question. I don't think this is a case of the
black art or anything of the sort. I don't think there
is any taint of criminality about it at all, Mr Fotheringay
— none whatever, unless you are suppressing material
facts. No, it's miracles — pure miracles — miracles, if I
may say so, of the very highest class.'
He began to pace the hearthrug and gesticulate,
while Mr Fotheringay sat with his arm on the table and
his head on his arm, looking worried. 'I don't see
how I'm to manage about Winch,' he said.
'A gift of working miracles — apparently a very
powerful gift,' said Mr May dig, 'will find a way about
Winch — never fear. My dear sir, you are a most
important man — a man of the most astonishing pos>i-
bilities. As evidence, for example ! And in other ways,
the thing; you maj do . . .'
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 131
'Yes, I've thought of a thing or two/ said Mr
Fotheringay. 'But — some of the things came a bit
twisty. You saw that fish at first? Wrong sort of
bowl and wrong sort of fish. And I thought I'd ask
some one.'
*A proper course,' said Mr Maydig, 'a very proper
course — altogether the proper course.' He stopped
and looked at Mr Fotheringay. 'It's practically an
unlimited gift. Let us test your powers, for instance.
If they really are . . . If they really are all they seem
to be.'
And so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of
the little house behind the Congregational Chapel, on
the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10, 1896, Mr Fotheringay,
egged on and inspired by Mr Maydig, began to work
miracles. The reader's attention is specially and
definitely called to the date. He will object, probably
has already objected, that certain points in this story
are improbable, that if any things of the sort already
described had indeed occurred, they would have been in
all the papers at that time. The details immediately
following he will find particularly hard to accept,
because among other things they involve the conclusion
that he or she, the reader in question, must have been
killed in a violent and unprecedented manner more
than a year ago. Now a miracle is nothing if not im-
probable, and as a matter of fact the reader was killed
in a violent and unprecedented manner in 1896. In
the subsequent course of this story that will become
perfectly clear and credible, as every right-minded and
reasonable reader will admit. But this is not the place
for the end of the story, being but little beyond the
hither side of the middle. And at first the miracles
worked by Mr Fotheringay were timid little miracles —
little things with the cups and parlour fitments, as
feeble as the miracles of Theosophists, and, feeble as
132 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
they were, they were received with awe by his col-
laborator. He would have preferred to settle the Winch
business out of hand, but Mr May dig would not let
him. But after they had worked a dozen of these
domestic trivialities, their sense of power grew, their
imagination began to show signs of stimulation, and
their ambition enlarged. Their first larger enterprise
was due to hunger and the negligence of Mrs Minchin,
Mr Maydig's housekeeper. The meal to which the
minister conducted Mr Fotheringay was certainly ill-
laid and uninviting as refreshment for two industrious
miracle-workers; but they were seated, and Mr Maydig
was descanting in sorrow rather than in anger upon
his housekeeper's shortcomings, before it occurred to
Mr Fotheringay that an opportunity lay before him.
'Don't you think, Mr Maydig,' he said, 'if it isn't a
liberty, / '
'My dear Mr Fotheringay ! Of course ! No —
I didn't think.'
Mr Fotheringay waved his hand. 'What shall we
have?' he said, in a large, inclusive spirit, and, at Mr
Maydig's order, revised the supper very thoroughly.
'As for me,' he said, eyeing Mr Maydig's selection,
'I am always particularly fond of a tankard of stout
and a nice Welsh rarebit, and I'll order that. I ain't
much given to Burgundy,' and forthwith stout and
Welsh rarebit promptly appeared at his command.
They sat long at their supper, talking like equals, as
Mr Fotheringay presently perceived, with a glow of
surprise and gratification, of all the miracles they would
picsently do. 'And, by-the-by, Mr Maydig,' said Mr
Fotheringay. 'I might perhaps be able to help you —
in a domestic way.'
'Don't quite follow,' said Mr Maydig, pouring out
a glass of miraculous old Burgundy.
Mr Fotheringay helped himself to a second Welsh
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES r33
rarebit out of vacancy, and took a mouthful . 'I
was thinking/ he said, r I might be able (chum,
chum) to work (chum, chum) a miracle with
Mrs Minchin (chum, chum) — make her a better
woman.'
Mr Maydig put down the glass and looked doubtful.
'She's She strongly objects to interference, you
know, Mr Fotheringay. And — as a matter of fact —
it's well past eleven and she's probably in bed and
asleep. Do you think, on the whole '
Mr Fotheringay considered these objections. 'I
don't see that it shouldn't be done in her sleep.'
For a time Mr Maydig opposed the idea, and then
he yielded. Mr Fotheringay issued his orders, and a
little less at their ease, perhaps, the two gentlemen
proceeded with their repast. Mr Maydig was enlarging
on the changes he might expect in his housekeeper next
day, with an optimism that seemed even to Mr Fotherin-
gay's supper senses a little forced and hectic, when a
series of confused noises from upstairs began. Their
eyes exchanged interrogations, and Mr Maydig left the
room hastily. Mr Fotheringay heard him calling up to
his housekeeper and then his footsteps going softly up
to her.
In a minute or so the minister returned, his step light,
his face radiant. 'Wonderful ! ' he said, 'and touching !
Most touching ! '
He began pacing the hearthrug. 'A repentance — a
most touching repentance — through the crack of the
door. Poor woman ! A most wonderful change ! She
had got up. She must have got up at once. She had
got up out of her sleep to smash a private bottle of
brandy in her box. And to confess it too ! . . . But
this gives us — it opens — a most amazing vista of
possibilities. If we can work this miraculous change in
ft* . . .'
134 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'The thing's unlimited seemingly,' said Mr Fother-
ingay. 'And about Mr Winch '
'Altogether unlimited.' And from the hearthrug
Mr Maydig, waving the Winch difficulty aside, unfolded
a series of wonderful proposals — proposals he invented
as he went along.
Now what those proposals were does not concern
the essentials of this story. Suffice it that they were
designed in a spirit of infinite benevolence, the sort of
benevolence that used to be called post-prandial.
Suffice it, too, that the problem of Winch remained
unsolved. Nor is it necessary to describe how far that
series got to its fulfilment. There were astonishing
changes. The small hours found Mr Maydig and Mr
Fotheringay careering across the chilly market square
under the still moon, in a sort of ecstasy of thaumaturgy,
Mr Maydig all flap and gesture, Mr Fotheringay short
and bristling, and no longer abashed at his greatness.
They had reformed ever}' drunkard in the Parliamentary
division, changed all the beer and alcohol to water (Mr
Maydig had overruled Mr Fotheringay on this point);
they had, further, greatly improved the railway com-
munication of the place, drained Flinder's swamp,
improved the soil of One Tree Hill, and cured the vicar's
wart. And they were going to see what could be done
with the injured pier at South Bridge. 'The place,
gasped Mr Maydig, 'won't be the same place to-morrow.
How surprised and thankful every one will be ! ' And
} ust at that moment the church clock struck three.
'I say,' said Mr Fotheringay, 'that's three o'clock!
I must be getting back. I've got to be at business by
eight. And besides, Mrs Wimms '
' WVre only beginning,' said Mr Maydig. full of the
sweetness of unlimited power. ' We're only beginning.
Think of all the good we're doing. When people
wake '
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 135
'But ' said Mr Fotheringay.
Mr Maydig gripped his arm suddenly. His eyes were
bright and wild. 'My dear chap/ he said, 'there's no
hurry. Look' — he pointed to the moon at the zenith —
' Joshua ! '
Joshua ? ' said Mr Fotheringay.
'Joshua,' said Mr Maydig. 'Why not? Stop it.'
Mr Fotheringay looked at the moon.
'That's a bit tall,' he said, after a pause.
'WTiy not?' said Mr Maydig. 'Of course it doesn't
stop. You stop the rotation of the earth, you know.
Time stops. It isn't as if we were doing harm.'
'H'm!' said Mr Fotheringay. 'Well,' he sighed,
Til try. Here!'
He buttoned up his jacket and addressed himself to
the habitable globe, with as good an assumption of
confidence as lay in his power. 'Jest stop rotating,
will you?' said Mr Fotheringay.
Incontinently he was flying head over heels through
the air at the rate of dozens of miles a minute. In spite
of the innumerable circles he was describing per second
he thought; for thought is wonderful — sometimes as
sluggish as flowing pitch, sometimes as instantaneous
as light. H? thought in a second, and willed. 'Let me
come down safe and sound. Whatever else happens let
me down safe and sound.'
He willed it only just in time, for his clothes, heated
by his rapid flight through the air, were already beginning
to singe. He came down with a forcible, but by no
means injurious, bump in what appeared to be a mound
of fresh-turned earth. A large mass of metal and
masonry, extraordinarily like the clock-tower in the
middle of the market square, hit the earth near him,
ricochetted over him, and flew into stonework, bricks,
and cement, like a bursting bomb. A hurtling cow hit
one of the larger blocks and smashed like an egg. There
136 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
was a crash that made all the most violent crashes of
his past life seem like the sound of falling dust, and
this was followed by a descending series of lesser crashes.
A vast wind roared throughout earth and heaven, so
that he could scarcely lift his head to look. For a while
he was too breathless and astonished even to see where
he was or what had happened. And his first movement
was to feel his head and reassure himself that his
streaming hair was still his own.
' Lord ! ' gasped Mr Fotheringay, scarce able to speak
for the gale, 'I've had a squeak ! What's gone wrong*?
Storms and thunder. And only a minute ago a fine
night. It's Maydig set me on to this sort of thing.
What a wind ! If I go on fooling in this way I'm bound
to have a thundering accident ! . . .
' Where's Maydig ? '
' \Mrat a confounded mess everything's in ! '
He looked about him so far as his flapping jacket
would permit. The appearance of things was really
extremely strange. 'The sky's all right anyhow,' said
Mr Fotheringay. 'And that's about all that is all right.
And even there it looks like a terrific gale coming up.
And even there's the moon overhead. Just as it was
just now. Bright as midday. But as for the rest
Where's the village? Where's — where's any thing?
And what on earth set this wind a-blowing? / didn't
order no wind.'
Mr Fotheringay struggled to get to his feet in vain,
and after one failure, remained on all fours, holding
on. He surveyed the moonlit world to leeward, with
the tails of his jacket streaming over his head. 'There's
something seriously wrong,' said Mr Fotheringay.
'And what it is — goodness knows.'
Far and wide nothing was visible in the white glare
through the haze of dust that drove before a screaming
gale but tumbled masses of earth and heaps of inchoate
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 137
ruins, no trees, no houses, no familiar shapes, only a
wilderness of disorder, vanishing at last into the darkness
beneath the whirling columns and streamers, the
lightnings and thunderings of a swiftly rising storm.
Near him in the livid glare was something that might
once have been an elm-tree, a smashed mass of splinters,
shivered from boughs to base, and further a twisted
mass of iron girders — only too evidently the viaduct —
rose out of the piled confusion.
You see, when Mr Fotheringay had arrested the
rotation of the solid globe, he had made no stipulation
concerning the trifling movables upon its surface. And
the earth spins so fast that the surface at its equator is
travelling at rather more than a thousand miles an hour,
and in these latitudes at more than half that pace.
So that the village, and Mr Maydig, and Mr Fotherin-
gay, and everybody and everything had been jerked
violently forward at about nine miles per second — that
is to say, much more violently than if they had been
fired out of a cannon. And every human being, every
living creature, every house, and every tree — all the
world as we know it — had been so jerked and smashed
and utterly destroyed. That was all.
These things Mr Fotheringay did not, of course, fully
appreciate. But he perceived that his miracle had
miscarried, and with that a great disgust of miracles
came upon him. He was in darkness now, for the clouds
had swept together and blotted out his momentary
glimpse of the moon, and the air was full of fitful strug-
gling tortured wraiths of hail. A great roaring of wind
and waters rilled earth and sky, and peering under his
hand through the dust and sleet to windward, he saw
by the play of the lightnings a vast wall of water pouring
towards him.
' Maydig ! ' screamed Mr Fotheringay's feeble voice
amid the elemental uproar. ' Here ! — Maydig !
138 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
' Stop ! ' cried Mr Fotheringay to the advancing water.
'Oh, for goodness' sake, stop !
' Just a moment,' said Mr Fotheringay to the lightnings
and thunder. 'Stop jest a moment while I collect my
thoughts. . . . And now what shall I do?' he said.
'What shall I do? Lord ! I wish Maydig was about.
'I know,' said Mr Fotheringay. 'And for goodness'
sake let's have it right this time.'
He remained on all fours, leaning against the wind,
very intent to have everything right.
'Ah!' he said. 'Let nothing what I'm going to
order happen until I say "Off!" . . . Lord! I wish
I'd thought of that before!'
He lifted his little voice against the whirlwind, shout-
ing louder and louder in the vain desire to hear himself
speak. 'Now then ! — here goes ! Mind about that
what I said just now. In the first place, when all I've
got to say is done, let me lose my miraculous power,
let my will become just like anybody else's will, and
all these dangerous miracles be stopped. I don't like
them. I'd rather I didn't work 'em. Ever so much.
That's the first thing. And the second is — let me be
back just before the miracles begin; let everything be
just as it was before that blessed lamp turned up. It's
a big job, but it's the last. Have you got it? No
more miracles, everything as it was — me back in the
Long Dragon just before I drank my half-pint. That's
it ! Yes.'
He dug his lingers into the mould, closed his eyes,
and said 'Off!'
Everything became perfectly still. He perceived
that he was standing erect.
' So you say,' said a voice.
He opened his eyes. He was in the bar., of the Long
Dragon, arguing about miracles with Toddy Beamish.
He had a vague sense of some great thing forgotten
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 139
that instantaneously passed. You see that, except for
the loss of his miraculous powers, everything was back
as it had been, his mind and memory therefore were
now just as they had been at the time when this story
began. So that he knew absolutely nothing of all that
is told here — knows nothing of all that is told here to
this day. And among other things, of course, he still
did not believe in miracles.
'I tell you that miracles, properly speaking, can't
possibly happen,' he said, 'whatever yci like to hold.
And I'm prepared to prove it up to the hilt.'
'That's what you think,' said Toddy Beamish, and
'Prove it if you can.'
'Looky here, Mr Beamish,' said Mr Fotheringay.
'Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It's
something contrariwise to the course of nature done
by power of Will. . . .'
A -DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON
The man with the white face entered the carriage at
Rugby. He moved slowly in spite of the urgency of
his porter, and even while he was still on the platform
I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner
over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete
attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became
motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently
he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up
at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper.
Then he glanced again in my direction.
I feigned to read. I feared I had unwittingly
embarrassed him, and in a moment I was surprised to
find him speaking.
'I beg your pardon?' said I.
'That book/ he repeated, pointing a lean finger,
'is about dreams.'
'Obviously,' I answered, for it was Fortnum-Roscoe's
Dream States, and the title was on the cover.
He hung silent for a space as if he sought
words. 'Yes/ he said, at last, 'but they tell you
nothing.'
I did not catch his meaning for a second.
'They don't know,' he added.
I looked a little more attentively at his face.
'There are dreams/ he said, 'and dreams.'
That sort of proposition I never dispute.
'I suppose——' he hesitated. 'Do you «vei dream?
I mean vividly/
140
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 141
'I dream very little/ I answered. 'I doubt if I have
three vivid dreams in a year.'
' Ah ! ' he said, and seemed for a moment to collect
his thoughts.
'Your dreams don't mix with your memories?' he
asked abruptly. ' You don't find yourself in doubt :
did this happen or did it not ? '
' Hardly ever. Except just for a momentary hesitation
now and then. I suppose few people do.'
'Does he say ' he indicated the book.
'Says it happens at times and gives the usual ex-
planation about intensity of impression and the like to
account for its not happening as a rule. I suppose you
know something of these theories '
'Very little except that they are wrong.*
His emaciated hand played with the strap of the
window for a time. I prepared to resume reading,
and that seemed to precipitate his next remark.
He leant forward almost as though he would touch
me.
'Isn't there something called consecutive dreaming —
that goes on night after night ? '
'I believe there is. There are cases given in moist
books on mental trouble.'
'Mental trouble! Yes. I dare say there are. It's
the right place for them. But what I mean ' He
looked at his bony knuckles. 'Is that sort of thing
always dreaming? Is it dreaming? Or is it something
else? Mightn't it be something else? '
I should have snubbed his persistent conversation
but for the drawn anxiety of his face. I remember now
the look of his faded eyes and the lids red stained —
perhaps you know that look.
'I'm not just arguing about a matter of opinion,'
he said. 'The thing's killing me.'
' Dreams ? '
142 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'If you call them dreams. Night after night. Vivid !
— so vivid . . . this ' (he indicated the landscape
that went streaming by the window) 'seems unreal in
comparison ! I can scarcely remember who I am, what
business I am on . . .'
He paused. ' Even now '
' The dream is always the same — do you mean ? ' I
asked.
'It's over.'
' You mean ? '
'I died.'
'Died?'
'Smashed and killed, and now so much of me as
that dream was is dead. Dead for ever. I dreamt I
was another man, you know, living in a different part
of the world and in a different time. I dreamt that
night after night. Night after night I woke into that
other life. Fresh scenes and fresh happenings — until
I came upon the last '
' When vou died ? '
'When I died.'
'And since then '
'No,' he said. 'Thank God! that was the end of
the dream. . . .'
It was clear I was in for this dream. And, after all,
I had an hour before me, the light was fading fast, and
Fortnum-Roscoe has a dreary way with him. 'Living
in a different time,' I said: 'do you mean in some
different age?'
'Yes.'
'Past?'
'No, to come — to come.'
' The year three thousand, for example ? '
'I don't know what year it was. I did when I was
asleep, when I was dreaming, that is, but not now —
not now that I am awake. There's a lot of things I
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 143
have forgotten since I woke out of these dreams, though
I knew them at the time when I was — I suppose it was
dreaming. They called the year differently from our
way of calling the year. . . . What did they call it?'
He put his hand to his forehead. 'No,' said he, 'I
forget.'
He sat smiling weakly. For a moment I feared he
did not mean to tell me his dream. As a rule, I hate
people who tell their dreams, but this struck me differ-
ently. I proffered assistance even. 'It began '
I suggested.
'It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up
in it suddenly. And it's curious that in these dreams
I am speaking of I never remembered this life I am
living now. It seemed as if the dream life was enough
while it lasted. Perhaps But I will tell you how
I find myself when I do my best to recall it all. I don't
remember anything clearly until I found myself sitting
in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. I had been
dozing, and suddenly I woke up — fresh and vivid — not
a bit dreamlike — because the girl had stopped fanning
me.'
'The girl?'
'Yes, the girl. You must not interrupt or you will
put me out.'
He stopped abruptly. 'You won't think I'm mad?'
he said.
'No,' I answered; 'you've been dreaming. Tell me
your dream.'
'I woke up, I say, because the girl had stopped
fanning me. I was not surprised to find myself there
or anything of that sort, you understand. I did not
feel I had fallen into it suddenly. I simply took it up
at that point. Whatever memory I had of this life,
this nineteenth-century life, faded as I woke, vanished
like a dream. I knew all about myself, knew that my
144 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
name was no longer Cooper but Hedon, and all about
my position in the world. I've forgotten a lot since I
woke — there's a want of connection — but it was all
quite clear and matter-of-fact then.'
He hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting
his face forward, and looking up to me appealingly.
'This seems bosh to you?'
' No, no ! ' I cried. ' Go on. Tell me what this loggia
was like.'
'It was not really a loggia — I don't know what to
call it. It faced south. It was small. It was all in
shadow except the semicircle above the balcony that
showed the sky and sea and the corner where the e;irl
stood. I was on a couch — it was a metal couch with
light striped cushions — and the girl was leaning over
the balcony with her back to me. The light of the
sunrise fell on her ear and cheek. Her pretty white
neck and the little curls that nestled there, and her white
shoulder were in the sun, and all the grace of her body
was in the cool blue shadow. She was dressed — how
can I describe it? It was easy and flowing. And
altogether there she stood, so that it came to me how
beautiful and desirable she was, as though I had never
seen her before. And when at last I sighed and raised
myself upon my arm she turned her face to me '
He stopped.
' I have lived three- and- fifty years in this world. I
e had mother, sisters, friends, wife and daughters —
all their faces, the play of their faces, I know. But the
face of this girl — it is much more real to me. I can
bring it back into memory so that I see it again — I could
draw it or paint it. And after all '
He stopped — but I said nothing.
'The face of a dream — the face of a dream. She was
beautiful. Not that beauty which is terrible, cold, and
worshipful, like the beauty of a saint; nor that beauty
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 145
that stirs fierce passions; but a sort of radiation, sweet
lips that softened into smiles, and grave gray eyes.
And she moved gracefully, she seemed to have part with
all pleasant and gracious things '
He stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden.
Then he looked up at me and went on, making no
further attempt to disguise his absolute belief in the
reality of his story.
'You see, I had thrown up my plans and ambitions,
thrown up all I had ever worked for or desired, for her
sake. I had been a master man away there in the north,
with influence and property and a great reputation, but
none of it had seemed worth having beside her. I had
come to the place, this city of sunny pleasures, with
her, and left all those things to wreck and ruin just to
save a remnant at least of my life. While I had been in
love with her before I knew that she had any care for
me, before I had imagined that she would dare — that
we should dare — all my life had seemed vain and hollow,
dust and ashes. It was dust and ashes. Night after
night, and through the long days I had lorged and
desired — my soul had beaten against the thing forbidden!
'But it is impossible for one man to tell another just
these things. It's emotion, it's a tint, a light that
comes and goes. Only while it's there, everything
changes, everything. The thing is I came away and left
them in their crisis to do what they could.'
'Left whom?' I asked, puzzled.
'The people up in the north there. You see— in this
dream, anyhow — I had been a big man, the sort of man
men come to trust in, to group themselves about.
Millions of men who had never seen me were ready to
do things and risk things because of their confidence in
me. I had been playing that game for years, that big
laborious game, that vague, monstrous political game
amidst intrigues and betrayals, speech and agitation.
T.u. K
146 TALES OF THE UxXEXPECTED
It was a vast weltering world, and at last I had a sort
of leadership against the Gang — you know it was called
the Gang — a sort of compromise of scoundrelly projects
and base ambitions and vast public emotional stupidities
and catch-words — the Gang that kept the world noisy
and blind year by year, and all the while that it was
drifting, drifting towards infinite disaster. But I can't
expect you to understand the shades and complications
of the year — the year something or other ahead. I had
it all — down to the smallest details — in my dream. I
suppose I had been dreaming of it before I awoke, and
the fading outline of some queer new development I
had imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes.
It was some grubby affair that made me thank God
for the sunlight. I sat up on the couch and remained
looking at the woman, and rejoicing — rejoicing that I
had come away out of all that tumult and folly and
violence before it was too late. After all, I thought,
this is life — love and beauty, desire and delight, are
they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague,
gigantic ends? And I blamed myself for having ever
sought to be a leader when I might have given my days
to love. But then, thought I, if I had not spent my
early days sternly and austerely, I might have wasted
myself upon vain and worthless women, and at the
thought all my being went out in love and tenderness
to my dear mistress, my dear lady, who had come at
last and compelled me — compelled me by her invincible
charm for me — to lay that life aside.
"'You are worth it," I said, speaking without intend-
ing her to hear; "you are worth it, my dearest one;
worth pride and praise and all things. Love ! to have
you is worth them all together." And at the murmur
of my voice she turned about.
"Come and see," she cried — I can hear her now —
"come and see the sunrise upon Monte Solaro."
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 147
1 1 remember how I sprang to my feet and joined her
at the balcony. She put a white hand upon my shoulder
and pointed towards great masses of limestone flushing,
as it were, into life. I looked. But first I noted the
sunlight on her face caressing the lines of her cheeks
and neck. How can I describe to you the scene we had
before us? We were at Capri '
'I have been there,' I said. 'I have clambered up
Monte Solaro and drunk vero Capri — muddy stuff like
cider — at the summit.'
' Ah ! ' said the man with the white face; ' then perhaps
you can tell me — you will know if this was indeed Capri.
For in this life I have never been there. Let me describe
it. We were in a little room, one of a vast multitude
of little rooms, very cool and sunny, hollowed out of
the limestone of a sort of cape, very high above the sea.
The whole island, you know, was one enormous hotel,
complex beyond explaining, and on the other side there
were miles of floating hotels, and huge floating stages
to which the flying machines came. They called it a
Pleasure City. Of course, there was none of that in
your time — rather, I should say, is none of that now.
Of course. Now ! — yes.
'Well, this room of ours was at the extremity of the
cape, so that one could see east and west. Eastward
was a great cliff — a thousand feet high perhaps, coldly
gray except for one bright edge of gold, and beyond it
the Isle of the Sirens, and a falling coast that faded and
passed into the hot sunrise. And when one turned to
the west, distinct and near was a little bay, a little beach
still in shadow. And out of that shadow rose Solaro,
straight and tall, flushed and golden-crested, like a
beauty throned, and the white moon was floating behind
her in the sky. And before us from east to west stretched
the many-tinted sea all dotted with little sailing-boats.
'To the eastward, of course, these little boats were
i 4 3 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
gray and very minute and clear, but to the westward
e little boats of gold — shining gold — almost like
little flames. And just below us was a rock with an arch
worn through it. The blue sea-water broke to green
and foam all round the rock, and a galley came gliding
out of the arch.'
'I know that rock,' I said. 'I was nearly drowned
there. It is called the Faraglioni.'
' Faraglioni? Yes, she called it that,' answered the
man with the white face. 'There was some story — but
that '
He put his hand to his forehead again. 'No,' he said,
'I forget that story.
'Well, that is the first thing I remember, the first
dream I had, that little shaded room and the beautiful
air and sky and that dear lady of mine, with her shining
arms and her graceful robe, and how we sat and talked in
half whispers to one another. We talked in whispers,
not because there was any one to hear, but because
there was still such a freshness of mind between us
that our thoughts were a little frightened, I think, to
find themselves at last in words. And so they went
softly.
'Presently we were hungry, and we went from our
apartment, going by a strange passage with a moving
floor, until we came to the great breakfast-room — there
was a fountain and music. A pleasant and joyful place
it was, with its sunlight and splashing, and the murmur
of plucked strings. And we sat and ate and smiled at
one another, and I would not heed a man who was
watching me from a table near by.
'And afterwards we went on to the dancing-hall.
But I cannot describe that hall. The place was enormous,
larger than any building you have ever seen — and in
one place there was the old gate of Capri, caught into
the wall of a gallerv high overhead. Light girders,
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON r 4 g
stems and threads of gold, burst from the pillars like
fountains, streamed like an Aurora across the roof and
interlaced, like — like conjuring tricks. All about the
great circle for the dancers there were beautiful figure,
strange dragons, and intricate and wonderful grotesques
bearing lights. The place was inundated with artificial
light that shamed the newborn day. And as we went
through the throng the people turned about and looked
at us, for all through the world my name and face were
known, and how I had suddenly thrown up pride and
struggle to come to this place. And they looked also
at the lady beside me, though half the story of how at
last she had come to me was unknown or mistold. And
few of the men who were there, I know, but judged me
a happy man, in spite of all the shame and dishonour
that had come upon my name.
