"Tripped coming down from the flying-machine from Paris--and fell into
his arms. The mischief was done in a moment!"
"Yes?"
"Well--that's all. Things must be stopped. That is what I want to
consult you about. What must be done? What _can_ be done? Of course I'm
not a hypnotist; my knowledge is limited. But you--?"
"Hypnotism is not magic," said the man in green, putting both arms on
the table.
"Oh, precisely! But still--!"
"People cannot be hypnotised without their consent. If she is able to
stand out against marrying Bindon, she will probably stand out against
being hypnotised. But if once she can be hypnotised--even by somebody
else--the thing is done."
"You can--?"
"Oh, certainly! Once we get her amenable, then we can suggest that she
_must_ marry Bindon--that that is her fate; or that the young man is
repulsive, and that when she sees him she will be giddy and faint, or
any little thing of that sort. Or if we can get her into a sufficiently
profound trance we can suggest that she should forget him altogether--"
"Precisely."
"But the problem is to get her hypnotised. Of course no sort of proposal
or suggestion must come from you--because no doubt she already distrusts
you in the matter."
The hypnotist leant his head upon his arm and thought.
"It's hard a man cannot dispose of his own daughter," said Mwres
irrelevantly.
"You must give me the name and address of the young lady," said the
hypnotist, "and any information bearing upon the matter. And, by the
bye, is there any money in the affair?"
Mwres hesitated.
"There's a sum--in fact, a considerable sum--invested in the Patent Road
Company. From her mother. That's what makes the thing so exasperating."
"Exactly," said the hypnotist. And he proceeded to cross-examine Mwres
on the entire affair.
It was a lengthy interview.
And meanwhile "Elizebe{th} Mwres," as she spelt her name, or "Elizabeth
Morris" as a nineteenth-century person would have put it, was sitting in
a quiet waiting-place beneath the great stage upon which the
flying-machine from Paris descended. And beside her sat her slender,
handsome lover reading her the poem he had written that morning while on
duty upon the stage. When he had finished they sat for a time in
silence; and then, as if for their special entertainment, the great
machine that had come flying through the air from America that morning
rushed down out of the sky.
At first it was a little oblong, faint and blue amidst the distant
fleecy clouds; and then it grew swiftly large and white, and larger and
whiter, until they could see the separate tiers of sails, each hundreds
of feet wide, and the lank body they supported, and at last even the
swinging seats of the passengers in a dotted row. Although it was
falling it seemed to them to be rushing up the sky, and over the
roof-spaces of the city below its shadow leapt towards them. They heard
the whistling rush of the air about it and its yelling siren, shrill and
swelling, to warn those who were on its landing-stage of its arrival.
And abruptly the note fell down a couple of octaves, and it had passed,
and the sky was clear and void, and she could turn her sweet eyes again
to Denton at her side.
Their silence ended; and Denton, speaking in a little language of broken
English that was, they fancied, their private possession--though lovers
have used such little languages since the world began--told her how they
too would leap into the air one morning out of all the obstacles and
difficulties about them, and fly to a sunlit city of delight he knew of
in Japan, half-way about the world.
She loved the dream, but she feared the leap; and she put him off with
"Some day, dearest one, some day," to all his pleading that it might be
soon; and at last came a shrilling of whistles, and it was time for him
to go back to his duties on the stage. They parted--as lovers have been
wont to part for thousands of years. She walked down a passage to a
lift, and so came to one of the streets of that latter-day London, all
glazed in with glass from the weather, and with incessant moving
platforms that went to all parts of the city. And by one of these she
returned to her apartments in the Hotel for Women where she lived, the
apartments that were in telephonic communication with all the best
lecturers in the world. But the sunlight of the flying stage was in her
heart, and the wisdom of all the best lecturers in the world seemed
folly in that light.
