missing and you go to the police, they'll clear up all your gang with
their enquiries. They'll be only too glad of the chance. Trouble
me! They'll dig up the cellars in your house and in your previous
house to find the body. They'll search you and ransack you. And
what they don't do to you, your pals will.'
"Sumner leaned forward and grimaced like a gargoyle to give his words
greater emphasis. '_Yew_ were the last man seen with her,' he said.
"'Not a scrap of evidence.'
"Sumner cursed vigorously. 'He saw you.'
"'I can deny that absolutely. Frowsty little witness your friend
Barnado. Don't be too sure he'll stick it. Nasty business if a
woman disappears and you find yourself trying to fix something that
won't hold water on to someone her husband dislikes. If I were you,
Sumner, I wouldn't take that line. Even if he backs you up, what
does it prove? You know of nobody else who pretends to have seen me
with Hetty. You won't be able to find anybody....'
"Mr. Sumner extended his hand towards my table. He was too far away
to bang it properly so he pulled his chair up closer. The bang when
it came was ineffective. 'Look 'ere,' he said and moistened his
lips. 'I want my Hetty back and I'm going to have her back. You're
precious cool and cucumberish and all that just now, but by God!
I'll warm you up before I've done with you. You think you can get
her away and bluff me off. Never made such a mistake in your life.
Suppose I don't go to the police. Suppose I go for direct action.
Suppose I come round to your place, and make a fuss with your wife."
"'That will be a nuisance,' I said.
"He followed up his advantage. 'A masterpiece of a nuisance.'
"I considered the forced fierceness of his face.
"'I shall say I know nothing about your wife's disappearance and that
you are a blackmailing liar. People will believe me. My wife will
certainly believe me. She'd make herself do so if your story was ten
times as possible. Your friend Barnado and you will make a pretty
couple of accusers. I shall say you are a crazy jealous fool, and if
you keep the game up I shall have you run in. I'd not be altogether
sorry to have you run in. There's one or two little things I don't
like you for. I'd not be so very sorry to get quits.'
"I had the better of him. He was baffled and angry but I saw now
plainly that he had no real fight in him.
"'And you know where she is?' he said.
"I was too full of the spirit of conflict now to be discreet. 'I
know where she is. And you don't get her--whatever you do. And as I
said before, What can you do about it?'
"'My God!' he said. 'My own wife.'
"I leant back with the air of a man who had finished an interview. I
looked at my wrist-watch.
"He stood up.
"I looked up at him brightly. 'Well?' I said.
"'Look here!' he spluttered. 'I don't stand this. By God! I tell
you I want Hetty. I want her. I want her and I'll do what I like
with her. D'you think I'll take this? Me? She's mine, you dirty
thief!'
"I took up a drawing for an illustration and held it in my hand,
regarding him with an expression of mild patience that maddened him.
"'Didn't I marry her--when I needn't have? If you wanted her, why
the devil didn't you keep her when you had her? I tell you I won't
stand it.'
"'My dear Sumner, as I said before, What can you do about it?'
"He leant over the desk, shook a finger as though it was a pistol
barrel in my face. 'I'll let daylight through you,' he said. 'I'll
let daylight through you.'
"'I'll take my chance of that,' I said.
"He expressed his opinion of me for a bit.
"'I won't argue your points,' I said. 'I guess we're about through
with this interview. Don't shock my clerk, please, when she comes
in.' And I rang the bell on my desk.
"His parting shot was feeble. 'You've not heard the last of me. I
mean what I told you.'
"'Mind the step,' said I.
"The door closed and left me strung up and trembling with excitement
but triumphant. I felt I had beaten him and that I could go on
beating him. It might be he would shoot. He'd probably got a
revolver. But it was ten to one he'd take the trouble to get a fair
chance at me and screw himself up to shooting pitch. And with his
loose twitching face and shaky hand it was ten to one against his
hitting me. He'd aim anyhow. He'd shoot too soon. And if he shot
me it was ten to one he only wounded me slightly. Then I'd carry
through my story against him. Milly might be shaken for a time, but
I'd get the thing right again with her.
"I sat for a long time turning over the possibilities of the case.
The more I considered it the more satisfied I was with my position.
