III

I had recently placed the lighting of my house in the hands of an

electrical engineer, a very intelligent man, Mr. Square, for whom I had

contracted a sincere friendship.

He had built a shed with a dynamo out of sight, and had entrusted the

laying of the wires to subordinates, as he had been busy with other

orders and could not personally watch every detail. But he was not the

man to let anything pass unobserved, and he knew that electricity was

not a force to be played with. Bad or careless workmen will often

insufficiently protect the wires, or neglect the insertion of the lead

which serves as a safety-valve in the event of the current being too

strong. Houses may be set on fire, human beings fatally shocked, by the

neglect of a bad or slovenly workman.

The apparatus for my mansion was but just completed, and Mr. Square had

come to inspect it and make sure that all was right.

He was an enthusiast in the matter of electricity, and saw for it a vast

perspective, the limits of which could not be predicted.

"All forces," said he, "are correlated. When you have force in one form,

you may just turn it into this or that, as you like. In one form it is

motive power, in another it is light, in another heat. Now we have

electricity for illumination. We employ it, but not as freely as in the

States, for propelling vehicles. Why should we have horses drawing our

buses? We should use only electric trams. Why do we burn coal to warm

our shins? There is electricity, which throws out no filthy smoke as

does coal. Why should we let the tides waste their energies in the

Thames? in other estuaries? There we have Nature supplying us--free,

gratis, and for nothing--with all the force we want for propelling, for

heating, for lighting. I will tell you something more, my dear sir,"

said Mr. Square. "I have mentioned but three modes of force, and have

instanced but a limited number of uses to which electricity may be

turned. How is it with photography? Is not electric light becoming an

artistic agent? I bet you," said he, "before long it will become a

therapeutic agent as well."

"Oh, yes; I have heard of certain impostors with their life-belts."

Mr. Square did not relish this little dig I gave him. He winced, but

returned to the charge. "We don't know how to direct it aright, that is

all," said he. "I haven't taken the matter up, but others will, I bet;

and we shall have electricity used as freely as now we use powders and

pills. I don't believe in doctors' stuffs myself. I hold that disease

lays hold of a man because he lacks physical force to resist it. Now, is

it not obvious that you are beginning at the wrong end when you attack

the disease? What you want is to supply force, make up for the lack of

physical power, and force is force wherever you find it--here motive,

there illuminating, and so on. I don't see why a physician should not

utilise the tide rushing out under London Bridge for restoring the

feeble vigour of all who are languid and a prey to disorder in the

Metropolis. It will come to that, I bet, and that is not all. Force is

force, everywhere. Political, moral force, physical force, dynamic

force, heat, light, tidal waves, and so on--all are one, all is one. In

time we shall know how to galvanise into aptitude and moral energy all

the limp and crooked consciences and wills that need taking in hand, and

such there always will be in modern civilisation. I don't know how to do

it. I don't know how it will be done, but in the future the priest as

well as the doctor will turn electricity on as his principal, nay, his

only agent. And he can get his force anywhere, out of the running

stream, out of the wind, out of the tidal wave.

"I'll give you an instance," continued Mr. Square, chuckling and rubbing

his hands, "to show you the great possibilities in electricity, used in

a crude fashion. In a certain great city away far west in the States, a

go-ahead place, too, more so than New York, they had electric trams all

up and down and along the roads to everywhere. The union men working for

the company demanded that the non-unionists should be turned off. But

the company didn't see it. Instead, it turned off the union men. It had

up its sleeve a sufficiency of the others, and filled all places at

once. Union men didn't like it, and passed word that at a given hour on

a certain day every wire was to be cut. The company knew this by means

of its spies, and turned on, ready for them, three times the power into

all the wires. At the fixed moment, up the poles went the strikers to

cut the cables, and down they came a dozen times quicker than they went

up, I bet. Then there came wires to the hospitals from all quarters for

stretchers to carry off the disabled men, some with broken legs, arms,

ribs; two or three had their necks broken. I reckon the company was

wonderfully merciful--it didn't put on sufficient force to make cinders

of them then and there; possibly opinion might not have liked it.

Stopped the strike, did that. Great moral effect--all done by

electricity."

In this manner Mr. Square was wont to rattle on. He interested me, and I

came to think that there might be something in what he said--that his

suggestions were not mere nonsense. I was glad to see Mr. Square enter

my room, shown in by my man. I did not rise from my chair to shake his

hand, for I had not sufficient energy to do so. In a languid tone I

welcomed him and signed to him to take a seat. Mr. Square looked at me

with some surprise.

