Tales of the Unexpected E-Book

H G Wells

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 394

Beschreibung

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."

Leseprobe

Tales of the Unexpected

Tales of the UnexpectedTHE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON’S EYESTHE MOTHTHE STORY OF THE LATE MR ELVESHAMUNDER THE KNIFETHE PLATTNER STORYTHE CRYSTAL EGGTHE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLESA DREAM OF ARMAGEDDONTHE NEW ACCELERATORTHE DOOR IN THE WALLTHE APPLETHE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAYMR SKELMERSDALE IN FAIRYLANDTHE STORY OF THE INEXPERIENCED GHOSTTHE STOLEN BODYCopyright

Tales of the Unexpected

H. G. Wells

THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON’S EYES

IThe 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-communication 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 Davidson’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.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 best of our electrometers. ‘What’s up, man?’ said I. ‘You’ve smashed the electrometer!’ ‘ Bellows again!’ said he. ‘Friends left, if my hands are gone. Something about electrometers. Which wayareyou, Bellows?’ He suddenly came staggering 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 swaying.I felt scared. ‘Davidson,’ said I, ‘what on earth’s come over you?’He looked round him in every direction. ‘I could swear that was Bellows. Why don’t you show yourself like a man, Bellows?’It occurred to me that he must be suddenly struckblind. 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’moff.’ 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. ‘Davidson,’ 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. ‘Iwasin the laboratory—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’reboth dead. But the rummy part is I feel 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!’IIIt was just then that Boyce came in. So soon as he spoke Davidson exclaimed: ‘Old Boyce! Dead too! 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 privateroom, 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. Horsehair stuffing.’Davidson felt about, and puzzled over it, and answered presently that he could feel it all right, but he couldn’t see it. ‘ Whatdoyou 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,aproposof 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?’Wade repeated it very patiently. Davidson shut his eyes, and pressed his hands upon his forehead. ‘Yes,’ 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!’IIIThat 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 move, 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 was at home, and that Wade was right in what he told him. My sister, to whom he was engaged, insisted on coming to see him, and would sit for hours every day while he talked about this beach of his. Holding her hand seemed to comfort him immensely. He explained that when we left the College and drove home—he lived in Hampstead village—it appeared to him as if we drove 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 itmade him giddy and almost frantic with the fear of falling, because going upstairs seemed to lift him thirty or forty 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 multitudes of penguins, and they made the rocks white and disagreeable to see. 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 disturbing 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, Widgery, to attend to it. Widgery’s 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. ‘ 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 if 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 with 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 seemed 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 specialPall Mall. ‘ I kept sinking down deeper and deeper into thewater. It became inky black about me, not a ray from above came down into that darkness, and the phosphorescent 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 outlined 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!’IVFor 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 histhumb, 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 flapping about as usual, and there’s been a whale showing every now and then, but it’s got too dark now to make him out. But put somethingthere, 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 of vision, the phantom world grew fainter, grew transparent, 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 citizen again. At first it was very confusing for him to have these two pictures overlapping each other like the changing views of a lantern, but in a little while he began to distinguish the real from the illusory.At first he was unfeignedly glad, and seemed onlytoo 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 everything 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.VAnd 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 incidentally he took out a kind of pocket photograph case to show us a new rendering of hisfiancée. ‘And, by-the-by,’ said he, ‘here’s the oldFulmar.’Davidson looked at it casually. Then suddenly his face lit up. ‘Good heavens!’ said he. ‘I could 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 years, 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.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.Fulmarhad 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 corresponded, about this distant island.Howis 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 sheet of paper, and yet be brought together by bending the paper round. The reader may grasp his argument, but I certainly do not. His idea seems to be that Davidson, stooping between the poles of the big electro-magnet, had some extraordinary twist given to hisretinal 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 installation 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 W. T. Hapley, the son, but the celebrated Hapley, the Hapley ofPeriplaneta Hapliia, Hapley the entomologist.If so you know at least of the great feud between Hapley and Professor Pawkins, though certain of its consequences 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 squabbles. Yet 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 perhaps a more personal affair, stirred passions as profound, if not profounder. Your common man has no conception of the zeal that animates a scientific investigator, the fury of contradiction you can arouse in him. It is theodium theologicumin a new form. There are men, for instance, who would gladly burn Professor Ray Lankester at Smithfield for his treatment of the Mollusca in the Encyclopædia. That fantasticextension of the Cephalopods to cover the Pteropods.... 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’[2]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. However, it would scarcely interest the reader to detail how these two great men quarrelled, and how the split between them widened until from the Microlepidoptera they were at war upon every open question in entomology. 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 fine 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 testimonials, and suspected of jobbing museum appointments. So the young men gathered round Hapley and applauded him. It was a long struggle, vicious from the beginningand growing at last to pitiless antagonism. The successive 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 1891 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—one can fancy the man’s disordered black hair, and his queer dark eyes 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 confusion 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 cameit 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 reasonable 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 ofgear, 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 theIsland Nights’ Entertainmentsuntil 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’sInner 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 is change of occupation. Hapley determined to plunge at diatoms, and had one of his smaller microscopes and 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 strenuous fashion, at these microscopic denizens of the wayside pool.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 notepaper, 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! And in England!’ said Hapley, staring.Then he suddenly thought of Pawkins. Nothing would have maddened Pawkins more.... And Pawkins 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 he 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 no lights. If 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.There was a timid rapping at the door.Then it opened, perhaps a foot, and very slowly. The alarmed face of the landlady appeared behind a pinkcandle flame; she wore a night-cap over her gray hair and had some purple garment over her shoulders. ‘Whatwasthat 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, ora row of beans, or 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 he 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.In the afternoon Hapley called upon the Vicar, and argued with him upon theological questions. They 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. The 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 point,’ said the Vicar, thinking it was part of the argument.That night Hapley found the moth crawling over his counterpane. He sat on the edge of the bed in his shirt sleeves and reasoned with himself. Was it pure hallucination? He knew he was slipping, and he battled for his sanity with the same silent energy he had formerlydisplayed 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 result of mental strain. But the point was, he did not onlyseethe 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 antennæ, 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. They 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. They 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 ornament 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 hall. 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 sweepingacross the moon, and the hedge and trees 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. Now 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. He went on, leaping and striking at the eddying 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 flints 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. He struck at it with his hand, and turning hishead 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 nightlight, 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. Hesimply said there was no moth. Had he possessed 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, and with the imaginary moth crawling over him. It never left him while he was awake and it grew to a monster in his dreams. While he was awake he longed for sleep, and from sleep he awoke screaming.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 specimen and well worth the trouble of catching.FOOTNOTES:[1] “ Remarks on a Recent Revision of Microlepidoptera.”Quart. Journ. Entomological Soc., 1863.[2] “ Rejoinder to certain Remarks,” etc.Ibid.1864.[3 “ Further Remarks,” etc.Ibid.

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 Birmingham 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 11A 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 shillingsworth.

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 your 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 pleased by this abrupt invitation. ‘I had rather——’

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.