It was two o'clock and long past my usual lunch time when I went off
to my club. I treated myself to the unusual luxury of a half-bottle
of champagne."
§ 9
"I never believed Sumner would shoot me until I was actually shot.
"He waylaid me in the passage-way to the yard of Thunderstone House
as I was returning from lunch just a week after our first encounter
and when I was beginning to hope he had accepted his defeat. He had
been drinking, and as soon as I saw his flushed face, half-angry and
half-scared, I had an intimation of what might befall. I remember
that I thought then that if anything happened he must get away
because otherwise he might be left to tell his tale after I was dead.
But I didn't really believe he was man enough to shoot and even now I
do not believe that. He fired through sheer lack of nervous and
muscular co-ordination.
"He did not produce his pistol until I was close up to him. 'Now
then,' said he, 'you're for it. Where's my wife?' and out came the
pistol a yard from me.
"I forget my answer. I probably said, 'Put that away' or something
of that sort. And then I may have seemed about to snatch it. The
report of the pistol, which sounded very loud to me, came at once,
and a feeling as though I'd been kicked in the small of the back.
The pistol was one of those that go on firing automatically as long
as the trigger is gripped. It fired two other shots, and one got my
knee and smashed it. 'Damn the thing!' he screamed and threw it down
as though it had stung him. 'Get out, you fool. Run!' I said as I
lurched towards him, and then as I fell I came within a foot of his
terrified face as he dashed past me towards the main thoroughfare.
He thrust me back with his hand as I reeled upon him.
"I think I rolled over on to my back into a sitting position after I
fell, because I have a clear impression of him vanishing like the
tail of a bolting rabbit into Tottenham Court Road. I saw a van and
an omnibus pass across the space at the end of the street, heedless
altogether of the pistol shots that had sounded so terrible in my
ears. A girl and a man passed with equal indifference. He was
clear. Poor little beast! I'd stolen his Hetty. And now----
"I was very clear-headed. A little numbed where I had been hit but
not in pain. I was chiefly aware of my smashed knee, which looked
very silly with its mixture of torn trouser and red stuff and a
little splintered pink thing that I supposed was an end of bone.
"People from nowhere were standing about me and saying things to me.
They had come out of the yard or from the public-house. I made a
swift decision. 'Pistol went off in my hand,' I said, and shut my
eyes.
"Then a fear of a hospital came upon me. 'My home quite handy,' I
said. 'Eight Chester Terrace, Regent's Park. Get me there, please.'
"I heard them repeating the address and I recognised the voice of
Crane & Newberry's door porter. 'That's right,' he was saying.
'It's Mr. Mortimer Smith. Anything I can do for you, Mr. Smith?'
"I do not remember much of the details of what followed. When they
moved me there was pain. I seem to have been holding on to what I
meant to say and do, and my memory does not seem to have recorded
anything else properly. I may have fainted once or twice. Newberry
was in it somehow. I think he took me home in his car. 'How did it
happen?' he asked. That I remember quite clearly.
"'The thing went off in my hand,' I said.
"One thing I was very certain about. Whatever happened they were not
going to hang that poor, silly, hunted cheat, Sumner. Whatever
happened, the story of Hetty must not come out. If it did, Milly
would think only one thing: that I had been unfaithful to her and
that Sumner had killed me on that account. Hetty was all right now.
I needn't bother about Hetty any more. I had to think of Milly--and
Sumner. It is queer, but I seem to have known I was mortally wounded
from the very instant I was shot.
"Milly appeared, full of solicitude.
"'Accident,' I said to her with all my strength. 'Went off in my
hand.'
"My own bed.
"Clothes being cut away. Round my knee the cloth had stuck. The new
grey suit which I'd meant should last the whole summer.
"Then two strangers became conspicuous, doctors, I suppose,
whispering, and one of them had his sleeves up and showed a pair of
fat pink arms. Sponges and a tinkle of water dripping into a basin.
They prodded me about. Damn! That hurt! Then stinging stuff. What
was the good of it? I was in the body they were prodding, and I knew
all about it and I was sure that I was a dead man.
"Milly again.
"'My dear,' I whispered. 'Dear!' and her poor, tearful face beamed
love upon me.