She spent the middle part of the day in the gymnasium, and took her
midday meal with two other girls and their common chaperone--for it was
still the custom to have a chaperone in the case of motherless girls of
the more prosperous classes. The chaperone had a visitor that day, a man
in green and yellow, with a white face and vivid eyes, who talked
amazingly. Among other things, he fell to praising a new historical
romance that one of the great popular story-tellers of the day had just
put forth. It was, of course, about the spacious times of Queen
Victoria; and the author, among other pleasing novelties, made a little
argument before each section of the story, in imitation of the chapter
headings of the old-fashioned books: as for example, "How the Cabmen of
Pimlico stopped the Victoria Omnibuses, and of the Great Fight in Palace
Yard," and "How the Piccadilly Policeman was slain in the midst of his
Duty." The man in green and yellow praised this innovation. "These pithy
sentences," he said, "are admirable. They show at a glance those
headlong, tumultuous times, when men and animals jostled in the filthy
streets, and death might wait for one at every corner. Life was life
then! How great the world must have seemed then! How marvellous! They
were still parts of the world absolutely unexplored. Nowadays we have
almost abolished wonder, we lead lives so trim and orderly that courage,
endurance, faith, all the noble virtues seem fading from mankind."
And so on, taking the girls' thoughts with him, until the life they led,
life in the vast and intricate London of the twenty-second century, a
life interspersed with soaring excursions to every part of the globe,
seemed to them a monotonous misery compared with the daedal past.
At first Elizabeth did not join in the conversation, but after a time
the subject became so interesting that she made a few shy
interpolations. But he scarcely seemed to notice her as he talked. He
went on to describe a new method of entertaining people. They were
hypnotised, and then suggestions were made to them so skilfully that
they seemed to be living in ancient times again. They played out a
little romance in the past as vivid as reality, and when at last they
awakened they remembered all they had been through as though it were a
real thing.
"It is a thing we have sought to do for years and years," said the
hypnotist. "It is practically an artificial dream. And we know the way
at last. Think of all it opens out to us--the enrichment of our
experience, the recovery of adventure, the refuge it offers from this
sordid, competitive life in which we live! Think!"
"And you can do that!" said the chaperone eagerly.
"The thing is possible at last," the hypnotist said. "You may order a
dream as you wish."
The chaperone was the first to be hypnotised, and the dream, she said,
was wonderful, when she came to again.
The other two girls, encouraged by her enthusiasm, also placed
themselves in the hands of the hypnotist and had plunges into the
romantic past. No one suggested that Elizabeth should try this novel
entertainment; it was at her own request at last that she was taken into
that land of dreams where there is neither any freedom of choice nor
will....
And so the mischief was done.
One day, when Denton went down to that quiet seat beneath the flying
stage, Elizabeth was not in her wonted place. He was disappointed, and a
little angry. The next day she did not come, and the next also. He was
afraid. To hide his fear from himself, he set to work to write sonnets
for her when she should come again....
For three days he fought against his dread by such distraction, and then
the truth was before him clear and cold, and would not be denied. She
might be ill, she might be dead; but he would not believe that he had
been betrayed. There followed a week of misery. And then he knew she was
the only thing on earth worth having, and that he must seek her, however
hopeless the search, until she was found once more.
He had some small private means of his own, and so he threw over his
appointment on the flying stage, and set himself to find this girl who
had become at last all the world to him. He did not know where she
lived, and little of her circumstances; for it had been part of the
delight of her girlish romance that he should know nothing of her,
nothing of the difference of their station. The ways of the city opened
before him east and west, north and south. Even in Victorian days London
was a maze, that little London with its poor four millions of people;
but the London he explored, the London of the twenty-second century, was
a London of thirty million souls. At first he was energetic and
headlong, taking time neither to eat nor sleep. He sought for weeks and
months, he went through every imaginable phase of fatigue and despair,
over-excitement and anger. Long after hope was dead, by the sheer
inertia of his desire he still went to and fro, peering into faces and
looking this way and that, in the incessant ways and lifts and passages
of that interminable hive of men.
At last chance was kind to him, and he saw her.
It was in a time of festivity. He was hungry; he had paid the inclusive
fee and had gone into one of the gigantic dining-places of the city; he
was pushing his way among the tables and scrutinising by mere force of
habit every group he passed.
He stood still, robbed of all power of motion, his eyes wide, his lips
apart. Elizabeth sat scarcely twenty yards away from him, looking
straight at him. Her eyes were as hard to him, as hard and
expressionless and void of recognition, as the eyes of a statue.
She looked at him for a moment, and then her gaze passed beyond him.