"Why, what's the matter?" he said. "You seem unwell. Not got the 'flue,

have you?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"The influenza. Every third person is crying out that he has it, and the

sale of eucalyptus is enormous, not that eucalyptus is any good.

Influenza microbes indeed! What care they for eucalyptus? You've gone

down some steps of the ladder of life since I saw you last, squire. How

do you account for that?"

I hesitated about mentioning the extraordinary circumstances that had

occurred; but Square was a man who would not allow any beating about the

bush. He was downright and straight, and in ten minutes had got the

entire story out of me.

"Rather boisterous for your nerves that--a crawling finger," said he.

"It's a queer story taken on end."

Then he was silent, considering.

After a few minutes he rose, and said: "I'll go and look at the

fittings, and then I'll turn this little matter of yours over again, and

see if I can't knock the bottom out of it, I'm kinder fond of these sort

of things."

Mr. Square was not a Yankee, but he had lived for some time in America,

and affected to speak like an American. He used expressions, terms of

speech common in the States, but had none of the Transatlantic twang. He

was a man absolutely without affectation in every other particular; this

was his sole weakness, and it was harmless.

The man was so thorough in all he did that I did not expect his return

immediately. He was certain to examine every portion of the dynamo

engine, and all the connections and burners. This would necessarily

engage him for some hours. As the day was nearly done, I knew he could

not accomplish what he wanted that evening, and accordingly gave orders

that a room should be prepared for him. Then, as my head was full of

pain, and my skin was burning, I told my servant to apologise for my

absence from dinner, and tell Mr. Square that I was really forced to

return to my bed by sickness, and that I believed I was about to be

prostrated by an attack of influenza.

The valet--a worthy fellow, who has been with me for six years--was

concerned at my appearance, and urged me to allow him to send for a

doctor. I had no confidence in the local practitioner, and if I sent for

another from the nearest town I should offend him, and a row would

perhaps ensue, so I declined. If I were really in for an influenza

attack, I knew about as much as any doctor how to deal with it. Quinine,

quinine--that was all. I bade my man light a small lamp, lower it, so as

to give sufficient illumination to enable me to find some lime-juice at

my bed head, and my pocket-handkerchief, and to be able to read my

watch. When he had done this, I bade him leave me.

I lay in bed, burning, racked with pain in my head, and with my eyeballs

on fire.

Whether I fell asleep or went off my head for a while I cannot tell. I

may have fainted. I have no recollection of anything after having gone

to bed and taken a sip of lime-juice that tasted to me like soap--till I

was roused by a sense of pain in my ribs--a slow, gnawing, torturing

pain, waxing momentarily more intense. In half-consciousness I was

partly dreaming and partly aware of actual suffering. The pain was real;

but in my fancy I thought that a great maggot was working its way into

my side between my ribs. I seemed to see it. It twisted itself half

round, then reverted to its former position, and again twisted itself,

moving like a bradawl, not like a gimlet, which latter forms a complete

revolution.

This, obviously, must have been a dream, hallucination only, as I was

lying on my back and my eyes were directed towards the bottom of the

bed, and the coverlet and blankets and sheet intervened between my eyes

and my side. But in fever one sees without eyes, and in every direction,

and through all obstructions.

Roused thoroughly by an excruciating twinge, I tried to cry out, and

succeeded in throwing myself over on my right side, that which was in

pain. At once I felt the thing withdrawn that was awling--if I may use

the word--in between my ribs.

And now I saw, standing beside the bed, a figure that had its arm under

the bedclothes, and was slowly removing it. The hand was leisurely

drawn from under the coverings and rested on the eider-down coverlet,

with the forefinger extended.

The figure was that of a man, in shabby clothes, with a sallow, mean

face, a retreating forehead, with hair cut after the French fashion, and

a moustache, dark. The jaws and chin were covered with a bristly growth,

as if shaving had been neglected for a fortnight. The figure did not

appear to be thoroughly solid, but to be of the consistency of curd, and

the face was of the complexion of curd. As I looked at this object it

withdrew, sliding backward in an odd sort of manner, and as though

overweighted by the hand, which was the most substantial, indeed the

only substantial portion of it. Though the figure retreated stooping,

yet it was no longer huddled along by the finger, as if it had no

material existence. If the same, it had acquired a consistency and a

solidity which it did not possess before.

How it vanished I do not know, nor whither it went. The door opened, and

Square came in.

"What!" he exclaimed with cheery voice; "influenza is it?"

"I don't know--I think it's that finger again."