"Valiant Milly! Things had never been fair to her.
"Fanny? Had Newberry gone to fetch her? Anyhow he had vanished.
"She'd say nothing about Hetty. She was as safe as--safe as
what?--what did one say?--any thing--safe.
"Poor dears! What a fuss they were all in. It seemed almost
shameful of me to be glad that I was going out of it all. But I was
glad. This pistol shot had come like the smashing of a window in a
stuffy room. My chief desire was to leave kind and comforting
impressions on those poor survivors who might still have to stay on
in the world of muddle for years and years. Life! What a muddle and
a blundering it had been! I'd never have to grow old now anyhow....
"There was an irruption. People coming in from the dressing-room.
One was a police inspector in uniform. The other showed policeman
through his plain clothes. Now was the time for it! I was quite
clear-headed--quite. I must be careful what I said. If I didn't
want to say anything I could just close my eyes.
"'Bleeding internally,' said someone.
"Then the police inspector sat down on the bed. What a whale he
was!--and asked me questions. I wondered if anyone had caught a
glimpse of Sumner. Sumner, bolting like a rabbit. I must risk that.
"'It went off in my hand,' I said.
"'What was he saying? How long had I had that revolver?
"'Bought it this lunch time,' I said.
"Did he ask why? He did. 'Keep up my shooting.'
"Where? He wanted to know where. 'Highbury.'
"'What part of Highbury?' They wanted to trace the pistol. That
wouldn't do. Give Mr. Inspector a paper chase. '_Near_ Highbury.'
"'Not in Highbury?'
"I decided to be faint and stupid. 'That way,' I said faintly.
"'A pawnshop?'
"Best not to answer. Then as if by an effort, 'Lil' shop.'
"'Unredeemed pledges?'
"I said nothing to that. I was thinking of another touch to the
picture I was painting.
"I spoke with weak indignation. 'I didn't think it was loaded. How
was I to know it was loaded? It ought not to have been sold--loaded
like that. I was just looking at it--
"I stopped short and shammed exhaustion. Then I felt that I was not
shamming exhaustion. I was exhausted. Gods! but the stuffing was
out of me! I was sinking, sinking, out of the bedroom, out from
among this group of people. They were getting little and faint and
flimsy. Was there anything more to say? Too late if there was. I
was falling asleep, falling into a sleep, so profound, so
fathomless....
"Far away now was the little roomful of people, and infinitely small.
"'He's going!' somebody said in a minute voice.
"I seemed to come back for an instant.
"I heard the rustle of Milly's dress as she came across the room to
me....
"And then, then I heard Hetty's voice again and opened my eyes and
saw Hetty bending down over me--in that lovely place upon this
mountain-side. Only Hetty had become my dear Sunray who is mistress
of my life. And the sunshine was on us and on her face, and I
stretched because my back was a little stiff and one of my knees was
twisted."
"'Wake up! I said,'" said Sunray. "'Wake up,' and I shook you."
"And then we came and laughed at you," said Radiant. "Firefly and I."
"And you said, 'then there is another life,'" said Firefly. "And the
tale is only a dream! It has been a good tale, Sarnac, and somehow
you have made me think it was true."
"As it is," said Sarnac. "For I am as certain I was Henry Mortimer
Smith yesterday as I am that I am Sarnac here and now."
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
THE EPILOGUE
§ 1
The guest-master poked the sinking fire into a last effort. "So am
I," he said, and then with profound conviction, "_That tale is true._"
"But how could it be true?" asked Willow.
"I should be readier to believe it true if Sarnac had not brought in
Sunray as Hetty," said Radiant. "It was very dreamlike, the way
Hetty grew more and more like his dear lady and at last dissolved
altogether into her."
"But if Smith was a sort of anticipation of Sarnac," said Starlight,
"then it was natural for him to choose as his love a sort of
anticipation of Sunray."
"But are there any other anticipations in the story?" asked Willow.
"Did you recognise any other people who are intimate with you both?
Is there a Fanny in this world? Is there a Matilda Good or a brother
Ernest? Was Sarnac's mother like Martha Smith?"
"That tale," said the guest-master, stoutly, "was no dream. It was a
memory floating up out of the deep darkness of forgotten things into
a kindred brain."