'The air was full of music, full of harmonious scents,
full of the rhythm of beautiful motions. Thousands of
beautiful people swarmed about the hall, crowded the
galleries, sat in a myriad recesses; they were dressed in
splendid colours and crowned with flowers; thousand -
danced about the great circle beneath the white imagf -
of the ancient gods, and glorious processions of youths
and maidens came and went. We two danced, not the
dreary monotonies of your days — of this time, I mean
— but dances that were beautiful, intoxicating. And
even now I can see my lady dancing — dancing — joyouslv.
She danced, you know, with a serious face; she danced
with a serious dignity, and yet she was smiling at me
and caressing me — smiling and caressing with her
eyes.
'The music was different,' he murmured. 'It went —
I cannot describe it; but it was infinitely richer and
more varied than any music that has ever come to me
awake.
'And then — it \va* when we had done dancing —
150 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
a man came to speak to me. He was a lean, resolute
man, very soberly clad for that place, and already I
had marked his face watching me in the breakfasting
hall, and afterwards as we went along the passage I had
avoided his eye. But now, as we sat in a little alcove
smiling at the pleasure of all the people who went to and
fro across the shining floor, he came and touched me,
and spoke to me so that I was forced to listen.
And he asked that he might speak to me for a little
time apart.
'"No," I said. **J have no secrets from this lady.
What do you want to tell me?"
'He said it was a trivial matter, or at least a dry
matter, for a lady to hear.
'"Perhaps for me to hear," said I.
' He glanced at her, as though almost he would appeal
to her. Then he asked me suddenly if I had heard of a
great and avenging declaration that Gresham had made.
Now, Gresham had always before been the man next
to myself in the leadership of that great party in the
north. He was a forcible, hard, and tactless man, and
only I had been able to control and soften him. It was
on his account even more than my own, I think, that
the others had been so dismayed at my retreat. So this
question about what he had done re-awakened my old
interest in the life I had put aside just for a moment.
'"I have taken no heed of any news for many days,'
I said. "What has Gresham been saying?"
'And with that the man began, nothing loath, and I
must confess even I was struck by Gresham 's reckless
folly in the wild and threatening words he had used.
And this messenger they had sent to me not only told
me of Gresham's speech, but went on to ask counsel
and to point out what need they had of me. While he
talked, my lady sat a little forward and watched his
face and mine.
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 151
' My old habits of scheming and organising reasserted
themselves. I could even see myself suddenly returning
to the north, and all the dramatic effect of it. All that
this man said witnessed to the disorder of the partv
indeed, but not to its damage. I should go back stronger
than I had come. And then I thought of my lady. You
see — how can I tell you ? There were certain peculiarities
of our relationship — as things are I need not tell about
that — which would render her presence with me
impossible. I should have had to leave her; indeed. 1
should have had to renounce her clearly and openly,
if I was to do all that I could do in the north. And the
man knew that, even as he talked to her and me, knew
it as well as she did, that my steps to duty were — first,
separation, then abandonment. At the touch of that
thought my dream of a return was shattered. I turned
on the man suddenly, as he was imagining his eloquence
was gaining ground with me.
"What have I to do with these things now? " I said.
" I have done with them. Do you think I am coquetting
with your people in coming here? "
'"No," he said; "but "
'"Why cannot you leave me alone? I have done
with these things. I have ceased to be anything but a
private man."
'"Yes," he answered. "But have you thought? —
this talk of war, these reckless challenges, these wild
aggressions "
'I stood up.
'"No," I cried. "I won't hear you. I took count
of all those things, I weighed them — and I have come
away."
'He seemed to consider the possibility of persistence.
He looked from me to where the lady sat regarding us.
"War," he said, as if he were speaking to himself,
and then turned slowly from me and walked away.
:52 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'I stood, caught in the whirl of thoughts his appeal
had set going.
'I heard my lady's voice.
' "Dear," she said; " but if they have need of you "
'She did not finish her sentence, she let it rest there.
1 turned to her sweet face, and the balance of my mood
swayed and reeled.
'"They want me only to do the thing they dare not
do themselves," I said. " If they distrust Gresham they
must settle with him themselves."
'She looked at me doubtfully.
'"But war " she said.
'I saw a doubt on her face that I had seen before, a
doubt of herself and me, the first shadow of the dis-
ary that, seen strongly and completely, must drive u>
apart for ever.
'Now, I was an older mind than hers, and I could
y her to this belief or that.
'"My dear one," I said, "you must not trouble over
these things. There will be no war. Certainly there
will be no war. The age of wars is past. Trust me to
know the justice of this case. They have no right upon
me, dearest, and no one has a right upon me. I
have been free to choose my life, and I have chosen
this."
'"But war " she said.
' I sat down beside her. I put an arm behind her and
took her hand in mine. I set myself to drive that doubt
away — I set myself to fill her mind with pleasant thing
again. I lied to her, and in lying to her I lied also to
myself. And she was only too ready to believe me, only
too ready to forget.
'Very soon the shadow had gone again, and we were
hastening to our bathing-place in the Grotta del Bov<>
Marino, where it was our custom to bathe every day.
We swam and splashed one another, and in that buoyant
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 153
water 1 seemed to become something lighter and stronger
than a man. And at last we came out dripping and
rejoicing and raced among the rocks. And then I put
on a dry bathing-dress, and we sat to bask in the sun,
and presently I nodded, resting my head against her
knee, and she put her hand upon my hair and stroked
it softly and I dozed. And behold ! as it were with the
snapping of the string of a violin, I was awakening, and
I was in my own bed in Liverpool, in the life of to-day.
'Only for a time I could not believe that all these
vivid moments had been no more than the substance of
a dream.
'In truth, I could not believe it a dream, for all the
sobering reality of things about me. I bathed and
dressed as it were by habit, and as I shaved I argued
why I of all men should leave the woman I loved to go
back to fantastic politics in the hard and strenuou-
north. Even if Gresham did force the world back to
war, what was that to me ? I was a man, with the heart
of a man, and why should I feel the responsibility of r
deity for the way the world might go ?
'You know that is not quite the way I think about
affairs, about my real affairs. I am a solicitor, you
know, with a point of view.
'The vision was so real, you must understand, so
utterly unlike a dream, that I kept perpetually recalling
little irrelevant details; even the ornament of a book-
cover that lay on my wife's sewing-machine in the
breakfast-room recalled with the utmost vividness the
gilt line that ran about the seat in the alcove where I
had talked with the messenger from my deserted party.
Have you ever heard of a dream that had a quality like
that?'
'Like ?'
'So that afterwards you remembered little details
you had forgotten.'
154 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
I thought. I had never noticed the point before, but
he was righ*.
'Never,' I said. 'That is what you never seem to do
with dreams.'
'No,' he answered. 'But that is just what I did.
I am a solicitor, you must understand, in Liverpool,
and I could not help wondering what the clients and
business people I found myself talking to in my office
would think if I told them suddenly I was in love with
a girl who would be born a couple of hundred years or
so hence, and worried about the politics of my great-
great-great-grandchildren. I was chiefly busy that day
negotiating a ninety-nine-year building lease. It was a
private builder in a hurry, and we wanted to tie him in
every possible way. I had an interview with him, and
he snowed a certain want of temper that sent me to
bed still irritated. That night I had no dream.
Nor did I dream the next night, at least, to
remember.
'Something of that intense reality of conviction
vanished. I began to feel sure it was a dream. And
then it came again.
'When the dream came again, nearly four days later,
it was very different.-, I think it certain that four days
had also elapsed in the dream. Many things had
happened in the north, and the shadow of them was back
again between us, and this time it was not so easily
dispelled. I began, I know, with moody musings. Why,
in spite of all, should I go back, go back for all the rest
of my days, to toil and stress, insults, and perpetual
dissatisfaction, simply to save hundreds of millions of
common people, whom I did not love, whom too often
I could not do other than despise, from the stress and
anguish of war and infinite misrule? And, after all, I
might fail. They all sought their own narrow ends, and
why should not I— why should not I also live as a
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 155
man? And out of such thoughts her voice summoned
me, and I lifted my eyes.
' I found myself awake and walking. We had come
out above the Pleasure City, we were near the summit of
Monte Solaro and looking towards the bay. It was the
late afternoon and very clear. Far away to the left
Ischia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky, and
Naples was coldly white against the hills, and before us
was Vesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering
at last towards the south, and the ruins of Torre
dell' Annunziata and Castellammare glittering and
near.'
I interrupted suddenly : ' You have been to Capri, of
course ? '
'Only in this dream,' he said, 'only in this dream.
All across the bay beyond Sorrento were the floating
palaces of the Pleasure City moored and chained. And
northward were the broad floating stages that received
the aeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell out of the sky every
afternoon, each bringing its thousands of pleasure-
seekers from the uttermost parts of the earth to Capri
and its delights. All these things, I say, stretched
below.
' But we noticed them only incidentally because of an
unusual sight that evening had to show. Five war
aeroplanes that had long slumbered useless in the
distant arsenals of the Rhine-mouth were manoeuvring
now in the eastward sky. Gresham had astonished the
world by producing them and others, and sending them
to circle here and there. It was the threat material in
the great game of bluff he was playing, and it had taken
even me by surprise. He was one of those incredibly
stupid, energetic people who seem sent by heaven to
create disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed
so wonderfully like capacity ! But he had no imagination,
no invention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will
156 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
and a mad faith in his stupid idiot "luck" to pull him
through. I remember how we stood out upon the head-
land watching the squadron circling far away, and how
I weighed the full meaning of the sight, seeing clearly
the way things must go. And even then it was not too
late. I might have gone back, I think, and saved the
world. The people of the north would follow me, 1
knew, granted only that in one thing I respected their
moral standards. The east and south would trust me
as they would trust no other northern man. And I
knew I had only to put it to her and she would have let
me go. . . . Not because she did not love me !
'Only I did not want to go; my will was all the other
way about. I had so newly thrown off the incubus of
responsibility : I was still so fresh a renegade from duty
that the daylight clearness of what I ought to do had no
power at all to touch my will. My will was to live, to
gather pleasures, and make my dear lady happy. But
though this sense of vast neglected duties had no power to
draw me, it could make me silent and preoccupied, it
robbed the days I had spent of half their brightness and
roused me into dark meditations in the silence of the
night. And as I stood and watched Gresham's aeroplanes
sweep to and fro — those birds of infinite ill omen — she
stood beside me, watching me, perceiving the trouble
indeed, but not perceiving it clearly — her eyes question-
ing my face, her expression shaded with perplexity .
Her face was gray because the sunset was fading out
of the sky. It was no fault of hers that she held me.
She had asked me to ^o from her. and again in the night-
time and with tears she had asked me to go.
'At last it was the sense of her that roused me from
my mood. I turned upon her suddenly and challenged
her to race down the mountain slopes. "No," she said,
as if I jarred with her gravity, but 1 was resolved to end
that gravity and made her run — no one can be very gray
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 157
and sad who is out of breath — and when she stumbled I
ran with my hand beneath her arm. We ran down past
a couple of men, who turned back staring in astonishment
at my behaviour — they must have recognised my face.
And half-way down the slope came a tumult in the air —
clang-clank, clang-clank — and we stopped, and presently
over the hill-crest those war things came flying one
behind the other.'
The man seemed hesitating on the verge of a descrip-
tion.
'What were they like?' I asked.
'They had never fought,' he said. 'They were just
like our ironclads are nowadays; they had never fought.
No one knew what they might do, with excited men
inside them; few even cared to speculate. They were
great driving things shaped like spear-heads without a
shaft, with a propeller in the place of the shaft ?
'Steel?'
'Not steel.'
' Aluminium ? '
'No, no, nothing of that sort. An alloy that was very
common — as common as brass, for example. It was
called — let me see ' He squeezed his forehead with
the fingers of one hand. 'I am forgetting everything,'
he said.
' And they carried guns ? '
'Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired
the guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to
speak, and rammed with the beak. That was the
theory, you know, but they had never been fought.
No one could tell exactly what was going to happen.
And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine to go whirling
through the air like a flight of young swallows, swift
and easy. I guess the captains tried not to think too
clearly what the real thing would be like. And these
flying war machines, you know, were only one sort of
158 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
the endless war contrivances that had been invented
and had fallen into abeyance during the long peace.
There were all sorts of these things that people were
routing out and furbishing up; infernal things, silly
things; things that had never been tried; big engines,
terrible explosives, great guns. You know the silly
way of these ingenious sort of men who make these
things; they turn 'em out as beavers build darns, and
with no more sense of the rivers they're going to divert
and the lands they're going to flood !
'As we went down the winding stepway to our hotel
again in the twilight I foresaw it all : I saw how clearly
and inevitably things were driving for war in Gresham's
silly, violent hands, and I had some inkling of what
war was bound to be under these new conditions. And
even then, though I knew it was drawing near the limit
of my opportunity, I could find no will to go back.'
He sighed.
'That was my last chance.
' We did not go into the city until the sky was full of
stars, so we walked out upon the high terrace, to and fro,
and — she counselled me to go back.
' "My dearest," she said, and her sweet face looked up
to me, 'this is Death. This life you lead is Death. Go
back to them, go back to your duty "
'She began to weep, saying between her sobs, and
clinging to my arm as she said it, "Go back — go back.'
'Then suddenly she fell mute, and glancing down at
her face, I read in an instant the thing she had
thought to do. It was one of those moments when
one sees.
'"No!" I said.
'"No?" she asked, in surprise, and I think a little
fearful at the answer to her thought.
'"Nothing," I said, "shall send me back. Nothing !
1 have chosen. Love, I have chosen, and the world
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 159
must go. Whatever happens, I will live this life — I
will live for you ! It — nothing shall turn me aside;
nothing, my dear one. Even if you died — even if you
died "
'"Yes?" she murmured, softly.
'"Then — I also would die."
'And before she could speak again I began to talk,
talking eloquently — as I could do in that life — talking to
exalt love, to make the life we were living seem heroic
and glorious; and the thing I was deserting something
hard and enormously ignoble that it was a fine thing to
set aside. I bent all my mind to throw that glamour
upon it, seeking not only to convert her but myself to
that. We talked, and she clung to me, torn too between
all that she deemed noble and all that she knew was
sweet. And at last I did make it heroic, made all the
thickening disaster of the world only a sort of glorious
setting to our unparalleled love, and we two poor foolish
souls strutted there at last, clad in that splendid delusion,
drunken rather with that glorious delusion, under the
still stars.
'And so my moment passed.
' It was my last chance. Even as we went to and fro
there, the leaders of the south and east were gathering
their resolve, and the hot answer that shattered Gresham's
blurring for ever took shape and waited. And all over
Asia, and the ocean, and the south, the air and the wires
were throbbing with their warnings to prepare — prepare.
'No one living, you know, knew what war was; no
one could imagine, with all these new inventions, what
horror war might bring. I believe most people still
believed it would be a matter of bright uniforms and
shouting charges and triumphs and flags and bands —
in a time when half the world drew its food-supply from
regions ten thousand miles away '
The man with the white face paused. I glanced at
i6o TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
him, and his face was intent on the floor of the carriage.
A little railway station, a string of loaded trucks, a
signal-box, and the back of a cottage shot by the carriage
window, and a bridge passed with a clap of noise, echoing
the tumult of the train.
'After that,' he said, 'I dreamt often. For three
weeks of nights that dream was my life. And the worst
of it was there were nights when I could not dream, when
I lay tossing on a bed in this accursed life; and there
— somewhere lost to me — things were happening —
momentous, terrible things. ... I lived at nights —
my days, my waking days, this life I am living now,
became a faded, far-away dream, a drab setting, the
cover of the book.'
He thought.
' I could tell you all, tell you every little thing in the
dream, but as to what I did in the daytime — no. I
could not tell — I do not remember. My memory — my
memory has gone. The business of life slips from me '
He leant forward, and pressed his hands upon hii eyes.
For a long time he said nothing.
'And then?' said I.
'The war burst like a hurricane.'
He stared before him at unspeakable than gs.
'And then?' I urged again.
' One touch of unreality,' he said, in the low tone of a
man who speaks to himself, 'and they would have been
nightmares. But they were not nightmares — they were
not nightmares. No I '
He was silent for so long that it dawned upon me that
there was a danger of losing the rest of the story. But
he went on talking again in the same tone of questioning
self-communion.
'What was there to do but flight? I had not thought
the war would touch Capri — I had seemed to see Capri
as being out of it all, as the contrast to it all; but two
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON ioi
nights after the whole place was shouting and bawling,
every woman almost and every other man wore a badge
— Gresham's badge — and there was no music but a
jangling war-song over and over again, and everywhere
men enlisting, and in the dancing halls they were drilling.
The whole island was a- whirl with rumours; it was said,
again and again, that fighting had begun. I had not
expected this. I had seen so little of the life of pleasure
that I had failed to reckon with this violence of the
amateurs. And as for me, I was out of it. I was like a
man who might have prevented the firing of a magazine.
The time had gone. I was no one; the vainest stripling
with a badge counted for more than I. The crowd
jostled us and bawled in our ears; that accursed song
deafened us; a woman shrieked at my lady because no
badge was on her, and we two went back to our own
place again, ruffled and insulted — my lady white and
silent, and I a-quiver with rage. So furious was I, I
cculd have quarrelled with her if I could have found one
shade of accusation in her eyes.
'All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked
up and down our rock cell, and outside was the darkling
sea and a light to the southward that flared and passed
and came again.
' " We must get out of this place," I said over and over.
I have made my choice, and I will have no hand in
these troubles. I will have nothing of this war. We
have taken our lives out of all these things. This is no
refuge for us. Let us go."
' And the next day we were already in flight from the
war that covered the world.
'And all the rest was Flight — all the rest was Flight.'
He mused darkly.
' How much was there of it ? '
He made no answer.
'How many days? '
T.U. T
i6* TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
His face was white and drawn and his hands were
clenched. He took no heed of my curiosity.
I tried to draw him back to his story with questions.
' Where did you go ? ' I said.
'When?'
'When you left Capri.'
'South-west,' he said, and glanced at me for a second.
'We went in a boat.'
' But I should have thought an aeroplane ? '
'They had been seized.'
I questioned him no more. Presently I thought he was
beginning again. He broke out in an argumentative
monotone : —
'But why should it be? If, indeed, this battle, this
slaughter and stress, is life, why have we this craving for
pleasure and beauty? If there is no refuge, if there is
no place of peace, and if all our dreams of quiet places
are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams?
Surely it was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions,
had brought us to this; it was love had isolated us.
Love had come to me with her eyes and robed in her
beauty, more glorious than all else in life, in the very
shape and colour of life, and summoned me away. I had
silenced all the voices, I had answered all the questions —
I had come to her. And suddenly there was nothing
but War and Death ! '
I had an inspiration. 'After all,' I said, 'it could have
been only a dream.'
' A dream ! ' he cried, naming upon me, ' a dream —
when, even now '
For the first time he became animated. A faint flush
crept into his cheek. He raised his open hand and
clenched it, and dropped it to his knee. He spoke,
looking away from me, and for all the rest of the time he
looked away. 'We are but phantoms,' he said, 'and
the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud shadows
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 163
and wills of straw that eddy in the wind ; the days pass,
use and wont carry us through as a train carries the
shadow of its lights — so be it? But one thing is real
and certain, one thing is no dream stuff, but eternal and
enduring. It is the centre of my life, and all other
things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I
loved her, that woman of a dream. And she and I are
dead together !
' A dream ! How can it be a dream, when it drenched
a living life with unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all
that I have lived for and cared for worthless and un-
meaning ?
'Until that very moment when she was killed I
believe we had still a chance of getting away,' he said.
1 All through the night and morning that we sailed across
the sea from Capri to Salerno we talked of escape. We
were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope
for the life together we should lead, out of it all, out of
the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions,
the empty, arbitrary "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not"
of the world. We were uplifted, as though our quest
was a holy thing, as though love for one another was
a mission. . . .
' Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that
great rock Capri — already scarred and gashed by the
gun emplacements and hiding-places that were to make
it a fastness — we reckoned nothing of the imminent
slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about
in puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst
the gray; but, indeed, I made a text of that and talked.
There, you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its
scars, with its countless windows and arches and ways,
tier upon tier, for a thousand feet, a vast carving of
gray, broken by vine-clad terraces, and lemon and
orange groves, and masses of agave and prickly pear,
and puffs of almond blossom. And out under the
1 64 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
archway that is built over the Piccola Marina other boats
were coming; and as we came round the cape and
within sight of the mainland, another little string of
boats came into view, driving before the wind towards
the south-west. In a little while a multitude had come
out, the remoter just little specks of ultramarine in the
shadow of the eastward cliff.
'"It is love and reason," I said, "fleeing from all this
madness of war."
'And though we presently saw a squadron of aero-
planes flying across the southern sky we did not heed it.
There it was — a line of little dots in the sky — and then
more, dotting the south-eastern horizon, and then still
more, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with
blue specks. Now they were all thin little strokes of
blue, and now one and now a multitude would heel and
catch the sun and become short flashes of light. They
came, rising and falling, and growing larger, like some
huge flight of gulls or rooks or such-like birds, moving
with a marvellous uniformity, and ever as they drew
nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. The
southward wing flung itself in an arrow-headed cloud
athwart the sun. And then suddenly they swept round
to the eastward and streamed eastward, growing
smaller and smaller and clearer and clearer again until
they vanished from the sky. And after that we noted
to the northward, and very high, Gresham's fighting
machines hanging high over Naples like an evening
swarm of gnats.
'It seemed to have no more to do with us than a
flight of birds.
'Even the mutter of guns far away in the south-east
seemed to us to signify nothing. . . .
'Each day, each dream after that, we were still
exalted, still seeking that refuge wheie we might live
and love. Fatigue had come upon us, pain and many
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 165
distresses. For though we were dusty and stained by
our toilsome tramping, and half starved, and with the
horror of the dead men we had seen and the flight of the
peasants — for very soon a gust of fighting swept up the
peninsula — with these things haunting our minds it still
resulted only in a deepening resolution to escape. Oh,
but she was brave and patient ! She who had never
faced hardship and exposure had courage for herself —
and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet, over a
country all commandeered and ransacked by the
gathering hosts of war. Always we went on foot. At
first there were other fugitives, but we did not mingl<-
with them. Some escaped northward, some were caught
in the torrent of peasantry that swept along the main
roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the
soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men
were impressed. But we kept away from these things:
we had brought no money to bribe a passage north, and
I feared for my lady at the hands of these conscript
crowds. We had landed at Salerno, and we had been
turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross
towards Taranto by a pass over Mount Alburno, but
we had been driven back for want of food, and so \\«
had come down among the marshes by Paestum, when
those great temples stand alone. I had some vague
idea that by Paestum it might be possible to find a boa'
or something, and take once more to sea. And there it
was the battle overtook us.
'A sort of soul-blindness had me. Plainly I could
that we were being hemmed in; that the great net of
that giant Warfare had us in its toils. Many times wk
had seen the levies that had come down from the North
going to and fro, and had come upon them in the
distance amidst the mountains making ways for the
ammunition and preparing the mounting of the guns.
Once we fancied they had fired at us, taking us for spies
166 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
— at any rate a shot had gone shuddering over us.
Several times we had hidden in woods from hovering
aeroplanes.
' But all these things do not matter now, these nights
of flight and pain. . . . We were in an open place near
those great temples at Pactum, at last, on a blank stony
place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolate and
so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to
the feet of its stems. How I can see it ! My lady was
sitting down under a bush resting a little, for she was
very weak and weary, and I was standing up watching
to see if I could tell the distance of the firing that came
and went. They were still, you know, lighting far
from each other, with these terrible new weapons that
had never before been used: guns that would carry
beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do
What they would do no man could foretell.
'I knew that we were between the two armies, and
that they drew together. I knew we were in danger, and
that we could not stop there and rest !
' Though all those things were in my mind, they were
in the background. They seemed to be affairs beyond
our concern. Chiefly, I was thinking of my lady. An
aching distress filled me. For the first time she had
owned herself beaten and had fallen a-weeping. Behind
me I could hear her sobbing, but I would not turn round
to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and
had held herself so far and so long tor me. It was well,
I thought, that she would weep and rest, and then we
would toil on again, for I had no inkling of the thing that
hung so near. Even now I can see her as she sat there,
her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark again the
deepening hollow of her cheek.
'"If we had parted," she said, "if I had let you
»
'"No," said 1. "Even now I do not repent. I will
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 167
not repent ; I made my choice, and I will hold on to the
end."
'And then
'Overhead in the sky flashed something and burst,
and all about us I heard the bullets making a noise like
a handful of peas suddenly thrown. They chipped the
stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks
and passed. . . .
He put his hand to his mouth and then moistened his
lips.
-At the flash I had turned about. . . .
'You know — she stood up
'She stood up, you know, and moved a step towards
As though she wanted to reach me-
me-
'And she had been shot through the heart.'
He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish
incapacity an Englishman feels on such occasions. I
met his eyes for a moment, and then stared out of the
window. For a long space we kept silence. When at
last I looked at him he was sitting back in his corner,
his arms folded and his teeth gnawing at his knuckles.
He bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it.
'I carried her,' he said, 'towards the temples, in my
arms — as though it mattered. I don't know why. They
seemed a sort of sanctuary, you know, they had lasted so
long, I suppose.
'She must have died almost instantly. Only — I
talked to her — all the way.'
Silence again.
' I have seen those temples,' I said abruptly, and
indeed he had brought those still, sunlit arcades of worn
sandstone very vividly before me.
' It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat
down on a fallen pillar and held her in my arms. . . .
Silent after the first babble was over. And after a little
i6S TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
while the lizards came out and ran about again, as
though nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing
had changed. ... It was tremendously still there, the
sun high and the shadows still; even the shadows of the
weeds upon the entablature were still — in spite of the
thudding and banging that went all aljout the sky.
' I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out
of the south, and that the battle went away to the west.
One aeroplane was struck, and overset and fell. I
remember that — though it didn't interest me in the
least. It didn't seem to signify. It was like a wounded
gull, you know — flapping for a time in the water. I
could see it down the aisle of the temple— a black thing
in the bright blue water.
'Three or four times shells burst about the beach,
and then that ceased. Each time that happened all the
lizards scuttled in and hid for a space. That was all
the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet
gashed the stone hard by — made just a fresh bright
surface.
'As the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed
gi eater.
'The curious thing,' he remarked, with the manner
of a man who makes a trivial conversation, 'is that I
didn't think — I didn't think at all. I sat with her in my
amis amidst the stones — in a sort of lethargy- stagnant.