Had he had only her eyes to judge by he might have doubted if it was
indeed Elizabeth, but he knew her by the gesture of her hand, by the
grace of a wanton little curl that floated over her ear as she moved her
head. Something was said to her, and she turned smiling tolerantly to
the man beside her, a little man in foolish raiment knobbed and spiked
like some odd reptile with pneumatic horns--the Bindon of her father's
choice.
For a moment Denton stood white and wild-eyed; then came a terrible
faintness, and he sat before one of the little tables. He sat down with
his back to her, and for a time he did not dare to look at her again.
When at last he did, she and Bindon and two other people were standing
up to go. The others were her father and her chaperone.
He sat as if incapable of action until the four figures were remote and
small, and then he rose up possessed with the one idea of pursuit. For
a space he feared he had lost them, and then he came upon Elizabeth and
her chaperone again in one of the streets of moving platforms that
intersected the city. Bindon and Mwres had disappeared.
He could not control himself to patience. He felt he must speak to her
forthwith, or die. He pushed forward to where they were seated, and sat
down beside them. His white face was convulsed with half-hysterical
excitement.
He laid his hand on her wrist. "Elizabeth?" he said.
She turned in unfeigned astonishment. Nothing but the fear of a strange
man showed in her face.
"Elizabeth," he cried, and his voice was strange to him: "dearest--you
_know_ me?"
Elizabeth's face showed nothing but alarm and perplexity. She drew
herself away from him. The chaperone, a little grey-headed woman with
mobile features, leant forward to intervene. Her resolute bright eyes
examined Denton. "_What_ do you say?" she asked.
"This young lady," said Denton,--"she knows me."
"Do you know him, dear?"
"No," said Elizabeth in a strange voice, and with a hand to her
forehead, speaking almost as one who repeats a lesson. "No, I do not
know him. I _know_--I do not know him."
"But--but ... Not know me! It is I--Denton. Denton! To whom you used to
talk. Don't you remember the flying stages? The little seat in the open
air? The verses--"
"No," cried Elizabeth,--"no. I do not know him. I do not know him. There
is something.... But I don't know. All I know is that I do not know
him." Her face was a face of infinite distress.
The sharp eyes of the chaperone flitted to and fro from the girl to the
man. "You see?" she said, with the faint shadow of a smile. "She does
not know you."
"I do not know you," said Elizabeth. "Of that I am sure."
"But, dear--the songs--the little verses--"
"She does not know you," said the chaperone. "You must not.... You have
made a mistake. You must not go on talking to us after that. You must
not annoy us on the public ways."
"But--" said Denton, and for a moment his miserably haggard face
appealed against fate.
"You must not persist, young man," protested the chaperone.
"_Elizabeth!_" he cried.
Her face was the face of one who is tormented. "I do not know you," she
cried, hand to brow. "Oh, I do not know you!"
For an instant Denton sat stunned. Then he stood up and groaned aloud.
He made a strange gesture of appeal towards the remote glass roof of the
public way, then turned and went plunging recklessly from one moving
platform to another, and vanished amidst the swarms of people going to
and fro thereon. The chaperone's eyes followed him, and then she looked
at the curious faces about her.
"Dear," asked Elizabeth, clasping her hand, and too deeply moved to heed
observation, "who was that man? Who _was_ that man?"
The chaperone raised her eyebrows. She spoke in a clear, audible voice.
"Some half-witted creature. I have never set eyes on him before."
"Never?"
"Never, dear. Do not trouble your mind about a thing like this."
* * * * *
And soon after this the celebrated hypnotist who dressed in green and
yellow had another client. The young man paced his consulting-room, pale
and disordered. "I want to forget," he cried. "I _must_ forget."
The hypnotist watched him with quiet eyes, studied his face and clothes
and bearing. "To forget anything--pleasure or pain--is to be, by so
much--_less_. However, you know your own concern. My fee is high."
"If only I can forget--"
"That's easy enough with you. You wish it. I've done much harder things.
Quite recently. I hardly expected to do it: the thing was done against
the will of the hypnotised person. A love affair too--like yours. A
girl. So rest assured."
The young man came and sat beside the hypnotist. His manner was a forced
calm. He looked into the hypnotist's eyes. "I will tell you. Of course
you will want to know what it is. There was a girl. Her name was
Elizabeth Mwres. Well ..."
