* * * * *
I think that going to bed was one of the luckiest ideas I have ever had
in an emergency. I really believe I should either have got loose-headed
or done some fatal, indiscreet thing. But there, locked in and secure
from all interruption, I could think out the position in all its
bearings and make my arrangements at leisure.
Of course it was quite clear to me what had happened to the boy. He
had crawled into the sphere, meddled with the studs, shut the Cavorite
windows, and gone up. It was highly improbable he had screwed in the
manhole stopper, and, even if he had, the chances were a thousand to
one against his getting back. It was fairly evident that he would
gravitate with my bales to somewhere near the middle of the sphere and
remain there, and so cease to be a legitimate terrestrial interest,
however remarkable he might seem to the inhabitants of some remote
quarter of space. I very speedily convinced myself on that point.
And as for any responsibility I might have in the matter, the more I
reflected upon that, the clearer it became that if only I kept quiet
about things, I need not trouble myself about that. If I was faced by
sorrowing parents demanding their lost boy, I had merely to demand my
lost sphere--or ask them what they meant. At first I had had a vision
of weeping parents and guardians, and all sorts of complications; but
now I saw that I simply had to keep my mouth shut, and nothing in that
way could arise. And, indeed, the more I lay and smoked and thought,
the more evident became the wisdom of impenetrability.
It is within the right of every British citizen, provided he does not
commit damage nor indecorum, to appear suddenly wherever he pleases,
and as ragged and filthy as he pleases, and with whatever amount of
virgin gold he sees fit to encumber himself, and no one has any right
at all to hinder and detain him in this procedure. I formulated that at
last to myself, and repeated it over as a sort of private Magna Charta
of my liberty.
Once I had put that issue on one side, I could take up and consider
in an equable manner certain considerations I had scarcely dared to
think of before, namely, those arising out of the circumstances of my
bankruptcy. But now, looking at this matter calmly and at leisure,
I could see that if only I suppressed my identity by a temporary
assumption of some less well-known name, and if I retained the two
months’ beard that had grown upon me, the risks of any annoyance from
the spiteful creditor to whom I have already alluded became very small
indeed. From that to a definite course of rational worldly action was
plain sailing. It was all amazingly petty, no doubt, but what was
there remaining for me to do?
Whatever I did I was resolved that I would keep myself level and right
side up.
I ordered up writing materials, and addressed a letter to the New
Romney Bank--the nearest, the waiter informed me--telling the manager
I wished to open an account with him, and requesting him to send
two trustworthy persons properly authenticated in a cab with a good
horse to fetch some hundredweight of gold with which I happened to
be encumbered. I signed the letter “Blake,” which seemed to me to be
a thoroughly respectable sort of name. This done, I got a Folkestone
Blue Book, picked out an outfitter, and asked him to send a cutter to
measure me for a drab tweed suit, ordering at the same time a valise,
dressing bag, brown boots, shirts, hats (to fit), and so forth; and
from a watchmaker I also ordered a watch. And these letters being
despatched, I had up as good a lunch as the hotel could give, and
then lay smoking a cigar, as calm and ordinary as possible, until in
accordance with my instructions two duly authenticated clerks came from
the bank and weighed and took away my gold. After which I pulled the
clothes over my ears in order to drown any knocking, and went very
comfortably to sleep.
I went to sleep. No doubt it was a prosaic thing for the first man back
from the moon to do, and I can imagine that the young and imaginative
reader will find my behaviour disappointing. But I was horribly
fatigued and bothered, and, confound it! what else was there to do?
There certainly was not the remotest chance of my being believed, if
I had told my story then, and it would certainly have subjected me to
intolerable annoyances. I went to sleep. When at last I woke up again I
was ready to face the world, as I have always been accustomed to face
it since I came to years of discretion. And so I got away to Italy, and
there it is I am writing this story. If the world will not have it as
fact, then the world may take it as fiction. It is no concern of mine.
And now that the account is finished, I am amazed to think how
completely this adventure is gone and done with. Everybody believes
that Cavor was a not very brilliant scientific experimenter who blew
up his house and himself at Lympne, and they explain the bang that
followed my arrival at Littlestone by a reference to the experiments
with explosives that are going on continually at the government
establishment of Lydd, two miles away. I must confess that hitherto I
have not acknowledged my share in the disappearance of Master Tommy
Simmons, which was that little boy’s name. That, perhaps, may prove
a difficult item of corroboration to explain away. They account for
my appearance in rags with two bars of indisputable gold upon the
Littlestone beach in various ingenious ways--it doesn’t worry me what
they think of me. They say I have strung all these things together
to avoid being questioned too closely as to the source of my wealth.
I would like to see the man who could invent a story that would hold
together like this one. Well, they must take it as fiction--there it is.
I have told my story--and now I suppose I have to take up the worries
of this terrestrial life again. Even if one has been to the moon, one
has still to earn a living. So I am working here at Amalfi, on the
scenario of that play I sketched before Cavor came walking into my
world, and I am trying to piece my life together as it was before ever
I saw him. I must confess that I find it hard to keep my mind on the
play when the moonshine comes into my room. It is full moon here, and
last night I was out on the pergola for hours, staring away at that
shining blankness that hides so much. Imagine it! tables and chairs,
and trestles and bars of gold! Confound it!--if only one could hit on
that Cavorite again! But a thing like that doesn’t come twice in a
life. Here I am, a little better off than I was at Lympne, and that
is all. And Cavor has committed suicide in a more elaborate way than
any human being ever did before. So the story closes as finally and
completely as a dream. It fits in so little with all the other things
of life, so much of it is so utterly remote from all human experience,
the leaping, the eating, the breathing, and these weightless times,
that indeed there are moments when, in spite of my moon gold, I do more
than half believe myself that the whole thing was a dream....