'And I don't remember waking up. I don't remember
dressing that day. I know I found myself in my office,
with my letters all slit open in front of me, and how I was
struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing that in
reality I was sitting, stunned, in that Prestum Temple
with a dead woman in my arms. I read my letters like
a machine. I have forgotten what they were about.'
He stopped, and there was a long silence.
Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the
incline from Chalk Farm to Euston. I started at this
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 169
passing of time. I turned on him with a brutal question
with the tone of 'Now or never.'
' And did you dream again ? '
'Yes.'
He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was
very low.
'Once more, and as it were only for a few instants.
I seemed to have suddenly awa.kened out of a great
apathy, to have risen into a sitting position, and the
body lay there on the stones beside me. A gaunt body.
Not her, you know. So soon — it was not her. . . .
'I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only
I knew clearly that men were coming into the solitude
and that that was a last outrage.
'I stood up and walked through the temple, and
there came into sight — first one man with a yellow face.
dressed in a uniform of dirty white, trimmed with blue,
and then several, climbing to the crest of the old wall
of the vanished city, and crouching there. They were
little bright figures in the sunlight, and there they hung.
weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them.
'And further away I saw others, and then more at
another point in the wall. It was a long lax line of men
in open order.
'Presently the man I had first seen stood up and
shouted a command, and his men came tumbling down
the wall and into the high weeds towards the temple.
He scrambled down with them and led them. He
came facing towards me, and when he saw me he
stopped.
'At first I had watched these men with a mere
curiosity, but when 1 had seen they meant to come to
the temple I was moved to forbid them. I shouted to
the officer.
'"You must not come here," I cried, "/am here, I
am here with my dead."
170 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'He stared, and then shouted a question back to me
in some unknown tongue.
' I repeated what I had said.
'He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood
still. Presently he spoke to his men and came forward.
He carried a drawn sword.
'I signed to him to keep away, but he continued to
advance. I told him again very patiently and clearly :
"You must not come here. These are old temples, and
I am here with my dead."
' Presently he was so close I could see his face clearly.
It was a narrow face, with dull gray eyes, and a black
moustache. He had a scar on his upper lip, and he was
dirty and unshaven. He kept shouting unintelligible
things, questions perhaps, at me.
'I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the
time that did not occur to me. As I tried to explain to
him he interrupted me in imperious tones, bidding me,
I suppose, stand aside.
'He made to go past me, and I caught hold of him.
' I saw his face change at my grip.
'"You fool," I cried. "Don't you know? She is
dead!"
'He started back. He looked at me with cruel eyes.
I saw a sort of exultant resolve leap into them — delight.
Then suddenly, with a scowl, he swept his sword back —
so — and thrust.'
He stopped abruptly.
I became aware of a change in the rhythm of the
train. The brakes lifted their voices and the carriage
jarred and jerked. This present world insisted upon
itself, became clamorous. I saw through the steamy
window huge electric lights glaring down from tall masts
upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages
ing by, and then a signal-box, hoisting its constel-
n of green and red into the murky London twilight,
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON 171
marched after them. I looked again at his drawn
features.
'He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort
of astonishment — no fear, no pain — but just amazement,
that I felt it pierce me, felt the sword drive home into
mv body. It didn't hurt, you know. It didn't hurt
at all/
The yellow platform lights came into the field of
view, passing first rapidly, then slowly, and at last
stopping with a jerk. Dim shapes of men passed to
and fro without.
' Euston ! ' cried a voice.
' Do you mean ? '
'There was no pain, no sting or smart. Amazement
and then darkness sweeping over everything. The hot,
brutal face before me, the face of the man who had killed
me, seemed to recede. It swept out of existence '
'Euston!' clamoured the voices outside; 'Euston!'
The carriage door opened, admitting a flood of sound,
and a porter stood regarding us. The sounds of doors
slamming, and the hoof-clatter of cab-horses, and
behind these things the featureless remote roar of the
London cobble-stones, came to my ears. A truck-load
of lighted lamps blazed along the platform.
'A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and
spread and blotted out all things.'
' Any luggage, sir ? ' said the porter.
'And that was the end? ' I asked.
He seemed to hesitate. Then, almost inaudibly, he
answered, 'No.'
' You mean ? '
'I couldn't get to her. She was there on the other
side of the temple And then '
'Yes,' I insisted. 'Yes?'
'Nightmares,' he cried; 'nightmares indeed! My
God ! Great birds that fought and ture.'
THE NEW ACCELERATOR
rAlNLY, if ever a man found a guinea when he was
looking for a pin, it is my good friend Professor Gibberne.
I have heard before of investigators overshooting the
mark, but never quite to the extent that he has done.
He has really, this time at any rate, without any touch
of exaggeration in the phrase, found something to
revolutionise human life. And that when he was simply
seeking an all-round nervous stimulant to bring languid
people up to the stresses of these pushful days. I have
tasted the stuff now several times, and I cannot do
better than describe the effect the thing had on me.
That there are astonishing experiences in store for all
in search of new sensations will become apparent
enough.
Professor Gibberne, as many people know, is my
neighbour in Folkestone. Unless my memory plays
me a trick, his portrait at various ages has already
appeared in The Strand Magazine — 1 think late in 1890;
but I am unable to look it up because I have lent thai
volume to some one who has never sent it back. The
leader may, perhaps, recall the high forehead and the
ularly long black eyebrows that rive such a Mephisto-
phelian touch to his face. He occupies one of those
pleasant little detached houses in the mixed style that
make the western end of the Upper Sandgate Road so
interesting. His is the one with the Flemish gables
and the Moorish portico, and it is in the little room with
the mullioned bay window that he works when he is
i 7 z
THE NEW ACCELERATOR 173
down here, and in which of an evening we have so often
smoked and talked together. He is a mighty jester,
but, besides, he likes to talk to me about his work; he
is one of those men who find a help and stimulus in
talking, and so I have been able to follow the conception
of the New Accelerator right up from a very early stage.
Of course, the greater portion of his experimental work
is not done in Folkestone, but in Gower Street, in the
fine new laboratory next to the hospital that he has
been the first to use.
As every one knows, or at least as all intelligent people
know, the special department in which Gibberne has
gained so great and deserved a reputation among
physiologists is the action of drugs upon the nervous
system. Upon soporifics, sedatives, and anaesthetics he
is, I am told, unequalled. He is also a chemist of
considerable eminence, and I suppose in the subtle and
complex jungle of riddles that centres about the ganglion
cell and the axis fibre there are little cleared places of
his making, little glades of illumination, that, until he
sees fit to publish his results, arc still inaccessible to
every other living man. And in the last few years he
has been particularly assiduous upon this question of
nervous stimulants, anof already, before the discovery of
the New Accelerator, very successful with them. Medical
science lias to thank him for at least three distinct and
absolutely safe invigorators of unrivalled value to
practising men. In cases of exhaustion the preparation
known as Gibberne's B Syrup has, I suppose, saved
more lives already than any lifeboat round the
roast.
'But none of these little things begin to sati-fv me
yet/ he told me nearly a year ago. 'Either they
increase the central energy without affecting the nerves,
or they simply increase the available energy by lowering
the nervous conductivity; and all of them are unequal
174 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
and local in their operation. One wakes up the
heart and viscera and leaves the brain stupefied,
one gets at the brain champagne fashion, and does
nothing good for the solar plexus, and what I want —
and what, if it's an earthly possibility, I mean to
have — is a stimulant that stimulates all round, that
wakes you up for a time from the crown of your head
to the tip of your great toe, and makes you go two — or
even three — to everybody else's one. Eh? That's the
thing I'm after.'
'It would tire a man,' I said.
'Not a doubt of it. And you'd eat double or treble
— and all that. But just think what the thing would
mean. Imagine yourself with a little phial like this' —
he held up a little bottle of green glass and marked his
points with it — 'and in this precious phial is the power
to think twice as fast, move twice as quickly, do twice
as much work in a given time as you could otherwise
do.'
' But is such a thing possible ? '
'I believe so. If it isn't, I've wasted my time for a
year. These various preparations of the hypophosphites,
for example, seem to show that something of the sort
. . . Even if it was only one and a half times as fast it
would do.'
'It would do,' I said.
'If you were a statesman in a corner, for example,
time rushing up against you, something urgent to be
done, eh ? '
'He could dose his private secretary,' I said.
'And gain — double time. And think if you, for
example, wanted to finish a book.'
'Usually,' I said, 'I wish I'd never begun 'em.'
'Or a doctor, driven to death, wants to sit down and
think nut a case. Or a barrister- or a man cramming
lor an examination.'
THE NEW ACCELERATOR 175
'Worth a guinea a drop/ said I, 'and more — to men
like that.'
'And in a duel, again,' said Gibberne, 'where
it all depends on your quickness in pulling the
trigger.'
'Or in fencing,' I echoed.
'You see,' said Gibberne, 'if I get it as an all-round
thing, it will really do you no harm at all — except
perhaps to an infinitesimal degree it brings you nearer
old age. You will just have lived twice to other people's
once '
'I suppose,' I meditated, 'in a duel — it would be
fair?'
'That's a question for the seconds,' said Gibberne.
I harked back further. 'And you really think such a
thing is possible?' I said.
'As possible,' said Gibberne, and glanced at something
that went throbbing by the window,' as a motor-bus.
As a matter of fact '
He paused and smiled at me deeply, and tapped
slowly on the edge of his desk with the green phial. ' I
think I know the stuff. . . . Already I've got something
coming.' The nervous smile upon his face betrayed
the gravity of his revelation. He rarely talked of his
actual experimental work unless things were very near
the end. 'And it may be, it may be — I shouldn't be
surprised — it may even do the thing at a greater rate
than twice.'
' It will be rather a big thing,' I hazarded.
1 It will be, I think, rather a big thing.'
But I don't think he quite knew what a big thing it
was to be, for all that.
I remember we had several talks about the stuff after
that. 'The New Accelerator' he called it, and his tone
about it grew more confident on each occasion. Some-
times he talked nervously of unexpected physiological
176 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
results its use might have, and then he would get a
little unhappy; at others he was frankly mercenary,
and we debated long and anxiously how the preparation
might be turned to commercial account. 'It's a good
thing,' said Gibberne, 'a tremendous thing. I know
I'm giving the world something, and I think it only
reasonable we should expect the world to pay. The
dignity of science is all very well, but I think somehow
I must have the monopoly of the stuff for, say, ten
years. I don't see why all the fun in life should go to
the dealers in ham.'
My own interest in the coming drug certainly did not
wane in the time. I have always had a queer little
twist towards metaphysics in my mind. I have always
been given to paradoxes about space and time, and it
seemed to me that Gibberne was really preparing no
less than the absolute acceleration of life. Suppose a
man repeatedly dosed with such a preparation : he
would live an active and record life indeed, but he would
be an adult at eleven, middle-aged at twenty-five, and
by thirty well on the road to senile decay. It seemed
to me that so far Gibberne was only going to do for any
one who took his drug exactly what Nature has done for
the Jews and Orientals, who are men in their teens and
aged by fifty, and quicker in thought and act than we
are all the time. The marvel of drugs has always been
great to my mind; you can madden a man, calm a man,
make him incredibly strong and alert or a helpless log,
quicken this passion and allay that, all by means of
drugs, and here was a new miracle to be added to this
strange armoury of phials the doctors use ! But
Gibberne was far too eager upon his technical
points to enter very keenly into my aspect of the
question.
It was the 7th or 8th of August when he told me the
distillation t! rid decide his failure or success for
THE NEW ACCELERATOR 177
a time was going forward as we talked, and it was on
the 10th that he told me the thing was done and the
New Accelerator a tangible reality in the world. I met
him as I was going up the Sandgate Hill towards Folke-
stone — I think I was going to get my hair cut, and he
came hurrying down to meet me — I suppose he was
coming to my house to tell me at once of his success.
I remember that his eyes were unusually bright and his
face flushed, and I noted even then the swift alacrity of
his step.
'It's done,' he cried, and gripped my hand, speaking
very fast; 'it's more than done. Come up to my house
and see.'
'Really?'
' Really ! ' he shouted. ' Incredibly ! Come up and
see.'
' And it does — twice ? '
'It does more, much more. It scares me. Come up
and see the stuff. Taste it ! Try it ! It's the most
amazing stuff on earth.' He gripped my arm and,
walking at such a pace that he forced me into a trot,
went shouting with me up the hill. A whole char-a-
banc-iu\\ of people turned and stared at us in unison after
the manner of people in chars-a-hanc. It was one of
those hot, clear da}'s that Folkestone sees so much of,
every colour incredibly bright and every outline hard.
There was a breeze, of course, but not so much breeze
as sufficed under these conditions to keep me cool and
dry. I panted for mercy.
'I'm not walking fast, am I?' cried Gibberne, and
slackened his pace to a quick march.
'You've been taking some of this stuff,' I puffed.
'No,' he said. 'At the utmost a drop of water that
stood in a beaker from which I had washed out the last
traces of the stuff. I took some last night, you know.
But that is ancient history now.'
r.u. 1 m
178 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'And it goes twice?' I said, nearing his doorway in
a grateful perspiration.
' It goes a thousand times, many thousand times ! '
cried Gibberne, with a dramatic gesture, flinging open
his Early English carved oak gate.
' Phew ! ' said I, and followed him to the door.
'I don't know how many times it goes,' he said, with
his latch-key in his hand.
'And you '
' It throws all sorts of light on nervous physiology, it
kicks the theory of vision into a perfectly new shape
. . . Heaven knows how many thousand times. We'll
try all that after The thing is to try the stuff
now.'
'Try the stuff? ' I said, as we went along the passage.
'Rather,' said Gibberne, turning on me in his study.
' There it is in that little green phial there ! Unless you
happen to be afraid?'
I am a careful man by nature, and only theoretically
adventurous. I was afraid. But on the other hand,
there is pride.
'Well,' I haggled. 'You say you've tried it? '
'I've tried it,' he said, 'and I don't look hurt by it,
do I? I don't even look livery, and I feel '
I sat down. 'Give me the potion,' I said. 'If the
worst comes to the worst it will save having my
hair cut, and that, I think, is one of the most
hateful duties of a civilised man. How do you take
the mixture? '
'With water,' said Gibberne, whacking down a
carafe.
He stood up in front of his desk and regarded me in
his easy-chair; his manner was suddenly affected by a
touch of the Harley Street specialist. 'It's rum stuff,
you know,' he said.
I made a gesture with my hand.
THE NEW ACCELERATOR 179
'I must warn you, in the first place, as soon as you've
got it down to shut your eyes, and open them very
cautiously in a minute or so's time. One still sees.
The sense of vision is a question of length of vibration,
and not of multitude of impacts; but there's a kind of
shock to the retina, a nasty giddy confusion just at the
time if the eyes are open. Keep 'em shut.'
'Shut,' I said. 'Good !'
'And the next thing is, keep still. Don't begin to
whack about. You may fetch something a nasty rap
if you do. Remember you will be going several thousand
times faster than you ever did before, heart, lungs,
muscles, brain — everything — and you will hit hard
without knowing it. You won't know it, you know.
You'll feel just as you do now. Only everything in the
world will seem to be going ever so many thousand times
slower than it ever went before. That's what makes
it so deuced queer.'
'Lor,' I said. 'And you mean '
'You'll see,' said he, and took up a little measure.
He glanced at the material on his desk. 'Glasses,' he
said, 'water. All here. Mustn't take too much for the
first attempt.
The little phial glucked out its precious contents.
'Don't forget what I told you,' he said, turning the
contents of the measure into a glass in the manner of
an Italian waiter measuring whisky. ' Sit with the eyes
tightly shut and in absolute stillness for two minutes,'
he said. 'Then you will hear me speak.'
He added an inch or so of water to the little dose in
each glass.
'By-the-by,' he said, 'don't put your glass down.
Keep it in your hand and rest your hand on your knee.
Yes — so. And now '
He raised his glass.
'The New Accelerator,' I said.
1S0 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'The New Accelerator,' he answered, and wc
touched glasses and drank, and instantly I closed my
eyes.
You know that blank non-existence into which one
drops when one has taken 'gas.' For an indefinite
interval it was like that. Then I heard Gibberne telling
me to wake up, and I stirred and opened my eyes. There
he stood as he had been standing, glass still in hand. It
was empty, that was all the difference.
'Well?' said I.
'Nothing out of the way?'
'Nothing. A slight feeling of exhilaration, perhaps.
Nothing more.'
' Sounds ? '
• 'Things are still,' I said. 'By Jove! yes! They
are still. Except the sort of faint pat, patter, like rain
falling on different things. What is it?'
'Analysed sounds,' I think he said, but I am not
sure. He glanced at the window. 'Have you ever
seen a curtain before a window fixed in that way before ? '
I followed his eyes, and there was the end of the
curtain, frozen, as it were, corner high, in the act of
flapping briskly in the breeze.
'No,' said I; 'that's odd.'
'And here,' he said, and opened the hand that held
the glass. Naturally I winced, expecting the glass to
smash. But so far from smashing, it did not even seem
to stir; it hung in mid-air — motionless. 'Roughly
speaking,' said Gibberne, 'an object in these latitudes
falls 1 6 feet in the first second. This glass is falling 16
feet in a second now. Only, you see, it hasn't been
falling yet. for the hundredth part of a second.
That gives you some idea of the pare of my
Accelerator.'
And he waved his hand round and round, over and
under the slowly sinking glass. Finally he took it by
THE NEW ACCELERATOR 181
the bottom, pulled it down and placed it very carefully
on the table. 'Eh? ' he said to me, and laughed.
'That seems all right/ I said, and began very gingerly
to raise myself from my chair. I felt perfectly well,
very light and comfortable, and quite confident in my
mind. I was going fast all over. My heart, for example,
was beating a thousand times a second, but that caused
me no discomfort at all. I looked out of the window.
An immovable cyclist, head down and with a frozen
puff of dust behind his driving-wheel, scorched to
overtake a galloping char-a-banc that did not stir. I
gaped in amazement at this incredible spectacle.
'Gibbeme,' I cried, 'how long will this confounded stuff
last?*
'Heaven knows!' he answered. 'Last time I took
it I went to bed and slept it off. I tell you, I was
frightened. It must have lasted some minutes, I think
— it seemed like hours. But after a bit it slows down
rather suddenly, I believe.'
I was proud to observe that I did not feel frightened
— I suppose because there were two of us. 'Why
shouldn't we go out ? ' I asked.
'Why not?'
' They'll see us.'
' Not they. Goodness, no ! Why, we shall be going
a thousand times faster than the quickest conjuring
trick that was ever done. Come along ! Which way
shall we go ? Window, or door ? '
And out by the window we went.
Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have
ever had, or imagined, or read of other people having
or imagining, that little raid I made with Gibbeme on
the Folkestone Leas, under the influence of the New
Accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all. We
went out by his gate into the road, and there we made a
minute examination of the statuesque passing traffic.
182 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horses
of this char-a-banc, the end of the whip-lash and the
lower jaw of the conductor — who was just beginning to
yawn — were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the
lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quite noiseless
except for a faint rattling that came from one man's
throat. And as parts of this frozen edifice there were a
driver, you know, and a conductor, and eleven people !
The effect as we walked about the thing began by being
madly queer and ended by being — disagreeable. There
they were, people like ourselves and yet not like our
selves, frozen in careless attitudes, caught in mid-
gesture. A girl and a man smiled at one another, a
leering smile that threatened to last for evermore; a
woman in a floppy capelline rested her arm on the rail
and stared at Gibberne's house with the unwinking stare
of eternity; a man stroked his moustache like a figure of
wax, and another stretched a tiresome stiff hand with
extended fingers towards his loosened hat. We stared
at them, we laughed at them, we made faces at them,
and then a sort of disgust of them came upon us, and
we turned away and walked round in front of the
cyclist towards the Leas.
'Goodness !' cried Gibberne, suddenly; 'look there !'
He pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding
down the air with wings flapping slowly and at the speed
of an exceptionally languid snail — was a bee.
And so we came out upon the Leas. There the thing
seemed madder than ever. The band was playing in
the upper stand, though all the sound it made for us
was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of prolonged
last sigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow,
muffled ticking of some monstrous clock. Frozen people
stood erect, strange, silent, self-conscious-looking dum-
mies hung unstably in mid-stride, promenading upon
the grass. I passed close to a little poodle dog suspended
THE NEW ACCELERATOR 183
in the act of leaping, and watched the slow movement
of his legs as he sank to earth. ' Lord, look here ! ' cried
Gibberne, and we halted for a moment before a magnifi-
cent person in white faint-striped flannels, white shoes,
and a Panama hat, who turned back to wink at two
gaily dressed ladies he had passed. A wink, studied with
such leisurely deliberation as we could afford, is an
unattractive thing. It loses any quality of alert gaiety,
and one remarks that the winking eye does not com-
pletely close, that under its drooping lid appears the
lower edge of an eyeball and a little line of white.
'Heaven give me memory,' said I, 'and I will never
wink again.'
'Or smile,' said Gibberne, with his eye on the lady's
answering teeth.
'It's infernally hot, somehow,' said I, 'Let's go
slower.'
' Oh, come along ! ' said Gibberne.
We picked our way among the bath-chairs in the path.
Many of the people sitting in the chairs seemed almost
natural in their passive poses, but the contorted scarlet
of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see. A
purple-faced little gentleman was frozen in the midst
of a violent struggle to refold his newspaper against
the wind; there were many evidences that all these
people in their sluggish way were exposed to a consider-
able breeze, a breeze that had no existence so far as our
sensations went. We came out and walked a little way
from the crowd, and turned and regarded it. To see
all that multitude changed to a picture, smitten rigid,
as it were, into the semblance of realistic wax, was
impossibly wonderful. It was absurd, of course; but
it filled me with an irrational, an exultant sense of
superior advantage. Consider the wonder of it ! All
that I had said, and thought, and done since the stuff
had begun to work in my veins had happened, so far
i8 4 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
as those people, so far as the world in general went, in
the twinkling of an eye. 'The New Accelerator '
I began, but Gibberne interrupted me.
' ' There's that infernal old woman ! ' he said.
'What old woman?'
Lives next door to me,' said Gibberne. 'Has a
lapdog that yaps. Gods ! The temptation is strong !'
There is something very boyish and impulsive about
Gibberne at times. Before I could expostulate with him
he had dashed forward, snatched the unfortunate animal
out of visible existence, and was running violently with
it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extra-
ordinary. The little brute, you know, didn't bark or
wriggle or make the slightest sign of vitality. It kept
quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolent repose, and
Gibberne held it by the neck. It was like running about
with a dog of wood. 'Gibberne,' I cried, 'put it down ! '
Then I said something else. 'If you run like that,
Gibberne,' I cried, 'you'll set your clothes on fire. Your
linen trousers are going brown as it is ! '
He clapped his hand on his thigh and stood hesitating
on the verge. 'Gibberne,' I cried, coming up, 'put it
down. This heat is too much ! It's our running
so I Two or three miles a second ! Friction of
the air ! '
'What?' he said, glancing at the dog.
'Friction of the air,' I shouted. 'Friction of the air.
Going too fast. Like meteorites and things. Too hot.
And, Gibberne ! Gibberne ! I'm all over pricking and
a sort of perspiration. You ca» see people stirring
^li^htly. I believe the stuff's working off ! Put that
dog down.'
' Eh? ' he said.
'It's working off,' I repeated. 'We're too hot and
the stuff's working off ! I'm wet thror
He stared at me, then at the band, the wheezy rattle
THE NEW ACCELERATOR 185
of whose performance was certainly going faster. Then
with a tremendous sweep of the arm he hulled the dog
away from him and it went spinning upward, still
inanimate, and hung at last over the grouped parasols
of a knot of chattering people. Gibberne was gripping
my elbow. ' By Jove ! ' he cried, ' I believe it is ! A
sort of hot pricking and — yes. That man's moving his
pocket-handkerchief ! Perceptibly. We must get out
of this sharp.'
But we could not get out of it sharply enough.
Luckily, perhaps I For we might have run, and if we
had run we should, I believe, have burst into flames !
Almost certainly we should have burst into flames !
You know we had neither of us thought of that. . . .
But before we could even begin to run the action of the
drug had ceased. It was the business of a minute
fraction of a second. The effect of the New Accelerator
passed like the drawing of a curtain, vanished in the
movement of a hand. I heard Gibberne's voice in
infinite alarm. 'Sit down,' he said, and flop, down upon
the turf at the edge of the Leas I sat — scorching as I sat.
There is a patch of burnt grass there still where I sat
down. The whole stagnation seemed to wake up as I
did so, the disarticulated vibration of the band rushed
together into a blast of music, the promenaders put
their feet down and walked their ways, the papers and
flags began flapping, smiles passed into words, the
winker finished his wink and went on his way com-
placently, and all the seated people moved and spoke.
The whole world had come alive again, was going as fast
as we were, or rather we were going no faster than the
rest of the world. It was like slowing down as one comes
into a railway station. Everything seemed to spin
round for a second or two, I had the most transient
feeling of nausea, and that was all. And the little dog,
which had seemed to hang for a moment when the force
186 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
of Gibberne's arm was expended, fell with a swift
acceleration clean through a lady's parasol !
That was the saving of us. Unless it was for one
corpulent old gentleman in a bath-chair, who certainlv
did start at the sight of us, and afterwards regarded us
at intervals with a darkly suspicious eye, and, finally, I
believe, said something to his nurse about us, I doubt if
a solitary person remarked our sudden appearance amon,^
them. Plop ! We must have appeared abruptly. We
ceased to smoulder almost at once, though the turf
beneath me was uncomfortably hot. The attention of
every one — including even the Amusements' Association
band, which on this occasion, for the only time in its
history, got out of tune — was arrested by the amazing
fact, and the still more amazing yapping and uproar
caused by the fact, that a respectable, over-fed lapdog
sleeping quietly to the east of the bandstand should
suddenly fall through the parasol of a lady on the west —
in a slightly singed condition due to the extreme velocity
of its movements through the air. In these absurd days,
too, when we are all trying to be as psychic, and silly,
and superstitious as possible ! People got up and trod
on other people, chairs were overturned, the Leas police-
man ran. How the matter settled itself I do not know —
we were much too anxious to disentangle ourselves from
the affair and get out of range of the eye of the old
gentleman in the bath-chair to make minute inquiries.
As soon as we were sufficiently cool amd sufficiently
recovered from our giddiness and nausea and confusion
of mind to do so we stood up, and skirting the crowd,
directed our steps back along the road below the.
Metropole towards Gibberne's house. But amidst the
din I heard very distinctly the gentleman who had been
sitting beside the lady of the ruptured sunshade using
quite unjustifiable threats and language to one of those
chair-attendants who had 'Inspector' written on their
THE NEW ACCELERATOR 187
caps: 'If you didn't throw the dog,' he said, 'who
did?'
