Tales of Space and Time

Tales of Space and Time Page 7

by H. G. Wells

  A STORY OF THE DAYS TO COME

  I--THE CURE FOR LOVE

  The excellent Mr. Morris was an Englishman, and he lived in the days ofQueen Victoria the Good. He was a prosperous and very sensible man; heread the _Times_ and went to church, and as he grew towards middle agean expression of quiet contented contempt for all who were not ashimself settled on his face. He was one of those people who doeverything that is right and proper and sensible with inevitableregularity. He always wore just the right and proper clothes, steeringthe narrow way between the smart and the shabby, always subscribed tothe right charities, just the judicious compromise between ostentationand meanness, and never failed to have his hair cut to exactly theproper length.

  Everything that it was right and proper for a man in his position topossess, he possessed; and everything that it was not right and properfor a man in his position to possess, he did not possess.

  And among other right and proper possessions, this Mr. Morris had a wifeand children. They were the right sort of wife, and the right sort andnumber of children, of course; nothing imaginative or highty-flightyabout any of them, so far as Mr. Morris could see; they wore perfectlycorrect clothing, neither smart nor hygienic nor faddy in any way, butjust sensible; and they lived in a nice sensible house in the laterVictorian sham Queen Anne style of architecture, with shamhalf-timbering of chocolate-painted plaster in the gables, LincrustaWalton sham carved oak panels, a terrace of terra cotta to imitatestone, and cathedral glass in the front door. His boys went to goodsolid schools, and were put to respectable professions; his girls, inspite of a fantastic protest or so, were all married to suitable,steady, oldish young men with good prospects. And when it was a fit andproper thing for him to do so, Mr. Morris died. His tomb was of marble,and, without any art nonsense or laudatory inscription, quietlyimposing--such being the fashion of his time.

  He underwent various changes according to the accepted custom in thesecases, and long before this story begins his bones even had become dust,and were scattered to the four quarters of heaven. And his sons and hisgrandsons and his great-grandsons and his great-great-grandsons, theytoo were dust and ashes, and were scattered likewise. It was a thing hecould not have imagined, that a day would come when even hisgreat-great-grandsons would be scattered to the four winds of heaven. Ifany one had suggested it to him he would have resented it. He was one ofthose worthy people who take no interest in the future of mankind atall. He had grave doubts, indeed, if there was any future for mankindafter he was dead.

  It seemed quite impossible and quite uninteresting to imagine anythinghappening after he was dead. Yet the thing was so, and when even hisgreat-great-grandson was dead and decayed and forgotten, when the shamhalf-timbered house had gone the way of all shams, and the _Times_ wasextinct, and the silk hat a ridiculous antiquity, and the modestlyimposing stone that had been sacred to Mr. Morris had been burnt to makelime for mortar, and all that Mr. Morris had found real and importantwas sere and dead, the world was still going on, and people were stillgoing about it, just as heedless and impatient of the Future, or,indeed, of anything but their own selves and property, as Mr. Morris hadbeen.

  And, strange to tell, and much as Mr. Morris would have been angered ifany one had foreshadowed it to him, all over the world there werescattered a multitude of people, filled with the breath of life, inwhose veins the blood of Mr. Morris flowed. Just as some day the lifewhich is gathered now in the reader of this very story may also bescattered far and wide about this world, and mingled with a thousandalien strains, beyond all thought and tracing.

  And among the descendants of this Mr. Morris was one almost as sensibleand clear-headed as his ancestor. He had just the same stout, shortframe as that ancient man of the nineteenth century, from whom his nameof Morris--he spelt it Mwres--came; he had the same half-contemptuousexpression of face. He was a prosperous person, too, as times went, andhe disliked the "new-fangled," and bothers about the future and thelower classes, just as much as the ancestral Morris had done. He did notread the _Times_: indeed, he did not know there ever had been a_Times_--that institution had foundered somewhere in the interveninggulf of years; but the phonograph machine, that talked to him as hemade his toilet of a morning, might have been the voice of areincarnated Blowitz when it dealt with the world's affairs. Thisphonographic machine was the size and shape of a Dutch clock, and downthe front of it were electric barometric indicators, and an electricclock and calendar, and automatic engagement reminders, and where theclock would have been was the mouth of a trumpet. When it had news thetrumpet gobbled like a turkey, "Galloop, galloop," and then brayed outits message as, let us say, a trumpet might bray. It would tell Mwres infull, rich, throaty tones about the overnight accidents to the omnibusflying-machines that plied around the world, the latest arrivals at thefashionable resorts in Tibet, and of all the great monopolist companymeetings of the day before, while he was dressing. If Mwres did not likehearing what it said, he had only to touch a stud, and it would choke alittle and talk about something else.

  Of course his toilet differed very much from that of his ancestor. It isdoubtful which would have been the more shocked and pained to findhimself in the clothing of the other. Mwres would certainly have soonergone forth to the world stark naked than in the silk hat, frock coat,grey trousers and watch-chain that had filled Mr. Morris with sombreself-respect in the past. For Mwres there was no shaving to do: askilful operator had long ago removed every hair-root from his face. Hislegs he encased in pleasant pink and amber garments of an air-tightmaterial, which with the help of an ingenious little pump he distendedso as to suggest enormous muscles. Above this he also wore pneumaticgarments beneath an amber silk tunic, so that he was clothed in air andadmirably protected against sudden extremes of heat or cold. Over thishe flung a scarlet cloak with its edge fantastically curved. On hishead, which had been skilfully deprived of every scrap of hair, headjusted a pleasant little cap of bright scarlet, held on by suction andinflated with hydrogen, and curiously like the comb of a cock. So histoilet was complete; and, conscious of being soberly and becominglyattired, he was ready to face his fellow-beings with a tranquil eye.

  This Mwres--the civility of "Mr." had vanished ages ago--was one of theofficials under the Wind Vane and Waterfall Trust, the great companythat owned every wind wheel and waterfall in the world, and which pumpedall the water and supplied all the electric energy that people in theselatter days required. He lived in a vast hotel near that part of Londoncalled Seventh Way, and had very large and comfortable apartments on theseventeenth floor. Households and family life had long since disappearedwith the progressive refinement of manners; and indeed the steady risein rents and land values, the disappearance of domestic servants, theelaboration of cookery, had rendered the separate domicile of Victoriantimes impossible, even had any one desired such a savage seclusion. Whenhis toilet was completed he went towards one of the two doors of hisapartment--there were doors at opposite ends, each marked with a hugearrow pointing one one way and one the other--touched a stud to open it,and emerged on a wide passage, the centre of which bore chairs and wasmoving at a steady pace to the left. On some of these chairs were seatedgaily-dressed men and women. He nodded to an acquaintance--it was not inthose days etiquette to talk before breakfast--and seated himself on oneof these chairs, and in a few seconds he had been carried to the doorsof a lift, by which he descended to the great and splendid hall in whichhis breakfast would be automatically served.

  It was a very different meal from a Victorian breakfast. The rudemasses of bread needing to be carved and smeared over with animal fatbefore they could be made palatable, the still recognisable fragments ofrecently killed animals, hideously charred and hacked, the eggs tornruthlessly from beneath some protesting hen,--such things as these,though they constituted the ordinary fare of Victorian times, would haveawakened only horror and disgust in the refined minds of the people ofthese latter days. Instead were pastes and cakes of agreeable andvariegated design, without any suggestio
n in colour or form of theunfortunate animals from which their substance and juices were derived.They appeared on little dishes sliding out upon a rail from a little boxat one side of the table. The surface of the table, to judge by touchand eye, would have appeared to a nineteenth-century person to becovered with fine white damask, but this was really an oxidised metallicsurface, and could be cleaned instantly after a meal. There werehundreds of such little tables in the hall, and at most of them wereother latter-day citizens singly or in groups. And as Mwres seatedhimself before his elegant repast, the invisible orchestra, which hadbeen resting during an interval, resumed and filled the air with music.

  But Mwres did not display any great interest either in his breakfast orthe music; his eye wandered incessantly about the hall, as though heexpected a belated guest. At last he rose eagerly and waved his hand,and simultaneously across the hall appeared a tall dark figure in acostume of yellow and olive green. As this person, walking amidst thetables with measured steps, drew near, the pallid earnestness of hisface and the unusual intensity of his eyes became apparent. Mwresreseated himself and pointed to a chair beside him.

  "I feared you would never come," he said. In spite of the interveningspace of time, the English language was still almost exactly the same asit had been in England under Victoria the Good. The invention of thephonograph and suchlike means of recording sound, and the gradualreplacement of books by such contrivances, had not only saved the humaneyesight from decay, but had also by the establishment of a surestandard arrested the process of change in accent that had hitherto beenso inevitable.

  "I was delayed by an interesting case," said the man in green andyellow. "A prominent politician--ahem!--suffering from overwork." Heglanced at the breakfast and seated himself. "I have been awake forforty hours."

  "Eh dear!" said Mwres: "fancy that! You hypnotists have your work todo."

  The hypnotist helped himself to some attractive amber-coloured jelly. "Ihappen to be a good deal in request," he said modestly.

  "Heaven knows what we should do without you."

  "Oh! we're not so indispensable as all that," said the hypnotist,ruminating the flavour of the jelly. "The world did very well without usfor some thousands of years. Two hundred years ago even--not one! Inpractice, that is. Physicians by the thousand, of course--frightfullyclumsy brutes for the most part, and following one another likesheep--but doctors of the mind, except a few empirical flounderers therewere none."

  He concentrated his mind on the jelly.

  "But were people so sane--?" began Mwres.

  The hypnotist shook his head. "It didn't matter then if they were a bitsilly or faddy. Life was so easy-going then. No competition worthspeaking of--no pressure. A human being had to be very lopsided beforeanything happened. Then, you know, they clapped 'em away in what theycalled a lunatic asylum."

  "I know," said Mwres. "In these confounded historical romances thatevery one is listening to, they always rescue a beautiful girl from anasylum or something of the sort. I don't know if you attend to thatrubbish."

  "I must confess I do," said the hypnotist. "It carries one out ofoneself to hear of those quaint, adventurous, half-civilised days of thenineteenth century, when men were stout and women simple. I like a goodswaggering story before all things. Curious times they were, with theirsmutty railways and puffing old iron trains, their rum little houses andtheir horse vehicles. I suppose you don't read books?"

  "Dear, no!" said Mwres, "I went to a modern school and we had none ofthat old-fashioned nonsense. Phonographs are good enough for me."