He stopped. He had seen the instant surprise on the hypnotist's face. In
that instant he knew. He stood up. He seemed to dominate the seated
figure by his side. He gripped the shoulder of green and gold. For a
time he could not find words.
"_Give her me back!_" he said at last. "Give her me back!"
"What do you mean?" gasped the hypnotist.
"Give her me back."
"Give whom?"
"Elizabeth Mwres--the girl--"
The hypnotist tried to free himself; he rose to his feet. Denton's grip
tightened.
"Let go!" cried the hypnotist, thrusting an arm against Denton's chest.
In a moment the two men were locked in a clumsy wrestle. Neither had the
slightest training--for athleticism, except for exhibition and to afford
opportunity for betting, had faded out of the earth--but Denton was not
only the younger but the stronger of the two. They swayed across the
room, and then the hypnotist had gone down under his antagonist. They
fell together....
Denton leaped to his feet, dismayed at his own fury; but the hypnotist
lay still, and suddenly from a little white mark where his forehead had
struck a stool shot a hurrying band of red. For a space Denton stood
over him irresolute, trembling.
A fear of the consequences entered his gently nurtured mind. He turned
towards the door. "No," he said aloud, and came back to the middle of
the room. Overcoming the instinctive repugnance of one who had seen no
act of violence in all his life before, he knelt down beside his
antagonist and felt his heart. Then he peered at the wound. He rose
quietly and looked about him. He began to see more of the situation.
When presently the hypnotist recovered his senses, his head ached
severely, his back was against Denton's knees and Denton was sponging
his face.
The hypnotist did not speak. But presently he indicated by a gesture
that in his opinion he had been sponged enough. "Let me get up," he
said.
"Not yet," said Denton.
"You have assaulted me, you scoundrel!"
"We are alone," said Denton, "and the door is secure."
There was an interval of thought.
"Unless I sponge," said Denton, "your forehead will develop a tremendous
bruise."
"You can go on sponging," said the hypnotist sulkily.
There was another pause.
"We might be in the Stone Age," said the hypnotist. "Violence!
Struggle!"
"In the Stone Age no man dared to come between man and woman," said
Denton.
The hypnotist thought again.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"While you were insensible I found the girl's address on your tablets.
I did not know it before. I telephoned. She will be here soon. Then--"
"She will bring her chaperone."
"That is all right."
"But what--? I don't see. What do you mean to do?"
"I looked about for a weapon also. It is an astonishing thing how few
weapons there are nowadays. If you consider that in the Stone Age men
owned scarcely anything _but_ weapons. I hit at last upon this lamp. I
have wrenched off the wires and things, and I hold it so." He extended
it over the hypnotist's shoulders. "With that I can quite easily smash
your skull. I _will_--unless you do as I tell you."
"Violence is no remedy," said the hypnotist, quoting from the "Modern
Man's Book of Moral Maxims."
"It's an undesirable disease," said Denton.
"Well?"
"You will tell that chaperone you are going to order the girl to marry
that knobby little brute with the red hair and ferrety eyes. I believe
that's how things stand?"
"Yes--that's how things stand."
"And, pretending to do that, you will restore her memory of me."
"It's unprofessional."
"Look here! If I cannot have that girl I would rather die than not. I
don't propose to respect your little fancies. If anything goes wrong you
shall not live five minutes. This is a rude makeshift of a weapon, and
it may quite conceivably be painful to kill you. But I will. It is
unusual, I know, nowadays to do things like this--mainly because there
is so little in life that is worth being violent about."
"The chaperone will see you directly she comes--"
"I shall stand in that recess. Behind you."
The hypnotist thought. "You are a determined young man," he said, "and
only half civilised. I have tried to do my duty to my client, but in
this affair you seem likely to get your own way...."
"You mean to deal straightly."
"I'm not going to risk having my brains scattered in a petty affair like
this."
"And afterwards?"
"There is nothing a hypnotist or doctor hates so much as a scandal. I at
least am no savage. I am annoyed.... But in a day or so I shall bear no
malice...."
"Thank you. And now that we understand each other, there is no
necessity to keep you sitting any longer on the floor."