The sudden return of movement and familiar noises,
and our natural anxiety about ourselves (our clothes
were still dreadfully hot, and the fronts of the thighs
of Gibberne's white trousers were scorched a drabbish
brown), prevented the minute observations I should
have liked to make on all these things. Indeed, I really
made no observations of any scientific value on that
return. The bee, of course, had gone. I looked for that
cyclist, but he was already out of sight as we came into
the Upper Sandgate Road or hidden from us by traffic :
the char-d-hanc, however, with its people now all alive
and stirring, was clattering along at a spanking pace
almost abreast of the nearer church.
We noted, however, that the window-sill on which we
had stepped in getting out of the house was slightly
singed, and that the impressions of our feet on the gravel
on the path were unusually deep.
So it was I had my first experience of the New
Accelerator. Practically we had been running about
and saying and doing all sorts of things in the space of a
second or so of time. We had lived half an hour while
the band had played, perhaps, two bars. But the
effect it had upon us was that the whole world had
stopped for our convenient inspection. Considering all
things, and particularly considering our rashness in
venturing out of the house, the experience might
certainly have been much more disagreeable than it was.
It showed, no doubt, that Gibberne has still much to
learn before his preparation is a manageable convenience,
but its practicability it certainly demonstrated beyond
all cavil.
Since that adventure he has been steadily bringing
its use under control, and I have several times, and
without the slightest bad result, taken measured doses
i88 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
under his direction; though I must confess I have not
yet ventured abroad again while under its influence. I
may mention, for example, that this story has been
written at one sitting and without interruption, except
for the nibbling of some chocolate, by its means. I
began at 6.25, and my watch is now very nearly at the
minute past the half -hour. The convenience of securing
a long, uninterrupted spell of work in the midst of a
day full of engagements cannot be exaggerated. Gib-
berne is now working at the quantitative handling of
his preparation, with especial reference to its distinctive
effects upon different types of constitution. He then
hopes to find a Retarder, with which to dilute its present
rather excessive potency. The Retarder will, of course,
have the reverse effect to the Accelerator; used alone it
should enable the patient to spread a few seconds over
many hours of ordinary time, and so to maintain an
apathetic inaction, a glacier-like absence of alacrity,
amidst the most animated or irritating surroundings.
The two things together must necessarily work an
entire revolution in civilised existence. It is the begin-
ning of our escape from that Time Garment of which
Carlyle speaks. While this Accelerator will enable us
to concentrate ourselves with tremendous impact upon
any moment or occasion that demands our utmost
sense and vigour, the Retarder will enable us to pass in
passive tranquillity through infinite hardship and
tedium. Perhaps I am a little optimistic about the
Retarder, which has indeed still to be discovered, but
about the Accelerator there is no possible sort of doubt
whatever. Its appearance upon the market in a
convenient, controllable, and assimilable^ form is a
matter of the next few months. It will be obtainable
of all chemists and druggist.^, La small green bottles, at a
high but, considering its extraordinary qualities, by no
means ex rvous Accelerator
THE NEW ACCELERATOR 189
it will be called, and he hopes to be able to supply it in
three strengths : one in 200, one in 900, and one in 2000,
distinguished by yellow, pink, and white labels
respectively.
No doubt its use renders a great number of very
extraordinary things possible; for, of course, the most
remarkable and, possibly, even criminal proceedings
may be effected with impunity by thus dodging, as it
were, into the interstices of time. Like all potent
preparations, it will be liable to abuse. We have,
however, discussed this aspect of the question very
thoroughly, and we have decided that this is purely a
matter of medical jurisprudence and altogether outside
our province. We shall manufacture and sell the
Accelerator, and as for the consequences — we shall aee.
THE DOOR IN THE WALL
One confidential evening, nut 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 con-
cerned it was a true story.
He told it me with such a direct simplicity of con-
viction that I could not do otherwise than believe in him.
But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a different
atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled the things
he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest
slow voice, denuded of the focused, shaded table light,
the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and
me, and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and
glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making
them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from
everyday realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible.
' He was mystifying ! ' I said, and then : ' How well he
did it ! ... It isn't quite the thing I should have
expected him, of all people, to do well.'
Afterwards as I sat up in bed and sipped my morning
tea, I found myself trying to account for the flavour
of reality that perplexed me in his impossible reminis-
cences, by supposing they did in some way suggest,
present, convey — I hardly know which word to use —
experiences it was otherwise impossible to tell.
Well, 1 don't resort to that explanation now. I have
got over my intervening doubts. I believe now, as I
190
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 191 *
believed at the moment of telling, that Wallace did
to the very best of his ability strip the truth of his
secret for me. But whether he himself saw, or only
thought he saw, whether he himself was the possessor
of an inestimable privilege or the victim of a fantastic
dream, I cannot pretend to guess. Even the facts of
his death, which ended my doubts for ever, throw no
light on that.
That much the reader must judge for himself.
I forget now what chance comment or criticism of
mine moved so reticent a man to confide in me. He
was, I think, defending himself against an imputation
of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation
to a great public movement, in which he had
disappointed me. But he plunged suddenly. 'I have,'
he said, 'a preoccupation*-- —
'I know/ he went on, after a pause, 'I have been
negligent. The fact is — it isn't a case of ghosts or
apparitions — but — it's an odd thing to tell of, Redmond
— I am haunted. I am haunted by something — that
rather takes the light out of things, that fills me with
longings . . .'
He paused, checked by that English shyness that so
often overcomes us when we would speak of moving
or grave or beautiful things. 'You were at Saint
/Ethelstan's all through,' he said, and for a moment
that seemed to me quite irrelevant. 'Well/ — and he
paused. Then very haltingly at first, but afterwards
more easily, he began to tell of the thing that was hidden
in his life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a
happiness that filled his heart with insatiable longings,
that made all the interests and spectacle of worldly life
seem dull and tedious and vain to him.
Now that I have the clue to it, the thing seems written
visibly in his face. I have a photograph in which that
look of detachment has been caught and intensified.
192 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
It reminds me of what a woman once said of him — a
woman who had loved him greatly. 'Suddenly,' she
said, 'the interest goes out of him. He forgets you.
He doesn't care a rap for you — under his very nose . . .'
Yet the interest was not always out of him, and when
he was holding his attention to a thing Wallace could
contrive to be an extremely successful man. His career,
indeed, is set with successes. He left me behind him long
ago : he soared up over my head, and cut a figure in the
world that I couldn't cut — anyhow. He was still a year
short of forty, and they say now that he would have
been in office and very probably in the new Cabinet if
he had lived. At school he always beat me without
effort — as it were by nature. We were at school together
at Saint /Ethelstan's College in W r est Kensington for
almost all our school-time. He came into the school as
my co-equal, but he left far above me, in a blaze of
scholarships and brilliant performance. Yet I think
I made a fair average running. And it was at school
I heard first of the ' Door in the Wall ' — that I was to
hear of a second time only a month before his death.
To him at least the Door in the Wall was a real door,
leading through a real wall to immortal realities. Of
that I am now quite assured.
And it came into his life quite early, when he was
a little fellow between five and six. I remember how,
as he sat making his confession to me with a slow gravity,
he reasoned and reckoned the date of it. 'There was,'
he said, * a crimson Virginia creeper in it — all one bright
uniform crimson, in a clear amber sunshine against a
white wall. That came into the impression somehow,
though I don't clearly remember how, and there were
lcr^e-chestnut leaves upon the clean pavement outside
the green door. They were blotched yellow and green,
you know, not brown nor dirty, so that they must have
been new fallen. I take it that means October. I look
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 193
out for horse-chestnut leaves every year and I ought to
know.
' If I'm right in that, I was about five years and four
months old.'
He was, he said, rather a precocious little boy — he
learnt to talk at an abnormally early age, and he was so
sane and 'old-fashioned,' as people say, that he was
permitted an amount of initiative that most children
scarcely attain by seven or eight. His mother died
when he was two, and he was under the less vigilant
and authoritative care of a nursery governess. His
father was a stern, preoccupied lawyer, who gave him
little attention, and expected great things of him. For
all his brightness he found life a little gray and dull,
I think. And one day he wandered.
He could not recall the particular neglect that enabled
him to get away, nor the course he took among the West
Kensington roads. All that had faded among the
incurable blurs of memory. But the white wall and the
green door stood out quite distinctly.
As his memory of that childish experience ran, he did
at the very first sight of that door experience a peculiar
emotion, an attraction, a desire to get to the door and
open it and walk in. And at the same time he had the
clearest conviction that either it was unwise or it was
wrong of him — he could not tell which — to yield to this
attraction. He insisted upon it as a curious thing that
he knew from the very beginning — unless memory
has played him the queerest trick — that the door was
unfastened, and that he could go in as he chose.
I seem to see the figure of that little boy, drawn and
repelled. And it was very clear in his mind, too,
though why it should be so was never explained, that
his father would be very angry if he went in through
that door.
Wallace described aU these moments of hesitation to
T.U. N
194 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
me with the utmost particularity. He went right past
the door, and then, with his hands in his pockets* and
making an infantile attempt to whistle, strolled right
along beyond the end of the wall. There he recalls a
number of mean dirty shops, and particularly that of a
plumber and decorator with a dusty disorder of earthen-
ware pipes, sheet lead, ball taps, pattern books of wall
paper, and tins of enamel. He stood pretending to
examine these things, and coveting, passionately desiring,
the green door.
Then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. He made
a run for it, lest hesitation should grip him again; he
went plump with outstretched hand through the green
door and let it slam behind him. And so, in a trice, he
came into the garden that has haunted all his life.
It was very difficult for Wallace to give me his full
sense of that garden into which he came.
There was something in the very air of it that ex-
hilarated, that gave one a sense of lightness and good
happening and well-being; there was something in the
sight of it that made all its colour clean and perfect and
subtly luminous. In the instant of coining into it one
was exquisitely glad — as only in rare moments, and
when one is young and joyful one can be glad in this
world. And everything was beautiful there. . . .
Wallace mused before he went on telling me. ' You
see,' he said, with the doubtful inflection of a man who
pauses at incredible things, 'there were two great
panthers there. . . . Yes, spotted panthers. And I was
not afraid. There was a long wide path with marble-
edged flower borders on either side, and these two huge
velvety beasts were playing there with a ball. One
looked up and came towards me, a little curious as it
seemed. It came right up to me, rubbed its soft round
\ < ;\ gently against the small hand I held out, and
purred. It was, 1 tell you, an enchanted garden. I
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 195
know. And the size ? Oh ! it stretched far and wide,
this way and that. I believe there were hills far away.
Heaven knows where West Kensington had suddenly
got to. And somehow it was just like coming home.
'You know, in the very moment the door swung to
behind me, I forgot the road with its fallen chestnut
leaves, its cabs and tradesmen's carts, I forgot the sort of
gravitational pull back to the discipline and obedience of
home, I forgot all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion,
forgot all the intimate realities of this life. I became
in a moment a very glad and wonder-happy little boy —
in another world. It was a world with a different
quality, a warmer, more penetrating and mellower light,
with a faint clear gladness in its air, and wisps of sun-
touched cloud in the blueness of its sky. And before
me ran this long wide path, invitingly, with weedless
beds on either side, rich with untended flowers, and
these, two great panthers. I put my little hands fear-
lessly on their soft fur, and caressed their round ears
and the sensitive corners under their ears, and played
with them, and it was as though they welcomed me
home. There was a keen sense of home-coming in my
mind, and when presently a tall, fair girl appeared in
the pathway and came to meet me, smiling, and said
"Well?" to me, and lifted me, and kissed me, and put
me down, and led me by the hand, there was no amaze-
ment, but only an impression of delightful lightness, of
being reminded of happy things that had in some
strange way been overlooked. There were broad red
steps, I remember, that came into view between spikes
of delphinium, and up these we went to a great avenue
between very old and shady dark trees. All down this
avenue, you know, between the red chapped stems, were
marble seats of honour and statuary, and very tame and
friendly white doves . . .
1 Along this cool avenue my girl-friend led me, looking
196 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
down — I recall the pleasant lines, the finely-modelled
chin of her sweet kind face — asking me questions in a
soft, agreeable voice, and telling me things, pleasant
things I know, though what they were I was never able
to recall. . . . Presently a little Capuchin monkey, very
clean, with a fur of ruddy brown and kindly hazel eyes,
came down a tree to us and ran beside me, looking up
at me and grinning, and presently leapt to my shoulder.
So we two went on our way in great happiness.'
He paused.
'Go on,' I said.
'I remember little things. We passed an old man
musing among laurels, I remember, and a place gay
with paroquets, and came through a broad shaded
colonnade to a spacious cool palace, full of pleasant
fountains, full of beautiful things, full of the quality and
promise of heart's desire. And there were many things
and many people, some that still seem to stand out
clearly and some that are a little vague; but all these
people were beautiful and kind. In some way — I don't
know how — it was conveyed to me that they all were
kind to me, glad to have me there, and filling me with
gladness by their gestures, by the touch of their hands,
by the welcome and love in their eyes. Yes '
He mused for a while. 'Playmates I found there.'
That was very much to me, because I was a lonely little
boy. They played delightful games in a grass-covered
court where there was a sun-dial set about with flowers.
And as one played one loved. . . .
'But — it's odd — there's a gap in my memory. I
don't remember the games we played. I never re-
membered. Afterwards, as a child, I spent long hours
trying, even with tears, to recall the form of that happi-
ness. I wanted to play it all over again — in my nursery
— by myself. No ! All I remember is the happiness
and two dear playfellows who were most with me. . . .
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 197
Then presently came a sombre dark woman, with a
grave, pale face, and dreamy eyes, a sombre woman,
wearing a soft long robe of pale purple, who carried a
book, and beckoned and took me aside with her into a
gallery above a hall — though my playmates were loath
to have me go, and ceased their game and stood watching
as I was carried away. " Come back to us ! " they cried.
"Come back to us soon ! " I looked up at her face, but
she heeded them not at all. Her face was very gentle
and grave. She took me to a seat in the gallery, and I
stood beside her, ready to look at her book as she opened
it upon her knee. The pages fell open. She pointed,
and I looked, marvelling, for in the living pages of that
book I saw myself; it was a story about myself, and in
it were all the things that had happened to me since
ever I was born. . . .
'It was wonderful to me, because the pages of that
book were not pictures, you understand, but realities.'
Wallace paused gravely — looked at me doubtfully.
'Go on,' I said. 'I understand.'
'They were realities — yes, they must have been;
people moved and things came and went in them; my
dear mother, whom I had near forgotten; then my
father, stern and upright, the servants, the nursery, all
the familiar things of home. Then the front door and
the busy streets, with traffic to and fro. I looked and
marvelled, and looked half doubtfully again into the
woman's face and turned the pages over, skipping this
and that, to see more of this book and more, and so at
last I came to myself hovering and hesitating outside
the green door in the long white wall, and felt again the
conflict and the fear.
'"And next?" I cried, and would have turned on,
but the cool hand of the grave woman delayed me.
'"Next?" I insisted, and struggled gently with her
hand, pulling up her fingers with all my childish strength,
198 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
and as she yielded and the page came over she bent
down upon me like a shadow and kissed my brow.
'But the page did not show the enchanted garden,
nor the panthers, nor the girl who had led me by the
hand, nor the playfellows who had been so loath to let
me go. It showed a long gray street in West Kensington,
in that chill hour of afternoon before the lamps are lit,
and I was there, a wretched little figure, weeping aloud,
for all that I could do to restrain myself, and I was
weeping because I could not return to my dear play-
fellows who had called after me, "Come back to us!
Come back to us soon!" I was there. This was no
page in a book, but harsh reality; that enchanted place
and the restraining hand of the grave mother at whose
knee I stood had gone — whither had they gone ? '
He halted again, and remained for a time staring into
the fire.
'Oh ! the woefulness of that return !' he murmured.
'Well? ' I said, after a minute or so.
' Poor little wretch I was ! — brought back to this gray
world again ! As I realised the fullness of what had
happened to me, I gave way to quite ungovernable
grief. And the shame and humiliation of that public
weeping and my disgraceful home-coming remain with
me still. I see again the benevolent-looking old gentle-
man in gold spectacles who stopped and spoke to me —
prodding me first with his umbrella. " Poor little chap,"
said he; " and are you lost then?" — and me a London boy
of five and more ! And he must needs bring in a kindly
young policeman and make a crowd of me, and so march
me home. Sobbing, conspicuous, and frightened, I canx-
back from the enchanted garden to the steps of my
father's house.
'That is as well as T can remember my vision of that
len— the garden that haunts me still. Of course, 1
can convey nothing of that indescribable quality oi
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 199
translucent unreality, that difference from the common
things of experience that hung about it all; but that —
that is what happened. If it was a dream, I am sure it
was a daytime and altogether extraordinary dream. . . .
H'm ! — naturally there followed a terrible questioning,
by my aunt, my father, the nurse, the governess —
every one. . . .
' I tried to tell them, and my father gave me my first
thrashing for telling lies. When afterwards I tried to
tell my aunt, she punished me again for my wicked
persistence. Then, as I said, every one was forbidden
to listen to me, to hear a word about it. Even my fairy-
tale books were taken away from me for a time — because
I was too "imaginative." Eh? Yes, they did that!
My father belonged to the old school. . . . And my story
was driven back upon myself. I whispered it to my
pillow †” my pillow that was often damp and salt to my
whispering lips with childish tears. And I added always
to my official and less fervent prayers this one heartfelt
request : " Please God I may dream of the garden. Oh !
take me back to my garden ! " Take me back to my
garden ! I dreamt often of the garden. I may have
added to it, I may have changed it; I do not know. . . .
All this, you understand, is an attempt to reconstruct
from fragmentary memories a very early experience.
Between that and the other consecutive memories of
my boyhood there is a gulf. A time came when it
seemed impossible I should ever speak of that wonder
glimpse again.'
I asked an obvious question.
'No,' he said. 'I don't remember that I ever
attempted to find my way back to the garden in those
early years. This seems odd to me now, but I think that
very probably a closer watch was kept on my movements
after this misadventure to prevent my going astray.
No, it wasn't till you knew me that I tried for the garden
200 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
again. And I believe there was a period — incredible as
it seems now — when I forgot the garden altogether —
when I was about eight or nine it may have been. Do
you remember me as a kid at Saint iEthelstan's?'
'Rather!'
' I didn't show any signs, did I, in those days of having
a secret dream?'
ii
He looked up with a sudden smile.
'Did you ever play North-West Passage with me?
. . . No, of course you didn't come my way ! '
'It was the sort of game,' he went on, 'that every
imaginative child plays all day. The idea was the
discovery of a North- West Passage to school. The way
to school was plain enough ; the game consisted in finding
some way that wasn't plain, starting off ten minutes
early in some almost hopeless direction, and working
my way round through unaccustomed streets to my
goal. And one day I got entangled among some rather
low-class streets on the other side of Campden Hill, and
I began to think that for once the game would be against
me and that I should get to school late. I tried rather
desperately a street that seemed a cul-de-sac, and found
a passage at the end. I hurried through that with
renewed hope. "I shall do it yet," I said, and passed a
row of frowsy little shops that were inexplicably familiar
to me, and behold ! there was my long white wall and
the green door that led to the enchanted garden !
'The thing whacked upon me suddenly. Then, after
all, that garden, that wonderful garden, wasn't a dream ! '
He paused.
' I suppose my second experience with the green door
marks the world of difference there is between the busy
life of a schoolboy and the infinite leisure of a child.
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 201
Anyhow, this second time I didn't for a moment think
of going in straight away. You see For one thing,
my mind was full of the idea of getting to school in time
— set on not breaking my record for punctuality. I
must surely have felt some little desire at least to try the
door — yes. I must have felt that. . . . But I seem to
remember the attraction of the door mainly as another
obstacle to my overmastering determination to get to
school. I was immensely interested by this discovery I
had made, of course — I went on with my mind full of it
— but I went on. It didn't check me. I ran past,
tugging out my watch, found I had ten minutes still to
spare, and then I was going downhill into familiar
surroundings. I got to school, breathless, it is true, and
wet with perspiration, but in time. I can remember
hanging up my coat and hat. . . . Went right by it
and left it behind me. Odd, eh ? '
He looked at me thoughtfully. 'Of course I didn't
know then that it wouldn't always be there. Schoolboys
have limited imaginations. I suppose I thought it was
an awfully jolly thing to have it there, to know my way
back to it, but there was the school tugging at me. I
expect I was a good deal distraught and inattentive that
morning, recalling what I could of the beautiful strange
people I should presently see again. Oddly enough I
had no doubt in my mind that they would be glad to
see me. . . . Yes, I must have thought of the garden
that morning just as a jolly sort of place to which one
might resort in the interludes of a strenuous scholastic
career.
'I didn't go that day at all. The next day was a
half holiday, and that may have weighed with me.
Perhaps, too, my state of inattention brought down
impositions upon me, and docked the margin of time
necessary for the detour. I don't know. What I do
know is that in the meantime the enchanted garden was
202 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
so much upon my mind that I could not keep it to
myself.
'I told. What was his name? — a ferrety-looking
youngster we used to call Squiff.'
'Young Hopkins,' said I.
'Hopkins it was. I did not like telling him. I had a
feeling that in some way it was against the rules to tell
him, but I did. He was walking part of the way home
with me; he was talkative, and if we had not talked
about the enchanted garden we should have talked of
something else, and it was intolerable to me to think
about any other subject. So I blabbed.
'Well, he told my secret. The next day in the play
interval I found myself surrounded by half a dozen
bigger boys, half teasing, and wholly curious to hear
more of the enchanted garden. There was that big
Fawcett — you remember him? — and Carnaby and
Morley Reynolds. You weren't there by any chance?
No, I think I should have remembered if you were. . . .
'A boy is a creature of odd feelings. I was, I really
believe, in spite of my secret self-disgust, a little flattered
to have the attention of these big fellows. I remember
particularly a moment of pleasure caused by the praise
of Crawshaw — you remember Crawshaw major, the son
of Crawshaw the composer? — who said it was the best
lie he had ever heard. But at the same time there was
a really painful undertow of shame ot telling what I felt
was indeed a sacred secret. That beast Fawcett made
a joke about the girl in green '
Wallace's voice sank with the keen memory of that
shame. 'I pretended not to hear,' he said. 'Well,
then Carnaby suddenly called me a young liar, and
disputed with me when I said the thing was true. I
said I knew where to find the green door, could had
them all there in ten minutes. Carnaby became out-
rageously virtuous, and said Yd have to— and bear out
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 203
my words or suffer. Did you ever have Carnaby twist
your arm? Then perhaps you'll understand how it
went with me. I swore my story was true. There was
nobody in the school then to save a chap from Carnaby,
though Crawshaw put in a word or so. Carnaby had got
his game. I grew excited and red-eared, and a little
frightened. I behaved altogether like a silly little chap,
and the outcome of it all was that instead of starting
alone for my enchanted garden, I led the way presently
— cheeks flushed, ears hot, eyes smarting, and my soul
one burning misery and shame — for a party of six
mocking, curious, and threatening schoolfellows.
'We never found the white wall and the green
door . . .'
' You mean ? '
'I mean I couldn't find it. I would have found it if
I could.
'And afterwards when I could go alone I couldn't
find it. I never found it. I seem now to have been
always looking for it through my schoolboy days, but
I never came upon it — never.'
'Did the fellows — make it disagreeable?'
'Beastly. . . . Carnaby held a council over me for
wanton lying. I remember how I sneaked home and
upstairs to hide the marks of my blubbering. But when
I cried myself to sleep at last it wasn't for Carnaby, but
for the garden, for the beautiful afternoon I had hoped
for, for the sweet friendly women and the waiting play-
fellows, and the game I had hoped to learn again, that
beautiful forgotten game . . .
'I believed firmly that if I had not told — ... I had
bad times after that — crying at night and wool-gathering
by day. For two terms I slackened and had bad reports.
Do you remember? Of course you would ! It was you
— your beating me in mathematics that brought me back
to the grind again.'
204 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
in
For a time my friend stared silently into the red heart
of the fire. Then he said : ' I never saw it again until
I was seventeen.
' It leapt upon me for the third time — as I was driving
to Paddington on my way to Oxford and a scholarship
I had just one momentary glimpse. I was leaning over
the apron of my hansom smoking a cigarette, and no
doubt thinking myself no end of a man of the world, and
suddenly there was the door, the wall, the dear sense of
unforgettable and still attainable things.
1 We clattered by — I too taken by surprise to stop my
cab until we were well past and round a corner. Then 1
had a queer moment, a double and divergent movement
of my will : I tapped the little door in the roof of the
cab, and brought my arm down to pull out my watch.
"Yes, sir !" said the cabman, smartly. "Er — well — it's
nothing," I cried. "My mistake! Wc haven't much
time ! Go on ! " And he went on. . . .
'I got my scholarship. And the night after I was
told of that I sat over my fire in my little upper room, my
study, in my father's house, with his praise — his rare
praise — and his sound counsels ringing in my ears, and
I smoked my favourite pipe — the formidable bulldog of
adolescence — and thought of that door in the long white
wall. "If I had stopped," I thought, "I should have
missed my scholarship, I should have missed Oxford —
muddled all the fine career before me ! I begin to see
things better ! " I fell musing deeply, but I did not
doubt then this career of mine was a thing that merited
sacrifice.
' Those dear friends and that clear atmosphere seemed
very sweet to me, very fine but remote. My grip was
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 205
fixing now upon the world. I saw another door opening
— the door of my career.'
He stared again into the fire. Its red light picked out
a stubborn strength in his face for just one flickering
moment, and then it vanished again.
'Well/ he said and sighed, 'I have served that career.
I have done — much work, much hard work. But I
have dreamt of the enchanted garden a thousand
dreams, and seen its door, or at least glimpsed its door,
four times since then. Yes — four times. For a while
this world was so bright and interesting, seemed so full
of meaning and opportunity, that the half-effaced charm
of the garden was by comparison gentle and remote.
Who wants to pat panthers on the way to dinner with
pretty women and distinguished men ? I came down to
London from Oxford, a man of bold promise that I have
done something to redeem. Something — and yet there
have been disappointments. . . .
'Twice I have been in love — I will not dwell on that
— but once, as I went to some one who, I knew, doubted
whether I dared to come, I took a short cut at a venture
through an unfrequented road near Earl's Court, and so
happened en a white wall and a familiar green door.
"Odd ! " said I to myself, "but I thought this place was
on Campden Hill. It's the place I never could find some-
how — like counting Stonehenge — the place of that queer
daydream of mine." And I went by it intent upon my
purpose. It had no appeal to me that afternoon.
'I had just a moment's impulse to try the door, three
steps aside were needed at the most — though I was sure
enough in my heart that it would open to me — and then
I thought that doing so might delay me on the way to
that appointment in which I thought my honour was
involved. Afterwards I was sorry for my punctuality —
I might at least have peeped in, I thought, and waved a
hand to those panthers, but I knew enough by this time
206 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
not to seek again belatedly that which is not found by
seeking. Yes, that time made me very sorry. . . .