  "Of course," said the hypnotist, "of course"; and surveyed the table forhis next choice. "You know," he said, helping himself to a dark blueconfection that promised well, "in those days our business was scarcelythought of. I daresay if any one had told them that in two hundredyears' time a class of men would be entirely occupied in impressingthings upon the memory, effacing unpleasant ideas, controlling andovercoming instinctive but undesirable impulses, and so forth, by meansof hypnotism, they would have refused to believe the thing possible. Fewpeople knew that an order made during a mesmeric trance, even an orderto forget or an order to desire, could be given so as to be obeyed afterthe trance was over. Yet there were men alive then who could have toldthem the thing was as absolutely certain to come about as--well, thetransit of Venus."

  "They knew of hypnotism, then?"

  "Oh, dear, yes! They used it--for painless dentistry and things likethat! This blue stuff is confoundedly good: what is it?"

  "Haven't the faintest idea," said Mwres, "but I admit it's very good.Take some more."

  The hypnotist repeated his praises, and there was an appreciative pause.

  "Speaking of these historical romances," said Mwres, with an attempt atan easy, off-hand manner, "brings me--ah--to the matter I--ah--had inmind when I asked you--when I expressed a wish to see you." He pausedand took a deep breath.

  The hypnotist turned an attentive eye upon him, and continued eating.

  "The fact is," said Mwres, "I have a--in fact a--daughter. Well, youknow I have given her--ah--every educational advantage. Lectures--not asolitary lecturer of ability in the world but she has had a telephonedirect, dancing, deportment, conversation, philosophy, art criticism ..."He indicated catholic culture by a gesture of his hand. "I had intendedher to marry a very good friend of mine--Bindon of the LightingCommission--plain little man, you know, and a bit unpleasant in some ofhis ways, but an excellent fellow really--an excellent fellow."

  "Yes," said the hypnotist, "go on. How old is she?"

  "Eighteen."

  "A dangerous age. Well?"

  "Well: it seems that she has been indulging in these historicalromances--excessively. Excessively. Even to the neglect of herphilosophy. Filled her mind with unutterable nonsense about soldiers whofight--what is it?--Etruscans?"

  "Egyptians."

  "Egyptians--very probably. Hack about with swords and revolvers andthings--bloodshed galore--horrible!--and about young men on torpedocatchers who blow up--Spaniards, I fancy--and all sorts of irregularadventurers. And she has got it into her head that she must marry forLove, and that poor little Bindon--"

  "I've met similar cases," said the hypnotist. "Who is the other youngman?"

  Mwres maintained an appearance of resigned calm. "You may well ask," hesaid. "He is"--and his voice sank with shame--"a mere attendant upon thestage on which the flying-machines from Paris alight. He has--as theysay in the romances--good looks. He is quite young and very eccentric.Affects the antique--he can read and write! So can she. And instead ofcommunicating by telephone, like sensible people, they write anddeliver--what is it?"

  "Notes?"

  "No--not notes.... Ah--poems."

  The hypnotist raised his eyebrows. "How did she meet him?"

  "Tripped coming down from the flying-machine from Paris--and fell intohis arms. The mischief was done in a moment!"

  "Yes?"

  "Well--that's all. Things must be stopped. That is what I want toconsult you about. What must be done? What _can_ be done? Of course I'mnot a hypnotist; my knowledge is limited. But you--?"

  "Hypnotism is not magic," said the man in green, putting both arms onthe table.

  "Oh, precisely! But still--!"

  "People cannot be hypnotised without their consent. If she is able tostand out against marrying Bindon, she will probably stand out againstbeing hypnotised. But if once she can be hypnotised--even by somebodyelse--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 isrepulsive, and that when she sees him she will be giddy and faint, orany little thing of that sort. Or if we can get her into a sufficientlyprofound trance we can suggest that she should forget him altogether--"

  "Precisely."

  "But the problem is to get her hypnotised. Of course no sort of proposalor suggestion must come from you--because no doubt she already dist
rustsyou 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 Mwresirrelevantly.

  "You must give me the name and address of the young lady," said thehypnotist, "and any information bearing upon the matter. And, by thebye, is there any money in the affair?"

  Mwres hesitated.

  "There's a sum--in fact, a considerable sum--invested in the Patent RoadCompany. From her mother. That's what makes the thing so exasperating."

  "Exactly," said the hypnotist. And he proceeded to cross-examine Mwreson the entire affair.

  It was a lengthy interview.

  And meanwhile "Elizebe{th} Mwres," as she spelt her name, or "ElizabethMorris" as a nineteenth-century person would have put it, was sitting ina quiet waiting-place beneath the great stage upon which theflying-machine from Paris descended. And beside her sat her slender,handsome lover reading her the poem he had written that morning while onduty upon the stage. When he had finished they sat for a time insilence; and then, as if for their special entertainment, the greatmachine that had come flying through the air from America that morningrushed down out of the sky.

  At first it was a little oblong, faint and blue amidst the distantfleecy clouds; and then it grew swiftly large and white, and larger andwhiter, until they could see the separate tiers of sails, each hundredsof feet wide, and the lank body they supported, and at last even theswinging seats of the passengers in a dotted row. Although it wasfalling it seemed to them to be rushing up the sky, and over theroof-spaces of the city below its shadow leapt towards them. They heardthe whistling rush of the air about it and its yelling siren, shrill andswelling, 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 againto Denton at her side.

  Their silence ended; and Denton, speaking in a little language of brokenEnglish that was, they fancied, their private possession--though lovershave used such little languages since the world began--told her how theytoo would leap into the air one morning out of all the obstacles anddifficulties about them, and fly to a sunlit city of delight he knew ofin 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 besoon; and at last came a shrilling of whistles, and it was time for himto go back to his duties on the stage. They parted--as lovers have beenwont to part for thousands of years. She walked down a passage to alift, and so came to one of the streets of that latter-day London, allglazed in with glass from the weather, and with incessant movingplatforms that went to all parts of the city. And by one of these shereturned to her apartments in the Hotel for Women where she lived, theapartments that were in telephonic communication with all the bestlecturers in the world. But the sunlight of the flying stage was in herheart, and the wisdom of all the best lecturers in the world seemedfolly in that light.

  She spent the middle part of the day in the gymnasium, and took hermidday meal with two other girls and their common chaperone--for it wasstill the custom to have a chaperone in the case of motherless girls ofthe more prosperous classes. The chaperone had a visitor that day, a manin green and yellow, with a white face and vivid eyes, who talkedamazingly. Among other things, he fell to praising a new historicalromance that one of the great popular story-tellers of the day had justput forth. It was, of course, about the spacious times of QueenVictoria; and the author, among other pleasing novelties, made a littleargument before each section of the story, in imitation of the chapterheadings of the old-fashioned books: as for example, "How the Cabmen ofPimlico stopped the Victoria Omnibuses, and of the Great Fight in PalaceYard," and "How the Piccadilly Policeman was slain in the midst of hisDuty." The man in green and yellow praised this innovation. "These pithysentences," he said, "are admirable. They show at a glance thoseheadlong, tumultuous times, when men and animals jostled in the filthystreets, and death might wait for one at every corner. Life was lifethen! How great the world must have seemed then! How marvellous! Theywere still parts of the world absolutely unexplored. Nowadays we havealmost 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, alife 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 timethe subject became so interesting that she made a few shyinterpolations. But he scarcely seemed to notice her as he talked. Hewent on to describe a new method of entertaining people. They werehypnotised, and then suggestions were made to them so skilfully thatthey seemed to be living in ancient times again. They played out alittle romance in the past as vivid as reality, and when at last theyawakened they remembered all they had been through as though it were areal thing.

  "It is a thing we have sought to do for years and years," said thehypnotist. "It is practically an artificial dream. And we know the wayat last. Think of all it opens out to us--the enrichment of ourexperience, the recovery of adventure, the refuge it offers from thissordid, 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 adream 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 placedthemselves in the hands of the hypnotist and had plunges into theromantic past. No one suggested that Elizabeth should try this novelentertainment; it was at her own request at last that she was taken intothat land of dreams where there is neither any freedom of choice norwill....

  And so the mischief was done.

  One day, when Denton went down to that quiet seat beneath the flyingstage, Elizabeth was not in her wonted place. He was disappointed, and alittle angry. The next day she did not come, and the next also. He wasafraid. To hide his fear from himself, he set to work to write sonnetsfor her when she should come again....

  For three days he fought against his dread by such distraction, and thenthe truth was before him clear and cold, and would not be denied. Shemight be ill, she might be dead; but he would not believe that he hadbeen betrayed. There followed a week of misery. And then he knew she wasthe only thing on earth worth having, and that he must seek her, howeverhopeless the search, until she was found once more.

  He had some small private means of his own, and so he threw over hisappointment on the flying stage, and set himself to find this girl whohad become at last all the world to him. He did not know where shelived, and little of her circumstances; for it had been part of thedelight of her girlish romance that he should know nothing of her,nothing of the difference of their station. The ways of the city openedbefore him east and west, north and south. Even in Victorian days Londonwas a maze, that little London with its poor four millions of people;but the London he explored, the London of the twenty-second century, wasa London of thirty million souls. At first he was energetic andheadlong, taking time neither to eat nor sleep. He sought for weeks andmonths, he went through every imaginable phase of fatigue and despair,over-excitement and anger. Long after hope was dead, by the sheerinertia of his desire he still went to and fro, peering into faces andlooking this way and that, in the incessant ways and lifts and passagesof 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 inclusivefee and had gone into one of the gigantic dining-places of the city; hewas pushing his way among the tables and scrutinising by mere force ofhabit every group he passed.

  He st
ood still, robbed of all power of motion, his eyes wide, his lipsapart. Elizabeth sat scarcely twenty yards away from him, lookingstraight at him. Her eyes were as hard to him, as hard andexpressionless 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 wasindeed Elizabeth, but he knew her by the gesture of her hand, by thegrace of a wanton little curl that floated over her ear as she moved herhead. Something was said to her, and she turned smiling tolerantly tothe man beside her, a little man in foolish raiment knobbed and spikedlike some odd reptile with pneumatic horns--the Bindon of her father'schoice.

  For a moment Denton stood white and wild-eyed; then came a terriblefaintness, and he sat before one of the little tables. He sat down withhis 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 standingup to go. The others were her father and her chaperone.

  He sat as if incapable of action until the four figures were remote andsmall, and then he rose up possessed with the one idea of pursuit. Fora space he feared he had lost them, and then he came upon Elizabeth andher chaperone again in one of the streets of moving platforms thatintersected the city. Bindon and Mwres had disappeared.