Sarnac thought, "What is a personality but a memory? If the memory
of Harry Mortimer Smith is in my brain, then I am Smith. I feel as
sure that I was Smith two thousand years ago as that I was Sarnac
this morning. Sometimes before this in my dreams I have had a
feeling that I lived again forgotten lives. Have none of you felt
that?"
"I dreamt the other day," said Radiant, "that I was a panther that
haunted a village of huts in which lived naked children and some very
toothsome dogs. And how I was hunted for three years and shot at
five times before I was killed. I can remember how I killed an old
woman gathering sticks and hid part of her body under the roots of a
tree to finish it on the morrow. It was a very vivid dream. And as
I dreamt it it was by no means horrible. But it was not a clear and
continuous dream like yours. A panther's mind is not clear and
continuous, but passes from flashes of interest to interludes of
apathy and utter forgetfulness.
"When children have dreams of terror, of being in the wild with
prowling beasts, of long pursuits and hairbreadth escapes, perhaps it
is the memory of some dead creature that lives again in them?" asked
Starlight. "What do we know of the stuff of memory that lies on the
other side of matter? What do we know of the relations of
consciousness to matter and energy? For four thousand years men have
speculated about these things, and we know no more to-day than they
did in Athens when Plato taught and Aristotle studied. Science
increases and the power of man grows but only inside the limits of
life's conditions. We may conquer space and time, but we shall never
conquer the mystery of what we are, and why we can be matter that
feels and wills. My brother and I have much to do with animals and
more and more do I perceive that what they are I am. They are
instruments with twenty strings while we have ten thousand, but they
are instruments like ourselves; what plays upon them plays upon us,
and what kills them kills us. Life and death alike are within the
crystal sphere that limits us for ever. Life cannot penetrate and
death will not penetrate that limitation. What memories are we
cannot tell. If I choose to believe that they float away like
gossamer nets when we die, and that they float I know not where, and
that they can come back presently into touch with other such gossamer
nets, who can contradict me? Maybe life from its very beginning has
been spinning threads and webs of memories. Not a thing in the past,
it may be, that has not left its memories about us. Some day we may
learn to gather in that forgotten gossamer, we may learn to weave its
strands together again, until the whole past is restored to us and
life becomes one. Then perhaps the crystal sphere will break. And
however that may be, and however these things may be explained, I can
well believe without any miracles that Sarnac has touched down to the
real memory of a human life that lived and suffered two thousand
years ago. And I believe that, because of the reality of the story
he told. I have felt all along that whatever interrupting question
we chose to ask, had we asked what buttons he wore on his jacket or
how deep the gutters were at the pavement edge or what was the price
he had paid for his cigarettes, he would have been ready with an
answer, more exact and sure than any historian could have given."
"And I too believe that," said Sunray. "I have no memory of being
Hetty, but in everything he said and did, even in his harshest and
hardest acts, Smith and Sarnac were one character. I do not question
for a moment that Sarnac lived that life."
§ 2
"But the hardness of it!" cried Firefly; "the cruelty! The universal
heartache!"
"It could have been only a dream," persisted Willow.
"It is not the barbarism I think of," said Firefly; "not the wars and
diseases, the shortened, crippled lives, the ugly towns, the narrow
countryside, but worse than that the sorrow of the heart, the
universal unkindness, the universal failure to understand or care for
the thwarted desires and needs of others. As I think of Sarnac's
story I cannot think of any one creature in it who was happy--as we
are happy. It is all a story of love crossed, imaginations like
flies that have fallen into gum, things withheld and things
forbidden. And all for nothing. All for pride and spite. Not all
that world had a giver who gave with both hands.... Poor Milly! Do
you think she did not know how coldly you loved her, Sarnac? Do you
think her jealousy was not born of a certainty and a fear? ... A
lifetime, a whole young man's lifetime, a quarter of a century, and
this poor Harry Smith never once met a happy soul and came only once
within sight of happiness! And he was just one of scores and
hundreds of millions! They went heavily and clumsily and painfully,
oppressing and obstructing each other, from the cradle to the grave."
This was too much for the guest-master, who almost wailed aloud.
"But surely there was happiness! Surely there were moods and phases
of happiness!"