1 Years of hard work after that, and never a sight of
the door. It's only recently it has come back to me.
With it there has come a sense as though some thin
tarnish had spread itself over my world. I began to
think of it as a sorrowful and bitter thing that I should
never see that door again. Perhaps I was suffering a
little from overwork — perhaps it was what I've heard
spoken of as the feeling of forty. I don't know. But
certainly the keen brightness that makes effort easy has
gone out of things recently, and that just at a time —
with all these new political developments — when I ought
to be working. Odd, isn't it? But I do begin to find
life toilsome, its rewards, as I come near them, cheap.
I began a little while ago to want the garden quite badly.
Yes — and I've seen it three times.'
'The garden?'
'No — the door ! And I haven't gone in !'
He leant over the table to me, with an enormous
sorrow in his voice as he spoke. 'Thrice I have had
my chance — thrice ! If ever that door offers itself to me
again, I swore, I will go in, out of this dust and heat,
out of this dry glitter of vanity, out of these toilsome
futilities. I will go and never return. This time I will
stay. ... I swore it, and when the time came — /
didn't go.
'Three times in one year have I passed that door and
failed to enter. Three times in the last year.
'The first time was on the night of the snatch division
on the Tenants' Redemption Bill, on which the Govern-
ment was saved by a majority of three. You remember?
Nq one on our side — perhaps very few on the opposite
side -expected the end that night. Then the debate
collapsed like eggshells. I and Hotchkiss were dining
with his cousin at Brentford; we were both unpaired,
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 207
and we were called up by telephone, and set off at once
in his cousin's motor. We got in barely in time, and
on the way we passed my wall and door — livid in the
moonlight, blotched with hot yellow as the glare of
our lamps lit it, but unmistakable. " My God ! " cried I.
"What?" said Hotchkiss, "Nothing!" I answered,
and the moment passed.
'"I've made a great sacrifice," I told the whip as I
got in. "They all have," he said, and hurried by.
'I do not see how I could have done otherwise then.
And the next occasion was as I rushed to my father's
bedside to bid that stern old man farewell. Then, too,
the claims of life were imperative. But the third time
was different; it happened a week ago. It fills me with
hot remorse to recall it. I was with Gurker and Ralphs
— it's no secret now, you know, that I've had my talk
with Gurker. We had been dining at Frobisher's, and
the talk had become intimate between us. The question
of my place in the reconstructed Ministry lay always
just over the boundary of the discussion. Yes — yes.
That's all settled. It needn't be talked about yet,
but there's no reason to keep a secret from you. . . .
Yes — thanks ! thanks ! But let me tell you my
story.
"Then, on that night things were very much in the air.
My position was a very delicate one. I was keenly
anxious to get some definite word from Gurker, but was
hampered by Ralphs' presence. I was using the best
power of my brain to keep that light and careless talk
not too obviously directed to the point that concerned
me. I had to. Ralphs' behaviour since has more than
justified my caution. . . . Ralphs, I knew, would leave
us beyond the Kensington High Street, and then I could
surprise Gurker by a sudden frankness. One has some-
times to resort to these little devices. . . . And then it
was that in the margin of my field of vision I became
2oS TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
aware once more of the white wall, the green door befoie
us down the road.
'We passed it talking. I passed it. I can still see
the shadow of Gurker's marked profile, his opera hat
tilted forward over his prominent nose, the many folds
of his neck wrap going before my shadow and Ralphs'
as we sauntered past.
' I passed within twenty inches of the door. " If I say
good-night to them, and go in," I asked myself, "what
will happen ? " And I was all a- tingle for that word with
Gurker.
'I could not answer that question in the tangle of
my other problems. "They will think me mad," I
thought. "And suppose I vanish now ! — Amazing dis-
appearance of a prominent politician ! " That weighed
with me. A thousand inconceivably petty worldlinesses
weighed with me in that crisis.'
Then he turned on me with a sorrowful smile, and,
speaking slowly, ' Here I am ! ' he said.
' Here I am 1 ' he repeated, ' and my chance has gone
from me. Three times in one year the door has been
offered me — the door that goes into peace, into delight,
into a beauty beyond dreaming, a kindness no man on
earth can know. And I have rejected it, Redmond, and
it has gone '
' How do you know ? '
' I know. I know. I am left now to work it out, to
stick to the tasks that held me so strongly when my
moments came. You say I have success — this vulgar,
tawdry, irksome, envied thing. I have it.' He had a
walnut in his big hand. 'If that was my success,' he
said, and crushed it, and held it out for me to see.
'Let me tell you something, Redmond. This loss
is destroying me. For two months, for ten weeks
nearly now, I have done no work at all, except the
most necessary and urgent duties. My soul is full of
THE DOOR IN THE WALL 209
inappeasable regrets. At nights — when it is less likely
I shall be recognised — I go out. I wander. Yes. I
wonder what people would think of that if they knew.
A Cabinet Minister, the responsible head of that most
vital of all departments, wandering alone — grieving —
sometimes near audibly lamenting — for a door, for a
garden !'
IV
I can see now his rather pallid face, and the unfamiliar
sombre fire that had come into his eyes. I see him very
vividly to-night. I sit recalling his words, his tones, and
last evening's Westminster Gazette still lies on my sofa,
containing the notice, of his death. At lunch to-day the
club was busy with his death. We talked of nothing else.
They found his body very early yesterday morning in
a deep excavation near East Kensington Station. It is
one of two shafts that have been made in connection
with an extension of the railway southward. It is
protected from the intrusion of the public by a hoarding
upon the high road, in which a small doorway has been
cut for the convenience of some of the workmen who
live in that direction. The doorway was left unfastened
through a misunderstanding between two gangers, and
through it he made his way. . . .
My mind is darkened with questions and riddles.
It would seem he walked all the way from the House
that night — he has frequently walked home during the
past Session — and so it is I figure his dark form coming
along the late and empty streets, wrapped up, intent.
And then did the pale electric lights near the station
cheat the rough planking into a semblance of white?
Did that fatal unfastened door awaken some memory?
Was there, after all, ever any green door in the wall
at all?
t.u. o
2io TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
I do not know. I have told his story as lie told it to
me. There are times when I believe that Wallace was
no more than the victim of the coincidence between a
rare but not unprecedented type of hallucination and a
careless trap, but that indeed is not my profoundest
belief. You may think me supefstitious, if you will,
and foolish; but, indeed, I am more than half convinced
that he had, in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense,
something — I know not what — that in the guise of wall
and door offered him an outlet, a secret and peculiar
passage of escape into another and altogether more
beautiful world. At any rate, you will say, it betrayed
him in the end. But did it betray him? There you
touch the inmost mystery of these dreamers, these men
of vision and the imagination. We see our world fair
and common, the hoarding and the pit. By our day-
light standard he walked out of security into darkness,
danger, and death.
But did he see like that?
THE APPLE
'I must get rid of it,' said the man in the corner of the
carriage, abruptly breaking the silence.
Mr Hinchcliff looked up, hearing imperfectly. He
had been lost in the rapt contemplation of the college
cap tied by a string to his portmanteau handles — the
outward and visible sign of his newly-gained pedagogic
position — in the rapt appreciation of the college cap
and the pleasant anticipations it excited. For Mr
Hinchcliff had just matriculated at London University,
and was going to be junior assistant at the Holm wood
Grammar School — a very enviable position. He stared
across the carriage at his fellow-traveller.
'Why not give it away?' said this person. 'Give it
away ! Why not ? '
He was a tall, dark, sunburnt man with a pale face.
His arms were folded tightly, and his feet were on the
seat in front of him. He was pulling at a lank black
moustache. He stared hard at his toes.
'Why not?' he said.
Mr Hinchcliff coughed.
The stranger lifted his eyes — they were curious, dark-
gray eyes — and stared blankly at Mr Hinchcliff for the
best part of a minute, perhaps. His expression grew to
interest.
'Yes,' he said slowly. 'Why not? And end it.'
'I don't quite follow you, I'm afraid,' said Mr Hinch-
cliff, with another cough.
'You don't quite follow me?' said the stranger quite
212 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
mechanically, his singular eyes wandering from Mr
Hinchcliff to the bag with its ostentatiously displayed
cap, and back to Mr Hinch cliff's downy face.
'You're so abrupt, you know,' apologised Mr Hinch-
cliff.
'Why shouldn't I?' said the stranger, following his
thoughts. 'You are a student?' he said, addressing
Mr Hinchcliff.
' I am — by Correspondence — of the London University
said Mr Hinchcliff, with irrepressible pride, and feeling
nervous]^ at his tie.
'In pursuit of knowledge,' said the stranger, and
suddenly took his feet oft the seat, put his fist on his
knees, and stared at Mr Hinchcliff as though he had
never seen a student before. 'Yes,' he said, and flung
out an index finger. Then he rose, took a bag from the
hat-rack, and unlocked it. Quite silently he drew out
something round and wrapped in a quantity of silver-
paper, and unfolded this carefully. He held it out
towards Mr Hinchcliff — a small, very smooth, golden-
yellow fruit.
Mr Hinchcliff's eyes and mouth were open. He did
not offer to take this object — if he was intended to take
it.
'That,' said this fantastic stranger, speaking very
slowly, 'is the Apple of the Tree of Knowledge. Look
at it — small, and bright, and wonderful — Knowledge —
and I am going to give it to you.'
Mr Hinchcliff's mind worked painfully for a minute,
and then the sufficient explanation, ' Mad ! ' flashed
across his brain, and illuminated the whole situation,
One humoured madmen. He put his head a little on
one side.
'The Apple of the Tree of Knowledge, eh!' said
Mr Hinchcliff, regarding it with a finely assumed air of
interest, and then looking at the interlocutor. 'But
THE APPLE 213
don't you want to eat it yourself? And besides — how
did you come by it ? '
'It never fades. I have had it now three months.
And it is ever bright and smooth and ripe and desirable,
as you see it.' He laid his hand on his knee and regarded
the fruit musingly. Then he began to wrap it again in
the papers, as though he had abandoned his intention
of giving it away.
'But how did you come by it?' said Mr Hinchcliff.
who had his argumentative side. 'And how do you
know that it is the Fruit of the Tree ? '
'I bought this fruit,' said the stranger, 'three month?
ago — for a drink of water and a crust of bread. The
man who gave it to me — because I kept the life in him —
was an Armenian. Armenia ! that wonderful country,
the first of all countries, where the ark of the Flood
remains to this day, buried in the glaciers of Mount
Ararat. This man, I say, fleeing with others from the
Kurds who had come upon them, went up into desolate
places among the mountains — places beyond the
common knowledge of men. And fleeing from imminent
pursuit, they came to a slope high among the mountain
peaks, green with a grass like knife-blades, that cut and
slashed most pitilessly at any one who went into it.
The Kurds were close behind, and there was nothing
for it but to plunge in, and the worst of it was that the
paths they made through it at the price of their blood
served for the Kurds to follow. Every one of the
fugitives was killed save this Armenian and another.
He heard the screams and cries of his friends, and the
swish of the grass about those who were pursuing them—
— it was tall grass rising overhead. And then a shouting
and answers, and when presently he paused, everything
was still. He pushed out again, not understanding,
cut and bleeding, until he came out on a steep slope of
rocks below a precipice, and then he saw the grass was
2i4 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
all on fire, and the smoke of it rose like a veil between
him and his enemies.'
The stranger paused. 'Yes?' said Mr Hinchcliff.
'Yes?'
'There he was, all torn and blood}' from the knife-
blades of the grass, the rocks blazing under the afternoon
sun — the sky molten brass — and the smoke of the fire
driving towards him. He dared not stay there. Death
he did not mind, but torture ! Ear away beyond the
smoke he heard shouts and cries. Women screaming.
So he went clambering up a gorge in the rocks — every-
where were bushes with dry branches that stuck out like
thorns among the leaves — until he clambered over the
brow of a ridge that hid him. And then he met his
companion, a shepherd, who had also escaped. And,
counting cold and famine and thirst as nothing against
the Kurds, they went on into the heights, and among
the snow and ice. They wandered three whole davs.
'The third day came the vision. I suppose hungry
men often do see visions, but then there is this fruit.'
He lifted the wrapped globe in his hand. 'And I have
heard it, too, from other mountaineers who have known
something of the legend. It was in the evening time,
when the stars were increasing, that they came down a
blope of polished rock into a huge dark valley all set
about with strati; , contorted trees, and in these trees
hung little globes like glow-worm spheres, strange
round yellow lights.
'Suddenly this valley was lit far away, many miles
away, far down it, with a golden llamc marching slowly
athwart it, that made the stunted trees against it black
as night, and turned the slopes all about them and their
figures to the likeness of fiery gold. And at the vision
they, knowing the legends of the mountains, instantly
knew that it was Eden they saw, or the sentinel of Eden,
and they fell upon their faces like men struck dead.
THE APPLE 215
'When they dared to look again the valley was dark
for a space, and then the light came again — returning,
a burning amber.
' At that the shepherd sprang to his feet, and with a
shout began to run down towards the light, but the
other man was too fearful to follow him. He stood
stunned, amazed, and terrified, watching his companion
recede towards the marching glare. And hardly had
the shepherd set out when there came a noise His'
thunder, the beating of invisible wings hurrying up th<
valley, arrd a great and terrible fear; and at that the
man who gave me the fruit turned — if he might still
escape. And hurrying headlong up the slope again, with
that tumult sweeping after him, he stumbled against
one of these stunted bushes, and a ripe fruit came off it
into his hand. This fruit. Forthwith, the wings and
the thunder rolled all about him. He fell and fainted,
and when he came to his senses, he was back among the
blackened ruins of his own village, and I and the others
were attending to the wounded. A vision? But the
golden fruit of the tree was still clutched in his hand.
There were others there who knew the legend, knew
what that strange fruit might be.' He paused. 'And
this is it,' he said.
It was a most extraordinary story to be told in a
third-class carriage on a Sussex railwa} 7 . It was as if
the real was a mere veil to the fantastic, and here was
the fantastic poking through. 'Is it?' was all Mr
Hinchcliff could say.
'The legend,' said the stranger, 'tells that those
thickets of dwarfed trees growing about the garden
sprang from the apple that Adam carried in his hand
when he and Eve were driven forth. He felt something
in his hand, saw the half-eaten apple, and flung it
petulantly aside. And there they grow, in that desolate
valley, girdled round with the everlasting snows, and
216 TALES OF THE UNEXPECETD
there the fiery swords keep war against the Judgment
Day.'
'But I thought these things were' — Mr Hinehcliff
paused — 'fables — parables rather. Do you mean to
tell me that there in Armenia '
The stranger answered the unfinished question with
the fruit in his open hand.
'But you don't know,' said Mr Hinehcliff, 'that that
is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The man may
have had — a sort of mirage, say. Suppose '
'Look at it,' said the stranger.
It was certainly a strange-looking globe, not really
an apple, Mr Hinehcliff saw, and a curious glowing
golden colour, almost as though light itself was wrought
into. its substance. As he looked at it, he began to see
more vividly the desolate valley among the mountains,
the guarding swords of fire, the strange antiquities of
the story he had just heard. He rubbed a knuckle into
his eye. 'But' — said he.
' It has kept like that, smooth and full, three months.
Longer than that it is now by some days. No drying,
no withering, no decay.'
'And you yourself,' said Mr Hinehcliff, 'really believe
that '
' Is the Forbidden Fruit.'
There was no mistaking the earnestness of the man's
manner and his perfect sanity. 'The Fruit of Know-
ledge,' he said.
'Suppose it was?' said Mr Hinehcliff, after a pause,
still staring at it. 'But after all,' said Mr Hinehcliff,
'it's not my kind of knowledge — not the sort of know-
ledge. I mean, Adam and Eve have eaten it already.'
'We inherit their sins — not their knowledge,' said
the stranger. 'That would make it all clear and bright
again. We should see into every thing, through every-
thing, into the deepest meaning of everything '
THE APPLE 217
'Why don't you eat it, then?' said Mr Hinchcliff,
with an inspiration.
'I took it intending to eat it,' said the stranger.
' Man has fallen. Merely to eat again could scarcely '
'Knowledge is power,' said Mr Hinchcliff.
'But is it happiness? I am older than you — more
than twice as old. Time after time I have held this in
my hand, and my heart has failed me at the thought of
all that one might know, that terrible lucidity — Suppose
suddenly all the world became pitilessly clear?'
'That, I think, would be a great advantage,' said
Mr Hinchcliff, 'on the whole.'
'Suppose you saw into the hearts and minds of
every one about you, into their most secret recesses —
people you loved, whose love you valued ? '
'You'd soon find out the humbugs,' said Mr Hinch-
cliff, greatly struck by the idea.
'And worse — to know yourself, bare of your most
intimate illusions. To see yourself in your place. All
that your lusts and weaknesses prevented your doing.
No merciful perspective.'
'That might be an excellent thing too. "Know
thyself," you know.'
'You are young,' said the stranger.
' If you don't care to eat it, and it bothers you, why
dont you throw it away ? '
'There again, perhaps, you will not understand me.
To me, how could one throw away a thing like that,
glowing, wonderful? Once one has it, one is bound.
But, on the other hand, to give it away ! To give it
away to some one who thirsted after knowledge,
who found no terror in the thought of that clear
perception '
'Of course,' said Mr Hinchcliff thoughtfully, 'it
might be some sort of poisonous fruit. *
And then his eye caught something motionless, the
218 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
end of a white board black-lettered outside the carriage
window. ' — mwood,' he saw. He started convulsively.
' Gracious ! ' said Mr Hinchclift. ' Holmwood ! ' — and
the practical present blotted out the mystic realisations
that had been stealing upon him.
In another moment he was opening the carriage-door,
portmanteau in hand. The guard was already fluttering
his green flag. Mr Hinchclift" jumped out. 'Here!'
said a voice behind him, and he saw the dark eyes of the
stranger shining and the golden fruit, bright and bare,
held out of the open carriage-door. He took it in-
stinctively, the train was already moving.
' No ! ' shouted the stranger, and made a snatch at
it as if to take it back.
'Stand away,' cried a country porter, thrusting
forward to close the door. The stranger shouted some-
thing Mr Hinchclift did not catch, head and arm thrust
excitedly out of the window, and then the shadow of
the bridge fell on him, and in a trice he was hidden.
Mr Hinchclift stood astonished, staring at the end of
the last wagon receding round the bend, and with the
wonderful fruit in his hand. For the fraction of a minute
his mind was confused, and then he became aware that
two or three people on the platform were regarding him
with interest. Was he not the new Grammar School
master making his debut? It occurred to him that, so
far as they could tell, the fruit might very well be the
naive refreshment of an orange. Fie flushed at the
thought, and thrust the fruit into his side pocket, where
it bulged undesirably. But there was no help for it,
-<) lie went towards them, awkwardly concealing his
sense of awkwardness, to ask the way to the Grammar
School, and the means of getting his portmanteau and
the two tin boxes which lay up the platform thither.
Of all the odd and fantastic yarns to tell a fellow !
His luggage could be taken on a truck foi sixpence,
THE APPLE 219
he found, and he could precede it on foot. He fancied
an ironical note in the voices. He was painfully aware
of his contour.
The curious earnestness of the man in the train, and
the glamour of the story he told, had, for a time, divert* 5 ^
the current of Mr Hinchcliff's thoughts. It drove i^ e
a mist before his immediate concerns. Fires * L T nat wen t
to and fro ! But the preoccupation of K^ new position
and the impression he was to. - produce ; pon Holmwood
generally, and the sc+~ ol people in particularj returned
upon him with r em vigorating power before he left the
station and c ] earec | hi 5 men tal atmosphere. But it is
extiaor . inar y what an inconvenient thing the addition
a soft and rather brightly-golden fruit, not three
J nc hes in diameter, may prove to a sensitive youth on
lis best appearance. In the pocket of his black jacket
it bulged dreadfully, spoilt the lines altogether. He
passed a little old lady in black, and he felt her eye drop
upon the excrescence at once. He was wearing one
glove and carrying the other, together with his stick,
so that to bear the fruit openly was impossible. In one
place, where the road into the town seemed suitably
secluded, he took his encumbrance out of his pocket
and tried it in his hat. It was just too large, the hat
wobbled ludicrously, and just as he was taking it out
again, a butcher's boy came driving round the corner.
'Confound it !' said Mr Hinchcliff.
He would have eaten the thing, and attained omnis-
cience there and then, but it would seem so silly to go
into the town sucking a juic} 7 fruit — and it certainly felt
juicy. If one of the boys should come by, it might do
him a serious injury with his discipline so to be seen.
And the juice might make his face sticky and get upon
his cuffs — or it might be an acid juice as potent as
lemon, and take all the colour out of his clothes.
Then round a bend in the lane came two pleasant
220 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
sunlit girlish figures. They were walking slowly towards
the town and chattering — at any moment they might
look round and see a hot-faced young man behind them
carrying a kind of phosphorescent yellow tomato !
They would be sure to laugh.
Jiang!' said Mr Hinchcliff, and with a swift jerk
sent tiic-p^rumbrance flying over the stone wall of an
orchard that tiic -« abutted on the road. As it vanished,
he felt a faint twinge «? loss that lasted scarcely a
moment. He adjusted the stick avid glove in his hand,
and walked on, erect and self-conscious, f o pass the girls.
But in the darkness of the night Mr Hinchcii^ had a
dream, and saw the valley, and the flaming sworaV, and
the contorted trees, and knew that it really was uhe
Apple of the Tree of Knowledge that he had thrown'
regardlessly away. And he awoke very unhappy.
In the morning his regret had passed, but afterwards
it returned and troubled him; never, however, when he
was happy or busily occupied. At last, one moonlight
night about eleven, when all Holmwood was quiet, his
regrets returned with redoubled force, and therewith
an impulse to adventure. He slipped out of the house
and over the playground wall, went through the silent
town to Station Lane, and climbed into the orchard
where he had thrown the fruit. But nothing was to be
found of it there among the dewy grass and the faint
intangible globes of dandelion down.
THE TEMPTATION OF
HARRINGAY
It is quite impossible to say whether this thing really
happened. It depends entirely on the word of R. M.
Harringay, who is an artist.
Following his version oi the affair, the narrative
deposes that Harringay went into his studio about ten
o'clock to see what he could make of the head that he
had been working at the day before. The head in
question was that of an Italian organ-grinder, and
Harringay thought — but was not quite sure — that the
title would be the 'Vigil.' So far he is frank, and his
narrative bears the stamp of truth. He had seen the
man expectant for pennies, and with a promptness that
suggested genius, had had him in at once.
'Kneel. Look up at that bracket,' said Harringay.
' As if you expected pennies.'
' Don't grin ! ' said Harringay. ' I don't want to paint
your gums. Look as though you were unhappy.'
Now, after a night's rest, the picture proved decidedly
unsatisfactory. ' It's good work,' said Harringay. ' That
little bit in the neck . . . But.'
He walked about the studio and looked at the thing
from this point and from that. Then he said a wicked
word. In the original the word is given.
'Painting,' he says he said. 'Just a painting of an
organ-grinder — a mere portrait. Is it was a live organ-
grinder I wouldn't mind. But somehow I never make
things alive. I wonder if my imagination is wrong.'
This, too, has a truthful air. His imagination is wrong.
221
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'That creative touch ! To take canvas and pigment
and make a man — as Adam was made of red ochre !
But this thing ! If you met it walking about the streets
you would know it was only a studio production. The
little boys would tell it to "Garnome and git frimed."
Some little touch . . . Well — it won't do as it is.'
He went to the blinds and began to pull them down.
They were made of blue holland with the rollers at the
bottom of the window, so that you pull them down to
get more light. He gathered his palette, brushes, and
mahl stick from his table. Then he turned to the
picture and put a speck of brown in the corner of the
mouth; and shifted his attention thence to the pupil of
the eye. Then he decided that the chin was a trifle too
impassive for a vigil.
Presently he put down his impedimenta, and lighting
a pipe surveyed the progress of his work. ' I'm hanged
if the thing isn't sneering at me,' said Harringay, and
he still believes it sneered.
The animation of the figure had certainly increased,
but scarcely in the direction he wished. There was no
mistake about the sneer. 'Vigil of the Unbeliever,'
said Harringay. 'Rather subtle and clever that ! But
the left eyebrow isn't cynical enough.'
He went and dabbed at the eyebrow, and added a
little to the lobe of the ear to suggest materialism.
Further consideration ensued. 'Vigil's off, I'm afraid,'
said Harringay. 'Why not Mephistopheles? But that's
a bit too common. "A Friend of the Doge," — not so
seedy. The armour won't do, though. Too Camelot.
How about a scarlet robe and call him "One of the
red College"? Humour in that, and an appreciation
of Middle Italian History.'
'There's always Benvenuto Cellini,' said Harringay;
'with a clever suggestion of a gold cup in one corner.
But that would scarcely suit the complexion. '
THE TEMPTATION Or HARRINGAY 223
He describes himself as babbling in this way in order
to keep down an unaccountably unpleasant sensation
of fear. The thing was certainly acquiring anything but
a pleasing expression. Yet it was as certainly becoming
far more of a living thing than it had been — if a sinister
one — far more alive than anything he had ever painted
before. 'Call it "Portrait of a Gentleman,'" said
Harringay — 'A Certain Gentleman.'
'Won't do,' said Harringay, still keeping up his
courage. 'Kind of thing they call Ead Taste. That
sneer will have to come out. That gone, and a little more
fire in the eye — never noticed how warm his eye v. as
before — and he might do for — ? What price Passionate
Pilgrim? But that devilish face won't do — this side of
the Channel.
'Some little inaccuracy does it,' he said; 'eyebrows
probably too oblique,' — therewith pulling the blind
lower to get a better light, and resuming palette and
brushes.
The face on the canvas seemed animated by a spirit
of its own. Where the expression of diablerie came in he
found impossible to discover — Experiment was necessary.
The eyebrows — it could scarcely be the eyebrows? But
he altered them. No, that was no better; in fact, if
anything, a trifle more satanic. The corner of the
mouth? Pah ! more than ever a leer — and now, re-
touched, it was ominously grim. The eye, then?
Catastrophe ! he had filled his brush with vermilion
instead of brown, and yet he had felt sure it was brown !
The eye seemed now to have rolled in its socket, and
was glaring at him an eye of fire. In a flash of passion,
possibly with something of the courage of panic, he
struck the brush full of bright red athwart the picture;
and then a very curious thing, a very strange thing
indeed, occurred — if it did occur.
The diabolified Italian before him shut both his eyes,
224 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
pursed his mouth, and wiped the colour off his face with
his hand.
Then the red eye opened again, with a sound like the
opening of lips, and the face smiled. 'That was rather
hasty of you,' said the picture.