  He could not control himself to patience. He felt he must speak to herforthwith, or die. He pushed forward to where they were seated, and satdown beside them. His white face was convulsed with half-hystericalexcitement.

  He laid his hand on her wrist. "Elizabeth?" he said.

  She turned in unfeigned astonishment. Nothing but the fear of a strangeman 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 drewherself away from him. The chaperone, a little grey-headed woman withmobile features, leant forward to intervene. Her resolute bright eyesexamined 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 herforehead, speaking almost as one who repeats a lesson. "No, I do notknow him. I _know_--I do not know him."

  "But--but ... Not know me! It is I--Denton. Denton! To whom you used totalk. Don't you remember the flying stages? The little seat in the openair? The verses--"

  "No," cried Elizabeth,--"no. I do not know him. I do not know him. Thereis something.... But I don't know. All I know is that I do not knowhim." Her face was a face of infinite distress.

  The sharp eyes of the chaperone flitted to and fro from the girl to theman. "You see?" she said, with the faint shadow of a smile. "She doesnot 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 havemade a mistake. You must not go on talking to us after that. You mustnot annoy us on the public ways."

  "But--" said Denton, and for a moment his miserably haggard faceappealed 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," shecried, 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 thepublic way, then turned and went plunging recklessly from one movingplatform to another, and vanished amidst the swarms of people going toand fro thereon. The chaperone's eyes followed him, and then she lookedat the curious faces about her.

  "Dear," asked Elizabeth, clasping her hand, and too deeply moved to heedobservation, "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 andyellow had another client. The young man paced his consulting-room, paleand disordered. "I want to forget," he cried. "I _must_ forget."

  The hypnotist watched him with quiet eyes, studied his face and clothesand bearing. "To forget anything--pleasure or pain--is to be, by somuch--_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 againstthe will of the hypnotised person. A love affair too--like yours. Agirl. So rest assured."

  The young man came and sat beside the hypnotist. His manner was a forcedcalm. He looked into the hypnotist's eyes. "I will tell you. Of courseyou will want to know what it is. There was a girl. Her name wasElizabeth Mwres. Well ..."

  He stopped. He had seen the instant surprise on the hypnotist's face. Inthat instant he knew. He stood up. He seemed to dominate the seatedfigure by his side. He gripped the shoulder of green and gold. For atime 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 griptightened.

  "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 theslightest training--for athleticism, except for exhibition and to affordopportunity for betting, had faded out of the earth--but Denton was notonly the younger but the stronger of the two. They swayed across theroom, and then the hypnotist had gone down under his antagonist. Theyfell together....

  Denton leaped to his feet, dismayed at his own fury; but the hypnotistlay still, and suddenly from a little white mark where his forehead hadstruck a stool shot a hurrying band of red. For a space Denton stoodover him irresolute, trembling.

  A fear of the consequences entered his gently nurtured mind. He turnedtowards the door. "No," he said aloud, and came back to the middle ofthe room. Overcoming the instinctive repugnance of one who had seen noact of violence in all his life before, he knelt down beside hisantagonist and felt his heart. Then he peered at the wound. He rosequietly and looked about him. He began to see more of the situation.

  When presently the hypnotist recovered his senses, his head achedseverely, his back was against Denton's knees and Denton was sponginghis face.

  The hypnotist did not speak. But presently he indicated by a gesturethat in his opinion he had been sponged enough. "Let me get up," hesaid.

  "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 tremendousbruise."

  "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," saidDenton.

  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 fewweapons
there are nowadays. If you consider that in the Stone Age menowned scarcely anything _but_ weapons. I hit at last upon this lamp. Ihave wrenched off the wires and things, and I hold it so." He extendedit over the hypnotist's shoulders. "With that I can quite easily smashyour skull. I _will_--unless you do as I tell you."

  "Violence is no remedy," said the hypnotist, quoting from the "ModernMan'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 marrythat knobby little brute with the red hair and ferrety eyes. I believethat'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. Idon't propose to respect your little fancies. If anything goes wrong youshall not live five minutes. This is a rude makeshift of a weapon, andit may quite conceivably be painful to kill you. But I will. It isunusual, I know, nowadays to do things like this--mainly because thereis 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, "andonly half civilised. I have tried to do my duty to my client, but inthis 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 likethis."

  "And afterwards?"

  "There is nothing a hypnotist or doctor hates so much as a scandal. I atleast am no savage. I am annoyed.... But in a day or so I shall bear nomalice...."

  "Thank you. And now that we understand each other, there is nonecessity to keep you sitting any longer on the floor."

  II--THE VACANT COUNTRY

  The world, they say, changed more between the year 1800 and the year1900 than it had done in the previous five hundred years. That century,the nineteenth century, was the dawn of a new epoch in the history ofmankind--the epoch of the great cities, the end of the old order ofcountry life.

  In the beginning of the nineteenth century the majority of mankind stilllived upon the countryside, as their way of life had been for countlessgenerations. All over the world they dwelt in little towns and villagesthen, and engaged either directly in agriculture, or in occupations thatwere of service to the agriculturist. They travelled rarely, and dweltclose to their work, because swift means of transit had not yet come.The few who travelled went either on foot, or in slow sailing-ships, orby means of jogging horses incapable of more than sixty miles a day.Think of it!--sixty miles a day. Here and there, in those sluggishtimes, a town grew a little larger than its neighbours, as a port or asa centre of government; but all the towns in the world with more than ahundred thousand inhabitants could be counted on a man's fingers. So itwas in the beginning of the nineteenth century. By the end, theinvention of railways, telegraphs, steamships, and complex agriculturalmachinery, had changed all these things: changed them beyond all hope ofreturn. The vast shops, the varied pleasures, the countless conveniencesof the larger towns were suddenly possible, and no sooner existed thanthey were brought into competition with the homely resources of therural centres. Mankind were drawn to the cities by an overwhelmingattraction. The demand for labour fell with the increase of machinery,the local markets were entirely superseded, and there was a rapid growthof the larger centres at the expense of the open country.

  The flow of population townward was the constant preoccupation ofVictorian writers. In Great Britain and New England, in India and China,the same thing was remarked: everywhere a few swollen towns were visiblyreplacing the ancient order. That this was an inevitable result ofimproved means of travel and transport--that, given swift means oftransit, these things must be--was realised by few; and the most puerileschemes were devised to overcome the mysterious magnetism of the urbancentres, and keep the people on the land.

  Yet the developments of the nineteenth century were only the dawning ofthe new order. The first great cities of the new time were horriblyinconvenient, darkened by smoky fogs, insanitary and noisy; but thediscovery of new methods of building, new methods of heating, changedall this. Between 1900 and 2000 the march of change was still morerapid; and between 2000 and 2100 the continually accelerated progress ofhuman invention made the reign of Victoria the Good seem at last analmost incredible vision of idyllic tranquil days.

  The introduction of railways was only the first step in that developmentof those means of locomotion which finally revolutionised human life. Bythe year 2000 railways and roads had vanished together. The railways,robbed of their rails, had become weedy ridges and ditches upon the faceof the world; the old roads, strange barbaric tracks of flint and soil,hammered by hand or rolled by rough iron rollers, strewn withmiscellaneous filth, and cut by iron hoofs and wheels into ruts andpuddles often many inches deep, had been replaced by patent tracks madeof a substance called Eadhamite. This Eadhamite--it was named after itspatentee--ranks with the invention of printing and steam as one of theepoch-making discoveries of the world's history.

  When Eadham discovered the substance, he probably thought of it as amere cheap substitute for india rubber; it cost a few shillings a ton.But you can never tell all an invention will do. It was the genius of aman named Warming that pointed to the possibility of using it, not onlyfor the tires of wheels, but as a road substance, and who organised theenormous network of public ways that speedily covered the world.

  These public ways were made with longitudinal divisions. On the outer oneither side went foot cyclists and conveyances travelling at a lessspeed than twenty-five miles an hour; in the middle, motors capable ofspeed up to a hundred; and the inner, Warming (in the face of enormousridicule) reserved for vehicles travelling at speeds of a hundred milesan hour and upward.

  For ten years his inner ways were vacant. Before he died they were themost crowded of all, and vast light frameworks with wheels of twenty andthirty feet in diameter, hurled along them at paces that year after yearrose steadily towards two hundred miles an hour. And by the time thisrevolution was accomplished, a parallel revolution had transformed theever-growing cities. Before the development of practical science thefogs and filth of Victorian times vanished. Electric heating replacedfires (in 2013 the lighting of a fire that did not absolutely consumeits own smoke was made an indictable nuisance), and all the city ways,all public squares and places, were covered in with a recently inventedglass-like substance. The roofing of London became practicallycontinuous. Certain short-sighted and foolish legislation against tallbuildings was abolished, and London, from a squat expanse of pettyhouses--feebly archaic in design--rose steadily towards the sky. To themunicipal responsibility for water, light, and drainage, was addedanother, and that was ventilation.

  But to tell of all the changes in human convenience that these twohundred years brought about, to tell of the long foreseen invention offlying, to describe how life in households was steadily supplanted bylife in interminable hotels, how at last even those who were stillconcerned in agricultural work came to live in the towns and to go toand fro to their work every day, to describe how at last in all Englandonly four towns remained, each with many millions of people, and howthere were left no inhabited houses in all the countryside: to tell allthis would take us far from our story of Denton and his Elizabeth. Theyhad been separated and reunited, and still they could not marry. ForDenton--it was his only fault--had no money. Neither had Elizabeth untilshe was twenty-one, and as yet she was only eighteen. At twenty-one allthe property of her mother would come to her, for that was the custom ofthe time. She did not know that it was possible to anticipate herfortune, and Denton was far too delicate a lover to suggest such athing. So things stuck hopelessly between them. Elizabeth said that shewas very unhappy, and that nobody understood her but Denton
, and thatwhen she was away from him she was wretched; and Denton said that hisheart longed for her day and night. And they met as often as they couldto enjoy the discussion of their sorrows.

  They met one day at their little seat upon the flying stage. The precisesite of this meeting was where in Victorian times the road fromWimbledon came out upon the common. They were, however, five hundredfeet above that point. Their seat looked far over London. To convey theappearance of it all to a nineteenth-century reader would have beendifficult. One would have had to tell him to think of the CrystalPalace, of the newly built "mammoth" hotels--as those little affairswere called--of the larger railway stations of his time, and to imaginesuch buildings enlarged to vast proportions and run together andcontinuous over the whole metropolitan area. If then he was told thatthis continuous roof-space bore a huge forest of rotating wind-wheels,he would have begun very dimly to appreciate what to these young peoplewas the commonest sight in their lives.