"In gleams and flashes," said Sarnac. "But I verily believe that
what Firefly says is true. In all my world there were no happy
lives."
"Not even children?"
"Lives, I said, not parts of lives. Children would laugh and dance
for a while if they were born in Hell."
"And out of that darkness," said Radiant; "in twenty short centuries
our race has come to the light and tolerance, the sweet freedoms and
charities of our lives to-day."
"Which is no sort of comfort to me," said Firefly, "when I think of
the lives that _have_ been."
"Unless this is the solution," the guest-master cried, "that everyone
is presently to dream back the lives that have gone. Unless the poor
memory-ghosts of all those sad lives that have been are to be brought
into the consolation of our happiness. Here, poor souls, for your
comfort is the land of heart's desire and all your hopes come true.
Here you live again in your ampler selves. Here lovers are not
parted for loving and your loves are not your torment.... Now I see
why men must be immortal, for otherwise the story of man's martyrdom
is too pitiful to tell. Many good men there were like me, jolly men
with a certain plumpness, men with an excellent taste for wine and
cookery, who loved men almost as much as they loved the food and
drink that made men, and they could not do the jolly work I do and
make comfort and happiness every day for fresh couples of holiday
friends. Surely presently I shall find the memories of the poor
licensed innkeeper I was in those ancient days, the poor, overruled,
ill-paid publican, handing out bad stuff in wrath and shame, I shall
find all his troubles welling up again in me. Consoled in this good
inn. If it was I who suffered in those days, I am content, but if it
was some other good fellow who died and never came to this, then
there is no justice in the heart of God. So I swear by immortality
now and henceforth--not for greed of the future but in the name of
the wasted dead.
"Look!" the guest-master continued. "Morning comes and the cracks at
the edge of the door-curtain grow brighter than the light within. Go
all of you and watch the mountain glow. I will mix you a warm bowl
of drink and then we will sleep for an hour or so before you
breakfast and go your way."
§ 3
"It was a life," said Sarnac, "and it was a dream, a dream within
this life; and this life too is a dream. Dreams within dreams,
dreams containing dreams, until we come at last, maybe, to the
Dreamer of all dreams, the Being who is all beings. Nothing is too
wonderful for life and nothing is too beautiful."
He got up and thrust back the great curtain of the guest-house room.
"All night we have been talking and living in the dark Ages of
Confusion and now the sunrise is close at hand."
He went out upon the portico of the guest-house and stood still,
surveying the great mountains that rose out of cloud and haze, dark
blue and mysterious in their recesses and soaring up at last into the
flush of dawn.
He stood quite still and all the world seemed still, except that, far
away and far below, a mist of sounds beneath the mountain mists, a
confusion of birds was singing.
¶ Mr. Wells has also written the following novels:
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM
KIPPS
TONO-BUNGAY
ANN VERONICA
MR. POLLY
THE NEW MACHIAVELLI
MARRIAGE
THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS
THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN
BEALBY
THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT
MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH
THE SOUL OF A BISHOP
JOAN AND PETER
THE UNDYING FIRE
THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART
¶ The following fantastic and imaginative romances:
THE TIME MACHINE
THE WONDERFUL VISIT
THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
THE INVISIBLE MAN
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
THE SLEEPER AWAKES
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON
THE SEA LADY
THE FOOD OF THE GODS
IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET
THE WAR IN THE AIR
THE WORLD SET FREE
MEN LIKE GODS
¶ Numerous short stories collected under the following titles:
THE STOLEN BACILLUS
THE PLATTNER STORY
TALES OF SPACE AND TIME
TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM
¶ The same short stories will also be found in three volumes:
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
TALES OF LIFE AND ADVENTURE
TALES OF WONDER
¶ A Series of books on social, religious and political questions:
ANTICIPATIONS (1900)
A MODERN UTOPIA
THE FUTURE IN AMERICA
NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
GOD THE INVISIBLE KING
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS
THE SALVAGING OF CIVILISATION
WASHINGTON AND THE HOPE OF PEACE
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
THE STORY OF A GREAT SCHOOLMASTER
¶ And two little books about children's play, called:
FLOOR GAMES and LITTLE WARS