Harringay states that, now that the worst had
happened, his self-possession returned. He had a saving
persuasion that devils were reasonable creatures.
'Why do you keep moving about then,' he said,
'making faces and all that — sneering and squinting,
while I am painting you?'
'I don't,' said the picture.
'You do,' said Harringay.
'It's yourself,' said the picture.
' It's not myself,' said Harringay. .
'It is yourself,' said the picture. 'No! don't
go hitting me with paint again, because it's true.
You have been trying to fluke an expression on my face
all the morning. Really, you haven't an idea what
your picture ought to look like.'
'I have,' said Harringay.
'You have not,' said the picture: 'You never have
with your pictures. Y T ou always start with the vaguest
presentiment of what you are going to do; it is to be
something beautiful — you are sure of that — and devout,
perhaps, or tragic; but beyond that it is all experiment
and chance. My dear fellow ! you don't think you can
paint a picture like that? '
Now it must be remembered that for what follows we
have only Harringay's word.
'I shall paint a picture exactly as I like,' said Harrin-
gay calmly.
This seemed to disconcert the picture a little. ' You
can't paint a picture without an inspiration,' it remarked.
'But I had an inspiration — for this.'
'Inspiration!' sneered the sardonic figure; 'a fancy
THE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAY 225
that came from your seeing an organ-grinder looking
up at a window ! Vigil ! Ha, ha ! You just started
painting on the chance of something coming — that's
what you did. And when I saw you at it I came. I
want a talk with you ! '
'Art, with you,' said the picture — 'it's a poor business.
You potter. I don't know how it is, but you don't
seem able to throw your soul into it. You know too
much. It hampers you. In the midst of your en-
thusiasms you ask yourself whether something like
this has not been done before. And . . .'
'Look here,' said Harringay, who had expected
something better than criticism from the devil. 'Are
you going to talk studio to me?' He filled his number
twelve hoghair with red paint.
'The true artist,' said the picture, 'is always an
ignorant man. An artist who theorises about his work
is no longer artist but critic. Wagner ... I say I —
What's that red paint for?'
'I'm going to paint you out,' said Harringay. 'I
don't want to hear all that Tommy Rot. If you
think just because I'm an artist by trade I'm
going to talk studio to you, you make a precious
mistake.'
'One minute,' said the picture, evidently alarmed.
'I want to make you an offer — a genuine offer. It's
right what I'm saying. You lack inspirations. Well.
No doubt you've heard of the Cathedral of Cologne, and
the Devil's Bridge, and '
'Rubbish,' said Harringay. 'Do you think I want
to go to perdition simply for the pleasure of painting a
good picture, and getting it slated. Take that.'
His blood was up. His danger only nerved him to
action, so he says. So he planted a dab of vermilion in
his creature's mouth. The Italian spluttered and tried
to wipe it off — evidently horribly surprised. And then
T.U. P
226 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
— according to Harringay— there began a very remark-
able struggle, Harringay splashing away with the red
paint, and the picture wriggling about and wiping it
off as fast as he put it on. ' Two masterpieces,' said the
demon. 'Two indubitable masterpieces for a Chelsea
artist's soul. It's a bargain? ' Harringay replied with
the paint brush.
For a few minutes nothing could be heard but the
brush going and the spluttering and ejaculations of the
Italian. A lot of the strokes he caught on his arm and
hand, though Harringay got over his guard often enough.
Presently the paint on the palette gave out and the
two antagonists stood breathless, regarding each other.
The picture was so smeared with red that it looked as
if it had been rolling about a slaughterhouse, and it was
painfully out of breath and very uncomfortable with the
wet paint trickling down its neck. Still, the first round
was in its favour on the whole. 'Think,' it said, sticking
pluckily to its point, 'two supreme masterpieces — in
different styles. Each equivalent to the Cathedral . . .'
'/ know,' said Harringay, and rushed out of the
studio and along the passage towards his wife's boudoir.
In another minute he was back with a large tin of
enamel — Hedge Sparrow's Egg Tint, it was, and a
brush. At the sight of that the artistic devil with the
red eye began to scream. 'Three masterpieces —
culminating masterpieces.'
Harringay delivered cut two across the demon, and
followed with a thrust in the eye. There was an indistinct
rumbling. 'Four masterpieces,' and a spitting sound.
But Harringay had the upper hand now and meant to
keep it. With rapid, bold strokes he continued to paint
over the writhing canvas, until at last it was a uniform
field of shining Hedge Sparrow tint. Once the mouth
reappeared and got as far as 'Five master — ' before he
filled it with enamel; and near the end the red eye
THE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAY 227
opened and glared at him indignantly. But at last
nothing remained save a gleaming panel of drying
enamel. For a little while a faint stirring beneath the
surface puckered it slightly here and there, but presently
even that died away and the thing was perfectly still.
Then Harringay — according to Harringay's account
— lit his pipe and sat down and stared at the enamelled
canvas, and tried to make out clearly what had happened.
Then he walked round behind it, to see if the back of it
was at all remarkable. Then it was he began to regret
he had not photographed the Devil before he painted
him out.
This is Harringays' story — not mine. He supports
it by a small canvas (24 by 20) enamelled a pale green,
and by violent asseverations. It is also true that he
never has produced a masterpiece, and in the opinion
of his intimate friends probably never will.
MR SKELMERSDALE IN
FAIRYLAND
'There's a man in that shop,' said the Doctor, 'who
has been in Fairyland.'
'Nonsense !' I said, and stared back at the shop. It
was the usual village shop, post office, telegraph wire
on its brow, zinc pans and brushes outside, boots,
shirtings, and potted meats in the window. 'Tell me
about it,' I said, after a pause.
'/ don't know,' said the Doctor. 'He's an ordinary
sort of lout — Skelmersdale is his name. But everybody
about here believes it like Bible truth.'
I reverted presently to the topic.
'I know nothing about it,' said the Doctor, 'and I
don't want to know. I attended him for a broken
finger — Married and Single cricket match — and that's
when I struck the nonsense. That's all. But it shows
j t ou the sort of stuff I have to deal with, anyhow, eh?
Nice to get modern sanitary ideas into a people like
this ! '
'Very,' I said in a mildly sympathetic tone, and he
went on to tell me about that business of the Bonham
drain. Things of that kind, I observe, are apt to weigh
on the minds of Medical Officers of Health. I was as
sympathetic as I knew how, and when he called the
Bonham people "asses," I said they were "thundering
asses," but even that did not allay him.
Afterwards, later in the summer, an urgent desire to
seclude myself, while finishing my chapter on Spiritual
Pathology— it was really, I believe, stirfer to write than
2iS
MR SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND 229
it is to read — took me to Bignor. I lodged at a farm-
house, and presently found myself outside that little
general shop again, in search of tobacco. ' Skelmersdale,'
said I to myself at the sight of it, and went in .
I was served by a short, but shapely, young man,
with a fair downy complexion, good, small teeth, blue
eyes, and a languid manner. I scrutinised him curiously.
Except for a touch of melancholy in his expression, he
was nothing out of the common. He was in the shirt-
sleeves and tucked-up apron of his trade, and a pencil
was thrust behind his inoffensive ear. Athwart his
black waistcoat was a gold chain, from which dangled
a bent guinea.
'Nothing more to-day, sir?' he inquired. He leant
forward over my bill as he spoke.
'Are you Mr Skelmersdale?' said I.
' I am, sir,' he said, without looking up.
'Is it true that you have been in Fairyland?'
He looked up at me for a moment with wrinkled
brows, with an aggrieved, exasperated face. 'O shut
it ! ' he said, and, after a moment of hostility, eye to eye,
he went on adding up my bill. ' Four, six and a half,' he
said, after a pause. 'Thank you, sir.'
So, unpropitiously, my acquaintance with Mr Skel-
mersdale began.
Well, I got from that to confidence — through a series
of toilsome efforts. I picked him up again in the Village
Room, where of a night I went to play billiards after my
supper, and mitigate the extreme seclusion from mv
kind that was so helpful to work during the day. I
contrived to play with him and afterwards to talk with
him. I found the one subject to avoid was Fairyland.
On everything else he was open and amiable in a common-
place sort of way, but on that he had been worried — it
was a manifest taboo. Only once in the room did I hear
the slightest allusion to his experience in his presence,
230 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
and that was by a cross-grained farm hand who was
losing to him. Skelmersdak had run a break into double
figures, which, by the Bignor standards, was un-
commonly good play. 'Steady on ! ' said his adversary.
' None of your fairy flukes ! '
Skelmersdale stared at him for a moment, cue in
hand, then flung it down and walked out of the
room.
'Why can't you leave 'im alone?' said a respectable
elder who had been enjoying the game, and in the
general murmur of disapproval, the grin of satisfied wit
faded from the ploughboy's face.
I scented my opportunity. 'What's this joke,' said
I, 'about Fairyland?'
"Tain't no joke about Fairyland, not to young
Skelmersdale,' said the respectable elder, drinking.
A little man with rosy cheeks was more communicative.
'They do say, sir,' he said, 'that they took him into
Aldington Knoll an' kep' him there a matter of three
weeks.'
And with that the gathering was well under weigh.
Once one sheep had started, others were ready enough
to follow, and in a little time I had at least the exterior
aspect of the Skelmersdale affair. Formerly, before he
came to Bignor, he had been in that very similar little
shop at Aldington Corner, and there whatever it was
did happen had taken place. The story was clear that
he had stayed out late one night on the Knoll and
vanished for three weeks from the sight of men, and had
returned with 'his cuffs as clean as when he started'
and his pockets full of dust and ashes. He returned in
a state of moody wretchedness that only slowly passed
away, and for many days he would give no account of
where it was he had been. The girl he was engaged to
at Clapton Hill tried to get it out of him, and threw
him over partly because he refused, and partly because
MR SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND 231
as she said, he fairly gave her the "ump. 1 And then
when, some time after, he let out to some one carelessly
that he had been in Fairyland and wanted to go back,
and when the thing spread and the simple badinage of
the countryside came into play, he threw up his situa-
tion abruptly, and came to Bignor to get out of the fuss.
But as to what had happened in Fairyland none of these
people knew. There the gathering in the Village Room
went to pieces like a pack at fault. One said this, and
another said that.
Their air in dealing with this marvel was ostensibly
critical and sceptical, but I could see a considerable
amount of belief showing through their guarded qualifi-
cations. I took a line of intelligent interest, tinged with
a reasonable doubt of the whole story.
'If Fairyland's inside Aldington Knoll,' I said, 'why
don't you dig it out ? '
'That's what I says/ said the young ploughboy.
'There's a-many have tried to dig on Aldington
Knoll,' said the respectable elder, solemnly, 'one time
and another. But there's none as goes about to-day to
tell what they got by digging.'
The unanimity of vague belief that surrounded me
was rather impressive; I felt there must surely be
something at the root of so much conviction, and the
already pretty keen curiosity I felt about the real facts
of the case was distinctly whetted. If these real facts
were to be got from any one, they were to be got from
Skelmersdale himself; and I set myself, therefore, still
more assiduously to efface the first bad impression 1 had
made and win his confidence to the pitch of voluntary
speech. In that endeavour I had a social advantage.
Being a person of affability and no apparent employment,
and wearing tweeds and knickerbockers, I was naturally
classed as an artist in Bignor, and in the remarkable
code of social precedence prevalent in Bignor an artist
232 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
ranks considerably higher than a grocer's assistant.
Skelmersdale, like too many of his class, is something of
a snob; he had told me to ' shut it' only under sudden,
excessive provocation, and with, I am certain, a sub-
sequent repentance; he was, I knew, quite glad to be
seen walking about the village with me. In due course
he accepted the proposal of a pipe and whisky in my
rooms readily enough, and there, scenting by some
happy instinct that there was trouble of the heart in
this, and knowing that confidences beget confidences, I
plied him with much of interest and suggestion from
my real and fictitious past. And it was after the third
whisky of the third visit of that sort, if I remember
rightly, that apropos of some artless expansion of a
little affair that had touched and left me in my teens
that he did at last, of his own free will and motion,
break the ice. 'It was like that with me,' he said, ' over
there at Aldington. It's just that that's so rum. First
I didn't care a bit and it was all her, and afterwards,
when it was too late, it was, in a manner of speaking,
all me.'
I forbore to jump upon this allusion, and so he
presently threw out another, and in a little while he was
making it as plain as daylight that the one thing he
wanted to talk about now was this Fairyland adventure
he had sat tight upon for so long. You see, I'd done the
trick with him, and from being just another half-
incredulous, would-be facetious stranger, I had, by all
my wealth of shameless self-exposure, become the
possible confidant. He had been bitten by the desire to
show that he, too, had lived and felt many things, and
the lever was upon him.
He was certainly confoundedly allusive at first, and
my eagerness to clear him up with a few precise questions
was only equalled and controlled by my anxiety not to
get to this sort of thing too soon. But in another meeting
MR SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND 233
or so the basis of confidence was complete; and from
first to last I think I got most of the items and aspects —
indeed, I got quite a number of times over almost
everything that Mr Skelmersdale, with his very limited
powers of narration, will ever be able to tell. And so
I come to the story of his adventure, and I piece it all
together again. Whether it really happened, whether
he imagined it or dreamt it, or fell upon it in some strange
hallucinatory trance, I do not profess to say. But that
he invented it I will not for one moment entertain.
The man simply and honestly believes the thing
happened as he says it happened; he is transparently
incapable of any lie so elaborate and sustained, and in
the belief of the simple, yet often keenly penetrating,
rustic minds about him I find a very strong confirmation
of his sincerity. He believes — and nobody can produce
any positive fact to falsify his belief. As for me, with
this much of endorsement, I transmit his story — I am
a little old now to justify or explain.
He says he went to sleep on Aldington Knoll about
ten o'clock one night — it was quite possibly Midsummer
night, though he has never thought of the date, and he
cannot be sure within a week or so — and it was a fine
night and windless, with a rising moon. I have been
at the pains to visit this Knoll thrice since his story
grew up under my persuasions, and once I went there
in the twilight summer moonrise on what was, perhaps,
a similar night to that of his adventure. Jupiter was
great and splendid above the moon, and in the north
and north-west the sky was green and vividly bright
over the sunken sun. The Knoll stands out bare and
bleak under the sky, but surrounded at a little distance
by dark thickets, and as I went up towards it there was
a mighty starting and scampering of ghostly or quite
invisible rabbits. Just over the crown of the Knoll, but
nowhere else, was a multitudinous thin trumpeting of
234 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
midges. The Knoll is, I believe, an artificial mound,
the tumulus of some great prehistoric chieftain, and
surely no man ever chose a more spacious prospect for
a sepulchre. Eastward one sees along the hills to Hythe,
and thence across the Channel to where, thirty miles and
more, perhaps, away, the great white lights by Oris Nez
and Boulogne wink and pass and shine. Westward lies
the whole tumbled valley of the Weald, visible as far as
flindhead and Leith Hill, and the valley of the Stour
opens the Downs in the north to interminable hills
beyond Wye. All Romney Marsh lies southward at
one's feet, Dymchurch and Romney and Lydd, Hast;
and its hill are in the middle distance, and the hills
multiply vaguely far beyond where Eastbourne rolls up
to Beachy Head.
And out upon all this it was that Skelmersdale
wandered, being troubled in his earlier love affair, and
as he says, 'not caring where he went.' And there he
sat down to think it over, and so, sulking and grieving,
was overtaken by sleep. And so he fell into the fairies'
power.
The quarrel that had upset him was some trivial
matter enough between himself and the girl at Clapton
Hill to whom he was engaged. She was a farmer's
daughter, said Skelmersdale, and 'very respectable,'
and no doubt an excellent match for him; but both
girl and lover were very young and with just that mutual
jealousy, that intolerantly keen edge of criticism, that
irrational hunger for a beautiful perfection, that life and
wisdom do presently and most mercifully dull. What
the precise matter of quanxl was I have no idea. She
may have said she liked men in gaiters when he hadn't
any gaiters on, or he may have said he liked her better
in a different sort of hat, but however it began, it got
by a series of clumsy stages to bitterness and tears.
She no doubt got tearful and smeary, and he grew dusty
MR SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND 235
and drooping, and she parted with invidious com-
parisons, grave doubts whether she ever had really cared
for him, and a clear certainty she would never care again.
And with this sort of thing upon his mind he came out
upon Aldington Knoll grieving, and presently, after a
long interval, perhaps, quite inexplicably, fell asleep.
He woke to find himself on a softer turf than ever he
had slept on before, and under the shade of very dark
trees that completely hid the sky. Always, indeed, in
Fairyland the sky is hidden, it seems. Except for one
night when the fairies were dancing, Mr Skelmersdale,
during all his time with them, never saw a star. And
of that, night I am in doubt whether he was in Fairyland
proper or out where the rings and rushes are, in those
low meadows near the railway line at Smeeth.
But it was light under these trees for all that, and on
the leaves and amidst the turf shone a multitude of
glow-worms, very bright and line. Mr Skelmersdale's
first impression was that he was small, and the next
that quite a number of people still smaller were standing
all about him. For some reason, he says, he was neither
surprised nor frightened, but sat up quite deliberately
and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. And there ail
about him stood the smiling elves who had caught him
sleeping under their privileges and had brought him
into Fairyland.
What these elves were like I have failed to gather,
so vague and imperfect is his vocabulary, and so un-
observant of all minor detail does he seem to have been.
They were clothed in something very light and beautiful,
that was neither wool, nor silk, nor leaves, nor the
petals of flowers. They stood all about him as he sat
and waked, and down the glade towards him, down a
glow-worm avenue and fronted by a star, came at once
that Fairy Lady who is the chief personage of his
memory and tale. Of her I gathered more. She was
236 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
clothed in filmy green, and about her little waist was
a broad silver girdle. Her hair waved back from her
forehead on either side; there were curls not too way-
ward and yet astray, and on her brow was a little tiara,
set with a single star. Her sleeves were some sort, of
open sleeves that gave little glimpses of her arms; her
throat, I think, was a little displayed, because he speaks
of the beauty of her neck and chin. There was a neck-
lace of coral about her white throat, and in her breast
a coral-coloured flower. She had the soft lines of a
little child in her chin and cheeks and throat. And her
eyes, I gather, were of a kindled brown, very soft and
straight and sweet under her level brows. You see by
these particulars how greatly this lady must have
loomed in Mr Skelmersdale's picture. Certain things
he tried to express and could not express; 'the way
she moved,' he said several times; and I fancy a sort
of demure joyousness radiated from this Lady.
And it was in the companj r of this delightful person,
as the guest and chosen companion of this delightful
person, that Mr Skelmersdale set out to be taken into
the intimacies of Fairyland. She welcomed him gladly
and a little warmly — I suspect a pressure of his hand in
both of hers and a lit face to his. After all, ten years
ago young Skelmersdale may have been a very comely
youth. And once she took his arm, and once, I think
she led him by the hand adown the glade that the glow-
worms lit.
Just how things chanced and happened there is no
telling from Mr Skelmersdale's disarticulated skeleton
of description. He gives little unsatisfactory glimpses
of strange corners and doings, of places where there
were many fairies together, of 'toadstool things that
shone pink,' of fairy food, of which he could only say
'you should have tasted it ! ' and of fairy music, 'like a
little musical box,' that came out of nodding flowers.
MR SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND 237
There was a great open place where fairies rode and
raced on 'things,' but what Mr Skelmersdale meant by
' these here things they rode/ there is no telling. Larvae,
perhaps, or crickets, or the little beetles that elude us so
abundantly. There was a place where water splashed
and gigantic kingcups grew, and there in the hotter
times the fairies bathed together. There were games
being played and dancing and much elvish love-making
too, I think, among the moss branch thickets. There
can be no doubt that the Fairy Lady made love to Mr
Skelmersdale, and no doubt either that this young man
set himself to resist her. A time came, indeed, when
she sat on a bank beside him, in a quiet secluded
place 'all smelling of vi'lets,' and talked to him of
love.
'When her voice went low and she whispered,'
said Mr Skelmersdale, 'and laid 'er 'and on my
'and, you know, and came close with a soft, warm
friendly way she 'ad, it was as much as I could do
to keep my 'ead.'
It seems he kept his head to a certain limited un-
fortunate extent. He saw ' 'ow the wind was blowing,'
he says, and so, sitting there in a place all smelling of
violets, with the touch of this lovely Fairy Lady about
him, Mr Skelmersdale broke it to her gently — that he
was engaged !
She had told him she loved him dearly, that he was a
sweet human lad for her, and whatever he would ask
of her he should have— even his heart's desire.
And Mr Skelmersdale, who, I fancy, tried hard to
avoid looking at her little lips as they just dropped apart
and came together, led up to the more intimate question
by saying he would like enough capital to start a little
shop. He'd just like to feel, he said, he had money
enough to do that. I imagine a little surprise in those
brown eyes he talked about, but she seemed sympathetic
238 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
for all that, and she asked him many questions about
the little shop, 'laughing like' all the time. So he got
to the complete statement of his affianced position, and
told her all about Millie.
'All?' said I.
'Everything,' said Mr Skelmersdale, 'just who she
was, and where she lived, and everything about her.
J sort of felt I 'ad to all the time, I did.'
'"Whatever you want you shall have," said the
Fairy Lady. "That's as good as done. You shall feel
you have the money just as you wish. And now, you
know — you jnust kiss me."'
And Mr Skelmersdale pretended not to hear the
latter part of her remark, and said she was very kind.
That he really didn't deserve she should be so kind.
And
The Fairy Lady suddenly came quite close to him
and whispered ' Kiss mc ! '
'And,' said Mr Skelmersdale, 'like a fool, I did.'
There are kisses and kisses, I am told, and this must
have been quite the other sort from Millie's resonant
signals of regard. There was something magic in that
kiss; assuredly it marked a turning point. At any rate,
this is one of the passages that he thought sufficiently
important to describe most at length. I have tried to
get it right, I have tried to disentangle it from the hints
and gestures through which it came to me, but I have
no doubt that it was all different from my telling and
far finer and sweeter, in the soft filtered light and the
subtly stirring silences of the fairy glades. The Fairy
Lady asked him more about Millie, and was she very
lovely, and so on — a great many tunes. As to Millie's
loveliness, I conceive him answering that she was 'all
right.' And then, or on some such occasion, the Fairy
v told him she had fallen in love with him as he slept
in the moonlight, and so he had been brought into
MR SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND 239
Fairyland, and she had thought, not knowing of Millie,
that perhaps he might chance to love her. 'But now
you know you can't,' she said, 'so you must stop with
me just a little while, and then you must go back to
Millie.' She told him that, and you know Skelmersdale
was already in love with her, but the pure inertia of his
mind kept him in the way he was going. I imagine him
sitting in a sort of stupefaction amidst all these glowing
beautiful things, answering about his Millie and the
little shop he projected and the need of a horse and cart.
. . . And that absurd state cf affairs must have gone
on for days and days. I see this little lady, hovering
about him and trying to amuse him, too dainty to
understand his complexity and too tender to let him
go. And he, you know, hypnotised as it were by his
earthly position, went his way with her hither and
thither, blind to everything in Fairyland but this
wonderful intimacy that had come to him. It is hard,
it is impossible, to give in print the effect of her radiant
sweetness shining through the jungle of poor Skelmers-
dale's rough and broken sentences. To me, at least,
she shone clear amidst the muddle of his story like a
glow-worm in a tangle of weeds.
There must have been many days of things while all
this was happening — and once, I say, they danced
under the moonlight in the fairy rings that stud the
meadows near Smeeth — but at last it all came to an end.
She led him into a great cavernous place, lit by ' a red
nightlight sort of thing,' where there were coffers piled
on coffers, and cups and golden boxes, and a great heap
of what certainly seemed to all Mr Skelmersdale's senses
— coined gold. There were little gnomes amidst this
wealth, who saluted her at her coming, and stood aside.
And suddenly she turned on him there with brightly
shining eyes.
'And now/ she said, 'you have been kind to stay
240 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
with me so long, and it is time I let you go. You must
go back to your Millie. You must go back to your
Millie, and here — just as I promised you — they will give
you gold.'
'She choked like,' said Mr Skelmersdale. 'At that,
I had a sort of feeling ' (he touched his breastbone)
'as though I was fainting here. I felt pale, you know,
and shivering, and even then — I hadn't a thing to say.
He paused. 'Yes,' I said.
The scene was beyond his describing. But I know
that she kissed him good-bye.
' And you said nothing ? '
'Nothing,' he said. 'I stood like a stuffed calf. She
just looked back once, you know, and stood smiling like
and crying — I could see the shine of her eyes — and then
she was gone, and there was all these little fellows
bustling about me, stuffing my 'ands and my pockets
and the back of my collar and everywhere with gold.'
And then it was, when the Fairy Lady had vanished,
that Mr Skelmersdale really understood and knew. He
suddenly began plucking out the gold they were thrusting
upon him, and shouting out at them to prevent their
giving him more. '"I don't want yer gold," I said.
" I 'aven't done yet. I'm not going. I want to speak to
that Fairy Lady again." I started off to go after her
and they held me back. Yes, stuck their little 'ands
against my middle and shoved me back. They kept
giving me more and more gold until it was running all
down my trouser legs and dropping out of my 'ands.
"I don't want yer gold," I says to them, "I want just
to speak to the Fairy Lady again."'
' And did you ? '
'It came to a tussle.'
' Before you saw her ? '
'I didn't see her. When I gut uui from them she
wasn't anywhere to be seen.'
MR SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND 241
So he ran in search of her out of this red-lit cave,
down a long grotto, seeking her, and thence he came
out in a great and desolate place athwart which a
swarm of will-o'-the-wisps were flying to and fro. And
about him elves were dancing in derision, and the little
gnomes came out of the cave after him, carrying gold
in handfuls and casting it after him, shouting, 'Fairy
love and fairy gold ! Fairy love and fairy gold ! '
And when he heard these words, came a great fear
that it was all over, and he lifted up his voice and called
to her by her name, and suddenly set himself to run
down the slope from the mouth of the cavern, through
a place of thorns and briers, calling after her very
loudly and often. The elves danced about him unheeded,
pinching and pricking him, and the will-o'-the-wisps
circled round him and dashed into his face, and the
gnomes pursued him shouting and pelting him with
fairy gold. As he ran with all this strange rout about
him and distracting him, suddenly he was knee-deep in
a swamp, and suddenly he was amidst thick twisted
roots, and he caught his foot in one and stumbled and
fell. . . .
He fell and he rolled over, and in that instant he
found himself sprawling upon Aldington Knoll, all
lonely under the stars.
He sat up sharply at once, he says, and found he was
very stiff and cold, and his clothes were damp with dew.
The first pallor of dawn and a chilly wind were coining
up together. He could have believed the whole thing a
strangely vivid dream until he thrust his hand into his
side pocket and found it stuffed with ashes. Then he
knew for certain it was fairy gold they had given him.