  To their eyes it had something of the quality of a prison, and they weretalking, as they had talked a hundred times before, of how they mightescape from it and be at last happy together: escape from it, that is,before the appointed three years were at an end. It was, they bothagreed, not only impossible but almost wicked, to wait three years."Before that," said Denton--and the notes of his voice told of asplendid chest--"_we might both be dead_!"

  Their vigorous young hands had to grip at this, and then Elizabeth had astill more poignant thought that brought the tears from her wholesomeeyes and down her healthy cheeks. "_One_ of us," she said, "_one_ of usmight be--"

  She choked; she could not say the word that is so terrible to the youngand happy.

  Yet to marry and be very poor in the cities of that time was--for anyone who had lived pleasantly--a very dreadful thing. In the oldagricultural days that had drawn to an end in the eighteenth centurythere had been a pretty proverb of love in a cottage; and indeed inthose days the poor of the countryside had dwelt in flower-covered,diamond-windowed cottages of thatch and plaster, with the sweet air andearth about them, amidst tangled hedges and the song of birds, and withthe ever-changing sky overhead. But all this had changed (the change wasalready beginning in the nineteenth century), and a new sort of life wasopening for the poor--in the lower quarters of the city.

  In the nineteenth century the lower quarters were still beneath the sky;they were areas of land on clay or other unsuitable soil, liable tofloods or exposed to the smoke of more fortunate districts,insufficiently supplied with water, and as insanitary as the great fearof infectious diseases felt by the wealthier classes permitted. In thetwenty-second century, however, the growth of the city storey abovestorey, and the coalescence of buildings, had led to a differentarrangement. The prosperous people lived in a vast series of sumptuoushotels in the upper storeys and halls of the city fabric; the industrialpopulation dwelt beneath in the tremendous ground-floor and basement, soto speak, of the place.

  In the refinement of life and manners these lower classes differedlittle from their ancestors, the East-enders of Queen Victoria's time;but they had developed a distinct dialect of their own. In these underways they lived and died, rarely ascending to the surface except whenwork took them there. Since for most of them this was the sort of lifeto which they had been born, they found no great misery in suchcircumstances; but for people like Denton and Elizabeth, such a plungewould have seemed more terrible than death.

  "And yet what else is there?" asked Elizabeth.

  Denton professed not to know. Apart from his own feeling of delicacy, hewas not sure how Elizabeth would like the idea of borrowing on thestrength of her expectations.

  The passage from London to Paris even, said Elizabeth, was beyond theirmeans; and in Paris, as in any other city in the world, life would bejust as costly and impossible as in London.

  Well might Denton cry aloud: "If only we had lived in those days,dearest! If only we had lived in the past!" For to their eyes evennineteenth-century Whitechapel was seen through a mist of romance.

  "Is there _nothing_?" cried Elizabeth, suddenly weeping. "Must we reallywait for those three long years? Fancy _three_ years--six-and-thirtymonths!" The human capacity for patience had not grown with the ages.

  Then suddenly Denton was moved to speak of something that had alreadyflickered across his mind. He had hit upon it at last. It seemed to himso wild a suggestion that he made it only half seriously. But to put athing into words has ever a way of making it seem more real and possiblethan it seemed before. And so it was with him.

  "Suppose," he said, "we went into the country?"

  She looked at him to see if he was serious in proposing such anadventure.

  "The country?"

  "Yes--beyond there. Beyond the hills."

  "How could we live?" she said. "_Where_ could we live?"

  "It is not impossible," he said. "People used to live in the country."

  "But then there were houses."

  "There are the ruins of villages and towns now. On the clay lands theyare gone, of course. But they are still left on the grazing land,because it does not pay the Food Company to remove them. I knowthat--for certain. Besides, one sees them from the flying machines, youknow. Well, we might shelter in some one of these, and repair it withour hands. Do you know, the thing is not so wild as it seems. Some ofthe men who go out every day to look after the crops and herds might bepaid to bring us food...."

  She stood in front of him. "How strange it would be if one reallycould...."

  "Why not?"

  "But no one dares."

  "That is no reason."

  "It would be--oh! it would be so romantic and strange. If only it werepossible."

  "Why not possible?"

  "There are so many things. Think of all the things we have, things thatwe should miss."

  "Should we miss them? After all, the life we lead is very unreal--veryartificial." He began to expand his idea, and as he warmed to hisexposition the fantastic quality of his first proposal faded away.

  She thought. "But I have heard of prowlers--escaped criminals."

  He nodded. He hesitated over his answer because he thought it soundedboyish. He blushed. "I could get some one I know to make me a sword."

  She looked at him with enthusiasm growing in her eyes. She had heard ofswords, had seen one in a museum; she thought of those ancient days whenmen wore them as a common thing. His suggestion seemed an impossibledream to her, and perhaps for that reason she was eager for more detail.And inventing for the most part as he went along, he told her, how theymight live in the country as the old-world people had done. With everydetail her interest grew, for she was one of those girls for whomromance and adventure have a fascination.

  His suggestion seemed, I say, an impossible dream to her on that day,but the next day they talked about it again, and it was strangely lessimpossible.

  "At first we should take food," said Denton. "We could carry food forten or twelve days." It was an age of compact artificial nourishment,and such a provision had none of the unwieldy suggestion it would havehad in the nineteenth century.

  "But--until our house," she asked--"until it was ready, where should wesleep?"

  "It is summer."

  "But ... What do you mean?"

  "There was a time when there were no houses in the world; when allmankind slept always in the open air."

  "But for us! The emptiness! No walls--no ceiling!"

  "Dear," he said, "in London you have many beautiful ceilings. Artistspaint them and stud them with lights. But I have seen a ceiling morebeautiful than any in London...."

  "But where?"

  "It is the ceiling under which we two would be alone...."

  "You mean...?"

  "Dear," he said, "it is something the world has forgotten. It is Heavenand all the host of stars."

  Each time they talked the thing seemed more possible and more desirableto them. In a week or so it was quite possible. Another week, and it wasthe inevitable thing they had to do
. A great enthusiasm for the countryseized hold of them and possessed them. The sordid tumult of the town,they said, overwhelmed them. They marvelled that this simple way out oftheir troubles had never come upon them before.

  One morning near Midsummer-day, there was a new minor official upon theflying stage, and Denton's place was to know him no more.

  Our two young people had secretly married, and were going forth manfullyout of the city in which they and their ancestors before them had livedall their days. She wore a new dress of white cut in an old-fashionedpattern, and he had a bundle of provisions strapped athwart his back,and in his hand he carried--rather shame-facedly it is true, and underhis purple cloak--an implement of archaic form, a cross-hilted thing oftempered steel.

  Imagine that going forth! In their days the sprawling suburbs ofVictorian times with their vile roads, petty houses, foolish littlegardens of shrub and geranium, and all their futile, pretentiousprivacies, had disappeared: the towering buildings of the new age, themechanical ways, the electric and water mains, all came to an endtogether, like a wall, like a cliff, near four hundred feet in height,abrupt and sheer. All about the city spread the carrot, swede, andturnip fields of the Food Company, vegetables that were the basis of athousand varied foods, and weeds and hedgerow tangles had been utterlyextirpated. The incessant expense of weeding that went on year afteryear in the petty, wasteful and barbaric farming of the ancient days,the Food Company had economised for ever more by a campaign ofextermination. Here and there, however, neat rows of bramble standardsand apple trees with whitewashed stems, intersected the fields, and atplaces groups of gigantic teazles reared their favoured spikes. Here andthere huge agricultural machines hunched under waterproof covers. Themingled waters of the Wey and Mole and Wandle ran in rectangularchannels; and wherever a gentle elevation of the ground permitted afountain of deodorised sewage distributed its benefits athwart the landand made a rainbow of the sunlight.

  By a great archway in that enormous city wall emerged the Eadhamite roadto Portsmouth, swarming in the morning sunshine with an enormous trafficbearing the blue-clad servants of the Food Company to their toil. Arushing traffic, beside which they seemed two scarce-moving dots. Alongthe outer tracks hummed and rattled the tardy little old-fashionedmotors of such as had duties within twenty miles or so of the city; theinner ways were filled with vaster mechanisms--swift monocycles bearinga score of men, lank multicycles, quadricycles sagging with heavy loads,empty gigantic produce carts that would come back again filled beforethe sun was setting, all with throbbing engines and noiseless wheels anda perpetual wild melody of horns and gongs.

  Along the very verge of the outermost way our young people went insilence, newly wed and oddly shy of one another's company. Many were thethings shouted to them as they tramped along, for in 2100 afoot-passenger on an English road was almost as strange a sight as amotor car would have been in 1800. But they went on with steadfast eyesinto the country, paying no heed to such cries.

  Before them in the south rose the Downs, blue at first, and as they camenearer changing to green, surmounted by the row of gigantic wind-wheelsthat supplemented the wind-wheels upon the roof-spaces of the city, andbroken and restless with the long morning shadows of those whirlingvanes. By midday they had come so near that they could see here andthere little patches of pallid dots--the sheep the Meat Department ofthe Food Company owned. In another hour they had passed the clay and theroot crops and the single fence that hedged them in, and the prohibitionagainst trespass no longer held: the levelled roadway plunged into acutting with all its traffic, and they could leave it and walk over thegreensward and up the open hillside.

  Never had these children of the latter days been together in such alonely place.

  They were both very hungry and footsore--for walking was a rareexercise--and presently they sat down on the weedless, close-croppedgrass, and looked back for the first time at the city from which theyhad come, shining wide and splendid in the blue haze of the valley ofthe Thames. Elizabeth was a little afraid of the unenclosed sheep awayup the slope--she had never been near big unrestrained animalsbefore--but Denton reassured her. And overhead a white-winged birdcircled in the blue.

  They talked but little until they had eaten, and then their tongues wereloosened. He spoke of the happiness that was now certainly theirs, ofthe folly of not breaking sooner out of that magnificent prison oflatter-day life, of the old romantic days that had passed from theworld for ever. And then he became boastful. He took up the sword thatlay on the ground beside him, and she took it from his hand and ran atremulous finger along the blade.

  "And you could," she said, "_you_--could raise this and strike a man?"

  "Why not? If there were need."

  "But," she said, "it seems so horrible. It would slash.... There wouldbe"--her voice sank,--"_blood_."

  "In the old romances you have read often enough ..."

  "Oh, I know: in those--yes. But that is different. One knows it is notblood, but just a sort of red ink.... And _you_--killing!"

  She looked at him doubtfully, and then handed him back the sword.