He could feel all their pinches and pricks still, though
there was never a bruise upon him. And in that
manner, and so suddenly, Mr Skelmersdale came out of
Fairyland back into this world of men. Even then he
T.u.
i\i TALKS OF THE UNEXPECTED
fancied the thing was but the matter of a night until
he returned to the shop at Aldington Corner and dis-
covered amidst their astonishment that he had been
away three weeks.
' Lor ! the trouble I 'ad ! ' said Mr Skelmersdale.
'How?'
'Explaining. I suppose you've never had anything
like that to explain.'
'Never,' I said, and he expatiated for a time on the
behaviour of this person and that. One name he
avoided for a space.
'And Millie?' said I at last.
'I didn't seem to care a bit for seeing Millie,' he said.
' I expect she seemed changed ? '
'Every one was changed. Changed for good. Every
one seemed big, you know, and coarse. And their
voices seemed loud. Why, the sun, when it rose in the
morning, fair hit me in the eye ! '
'And Millie?'
'I didn't want to see Millie.'
'And when you did?'
' I came up against her Sunday, coming out of church.
"Where you been?" she said, and I saw there was a
row. / didn't care if there was. I seemed to forget
about her even while she was there a-talking to me.
She was just nothing. I couldn't make out whatever I
'ad seen in 'er ever, or what there could 'ave been.
Sometimes when she wasn't about. I did get back a little,
but never when she was there. Then it was always the
other came up and blotted her out. . . . Any'ow, it
didn't break her heart.'
' Married ? ' 1 asked.
'Married 'er cousin,' said Mr Skelmersdale, and
reflected on the pattern of the tablecloth for a space.
When he spoke again it was clear that his former
sweetheart had clean vanished from his mind, and that
MR SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLAND 24J
the talk had brought back the Fairy Lady triumphant
in his heart. He talked of her — soon he was letting out
the oddest things, queer love secrets it would be
treachery to repeat. I think, indeed, that was the
queerest thing in the whole affair, to hear that neat
little grocer man after his story was done, with a glass
of whisky beside him and a cigar between his fingers,
witnessing, with sorrow still, though now, indeed, with
a time blunted anguish, of the inappeasable hunger of
the heart that presently came upon him. 'I couldn't
eat,' he said, 'I couldn't sleep. I made mistakes in
orders and got mixed with change. There she was
day and night, drawing me and drawing me. Oh, I
wanted her. Lord ! how I wanted her ! I was up there,
most evenings I was up there on the Knoll, often even
when it rained. I used to walk over the Knoll and round
it and round it, calling for them to let me in. Shouting.
Near blubbering I was at times. Daft I was and
miserable. I kept on saying it was all a mistake. And
every Sunday afternoon I went up there, wet and fine,
though I knew as well as you do it wasn't no good by
day. And I've tried to go to sleep there.'
Lie stopped abruptly and decided to drink some
whisky.
'I've tried to go to sleep there,' he said, and I could
swear his lips trembled. 'I've tried to go to sleep there
often and often. And, you know, I couldn't, sir — never.
I've thought if I could go to sleep there, there might be
something. . . . But I've sat up there and laid up
there, and I couldn't — not for thinking and longing.
It's the longing. . . . I've tried '
He blew, drank up the rest of his whisky spasmodi-
cally, stood up suddenly and buttoned his jacket,
staring closely and critically at the cheap oleographs
beside the mantel meanwhile. The little black note-
book in which he recorded the orders of his dailv round
244 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
projected stiffly from his breast pocket. When all
the buttons were quite done, he patted his chest and
turned on me suddenly. 'Well,' he said, 'I must be
going.'
There was something in his eyes and manner that
was too difficult for him to express in words. 'One
gets talking,' he said at last at the door, and smiled
wanly, and so vanished from my eyes. And that is the
tale of Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland just as he told it
to me.
I.
THE STORY OF THE
INEXPERIENCED GHOST
The scene amidst which Clayton told his last story
comes back very vividly to my mind. There he sat,
for the greater part of the time, in the corner of the
authentic settle by the spacious open fire, and Sanderson
sat beside him smoking the Broseley clay that bore his
name. There was Evans, and that marvel among actors,
Wish, who is also a modest man. We had all come
down to the Mermaid Club that Saturday morning,
except Clayton, who had slept there overnight — which
indeed gave him the opening of his story. We had
golfed until golfing was invisible; we had dined, and
we were in that mood of tranquil kindliness when men
will suffer a story. When Clayton began to tell one, we
naturally supposed he was lying. It may be that indeed
he was lying — of that the reader will speedily be able to
judge as well as I. He began, it is true, with an air of
matter-of-fact anecdote, but that we thought was only
the incurable artifice of the man.
'I say!' he remarked, after a long consideration of
the upward rain of sparks from the log that Sanderson
had thumped, ' you know I was alone here last night ? '
'Except for the domestics,' said Wish.
'Who sleep in the other wing,' said Clayton. 'Yes.
Well ' He pulled at his cigar for some little time as
though he still hesitated about his confidence. Then
he said, quite quietly, ' I caught a ghost ! '
'Caught a ghost, did you?' said Sanderson. 'Where
is it?'
245
246 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
And Evans, who admires Clayton immensely and
has been four weeks in America, shouted, ' Caught a
ghost, did you, Clayton? I'm glad of it ! Tell us all
about it right now.'
Clayton said he would in a minute, and asked him to
shut the door.
He looked apologetically at me. 'There's no eaves-
dropping, of course, but we don't want to upset our very
excellent service with any rumours of ghosts in the
place. There's too much shadow and oak panelling
to trifle with that. And this, you know, wasn't
a regular ghost. I don't think it will come again —
ever.'
' You mean to say you didn't keep it? ' said Sanderson.
'I hadn't the heart to/ said Clayton.
And Sanderson said he was surprised.
We laughed, and Clayton looked aggrieved. ' I know,'
he said, with a flicker of a smile, ' but the fact is it really
was a ghost, and I'm as sure of it as I am that I am
talking to you now. I'm not joking. I mean what I
say.'
Sanderson drew deeply at his pipe, with one reddish
eye on Clayton, and then emitted a thin jet of smoke
more eloquent than many words.
Clayton ignored the comment. ' It is the strangest
thing that has ever happened in my life. You know I
never believed in ghosts or anything of the sort, before,
ever; and then, you know, I bag one in a corner; and
the whole business is in my hands.'
He meditated still more profoundly and produced
and began to pierce a second cigar with a curious little
slabber he affected.
' You talked to it?' asked Wish.
'For the space, probably, of an hour.'
'Chatty?' I said, joining the party of the sceptics.
'The poor devil was in trouble,' said Clayton, bowed
THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST 247
over his cigar-end and with the very faintest note of
reproof.
'Sobbing?' some one asked.
Clayton heaved a realistic sigh at the memory. ' Good
Lord !' he said; 'yes.' And then, 'Poor fellow ! yes.'
' Where did you strike it ? ' asked Evans, in his best
American accent.
'I never realised,' said Clayton, ignoring him, 'the
poor sort of thing a ghost might be,' and he hung us up
again for a time, while he sought for matches in his
pocket and lit and warmed to his cigar.
'I took an advantage,' he reflected at last.
We were none of us in a hurry. 'A character,' he
said, 'remains just the same character for all that it's
been disembodied. That's a thing we too often forget.
People with a certain strength or fixity of purpose may
have ghosts of a certain strength and fixity of purpose —
most haunting ghosts, you know, must be as one-idea'd
as monomaniacs and as obstinate as mules to come back
again and again. This poor creature wasn't.' He
suddenly looked up rather queerly, and his eye went
round the room. 'I say it,' he said, 'in all kindliness,
but that is the plain truth of the case. Even at the
first glance he struck me as weak.'
He punctuated with the help of his cigar.
'I came upon him, you know, in the long passage.
His back was towards me and I saw him first. Right
off I knew him for a ghost. He was transparent and
whitish; clean through his chest I could see the glimmer
of the little window at the end. And not only his
physique but his attitude struck me as being weak. He
looked, you know, as though he didn't know in the
slightest whatever he meant to do. One hand was on
the panelling and the other fluttered to his mouth.
Like — so ! '
'What sort of physique?' said Sanderson.
248 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'Lean. You know that sort of young man's neck
that has two great fiutings clown the back, here an
here — so ! And a little, meanish head with scrubby
hair and rather bad ears. Shoulders bad, narrower than
the hips; turndown collar, ready-made short jacket,
trousers baggy and a little frayed at the heels. That's
how he took me. I came very quietly up the staircase.
I did not carry a light, you know — the candles are on
the landing table and there is that lamp — and I was in
m}' list slippers, and I saw him as I came up. I stopped
dead at that — taking him in. I wasn't a bit afraid.
I think that in most of these affairs one is never nearly
so afraid or excited as one imagines one would be. I
was surprised and interested. I thought, "Good Lord !
Here's a ghost at last ! And I haven't believed for a
moment in ghosts during the last five-and-twenty
vears."'
'Urn,' said Wish.
'I suppose I wasn't on the landing a moment before
lie found out I was there. He turned on me sharply,
and I saw the face of an immature young man, a weak
nose, a scrubby little moustache, a feeble chin. So for
an instant we stood — he looking over his shoulder at me
— and regarded one another. Then he seemed to re-
member his high calling. He turned round, drew him-
self up, projected his face, raised his arms, spread his
hands in approved ghost fashion— came towards mc.
As he did so his little jaw dropped, and he emitted a
faint, drawn-out "Boo." No, it wasn't — not a bit
dreadful. I'd dined. I'd had a bottle of champagne,
and being all alone, perhaps two or three — perhaps even
four or five — whiskies, so I was as solid as rocks and no
more frightened than if I'd been assailed by a frog.
"Boo !" I said. "Nonsense. You don't belong to this
place. What are you doing here?"
'I could ?ce him wince. "Boo-oo," he said.
THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST 249
< «(
Boo — be hanged! Are you a member ?" I said;
and just to show I didn't care a pin for him I stepped
through a corner of him and made to light my candle.
"Are you a member?" I repeated, looking at him side-
ways.
' He moved a little so as to stand clear of me, and his
bearing became crestfallen. "No," he said, in answer
to the persistent interrogation of my eye; "I'm not a
member — I'm a ghost."
' " Well, that doesn't give you the run of the Mermaid
Club. Is there any one you want to see, or anything
of that sort? " And doing it as steadily as possible for
fear that he should mistake the carelessness of whisky
for the distraction of fear, I got my candle alight. I
turned on him, holding it. " What are you doing here? "
I said.
'He had dropped his hands and stopped his booing,
and there he stood, abashed and awkward, the ghost
of a weak, silly, aimless young man. "I'm haunting,"
he said.
'"You haven't any business to," I said in a quiet
voice.
' " I'm a ghost," he said, as if in defence.
'"That may be, but you haven't any business to
haunt here. This is a respectable private club; people
often stop here with nursemaids and children, and,
â– going about in the careless way you do, some poor little
mite could easily come upon you and be scared out of
her wits. I suppose you didn't think of that ?"
'"No sir," he said, "I didn't."
'"You should have done. You haven't any claim
on the place, have you? Weren't murdered here, or
anything of that sort?"
"None, sir; but I thought as it was old and oak-
panelled "
'"That's no excuse." I regarded him firmly. "Your
250 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
coming here is a mistake," I said, in a tone of friendly
superiority. I feigned to see if I had my matches, and
then looked up at him frankly. " If I were you I wouldn't
wait for cock-crow — I'd vanish right away."
'He looked embarrassed. "The fact is, sir " he
began.
"I'd vanish," I said, driving it home.
'"The fact is, sir, that — somehow — I can't."
"'You can't}"
'"No, sir. There's something I've forgotten. I've
been hanging about here since midnight last night,
hiding in the cupboards of the empty bedrooms and
things like that. I'm flurried. I've never come haunting
before, and it seems to put me out."
'"Put you out? "
'"Yes, sir. I've tried to do it several times, and it
doesn't come off. There's some little thing has slipped
me, and I can't get back."
'That, you know, rather bowled me over. He looked
at me in such an abject way that for the life of me I
couldn't keep up quite the high, hectoring vein I had
adopted. "That's queer," I said, and as I spoke I
fancied I heard some one moving about down below.
"Come into my room and tell me more about it," I
said. " I didn't, of course, understand this," and I tried
to take him by the arm. But, of course, you might as
well have tried to take hold of a puff of smoke ! I had
forgotten my number, I think; anyhow, I remember
going into several bedrooms — it was lucky I was the
only soul in that wing— until I saw my traps. " Here
we are," I said, and sat down in the arm-chair; "sit
down and tell me all about it. It seems to me you have
got yourself into a jolly awkward position, old chap."
'Well, he said he wouldn't sit clown; he'd prefer to
flit up and down the room if it was all the same to me.
.^nd so he did, and in a little while we were deep in a
THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST 251
long and serious talk. And presently, you know,
something of those whiskies and sodas evaporated out
of me, and I began to realise just a little what a thunder-
ing rum and weird business it was that I was in. There
he was, semi-transparent — the proper conventional
phantom, and noiseless except for his ghost of a voice —
flitting to and fro in that nice, clean, chintz-hung old
bedroom. You could see the gleam of the copper
candlesticks through him, and the lights on the brass
fender, and the corners of the framed engravings on
the wall, and there he was telling me all about this
wretched little life of his that had recently ended on
earth. He hadn't a particularly honest face, you know,
but being transparent, of course, he couldn't avoid
telling the truth.'
'Eh?' said Wish, suddenly sitting up in his chair.
'What?' said Clayton.
'Being transparent — couldn't avoid telling the truth
— I don't see it,' said Wish.
' / don't see it,' said Clayton, with inimitable assurance.
'But it is so, I can assure you nevertheless. I don't
believe he got once a nail's breadth off the Bible truth.
He told me how he had been killed — he went down into
a London basement with a candle to look for a leakage
of gas— and described himself as a senior English master
in a London private school when that release occurred.'
'Poor wretch !' said I.
'That's what I thought, and the more he talked the
more I thought it. There he was, purposeless in life
and purposeless out of it. He talked of his father and
mother and his schoolmaster, and all who had ever been
anything to him in the world, meanly. He had been
too sensitive, too nervous; none of them had ever
valued him properly or understood him, he said. He
had never had a real friend in the world, I think; he
had never had a success. He had shirked games and
252 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
failed examinations. " It's like that with some people,"
he said; "whenever I got into the examination-room
or anywhere everything seemed to go." Engaged to
be married of course — to another over-sensitive person,
I suppose — when the indiscretion with the gas escape
ended his affairs. "And where are you now? " I asked.
"Not in ?"
'He wasn't clear on that point at all The impression
he gave me was of a sort of vague, intermediate state,
a special reserve for souls too non-existent for anything
so positive as either sin or virtue. / don't know. He
was much too egotistical and unobservant to give me
any clear idea of the kind of place, kind of country,
there is on the Other Side of Things. Wherever he was
he seems to have fallen in with a set of kindred spirits :
ghosts of weak Cockney young men, who were on a
footing of Christian names, and among these there was
certainly a lot of talk about "going haunting" and
things like that. Yes — going haunting ! They seemed
to think "haunting" a tremendous adventure, and most
of them funked it all the time. And so primed, you
know, he had come.'
' But really ! ' said Wish to the fire.
'These are the impressions he gave me, anyhow,' said
Clayton modestly. ' I may, of course, have been in a
rather uncritical state, but that was the sort of back-
ground he gave to himself. He kept flitting up and
down, with his thin voice going — talking, talking about
his wretched self, and never a word of clear, firm state-
ment from first to last. He was thinner and sillier and
more pointless than if he had been real and alive. Only
then, you know, he would not have been in my bed-
room here — if he had been alive. I should have kicked
him out.'
'Of course/ s:\id Evans, 'there are poor mortals like
that.'
THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST 253
'And there's just as much chance of their having
ghosts as the rest of us,' I admitted.
' What gave a sort of point to him, you know, was the
fact that he did seem within limits to have found himself
out. The mess he had made of haunting had depressed
him terribly. He had been told it would be a "lark";
he had come expecting it to be a "lark," and here it was,
nothing but another failure added to his record ! He-
proclaimed himself an utter out-and-out failure. He
said, and I can quite believe it, that he had never tried
to do anything all his life that he hadn't made a perfect
mess of — and through all the wastes of eternity he
never would. If he had had sympathy, perhaps
He paused at that, and stood regarding me. He re-
marked that, strange as it might seem to me, nobod} .
not any one, ever, had given him the amount of sym-
pathy I was doing now. I could see what he wanted
straight away, and I determined to head him off at once.
I may be a brute, you know, but being the Only Real
Friend, the recipient of the confidences of one of these
egotistical weaklings, ghost or body, is beyond my
physical endurance. I got up briskly. "Don't you
brood on these things too much," I said. "The thing
you've got to do is to get out of this — get out of this
sharp. You pull yourself together and try." "I can't,"
he said. "You try," I said, and try he did.'
'Try !' said Sanderson. 'How} 1
'Passes,' said Clayton.
' Passes ? '
'Complicated series of gestures and passes with the
hands. That's how he had come in and that's how he
had to get out again. Lord ! what a business I had ! '
'But how could any series of passes ' I began.
'My dear man,' said Clayton, turning on me and
putting a great emphasis on certain words, 'you want
everything clear. / don't know how. All I know is that
254 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
you do — that he did, anyhow, at least. After a fearful
time, you know, he got his passes right and suddenly
disappeared.'
'Did you,' said Sanderson, slowly, "observe the
passes ? '
'Yes,' said Clayton, and seemed to think. 'It was
tremendously queer,' he said. 'There we were, I and
this thin vague ghost, in that silent room, in this silent,
empty inn, in this silent little Friday-night town. Not
a sound except our voices and a faint panting he made
when he swung. There was the bedroom candle, and
one candle on the dressing-table alight, that was all —
sometimes one or other would flare up into a tall, lean,
astonished flame for a space. And queer things hap-
pened. "I can't," he said; "I shall never !" And
suddenly he sat down on a little chair at the foot of the
bed and began to sob and sob. Lord ! what a harrowing,
whimpering thing he seemed !
'"You pull yourself together," I said, and tried to
pat him on the back, and . . . my confounded hand
went through him ! By that time, you know, I wasn't
nearly so — massive as I had been on the landing. I got
the queerness of it full. I remember snatching back my
hand out of him, as it were, with a little thrill, and
walking over to the dressing-table. " You pull yourself
together," I said to him, "and try." And in order to
encourage and help him I began to try as well.'
'What!' said Sanderson, 'the passes?'
' Yes, the passes.'
'But ' I said, moved by an idea that eluded me
for a space.
' This is interesting,' said Sanderson, with his linger in
his pipe-bowl. You moan to say this ghost of yours
e away '
'Did his level best to give away the whole confounded
barrier? Yes'
THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST 255
'He didn't,' said Wish; 'he couldn't. Or you'd have
gone there too.'
'That's precisely it,' I said, rinding my elusive idea
put into words for me.
'That is precisely it,' said Clayton, with thoughtful
eyes upon the fire.
For just a little while there was silence.
'And at last he did it?' said Sanderson.
'At last he did it. I had to keep him up to it hard,
but he did it at last — rather suddenly. He despaired,
we had a scene, and then he got up abruptly and asked
me to go through the whole performance, slowly, so
that he might see. " I believe," he said, " if I could see I
should spot what was wrong at once." And he did.
"/ know," he said. " What do you know? " said I. "/
know," he repeated. Then he said, peevishly, " I can't
do it if you look at me — I really can't; it's been that,
partly, all along. I'm such a nervous fellow that you
put me out." Well, we had a bit of an argument.
Naturally I wanted to see; but he was as obstinate as
a mule, and suddenly I had come over as tired as a
dog — he tired me out. " All right," I said, " / won't look
at you," and turned towards the mirror, on the ward-
robe, by the bed.
'He started off very fast. I tried to follow him by
looking in the looking-glass, to see just what it was had
hung. Round went his arms and hands, so, and so, and
so, and then with a rush came to the last gesture off
all — you stand erect and open out your arms — and
so, don't you know, he stood. And then he didn't!
He didn't ! He wasn't ! I wheeled round from the
looking-glass to him. There was nothing ! I was alone
with the flaring candles and a staggering mind. What
had happened? Had anything happened? Had I
been dreaming? . . . And then, with an absurd note
of finality about it, the clock upon the landing
256 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
discovered the moment was ripe for striking one. So ! —
Ping ! And I was as grave and sober as a judge, with all
my champagne and whisky gone into the vast serene.
Feeling queer, you know — confoundedly queer I Queer !
Good Lord ! '
He regarded his cigar-ash for a moment. 'That's
all that happened/ he said.
' And then you went to bed? ' asked Evans.
' What else was there to do ? '
I looked Wish in the eye. We wanted to scoff, and
there was something, something perhaps in Clayton's
voice and manner, that hampered our desire.
'And about these passes?' said Sanderson.
'T believe I could do them now.'
'Oh !' said Sanderson, and produced a pen-knife and
set himself to grub the dottel out of the bowl of his
clay.
'Why don't 5-011 do them now?' said Sanderson,
shutting his pen-knife with a click.
'That's what I'm going to do,' said Clayton.
'They won't work,' said Evans.
'If they do ' I suggested.
'You know, I'd rather you didn't,' said Wish,
stretching out his legs.
'Why? 1 asked Evans.
' I'd rather he didn't,' said Wish.
' But he hasn't got 'em right,' said Sanderson, plugging
too much tobacco into his pipe.
'All the same, I'd rather he didn't,' said Wish.
We argued with Wi^h. He said that for Clayton to
go through those gestures was like mocking a serious
matter. 'But you don't believe ?' I said. Wish
glanced at Clayton, who was staring into the fire,
weighing something in his mind. 'I do — more than
half, anyhow, I do,' -did Wish.
'Clayton,' said I, 'you're too good a liar for us.
THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST 257
Most of it was all right. But that disappearance . . .
happened to be convincing. Tell us, it's a tale of cock
and bull.'
He stood up without heeding me, took the middle of
the hearthrug, and faced me. For a moment he regarded
his feet thoughtfully, and then for all the rest of the
time his eyes were on the opposite wall, with an intent
expression. He raised his two hands slowly to the
level of his eyes and so began. . . .
Now, Sanderson is a Freemason, a member of the
lodge of the Four Kings, which devotes itself so ably
to the study and elucidation of all the mysteries of
Masonry past and present, and among the students of
this lodge Sanderson is by no means the least. He
followed Clayton's motions with a singular interest in
his reddish eye. 'That's not bad,' he said, when it was
done. 'You really do, you know, put things together,
Clayton, in a most amazing fashion. But there's one
little detail out.'
'I know,' said Clayton. 'I believe I could tell you
which.'
'Well?'
'This,' said Clayton, and did a queer little twist and
writhing and thrust of the hands.
'Yes.'
'That, you know, was what he couldn't get right/
said Clayton. 'But how do you ?'
'Most of this business, and particularly how you
invented it, I don't understand at all,' said Sanderson,
'but just that phase — I do.' He reflected. '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.'
T.u. R
258 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
'I know nothing,' said Clayton, 'except what the
poor devil let out last night.'
' Well, anyhow,' said Sanderson, and placed his church-
warden 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 table 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
THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST 259
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 gentle-
man 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
aU ?
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
260 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
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 com-
prehend. 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 STOLEN BODY
Mr Bessel was the senior partner in the firm of Bessel,
Hart, and Brown, of St Paul's Churchyard, and for
many years he was well known among those interested
in psychical research as a liberal-minded and con-
scientious investigator. He was an unmarried man,
and instead of living in the suburbs, after the fashion
of his class, he occupied rooms in the Albany, near
Piccadilly. He was particularly interested in the
questions of thought transference and of apparitions of
the living, and in November, 1896, he commenced a
series of experiments in conjunction with Mr Vincey,
of Staple Inn, in order to test the alleged possibility of
projecting an apparition of oneself by force of will
through space.
Their experiments were conducted in the following
manner : At a pre-arranged hour Mr Bessel shut him-
self in one of his rooms in the Albany and Mr Vincey in
his sitting-room in Staple Inn, and each then fixed his
mind as resolutely as possible on the other. Mr Bessel
had acquired the art of self-hypnotism, and, so far as
he could, he attempted first to hypnotise himself and
then to project himself as a 'phantom of the living'
across the intervening space of nearly two miles into Mr
Vincey's apartment. On several evenings this was tried
without any satisfactory result, but on the fifth or sixth
occasion Mr Vincey did actually see or imagine he saw
an apparition of Mr Bessel standing in his room. He
states that the appearance, although brief, was very
261
262 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
vivid and real. He noticed that Mr Bessel's face was
white and his expression anxious, and, moreover, that
his hair was disordered. For a moment Mr Vincey,- in
spite of his state of expectation, was too surprised to
speak or move, and in that moment it seemed to him
as though the figure glanced over its shoulder and
incontinently vanished.
It had been arranged that an attempt should be
made to photograph any phantasm seen, but Mr Vincey
had not the instant presence of mind to snap the camera
that lay ready on the table beside him, and when he did
so he was too late. Greatly elated, however, even by
this partial success, he made a note of the exact time,
and at once took a cab to the Albany to inform Mr
Bessel of this result.
He was surprised to find Mr Bessel's outer door
standing open to the night, and the inner apartments
lit and in an extraordinary disorder. An empty cham-
pagne magnum lay smashed upon the floor; its neck
had been broken off against the inkpot on the bureau
and lay beside it. An octagonal occasional table, which
carried a bronze statuette and a number of choice books,
had been rudely overturned, and down the primrose
paper of the wall inky fingers had been drawn, as it
seemed for the mere pleasure of defilement. One of
the delicate chintz curtains had been violently torn
from its rings and thrust upon the fire, so that the smell
of its smouldering filled the room. Indeed the whole
place was disarranged in the strangest fashion. For a
few minutes Mr Vincey, who had entered sure of finding
Mr Bessel in his easy chair awaiting him, could scarcely
believe his eyes, and stood staring helplessly at these
unanticipated things.
Then, full of a vague sense of calamity, he sought the
porter at the entrance lodge. 'Where is Mr Bessel?'
he asked. ' Do you know that all the furniture is broken
THE STOLEN BODY 263
in Mr Bessel's room?' The porter said nothing, but,
obeying his gestures, came at once to Mr Bessel's
apartment to see the state of affairs. 'This
settles it,' he said, surveying the lunatic confusion.
'I didn't know of this. Mr Bessel's gone off. He's
mad !'
He then proceeded to tell Mr Vincey that about half
an hour previously, that is to say, at about the time of
Mr Bessel's apparition in Mr Vincey's rooms, the missing
gentleman had rushed out of the gates of the Albany
into Vigo Street, hatless and with disordered hair, and
had vanished into the direction of Bond Street. 'And
as he went past me,' said the porter, 'he laughed — a
sort of gasping laugh, with his mouth open and his
eyes glaring — I tell you, sir, he fair scared me ! — like
this.'
According to his imitation it was anything but a
pleasant laugh. 'He waved his hand, with all his
fingers crooked and clawing — like that. And he said,
in a sort of fierce whisper, u Life /" Just that one word,
"Lifer*
' Dear me,' said Mr Vincey. ' Tut, tut,' and ' Dear me ! '
He could think of nothing else to say. He was naturally
very much surprised. He turned from the room to the
porter and from the porter to the room in the gravest
perplexity. Beyond his suggestion that probably Mr
Bessel would come back presently and explain what
had happened, their conversation was unable to proceed.
'It might be a sudden toothache,' said the porter, 'a
very sudden and violent toothache, jumping on him
suddenly-like and driving him wild. I've broken things
myself before now in such a case . . .' He thought.
' If it was, why should he say ' life ' to me as he went
past?'
Mr Vincey did not know. Mr Bessel did not return,
and at last Mr Vincey, having done some more helpless
264 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
staring, and having addressed a note of brief inquiry
and left it in a conspicuous position on the bureau,
returned in a very perplexed frame of mind to his own
premises in Staple Inn. This affair had given him a
shock. He was at a loss to account for Mr Bessel's
conduct on any sane hypothesis. He tried to read,
but he could not do so; he went for a short walk, and
was so preoccupied that he narrowly escaped a cab at
the top of Chancery Lane; and at last — a full hour
before his usual time — he went to bed. For a consider-
able time he could not sleep because of his memory of
the silent confusion of Mr Bessel's apartment, and when
at length he did attain an uneasy slumber it was at once
disturbed by a very vivid and distressing dream of Mr
Bessel.
He saw Mr Bessel gesticulating wildly, and with his
face white and contorted. And, inexplicably mingled
with his appearance, suggested perhaps by his gestures,
was an intense fear, an urgency to act. He even believes
that he heard the voice of his fellow experimenter calling
distressfully to him, though at the time he considered
this to be an illusion. The vivid impression remained
though Mr Vincey awoke. For a space he lay awake
and trembling in the darkness, possessed with that
vague, unaccountable terror of unknown possibilities
that comes out of dreams upon even the bravest men.
But at last he roused himself, and turned over and
went to sleep again, only for the dream to return with
enhanced vividness.
He awoke with such a strong conviction that Mr
Bessel was in overwhelming distress and need of help
that sleep was no longer possible. He was persuaded
that his friend had rushed out to some dire calamity.
For a time he lay reasoning vainly against this belief,
but at last he gave way to it. He arose, against all
reason, lit his gas and dressed, and set out through the
THE STOLEN BODY 265
deserted streets — deserted, save for a noiseless police-
man or so and the early news carts — towards Vigo
Street to inquire if Mr Bessel had returned.
But he never got there. As he was going down Long
Acre some unaccountable impulse turned him aside
out of that street towards Co vent Garden, which was
just waking to its nocturnal activities. He saw the
market in front of him — a queer effect of glowing yellow
lights and busy black figures. He became aware of a
shouting, and perceived a figure turn the corner by the
hotel and run swiftly towards him. He knew at once
that it was Mr Bessel. But it was Mr Bessel transfigured.
He was hatless and dishevelled, his collar was torn open,
he grasped a bone-handled walking-cane near the
ferrule end, and his mouth was pulled awry. And he
ran, with agile strides, very rapidly. Their encounter
was the affair of an instant. 'Bessel !' cried Vincey.
The running man gave no sign of recognition either
of Mr Vincey or of his own name. Instead, he cut at
his friend savagely with the stick, hitting him in the
face within an inch of the eye. Mr Vincey, stunned
and astonished, staggered back, lost his footing, and fell
heavily on the pavement. It seemed to him that Mr
Bessel leapt over him as he fell. When he looked again
Mr Bessel had vanished, and a policeman and a number
of garden porters and salesmen were rushing past
towards Long Acre in hot pursuit.
With the assistance of several passers-by — for the
whole street was speedily alive with running people —
Mr Vincey struggled to his feet. He at once became
the centre of a crowd greedy to see his injury. A
multitude of voices competed to reassure him of his
safety, and then to tell him of the behaviour of the
madman, as they regarded Mr Bessel. He had suddenly
appeared in the middle of the market screaming 'Life !
LifeT striking right and left with a blood-stained
266 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
walking-stick, and dancing and shouting with laughter
at each successful blow. A lad and two women had
broken heads, and he had smashed a man's wrist; a
little child had been knocked insensible, and for a time
he had driven every one before him, so furious and
resolute had his behaviour been. Then he made a raid
upon a coffee stall, hurled its paraffin flare through the
window of the post office, and fled laughing, after
stunning the foremost of the two policemen who had
the pluck to charge him.
Mr Vincey's first impulse was naturally to join in
the pursuit of his friend, in order if possible to save him
from the violence of the indignant people. But his
action was slow, the blow had half stunned him, and
while this was still no more than a resolution came the
news, shouted through the crowd, that Mr Bessel had
eluded his pursuers. At first Mr Vincey could scarcely
credit this, but the universality of the report, and
presently the dignified return of two futile policemen,
convinced him. After some aimless inquiries he returned
towards Staple Inn, padding a handkerchief to a now
very painful nose.
He was angry and astonished and perplexed. It
appeared to him indisputable that Mr Bessel must have
gone violently mad in the midst of his experiment in
thought transference, but why that should make him
appear with a sad white face in Mr Vincey 's dreams
seemed a problem beyond solution. He racked his
brains in vain to explain this. It seemed to him at last
that not simply Mr Bessel, but the order of things must
be insane. But he could think of nothing to do. He
shut himself carefully into his room, lit his fire — it was
a gas fire with asbestos bricks — and, fearing fresh
dreams if he went to bed, remained bathing his injured
face, or holding up books in a vain attempt to read
until dawn. Throughout that vigil he had a curious
THE STOLEN BODY 267
persuasion that Mr Bessel was endeavouring to speak to
him, but he would not let himself attend to any such
belief.
About dawn, his physical fatigue asserted itself, and
he went to bed and slept at last in spite of dreaming.
He rose late, unrested and anxious and in considerable
facial pain. The morning papers had no news of Mr
Bessel's aberration — it had come too late for them. Mr
Vincey's perplexities, to which the fever of his bruise
added fresh irritation, became at last intolerable, and,
after a fruitless visit to the Albany, he went down to
St Paul's Churchyard to Mr Hart, Mr Bessel's partner,
and so far as Mr Vincey knew, his nearest friend.
He was surprised to learn that Mr Hart, although he
knew nothing of the outbreak, had also been disturbed
by a vision, the very vision that Mr Vincey had seen —
Mr Bessel, white and dishevelled, pleading earnestly by
his gestures for help. That was his impression of the
import of his signs. ' I was just going to look him up in
the Albany when you arrived,' said Mr Hart. 'I was
so sure of something being wrong with him.'
As the outcome of their consultation the two gentle-
men decided to inquire at Scotland Yard for news of
their missing friend. 'He is bound to be laid by the
heels,' said Mr Hart. 'He can't go on at that pace for
long.' But the police authorities had not laid Mr Bessel
by the heels. They confirmed Mr Vincey's overnight
experiences and added fresh circumstances, some of an
even graver character than those he knew — a list of
smashed glass along the upper half of Tottenham Court
Road, an attack upon a policeman in Hampstead Road,
and an atrocious assault upon a woman. All these
outrages were committed between half-past twelve and
a quarter to two in the morning, and between those
hours — and, indeed, from the very moment of Mr
Bessel's first rush from his rooms at half-past nine in
268 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
the evening — they could trace the deepening violence
of his fantastic career. For the last hour, at least from
before one, that is, until a quarter to two, he had run
amuck through London, eluding with amazing agility
every effort to stop or capture him.
But after a quarter to two he had vanished. Up to
that hour witnesses were multitudinous. Dozens of
people had seen him, fled from him or pursued him, and
then things suddenly came to an end. At a quarter to
two he had been seen running down the Euston Road
towards Baker Street, flourishing a can of burning
colza oil and jerking splashes of flame therefrom at the
windows of the houses he passed. But none of the police-
men on Euston Road bej^ond the Waxwork Exhibition,
nor any of those in the side streets down which he must
have passed had he left the Euston Road, had seen
anything of him. Abruptly he disappeared. Nothing
of his subsequent doings came to light, in spite of the
keenest inquiry.
Here was a fresh astonishment for Mr Vincey. He
had found considerable comfort in Mr Hart's conviction,
'He is bound to be laid by the heels before long,' and in
that assurance he had been able to suspend his mental
perplexities. But any fresh development seemed
destined to add new impossibilities to a pile already
heaped beyond the powers of his acceptance. He found
himself doubling whether his memory might not have
played him some grotesque trick, debating whether any
of these things could possibly have happened; and in
the afternoon he hunted up Mr Hart again to share the
intolerable weight on his mind. He found Mr Hart
engaged with a well-known private detective, but as
that gentleman accomplished nothing in this case, we
need not enlarge upon his proceedings.
All that day Mr Bessel's whereabouts eluded an
unceasingly active inquiry, and all that night. And all
THE STOLEN BODY 269
that day there was a persuasion in the back of Mr Vincey's
mind that Mr Bessel sought his attention, and all
through the night Mr Bessel with a tear-stained face of
anguish pursued him through his dreams. And when-
ever he saw Mr Bessel in his dreams he also saw a
number of other faces, vague but malignant, that
seemed to be pursuing Mr Bessel.
It was on the following day, Sunday, that Mr Vincey
recalled certain remarkable stories of Mrs Bullock, the
medium, who was then attracting attention for the
first time in London. He determined to consult her.
She was staying at the house of that well-known inquirer,
Dr Wilson Paget, and Mr Vincey, although he had
never met that gentleman before, repaired to him
forthwith with the intention of invoking her help.
But scarcely had he mentioned the name of
Bessel when Doctor Paget interrupted him. 'Last
night — just at the end,' he said, 'we had a com-
munication.'
He left the room, and returned with a slate on which
were certain words written in a handwriting, shaky
indeed, but indisputably the handwriting of Mr Bessel !
'How did you get this?' said Mr Vincey. 'Do you
mean ? '
'We got it last night,' said Doctor Paget. With
numerous interruptions from Mr Vincey, he proceeded
to explain how the writing had been obtained. It
appears that in her seances, Mrs Bullock passes into a
condition of trance, her eyes rolling up in a strange way
under her eyelids, and her body becoming rigid. She
then begins to talk very rapidly, usually in voices other
than her own. At the same time one or both of her
hands may become active, and if slates and pencils are
provided they will then write messages simultaneously
with and quite independently of the flow of words from
her mouth. By many she is considered an even more
270 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
remarkable medium than the celebrated Mrs Piper. It
was one of these messages, the one written by her left
hand, that Mr Vincey now had before him. It consisted
of eight words written disconnectedly 'George Bessel
. . . trial excav 11 - . . . Baker Street . . . help . . .
starvation.' Curiously enough, neither Doctor Paget
nor the two other inquirers who were present had heard
of the disappearance of Mr Bessel — the news of it
appeared only in the evening papers of Saturday — and
they had put the message aside with many others of a
vague and enigmatical sort that Mrs Bullock has from
time to time delivered.
When Doctor Paget heard Mr Vincey's story, he
gave himself at once with great energy to the pursuit
of this clue to the discovery of Mr Bessel. It would
serve no useful purpose here to describe the inquiries
of Mr Vincey and himself; suffice it that the clue
was a genuine one, and that Mr Bessel was actually
discovered by its aid.
He was found at the bottom of a detached shaft
which had been sunk and abandoned at the commence-
ment of the work for the new electric railway near
Baker Street Station. His arm and leg and two ribs
were broken. The shaft is protected by a hoarding
nearly 20 ft. high, and over this, incredible as it seems,
Mr Bessel, a stout, middle-aged gentleman, must have
scrambled in order to fall down the shaft. He was
saturated in colza oil, and the smashed tin lay beside
him, but luckily the flame had been extinguished by his
fall. And his madness had passed from him altogether.
But he was, of course, terribly enfeebled, and at the
sight of his rescuers he gave way to hysterical weeping.
In view of the deplorable state of his flat, he was
taken to the house of Dr Hatton in Upper Baker Street.
Here he was subjected to a sedative treatment, and
anything that might recall the violent crisis through
THE STOLEN BODY 271
which he had passed was carefully avoided. But on the
second day he volunteered a statement.
Since that occasion Mr Bessel has several times re-
peated this statement — to myself among other people —
varying the details as the narrator of real experiences
always does, but never by any chance contradicting
himself in any particular. And the statement he makes
is in substance as follows.
In order to understand it clearly it is necessary to go
back to his experiments with Mr Vincey before his
remarkable attack. Mr Bessel's first attempts at self-
projection, in his experiments with Mr Vincey, were, as
the reader will remember, unsuccessful. But through all
of them he was concentrating all his power and will upon
getting out of the body — 'willing it with all my might/
he says. At last, almost against expectation, came
success. And Mr Bessel asserts that he, being alive,
did actually, by an effort of will, leave his body and
pass into some place or state outside this world.
The release was, he asserts, instantaneous. 'At one
moment I was seated in my chair, with my eyes tightly
shut, my hands gripping the arms of the chair, doing all
I could to concentrate my mind on Vincey, and then I
perceived myself outside my body — saw my body near
me, but certainly not containing me, with the hands
relaxing and the head drooping forward on the breast.'
Nothing shakes him in his assurance of that release.
He describes in a quiet, matter-of-fact way the new
sensation he experienced. He felt he had become im-
palpable — so much he had expected, but he had not
expected to find himself enormously large. So, how-
ever, it would seem he became. ' I was a great cloud —
if I may express it that way — anchored to my body. It
appeared to me, at first, as if I had discovered a greater
self of which the conscious being in my brain was only
a little part. I saw the Albany and Piccadilly and
272 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
Regent Street and all the rooms and places in the houses,
very minute and very bright and distinct, spread out
below me like a little city seen from a balloon. Every
now and then vague shapes like drifting wreaths of
smoke made the vision a little indistinct, but at first I
paid little heed to them. The thing that astonished me
most, and which astonishes me still, is that I saw quite
distinctly the insides of the houses as well as the streets,
saw little people dining and talking in the private
houses, men and women dining, playing billards, and
drinking in restaurants and hotels, and several places
of entertainment crammed with people. It was like
watching the affairs of a glass hive.'
Such were Mr Bessel's exact words as I took them
down when he told me the story. Quite forgetful of
Mr Vincey, he remained for a space observing these
things. Impelled by curiosity, he says, he stooped down
and with the shadowy arm he found himself possessed
of attempted to touch a man walking along Vigo Street.
But he could not do so, though his finger seemed to
pass through the man. Something prevented his doing
this, but what it was he finds it hard to describe. He
compares the obstacle to a sheet of glass.
'I felt as a kitten may feel/ he said, 'when it goes
for the first time to pat its reflection in a mirror.' Again
and again, on the occasion when I heard him tell this
story, Mr Bessel returned to that comparison of the
sheet of glass. "Yet it was not altogether a precise
comparison, because, as the reader will speedily see,
there were interruptions of this generally impermeable
resistance, means of getting through the barrier to the
material world again. But, naturally, there is a very
great difficulty in expressing these unprecedented
impressions in the language of everyday experience.
A thing that impressed him instantly, and which
weighed upon him throughout all this experience, was
THE STOLEN BODY 273
the stillness of this place — he was in a world without
sound.
At first Mr Bessel's mental state was an unemotional
wonder. His thought chiefly concerned itself with where
he might be. He was out of the body — out of his
material body, at any rate — but that was not all. He
believes, and I for one believe also, that he was some-
where out of space, as we understand it, altogether. By
a strenuous effort of will he had passed out of his body
into a world beyond this world, a world undreamt of,
yet lying so close to it and so strangely situated with
regard to it that all things on this earth are clearly
visible both from without and from within in this other
world about us. For a long time, as it seemed to him,
this realisation occupied his mind to the exclusion of all
other matters, and then he recalled the engagement
with Mr Vincey, to which this astonishing experience
was, after all, but a prelude.
He turned his mind to locomotion in this new body
in which he found himself. For a time he was unable
to shift himself from his attachment to his earthly car-
cass. For a time this new strange cloud body of his
simply swayed, contracted, expanded, coiled, and
writhed with his efforts to free himself, and then quite
suddenly the link that bound him snapped. For a
moment everything was hidden by what appeared to be
whirling spheres of dark vapour, and then through a
momentary gap he saw his drooping body collapse limply,
saw his lifeless head drop sideways, and found he was
driving along like a huge cloud in a strange place of
shadowy clouds that had the luminous intricacy of
London spread like a model below.
But now he was aware that the fluctuating vapour
about him was something more than vapour, and
the temerarious excitement of his first essay was
shot with fear. For he perceived, at first indistinctly,
T.U. S
274 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
and then suddenly very clearly, that he was surrounded
by faces ! that each roll and coil of the seeming cloud-
stuff was a face. And such faces ! Faces of thin shadow,
faces of gaseous tenuity. Faces like those faces that
glare with intolerable strangeness upon the sleeper in
the evil hours of his dreams. Evil, greedy eyes that
were full of a covetous curiosity, faces with knit brows
and snarling, smiling lips; their vague hands clutched
at Mr Bessel as he passed, and the rest of their bodies
was but an elusive streak of trailing darkness. Never
a word they said, never a sound from the mouths that
seemed to gibber. All about him they pressed in that
dreamy silence, passing freely through the dim mistiness
that was his body, gathering ever more numerously
about him. And the shadowy Mr Bessel, now suddenly
fear-stricken, drove through the silent, active multitude
of eyes and clutching hands.
So inhuman were these faces, so malignant their
staring eyes, and shadowy, clawing gestures, that it
did not occur to Mr Bessel to attempt intercourse with
these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms, they seemed,
children of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden
the boon of being, whose only expressions and gestures
told of the envy and craving for life that was their one
link with existence.
It says much for his resolution that, amidst the
swarming cloud of these noiseless spirits of evil, he could
still think of Mr Vincey. He made a violent effort of
will and found himself, he knew not how, stooping
towards Staple Inn, saw Vincey sitting attentive and
alert in his arm-chair by the lire.
And clustering also about him, as they clustered ever
about all that lives and breathes, was another multitude
of these vain voiceless shadows, longing, desiring, seeking
some loophole into life.
For a space Mr Bessel sought ineffectually to attract
THE STOLEN BODY 275
his friend's attention. He tried to get in front of his
eyes, to move the objects in his room, to touch him.
But Mr Vincey remained unaffected, ignorant of the
being that was so close to his own. The strange some-
thing that Mr Bessel has compared to a sheet of glass
separated them impermeably.
And at last Mr Bessel did a desperate thing. I have
told how that in some strange way he could see not
only the outside of a man as we see him, but within. He
extended his shadowy hand and thrust his vague black
fingers, as it seemed, through the heedless brain.
Then, suddenly, Mr Vincey started like a man who
recalls his attention from wandering thoughts, and it
seemed to Mr Bessel that a little dark-red body situated
in the middle of Mr Vincey's brain swelled and glowed
as he did so. Since that experience he has been shown
anatomical figures of the brain, and he knows now that
this is that useless structure, as doctors call it, the
pineal eye. For, strange as it will seem to many, we
have, deep in our brains — where it cannot possibly see
any earthly light — an eye ! At the time this, with the
rest of the internal anatomy of the brain, was quite
new to him. At the sight of its changed appearance,
however, he thrust forth his finger, and, rather fearful
still of the consequences, touched this little spot. And
instantly Mr Vincey started, and Mr Bessel knew that
he was seen.
And at that instant it came to Mr Bessel that evil
had happened to his body, and behold ! a great wind
blew through all that world of shadows and tore him
away. So strong was this persuasion that he thought
no more of Mr Vincey, but turned about forthwith, and
all the countless faces drove back with him like leaves
before a gale. But he returned too late. In an instant
he saw the body that he had left inert and collapsed —
lying, indeed, like the body of a man just dead — had
276 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
arisen by virtue of some strength and will beyond his
own. It stood with staring eyes, stretching its limbs in
dubious fashion.
For a moment he watched it in wild dismay, and
then he stooped towards it. But the pane of glass had
closed against him again, and he was foiled. He beat
himself passionately against this, and all about him the
spirits of evil grinned and pointed and mocked. He
gave way to furious anger. He compares himself to a
bird that has fluttered heedlessly into a room and is
beating at the window-pane that holds it back from
freedom.
And behold 1 the little body that had once been his
was now dancing with delight. He saw it shouting,
though he could not hear its shouts; he saw the violence
of its movements grow. He watched it fling his cherished
furniture about in the mad delight of existence, rend
his books apart, smash bottles, drink heedlessly from
the jagged fragments, leap and smite in a passionate
acceptance of living. He watched these actions in
paralysed astonishment. Then once more he hurled
himself against the impassable barrier, and then, with
all that crew of mocking ghosts about him, hurried back
in dire confusion to Vincey to tell him of the outrage
that had come upon him.
But the brain of Vincey was now closed against
apparitions, and the disembodied Mr Bessel pursued
him in vain as he hurried out into Holborn to call a cab.
Foiled and terror-stricken, Mr Bessel swept back again,
to find his desecrated body whooping in a glorious
frenzy down the Burlington Arcade. . . .
And now the attentive reader begins to understand
Mr Bessel's interpretation of the first part of this strange
story. The being whose frantic rush through London
had indicted so much injury and disaster had indeed
Mr Bessel's body, but it was not Mr Bessel. It was an
THE STOLEN BODY 277
evil spirit out of that strange world beyond existence,
into which Mr Bessel had so rashly ventured. For
twenty hours it held possession of him, and for all those
twenty hours the dispossessed spirit-body of Mr Bessel
was going to and fro in that unheard-of middle world of
shadows seeking help in vain.
He spent many hours beating at the minds of Mr
Vincey and of his friend Mr Hart. Each, as we know,
he roused by his efforts. But the language that might
convey his situation to these helpers across the gulf he
did not know; his feeble fingers groped vainly and
powerlessly in their brains. Once, indeed, as we have
already told, he was able to turn Mr Vincey aside from
his path so that he encountered the stolen body in its
career, but he could not make him understand the thing
that had happened : he was unable to draw any help
from that encounter. . . .
All through those hours the persuasion was over-
whelming in Mr Bessel's mind that presently his body
would be killed by its furious tenant, and he would have
to remain in this shadow-land for evermore. So that
those long hours were a growing agony of fear. And
ever as he hurried to and fro in his ineffectual excitement
innumerable spirits of that world about him mobbed
him and confused his mind. And ever an envious
applauding multitude poured after their successful
f illow as he went upon his glorious career.
For that, it would seem, must be the life of these
bodiless things of this world that is the shadow of our
world. Ever they watch, coveting a way into a mortal
body, in order that they may descend, as furies and
frenzies, as violent lusts and mad, strange impulses,
rejoicing in the body they have won. For Mr Bessel was
not the only human soul in that place. Witness the
fact that he met first one, and afterwards several
shadows of men, men like himself, it seemed, who had
278 TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
lost their bodies even it may be as he had lost his, and
wandered, despairingly, in that lost world that is neither
life nor death. They could not speak because that
world is silent, yet he knew them for men because of
their dim human bodies, and because of the sadness of
their faces.
But how they had come into that world he could not
tell, nor where the bodies they had lost might be,
whether they still raved about the earth, or whether
they were closed for ever in death against return. That
they were the spirits of the dead neither he nor I believe.
But Doctor Wilson Paget thinks they are the rational
souls of men who are lost in madness on the earth.
At last Mr Bessel chanced upon a place where a little
crowd of such disembodied silent creatures was gathered,
and thrusting through them he saw below a brightly-lit
room, and four or five quiet gentlemen and a woman,
a stoutish woman dressed in black bombazine and
sitting awkwardly in a chair with her head thrown back.
He knew her from her portraits to be Mrs Bullock, the
medium. And he perceived that tracts and structures
in her brain glowed and stirred as he had seen the pineal
eye in the brain of Mr Vincey glow. The light was very
fitful; sometimes it was a broad illumination, and
sometimes merely a faint twilight spot, and it shifted
slowly about her brain. She kept on talking and writing
with one hand. And Mr Bessel saw that the crowding
shadows of men about him, and a great multitude of the
shadow spirits of that shadow-land, were all striving
and thrusting to touch the lighted regions of her brain.
As one gained her brain or another was thrust away,
her voice and the writing of her hand changed. So
that what she said was disorderly and confused for the
most part; now a fragment of one soul's message, and
now a fragment of another's, and now she babbled
the insane fancies of the spirits of vain desire. Then
THE STOLEN BODY 279
Mr Bessel understood that she spoke for the spirit that
had touch of her, and he began to struggle very furiously
towards her. But he was on the outside of the crowd
and at that time he could not reach her, and at last,
growing anxious, he went away to find what had
happened meanwhile to his body.
For a long time he went to and fro seeking it in vain
and fearing that it must have been killed, and then he
found it at the bottom of the shaft in Baker Street,
writhing furiously and cursing with pain. Its leg and
an arm and two ribs had been broken by its fall. More-
over, the evil spirit was angry because his time had
been so short and because of the pain — making violent
movements and casting his body about.
And at that Mr Bessel returned with redoubled
earnestness to the room where the seance was going on,
and so soon as he had thrust himself within sight of the
place he saw one of the men who stood about the medium
looking at his watch as if he meant that the seance
should presently end. At that a great number of the
shadows who had been striving turned away with
gestures of despair. But the thought that the seance
was almost over only made Mr Bessel the more earnest,
and he struggled so stoutly with his will against the
others that presently he gained the woman's brain.
It chanced that just at that moment it glowed very
brightly, and in that instant she wrote the message that
Doctor Wilson Paget preserved. And then the other
shadows and the cloud of evil spirits about him had
thrust Mr Bessel away from her, and for all the rest of
the seance he could regain her no more.
So he went back and watched through the long hours
at the bottom of the shaft where the evil spirit lay in
the stolen body it had maimed, writhing and cursing,
and weeping and groaning, and learning the lesson of
pain. And towards dawn the thing he had waited for
28o TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
happened, the brain glowed brightly and the evil spirit
came out, and Mr Bessel entered the body he had
feared he should never enter again. As he did so, the
silence — the brooding silence — ended; he heard the
tumult of traffic and the voices of people overhead, and
that strange world that is the shadow of our world —
the dark and silent shadows of ineffectual desire and
the shadows of lost men — vanished clean away.
He lay there for the space of about three hours before
he was found. And in spite of the pain and suffering
of his wounds, and of the dim damp place in which he
lay; in spite of the tears — wrung from him by his
physical distress — his heart was full of gladness to
know that he was nevertheless back once more in the
kindly world of men.
GLASGOW : VV. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
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