  After they had rested and eaten, they rose up and went on their waytowards the hills. They passed quite close to a huge flock of sheep, whostared and bleated at their unaccustomed figures. She had never seensheep before, and she shivered to think such gentle things must needs beslain for food. A sheep-dog barked from a distance, and then a shepherdappeared amidst the supports of the wind-wheels, and came down towardsthem.

  When he drew near he called out asking whither they were going.

  Denton hesitated, and told him briefly that they sought some ruinedhouse among the Downs, in which they might live together. He tried tospeak in an off-hand manner, as though it was a usual thing to do. Theman stared incredulously.

  "Have you _done_ anything?" he asked.

  "Nothing," said Denton. "Only we don't want to live in a city anylonger. Why should we live in cities?"

  The shepherd stared more incredulously than ever. "You can't live here,"he said.

  "We mean to try."

  The shepherd stared from one to the other. "You'll go back to-morrow,"he said. "It looks pleasant enough in the sunlight.... Are you sureyou've done nothing? We shepherds are not such _great_ friends of thepolice."

  Denton looked at him steadfastly. "No," he said. "But we are too poor tolive in the city, and we can't bear the thought of wearing clothes ofblue canvas and doing drudgery. We are going to live a simple life here,like the people of old."

  The shepherd was a bearded man with a thoughtful face. He glanced atElizabeth's fragile beauty.

  "_They_ had simple minds," he said.

  "So have we," said Denton.

  The shepherd smiled.

  "If you go along here," he said, "along the crest beneath thewind-wheels, you will see a heap of mounds and ruins on your right-handside. That was once a town called Epsom. There are no houses there, andthe bricks have been used for a sheep pen. Go on, and another heap onthe edge of the root-land is Leatherhead; and then the hill turns awayalong the border of a valley, and there are woods of beech. Keep alongthe crest. You will come to quite wild places. In some parts, in spiteof all the weeding that is done, ferns and bluebells and other suchuseless plants are growing still. And through it all underneath thewind-wheels runs a straight lane paved with stones, a roadway of theRomans two thousand years old. Go to the right of that, down into thevalley and follow it along by the banks of the river. You come presentlyto a street of houses, many with the roofs still sound upon them. Thereyou may find shelter."

  They thanked him.

  "But it's a quiet place. There is no light after dark there, and I haveheard tell of robbers. It is lonely. Nothing happens there. Thephonographs of the story-tellers, the kinematograph entertainments, thenews machines--none of them are to be found there. If you are hungrythere is no food, if you are ill no doctor ..." He stopped.

  "We shall try it," said Denton, moving to go on. Then a thought struckhim,
and he made an agreement with the shepherd, and learnt where theymight find him, to buy and bring them anything of which they stood inneed, out of the city.

  And in the evening they came to the deserted village, with its housesthat seemed so small and odd to them: they found it golden in the gloryof the sunset, and desolate and still. They went from one deserted houseto another, marvelling at their quaint simplicity, and debating whichthey should choose. And at last, in a sunlit corner of a room that hadlost its outer wall, they came upon a wild flower, a little flower ofblue that the weeders of the Food Company had overlooked.

  That house they decided upon; but they did not remain in it long thatnight, because they were resolved to feast upon nature. And moreover thehouses became very gaunt and shadowy after the sunlight had faded outof the sky. So after they had rested a little time they went to thecrest of the hill again to see with their own eyes the silence of heavenset with stars, about which the old poets had had so many things totell. It was a wonderful sight, and Denton talked like the stars, andwhen they went down the hill at last the sky was pale with dawn. Theyslept but little, and in the morning when they woke a thrush was singingin a tree.

  So these young people of the twenty-second century began their exile.That morning they were very busy exploring the resources of this newhome in which they were going to live the simple life. They did notexplore very fast or very far, because they went everywherehand-in-hand; but they found the beginnings of some furniture. Beyondthe village was a store of winter fodder for the sheep of the FoodCompany, and Denton dragged great armfuls to the house to make a bed;and in several of the houses were old fungus-eaten chairs andtables--rough, barbaric, clumsy furniture, it seemed to them, and madeof wood. They repeated many of the things they had said on the previousday, and towards evening they found another flower, a harebell. In thelate afternoon some Company shepherds went down the river valley ridingon a big multicycle; but they hid from them, because their presence,Elizabeth said, seemed to spoil the romance of this old-world placealtogether.

  In this fashion they lived a week. For all that week the days werecloudless, and the nights nights of starry glory, that were invaded eacha little more by a crescent moon.

  Yet something of the first splendour of their coming faded--fadedimperceptibly day after day; Denton's eloquence became fitful, andlacked fresh topics of inspiration; the fatigue of their long march fromLondon told in a certain stiffness of the limbs, and each suffered froma slight unaccountable cold. Moreover, Denton became aware of unoccupiedtime. In one place among the carelessly heaped lumber of the old timeshe found a rust-eaten spade, and with this he made a fitful attack onthe razed and grass-grown garden--though he had nothing to plant or sow.He returned to Elizabeth with a sweat-streaming face, after half an hourof such work.

  "There were giants in those days," he said, not understanding what wontand training will do. And their walk that day led them along the hillsuntil they could see the city shimmering far away in the valley. "Iwonder how things are going on there," he said.

  And then came a change in the weather. "Come out and see the clouds,"she cried; and behold! they were a sombre purple in the north and east,streaming up to ragged edges at the zenith. And as they went up the hillthese hurrying streamers blotted out the sunset. Suddenly the wind setthe beech-trees swaying and whispering, and Elizabeth shivered. And thenfar away the lightning flashed, flashed like a sword that is drawnsuddenly, and the distant thunder marched about the sky, and even asthey stood astonished, pattering upon them came the first headlongraindrops of the storm. In an instant the last streak of sunset washidden by a falling curtain of hail, and the lightning flashed again,and the voice of the thunder roared louder, and all about them the worldscowled dark and strange.

  Seizing hands, these children of the city ran down the hill to theirhome, in infinite astonishment. And ere they reached it, Elizabeth wasweeping with dismay, and the darkling ground about them was white andbrittle and active with the pelting hail.

  Then began a strange and terrible night for them. For the first time intheir civilised lives they were in absolute darkness; they were wet andcold and shivering, all about them hissed the hail, and through the longneglected ceilings of the derelict home came noisy spouts of water andformed pools and rivulets on the creaking floors. As the gusts of thestorm struck the worn-out building, it groaned and shuddered, and now amass of plaster from the wall would slide and smash, and now someloosened tile would rattle down the roof and crash into the emptygreenhouse below. Elizabeth shuddered, and was still; Denton wrapped hisgay and flimsy city cloak about her, and so they crouched in thedarkness. And ever the thunder broke louder and nearer, and ever morelurid flashed the lightning, jerking into a momentary gaunt clearnessthe steaming, dripping room in which they sheltered.

  Never before had they been in the open air save when the sun wasshining. All their time had been spent in the warm and airy ways andhalls and rooms of the latter-day city. It was to them that night as ifthey were in some other world, some disordered chaos of stress andtumult, and almost beyond hoping that they should ever see the city waysagain.

  The storm seemed to last interminably, until at last they dozed betweenthe thunderclaps, and then very swiftly it fell and ceased. And as thelast patter of the rain died away they heard an unfamiliar sound.

  "What is that?" cried Elizabeth.

  It came again. It was the barking of dogs. It drove down the desert laneand passed; and through the window, whitening the wall before them andthrowing upon it the shadow of the window-frame and of a tree in blacksilhouette, shone the light of the waxing moon....

  Just as the pale dawn was drawing the things about them into sight, thefitful barking of dogs came near again, and stopped. They listened.After a pause they heard the quick pattering of feet seeking round thehouse, and short, half-smothered barks. Then again everything was still.

  "Ssh!" whispered Elizabeth, and pointed to the door of their room.

  Denton went half-way towards the door, and stood listening. He came backwith a face of affected unconcern. "They must be the sheep-dogs of theFood Company," he said. "They will do us no harm."

  He sat down again beside her. "What a night it has been!" he said, tohide how keenly he was listening.

  "I don't like dogs," answered Elizabeth, after a long silence.

  "Dogs never hurt any one," said Denton. "In the old days--in thenineteenth century--everybody had a dog."

  "There was a romance I heard once. A dog killed a man."

  "Not this sort of dog," said Denton confidently. "Some of thoseromances--are exaggerated."

  Suddenly a half bark and a pattering up the staircase; the sound ofpanting. Denton sprang to his feet and drew the sword out of the dampstraw upon which they had been lying. Then in the doorway appeared agaunt sheep-dog, and halted there. Behind it stared another. For aninstant man and brute faced each other, hesitating.

  Then Denton, being ignorant of dogs, made a sharp step forward. "Goaway," he said, with a clumsy motion of his sword.

  The dog started and growled. Denton stopped sharply. "Good dog!" hesaid.

  The growling jerked into a bark.

  "Good dog!" said Denton. The second dog growled and barked. A third outof sight down the staircase took up the barking also. Outside othersgave tongue--a large number it seemed to Denton.

  "This is annoying," said Denton, without taking his eye off the brutesbefore him. "Of course the shepherds won't come out of the city forhours yet. Naturally these dogs don't quite make us out."

  "I can't hear," shouted Elizabeth. She stood up and came to him.

  Denton tried again, but the barking still drowned his voice. The soundhad a curious effect upon his blood. Odd disused emotions began to stir;his face changed as he shouted. He tried again; the barking seemed tomock him, and one dog danced a pace forward, bristling. Suddenly heturned, and uttering certain words in the dialect of the underways,words incomprehensible to Elizabeth, he made for the dogs. There was asudden ce
ssation of the barking, a growl and a snapping. Elizabeth sawthe snarling head of the foremost dog, its white teeth and retractedears, and the flash of the thrust blade. The brute leapt into the airand was flung back.

  Then Denton, with a shout, was driving the dogs before him. The swordflashed above his head with a sudden new freedom of gesture, and then hevanished down the staircase. She made six steps to follow him, and onthe landing there was blood. She stopped, and hearing the tumult of dogsand Denton's shouts pass out of the house, ran to the window.

  Nine wolfish sheep-dogs were scattering, one writhed before the porch;and Denton, tasting that strange delight of combat that slumbers stillin the blood of even the most civilised man, was shouting and runningacross the garden space. And then she saw something that for a moment hedid not see. The dogs circled round this way and that, and came again.They had him in the open.

  In an instant she divined the situation. She would have called to him.For a moment she felt sick and helpless, and then, obeying a strangeimpulse, she gathered up her white skirt and ran downstairs. In the hallwas the rusting spade. That was it! She seized it and ran out.

  She came none too soon. One dog rolled before him, well-nigh slashed inhalf; but a second had him by the thigh, a third gripped his collarbehind, and a fourth had the blade of the sword between its teeth,tasting its own blood. He parried the leap of a fifth with his left arm.

  It might have been the first century instead of the twenty-second, sofar as she was concerned. All the gentleness of her eighteen years ofcity life vanished before this primordial need. The spade smote hard andsure, and cleft a dog's skull. Another, crouching for a spring, yelpedwith dismay at this unexpected antagonist, and rushed aside. Two wastedprecious moments on the binding of a feminine skirt.

  The collar of Denton's cloak tore and parted as he staggered back; andthat dog too felt the spade, and ceased to trouble him. He sheathed hissword in the brute at his thigh.

  "To the wall!" cried Elizabeth; and in three seconds the fight was at anend, and our young people stood side by side, while a remnant of fivedogs, with ears and tails of disaster, fled shamefully from the strickenfield.

  For a moment they stood panting and victorious, and then Elizabeth,dropping her spade, covered her face, and sank to the ground in aparoxysm of weeping. Denton looked about him, thrust the point of hissword into the ground so that it was at hand, and stooped to comforther.

  * * * * *

  At last their more tumultuous emotions subsided, and they could talkagain. She leant upon the wall, and he sat upon it so that he could keepan eye open for any returning dogs. Two, at any rate, were up on thehillside and keeping up a vexatious barking.

  She was tear-stained, but not very wretched now, because for half anhour he had been repeating that she was brave and had saved his life.But a new fear was growing in her mind.

  "They are the dogs of the Food Company," she said. "There will betrouble."

  "I am afraid so. Very likely they will prosecute us for trespass."

  A pause.

  "In the old times," he said, "this sort of thing happened day afterday."

  "Last night!" she said. "I could not live through another such night."

  He looked at her. Her face was pale for want of sleep, and drawn andhaggard. He came to a sudden resolution. "We must go back," he said.

  She looked at the dead dogs, and shivered. "We cannot stay here," shesaid.

  "We must go back," he repeated, glancing over his shoulder to see if theenemy kept their distance. "We have been happy for a time.... But theworld is too civilised. Ours is the age of cities. More of this willkill us."

  "But what are we to do? How can we live there?"

  Denton hesitated. His heel kicked against the wall on which he sat."It's a thing I haven't mentioned before," he said, and coughed;"but ..."

  "Yes?"

  "You could raise money on your expectations," he said.

  "Could I?" she said eagerly.

  "Of course you could. What a child you are!"

  She stood up, and her face was bright. "Why did you not tell me before?"she asked. "And all this time we have been here!"

  He looked at her for a moment, and smiled. Then the smile vanished. "Ithought it ought to come from you," he said. "I didn't like to ask foryour money. And besides--at first I thought this would be rather fine."

  There was a pause.

  "It _has_ been fine," he said; and glanced once more over his shoulder."Until all this began."

  "Yes," she said, "those first days. The first three days."

  They looked for a space into one another's faces, and then Denton sliddown from the wall and took her hand.

  "To each generation," he said, "the life of its time. I see it allplainly now. In the city--that is the life to which we were born. Tolive in any other fashion ... Coming here was a dream, and this--is theawakening."

  "It was a pleasant dream," she said,--"in the beginning."

  For a long space neither spoke.

  "If we would reach the city before the shepherds come here, we muststart," said Denton. "We must get our food out of the house and eat aswe go."

  Denton glanced about him again, and, giving the dead dogs a wide berth,they walked across the garden space and into the house together. Theyfound the wallet with their food, and descended the blood-stained stairsagain. In the hall Elizabeth stopped. "One minute," she said. "There issomething here."

  She led the way into the room in which that one little blue flower wasblooming. She stooped to it, she touched it with her hand.

  "I want it," she said; and then, "I cannot take it...."

  Impulsively she stooped and kissed its petals.

  Then silently, side by side, they went across the empty garden-spaceinto the old high road, and set their faces resolutely towards thedistant city--towards the complex mechanical city of those latter days,the city that had swallowed up mankind.

  III--THE WAYS OF THE CITY

  Prominent if not paramount among world-changing inventions in thehistory of man is that series of contrivances in locomotion that beganwith the railway and ended for a century or more with the motor and thepatent road. That these contrivances, together with the device oflimited liability joint stock companies and the supersession ofagricultural labourers by skilled men with ingenious machinery, wouldnecessarily concentrate mankind in cities of unparallelled magnitude andwork an entire revolution in human life, became, after the event, athing so obvious that it is a matter of astonishment it was not moreclearly anticipated. Yet that any steps should be taken to anticipatethe miseries such a revolution might entail does not appear even to havebeen suggested; and the idea that the moral prohibitions and sanctions,the privileges and concessions, the conception of property andresponsibility, of comfort and beauty, that had rendered the mainlyagricultural states of the past prosperous and happy, would fail in therising torrent of novel opportunities and novel stimulations, neverseems to have entered the nineteenth-century mind. That a citizen,kindly and fair in his ordinary life, could as a shareholder becomealmost murderously greedy; that commercial methods that were reasonableand honourable on the old-fashioned countryside, should on an enlargedscale be deadly and overwhelming; that ancient charity was modernpauperisation, and ancient employment modern sweating; that, in fact, arevision and enlargement of the duties and rights of man had becomeurgently necessary, were things it could not entertain, nourished as itwas on an archaic system of education and profoundly retrospective andlegal in all its habits of thought. It was known that the accumulationof men in cities involved unprecedented dangers of pestilence; there wasan energetic development of sanitation; but that the diseases ofgambling and usury, of luxury and tyranny should become endemic, andproduce horrible consequences was beyond the scope of nineteenth-centurythought. And so, as if it were some inorganic process, practicallyunhindered by the creative will of man, the growth of the swarmingunhappy cities that mark the twenty-first century accomplished i
tself.

  The new society was divided into three main classes. At the summitslumbered the property owner, enormously rich by accident rather thandesign, potent save for the will and aim, the last _avatar_ of Hamlet inthe world. Below was the enormous multitude of workers employed by thegigantic companies that monopolised control; and between these two thedwindling middle class, officials of innumerable sorts, foremen,managers, the medical, legal, artistic, and scholastic classes, and theminor rich, a middle class whose members led a life of insecure luxuryand precarious speculation amidst the movements of the great managers.

  Already the love story and the marrying of two persons of this middleclass have been told: how they overcame the obstacles between them, andhow they tried the simple old-fashioned way of living on the countrysideand came back speedily enough into the city of London. Denton had nomeans, so Elizabeth borrowed money on the securities that her fatherMwres held in trust for her until she was one-and-twenty.

  The rate of interest she paid was of course high, because of theuncertainty of her security, and the arithmetic of lovers is oftensketchy and optimistic. Yet they had very glorious times after thatreturn. They determined they would not go to a Pleasure city nor wastetheir days rushing through the air from one part of the world to theother, for in spite of one disillusionment, their tastes were stillold-fashioned. They furnished their little room with quaint oldVictorian furniture, and found a shop on the forty-second floor inSeventh Way where printed books of the old sort were still to be bought.It was their pet affectation to read print instead of hearingphonographs. And when presently there came a sweet little girl, to unitethem further if it were possible, Elizabeth would not send it to a_creche_, as the custom was, but insisted on nursing it at home. Therent of their apartments was raised on account of this singularproceeding, but that they did not mind. It only meant borrowing a littlemore.

  Presently Elizabeth was of age, and Denton had a business interview withher father that was not agreeable. An exceedingly disagreeable interviewwith their money-lender followed, from which he brought home a whiteface. On his return Elizabeth had to tell him of a new and marvellousintonation of "Goo" that their daughter had devised, but Denton wasinattentive. In the midst, just as she was at the cream of herdescription, he interrupted. "How much money do you think we have left,now that everything is settled?"

  She stared and stopped her appreciative swaying of the Goo genius thathad accompanied her description.

  "You don't mean...?"

  "Yes," he answered. "Ever so much. We have been wild. It's the interest.Or something. And the shares you had, slumped. Your father did not mind.Said it was not his business, after what had happened. He's going tomarry again.... Well--we have scarcely a thousand left!"

  "Only a thousand?"

  "Only a thousand."

  And Elizabeth sat down. For a moment she regarded him with a white face,then her eyes went about the quaint, old-fashioned room, with its middleVictorian furniture and genuine oleographs, and rested at last on thelittle lump of humanity within her arms.

  Denton glanced at her and stood downcast. Then he swung round on hisheel and walked up and down very rapidly.

  "I must get something to do," he broke out presently. "I am an idlescoundrel. I ought to have thought of this before. I have been a selfishfool. I wanted to be with you all day...."

  He stopped, looking at her white face. Suddenly he came and kissed herand the little face that nestled against her breast.

  "It's all right, dear," he said, standing over her; "you won't be lonelynow--now Dings is beginning to talk to you. And I can soon get somethingto do, you know. Soon.... Easily.... It's only a shock at first. But itwill come all right. It's sure to come right. I will go out again assoon as I have rested, and find what can be done. For the present it'shard to think of anything...."

  "It would be hard to leave these rooms," said Elizabeth; "but----"

  "There won't be any need of that--trust me."

  "They are expensive."

  Denton waved that aside. He began talking of the work he could do. Hewas not very explicit what it would be; but he was quite sure that therewas something to keep them comfortably in the happy middle class, whoseway of life was the only one they knew.

  "There are three-and-thirty million people in London," he said: "some ofthem _must_ have need of me."

  "Some _must_."

  "The trouble is ... Well--Bindon, that brown little old man your fatherwanted you to marry. He's an important person.... I can't go back to myflying-stage work, because he is now a Commissioner of the Flying StageClerks."

  "I didn't know that," said Elizabeth.

  "He was made that in the last few weeks ... or things would be easyenough, for they liked me on the flying stage. But there's dozens ofother things to be done--dozens. Don't you worry, dear. I'll rest alittle while, and then we'll dine, and then I'll start on my rounds. Iknow lots of people--lots."

  So they rested, and then they went to the public dining-room and dined,and then he started on his search for employment. But they soon realisedthat in the matter of one convenience the world was just as badly off asit had ever been, and that was a nice, secure, honourable, remunerativeemployment, leaving ample leisure for the private life, and demanding nospecial ability, no violent exertion nor risk, and no sacrifice of anysort for its attainment. He evolved a number of brilliant projects, andspent many days hurrying from one part of the enormous city to anotherin search of influential friends; and all his influential friends wereglad to see him, and very sanguine until it came to definite proposals,and then they became guarded and vague. He would part with them coldly,and think over their behaviour, and get irritated on his way back, andstop at some telephone office and spend money on an animated butunprofitable quarrel. And as the days passed, he got so worried andirritated that even to seem kind and careless before Elizabeth cost himan effort--as she, being a loving woman, perceived very clearly.

  After an extremely complex preface one day, she helped him out with apainful suggestion. He had expected her to weep and give way to despairwhen it came to selling all their joyfully bought early Victoriantreasures, their quaint objects of art, their antimacassars, bead mats,repp curtains, veneered furniture, gold-framed steel engravings andpencil drawings, wax flowers under shades, stuffed birds, and all sortsof choice old things; but it was she who made the proposal. Thesacrifice seemed to fill her with pleasure, and so did the idea ofshifting to apartments ten or twelve floors lower in another hotel. "Solong as Dings is with us, nothing matters," she said. "It's allexperience." So he kissed her, said she was braver than when she foughtthe sheep-dogs, called her Boadicea, and abstained very carefully fromreminding her that they would have to pay a considerably higher rent onaccount of the little voice with which Dings greeted the perpetualuproar of the city.

  His idea had been to get Elizabeth out of the way when it came toselling the absurd furniture about which their affections were twinedand tangled; but when it came to the sale it was Elizabeth who haggledwith the dealer while Denton went about the running ways of the city,white and sick with sorrow and the fear of what was still to come. Whenthey moved into their sparsely furnished pink-and-white apartments in acheap hotel, there came an outbreak of furious energy on his part, andthen nearly a week of lethargy during which he sulked at home. Throughthose days Elizabeth shone like a star, and at the end Denton's miseryfound a vent in tears. And then he went out into the city ways again,and--to his utter amazement--found some work to do.

  His standard of employment had fallen steadily until at last it hadreached the lowest level of independent workers. At first he had aspiredto some high official position in the great Flying or Wind Vane or WaterCompanies, or to an appointment on one of the General IntelligenceOrganisations that had replaced newspapers, or to some professionalpartnership, but those were the dreams of the beginning. From that hehad passed to speculation, and three hundred gold "lions" out ofElizabeth's thousand had vanished one evening in the share mark
et. Nowhe was glad his good looks secured him a trial in the position ofsalesman to the Suzannah Hat Syndicate, a Syndicate, dealing in ladies'caps, hair decorations, and hats--for though the city was completelycovered in, ladies still wore extremely elaborate and beautiful hats atthe theatres and places of public worship.

  It would have been amusing if one could have confronted a Regent Streetshopkeeper of the nineteenth century with the development of hisestablishment in which Denton's duties lay. Nineteenth Way was stillsometimes called Regent Street, but it was now a street of movingplatforms and nearly eight hundred feet wide. The middle space wasimmovable and gave access by staircases descending into subterraneanways to the houses on either side. Right and left were an ascendingseries of continuous platforms each of which travelled about five milesan hour faster than the one internal to it, so that one could step fromplatform to platform until one reached the swiftest outer way and so goabout the city. The establishment of the Suzannah Hat Syndicateprojected a vast _facade_ upon the outer way, sending out overhead ateither end an overlapping series of huge white glass screens, on whichgigantic animated pictures of the faces of well-known beautiful livingwomen wearing novelties in hats were thrown. A dense crowd was alwayscollected in the stationary central way watching a vast kinematographwhich displayed the changing fashion. The whole front of the buildingwas in perpetual chromatic change, and all down the _facade_--fourhundred feet it measured--and all across the street of moving ways,laced and winked and glittered in a thousand varieties of colour andlettering the inscription--

  SUZANNA! 'ETS! SUZANNA! 'ETS!

  A broadside of gigantic phonographs drowned all conversation in themoving way and roared "_hats_" at the passer-by, while far down thestreet and up, other batteries counselled the public to "walk down forSuzannah," and queried, "Why _don't_ you buy the girl a hat?"

  For the benefit of those who chanced to be deaf--and deafness was notuncommon in the London of that age, inscriptions of all sizes werethrown from the roof above upon the moving platforms themselves, and onone's hand or on the bald head of the man before one, or on a lady'sshoulders, or in a sudden jet of flame before one's feet, the movingfinger wrote in unanticipated letters of fire "_'ets r chip t'de_," orsimply "_'ets_." And spite of all these efforts so high was the pitch atwhich the city lived, so trained became one's eyes and ears to ignoreall sorts of advertisement, that many a citizen had passed that placethousands of times and was still unaware of the existence of theSuzannah Hat Syndicate.

  To enter the building one descended the staircase in the middle way andwalked through a public passage in which pretty girls promenaded, girlswho were willing to wear a ticketed hat for a small fee. The entrancechamber was a large hall in which wax heads fashionably adorned rotatedgracefully upon pedestals, and from this one passed through a cashoffice to an interminable series of little rooms, each room with itssalesman, its three or four hats and pins, its mirrors, itskinematographs, telephones and hat slides in communication with thecentral depot, its comfortable lounge and tempting refreshments. Asalesman in such an apartment did Denton now become. It was his businessto attend to any of the incessant stream of ladies who chose to stopwith him, to behave as winningly as possible, to offer refreshment, toconverse on any topic the possible customer chose, and to guide theconversation dexterously but not insistently towards hats. He was tosuggest trying on various types of hat and to show by his manner andbearing, but without any coarse flattery, the enhanced impression madeby the hats he wished to sell. He had several mirrors, adapted byvarious subtleties of curvature and tint to different types of face andcomplexion, and much depended on the proper use of these.

  Denton flung himself at these curious and not very congenial duties witha good will and energy that would have amazed him a year before; but allto no purpose. The Senior Manageress, who had selected him forappointment and conferred various small marks of favour upon him,suddenly changed in her manner, declared for no assignable cause that hewas stupid, and dismissed him at the end of six weeks of salesmanship.So Denton had to resume his ineffectual search for employment.

  This second search did not last very long. Their money was at the ebb.To eke it out a little longer they resolved to part with their darlingDings, and took that small person to one of the public _creches_ thatabounded in the city. That was the common use of the time. Theindustrial emancipation of women, the correlated disorganisation of thesecluded "home," had rendered _creches_ a necessity for all but veryrich and exceptionally-minded people. Therein children encounteredhygienic and educational advantages impossible without suchorganisation. _Creches_ were of all classes and types of luxury, down tothose of the Labour Company, where children were taken on credit, to beredeemed in labour as they grew up.

  But both Denton and Elizabeth being, as I have explained, strangeold-fashioned young people, full of nineteenth-century ideas, hatedthese convenient _creches_ exceedingly and at last took their littledaughter to one with extreme reluctance. They were received by amotherly person in a uniform who was very brisk and prompt in her manneruntil Elizabeth wept at the mention of parting from her child. Themotherly person, after a brief astonishment at this unusual emotion,changed suddenly into a creature of hope and comfort, and so wonElizabeth's gratitude for life. They were conducted into a vast roompresided over by several nurses and with hundreds of two-year-old girlsgrouped about the toy-covered floor. This was the Two-year-old Room.Two nurses came forward, and Elizabeth watched their bearing towardsDings with jealous eyes. They were kind--it was clear they felt kind,and yet ...

  Presently it was time to go. By that time Dings was happily establishedin a corner, sitting on the floor with her arms filled, and herself,indeed, for the most part hidden by an unaccustomed wealth of toys. Sheseemed careless of all human relationships as her parents receded.

  They were forbidden to upset her by saying good-bye.

  At the door Elizabeth glanced back for the last time, and behold! Dingshad dropped her new wealth and was standing with a dubious face.Suddenly Elizabeth gasped, and the motherly nurse pushed her forward andclosed the door.

  "You can come again soon, dear," she said, with unexpected tenderness inher eyes. For a moment Elizabeth stared at her with a blank face. "Youcan come again soon," repeated the nurse. Then with a swift transitionElizabeth was weeping in the nurse's arms. So it was that Denton's heartwas won also.

  And three weeks after our young people were absolutely penniless, andonly one way lay open. They must go to the Labour Company. So soon asthe rent was a week overdue their few remaining possessions were seized,and with scant courtesy they were shown the way out of the hotel.Elizabeth walked along the passage towards the staircase that ascendedto the motionless middle way, too dulled by misery to think. Dentonstopped behind to finish a stinging and unsatisfactory argument with thehotel porter, and then came hurrying after her, flushed and hot. Heslackened his pace as he overtook her, and together they ascended to themiddle way in silence. There they found two seats vacant and sat down.

  "We need not go there--_yet_?" said Elizabeth.

  "No--not till we are hungry," said Denton.

  They said no more.

  Elizabeth's eyes sought a resting-place and found none. To the rightroared the eastward ways, to the left the ways in the oppositedirection, swarming with people. Backwards and forwards along a cableoverhead rushed a string of gesticulating men, dressed like clowns, eachmarked on back and chest with one gigantic letter, so that altogetherthey spelt out:

  "PURKINJE'S DIGESTIVE PILLS."

  An anaemic little woman in horrible coarse blue canvas pointed a littlegirl to one of this string of hurrying advertisements.

  "Look!" said the anaemic woman: "there's yer father."

  "Which?" said the little girl.

  "'Im wiv his nose coloured red," said the anaemic woman.

  The little girl began to cry, and Elizabeth could have cried too.

  "Ain't 'e kickin' 'is legs!--_just!_" said the anaemic woman in blue,trying
to make things bright again. "Looky--_now!_"

  On the _facade_ to the right a huge intensely bright disc of weirdcolour span incessantly, and letters of fire that came and went speltout--

  "DOES THIS MAKE YOU GIDDY?"

  Then a pause, followed by

  "TAKE A PURKINJE'S DIGESTIVE PILL."

  A vast and desolating braying began. "If you love Swagger Literature,put your telephone on to Bruggles, the Greatest Author of all Time. TheGreatest Thinker of all Time. Teaches you Morals up to your Scalp! Thevery image of Socrates, except the back of his head, which is likeShakspeare. He has six toes, dresses in red, and never cleans his teeth.Hear HIM!"

  Denton's voice became audible in a gap in the uproar. "I never ought tohave married you," he was saying. "I have wasted your money, ruined you,brought you to misery. I am a scoundrel.... Oh, this accursed world!"

  She tried to speak, and for some moments could not. She grasped hishand. "No," she said at last.

  A half-formed desire suddenly became determination. She stood up. "Willyou come?"

  He rose also. "We need not go there yet."

  "Not that. But I want you to come to the flying stages--where we met.You know? The little seat."

  He hesitated. "_Can_ you?" he said, doubtfully.

  "Must," she answered.

  He hesitated still for a moment, then moved to obey her will.

  And so it was they spent their last half-day of freedom out under theopen air in the little seat under the flying stages where they had beenwont to meet five short years ago. There she told him, what she couldnot tell him in the tumultuous public ways, that she did not repent evennow of their marriage--that whatever discomfort and misery life stillhad for them, she was content with the things that had been. The weatherwas kind to them, the seat was sunlit and warm, and overhead the shiningaeroplanes went and came.

  At last towards sunsetting their time was at an end, and they made theirvows to one another and clasped hands, and then rose up and went backinto the ways of the city, a shabby-looking, heavy-hearted pair, tiredand hungry. Soon they came to one of the pale blue signs that marked aLabour Company Bureau. For a space they stood in the middle wayregarding this and at last descended, and entered the waiting-room.

  The Labour Company had originally been a charitable organisation; itsaim was to supply food, shelter, and work to all comers. This it wasbound to do by the conditions of its incorporation, and it was alsobound to supply food and shelter and medical attendance to all incapableof work who chose to demand its aid. In exchange these incapables paidlabour notes, which they had to redeem upon recovery. They signed theselabour notes with thumb-marks, which were photographed and indexed insuch a way that this world-wide Labour Company could identify any one ofits two or three hundred million clients at the cost of an hour'sinquiry. The day's labour was defined as two spells in a treadmill usedin generating electrical force, or its equivalent, and its dueperformance could be enforced by law. In practice the Labour Companyfound it advisable to add to its statutory obligations of food andshelter a few pence a day as an inducement to effort; and its enterprisehad not only abolished pauperisation altogether, but suppliedpractically all but the very highest and most responsible labourthroughout the world. Nearly a third of the population of the world wereits serfs and debtors from the cradle to the grave.

  In this practical, unsentimental way the problem of the unemployed hadbeen most satisfactorily met and overcome. No one starved in the publicways, and no rags, no costume less sanitary and sufficient than theLabour Company's hygienic but inelegant blue canvas, pained the eyethroughout the whole world. It was the constant theme of thephonographic newspapers how much the world had progressed sincenineteenth-century days, when the bodies of those killed by thevehicular traffic or dead of starvation, were, they alleged, a commonfeature in all the busier streets.

  Denton and Elizabeth sat apart in the waiting-room until their turncame. Most of the others collected there seemed limp and taciturn, butthree or four young people gaudily dressed made up for the quietude oftheir companions. They were life clients of the Company, born in theCompany's _creche_ and destined to die in its hospital, and they hadbeen out for a spree with some shillings or so of extra pay. They talkedvociferously in a later development of the Cockney dialect, manifestlyvery proud of themselves.

  Elizabeth's eyes went from these to the less assertive figures. Oneseemed exceptionally pitiful to her. It was a woman of perhapsforty-five, with gold-stained hair and a painted face, down whichabundant tears had trickled; she had a pinched nose, hungry eyes, leanhands and shoulders, and her dusty worn-out finery told the story of herlife. Another was a grey-bearded old man in the costume of a bishop ofone of the high episcopal sects--for religion was now also a business,and had its ups and downs. And beside him a sickly, dissipated-lookingboy of perhaps two-and-twenty glared at Fate.

  Presently Elizabeth and then Denton interviewed the manageress--for theCompany preferred women in this capacity--and found she possessed anenergetic face, a contemptuous manner, and a particularly unpleasantvoice. They were given various checks, including one to certify thatthey need not have their heads cropped; and when they had given theirthumb-marks, learnt the number corresponding thereunto, and exchangedtheir shabby middle-class clothes for duly numbered blue canvas suits,they repaired to the huge plain dining-room for their first meal underthese new conditions. Afterwards they were to return to her forinstructions about their work.

  When they had made the exchange of their clothing Elizabeth did not seemable to look at Denton at first; but he looked at her, and saw withastonishment that even in blue canvas she was still beautiful. And thentheir soup and bread came sliding on its little rail down the long tabletowards them and stopped with a jerk, and he forgot the matter. For theyhad had no proper meal for three days.

  After they had dined they rested for a time. Neither talked--there wasnothing to say; and presently they got up and went back to themanageress to learn what they had to do.

  The manageress referred to a tablet. "Y'r rooms won't be here; it'll bein the Highbury Ward, Ninety-seventh Way, number two thousand andseventeen. Better make a note of it on y'r card. _You_, nought noughtnought, type seven, sixty-four, b.c.d., _gamma_ forty-one, female; you'ave to go to the Metal-beating Company and try that for aday--fourpence bonus if ye're satisfactory; and _you_, nought seven one,type four, seven hundred and nine, g.f.b., _pi_ five and ninety, male;you 'ave to go to the Photographic Company on Eighty-first Way, andlearn something or other--_I_ don't know--thrippence. 'Ere's y'r cards.That's all. Next! _What?_ Didn't catch it all? Lor! So suppose I must goover it all again. Why don't you listen? Keerless, unprovident people!One'd think these things didn't matter."

  Their ways to their work lay together for a time. And now they foundthey could talk. Curiously enough, the worst of their depression seemedover now that they had actually donned the blue. Denton could talk withinterest even of the work that lay before them. "Whatever it is," hesaid, "it can't be so hateful as that hat shop. And after we have paidfor Dings, we shall still have a whole penny a day between us even now.Afterwards--we may improve,--get more money."

  Elizabeth was less inclined to speech. "I wonder why work should seemso hateful," she said.

  "It's odd," said Denton. "I suppose it wouldn't be if it were not thethought of being ordered about.... I hope we shall have decentmanagers."

  Elizabeth did not answer. She was not thinking of that. She was tracingout some thoughts of her own.

  "Of course," she said presently, "we have been using up work all ourlives. It's only fair--"

  She stopped. It was too intricate.

  "We paid for it," said Denton, for at that time he had not troubledhimself about these complicated things.

  "We did nothing--and yet we paid for it. That's what I cannotunderstand."

  "Perhaps we are paying," said Elizabeth presently--for her theology wasold-fashioned and simple.

  Presently it was time for them to part,
and each went to the appointedwork. Denton's was to mind a complicated hydraulic press that seemedalmost an intelligent thing. This press worked by the sea-water that wasdestined finally to flush the city drains--for the world had long sinceabandoned the folly of pouring drinkable water into its sewers. Thiswater was brought close to the eastward edge of the city by a hugecanal, and then raised by an enormous battery of pumps into reservoirsat a level of four hundred feet above the sea, from which it spread by abillion arterial branches over the city. Thence it poured down,cleansing, sluicing, working machinery of all sorts, through an infinitevariety of capillary channels into the great drains, the _cloacaemaximae_, and so carried the sewage out to the agricultural areas thatsurrounded London on every side.

  The press was employed in one of the processes of the photographicmanufacture, but the nature of the process it did not concern Denton tounderstand. The most salient fact to his mind was that it had to beconducted in ruby light, and as a consequence the room in which heworked was lit by one coloured globe that poured a lurid and painfulillumination about the room. In the darkest corner stood the press whoseservant Denton had now become: it was a huge, dim, glittering thing witha projecting hood that had a remote resemblance to a bowed head, and,squatting like some metal Buddha in this weird light that ministered toits needs, it seemed to Denton in certain moods almost as if this mustneeds be the obscure idol to which humanity in some strange aberrationhad offered up his life. His duties had a varied monotony. Such items asthe following will convey an idea of the service of the press. The thingworked with a busy clicking so long as things went well; but if thepaste that came pouring through a feeder from another room and which itwas perpetually compressing into thin plates, changed in quality therhythm of its click altered and Denton hastened to make certainadjustments. The slightest delay involved a waste of paste and thedocking of one or more of his daily pence. If the supply of pastewaned--there were hand processes of a peculiar sort involved in itspreparation, and sometimes the workers had convulsions which derangedtheir output--Denton had to throw the press out of gear. In the painfulvigilance a multitude of such trivial attentions entailed, painfulbecause of the incessant effort its absence of natural interestrequired, Denton had now to pass one-third of his days. Save for anoccasional visit from the manager, a kindly but singularly foul-mouthedman, Denton passed his working hours in solitude.

  Elizabeth's work was of a more social sort. There was a fashion forcovering the private apartments of the very wealthy with metal platesbeautifully embossed with repeated patterns. The taste of the timedemanded, however, that the repetition of the patterns should not beexact--not mechanical, but "natural"--and it was found that the mostpleasing arrangement of pattern irregularity was obtained by employingwomen of refinement and natural taste to punch out the patterns withsmall dies. So many square feet of plates was exacted from Elizabeth asa minimum, and for whatever square feet she did in excess she received asmall payment. The room, like most rooms of women workers, was under amanageress: men had been found by the Labour Company not only lessexacting but extremely liable to excuse favoured ladies from a propershare of their duties. The manageress was a not unkindly, taciturnperson, with the hardened remains of beauty of the brunette type; andthe other women workers, who of course hated her, associated her namescandalously with one of the metal-work directors in order to explainher position.

  Only two or three of Elizabeth's fellow-workers were born labour serfs;plain, morose girls, but most of them corresponded to what thenineteenth century would have called a "reduced" gentlewoman. But theideal of what constituted a gentlewoman had altered: the faint, faded,negative virtue, the modulated voice and restrained gesture of theold-fashioned gentlewoman had vanished from the earth. Most of hercompanions showed in discoloured hair, ruined complexions, and thetexture of their reminiscent conversations, the vanished glories of aconquering youth. All of these artistic workers were much older thanElizabeth, and two openly expressed their surprise that any one so youngand pleasant should come to share their toil. But Elizabeth did nottrouble them with her old-world moral conceptions.

  They were permitted, and even encouraged to converse with each other,for the directors very properly judged that anything that conduced tovariations of mood made for pleasing fluctuations in their patterning;and Elizabeth was almost forced to hear the stories of these lives withwhich her own interwove: garbled and distorted they were by vanityindeed and yet comprehensible enough. And soon she began to appreciatethe small spites and cliques, the little misunderstandings and alliancesthat enmeshed about her. One woman was excessively garrulous anddescriptive about a wonderful son of hers; another had cultivated afoolish coarseness of speech, that she seemed to regard as the wittiestexpression of originality conceivable; a third mused for ever on dress,and whispered to Elizabeth how she saved her pence day after day, andwould presently have a glorious day of freedom, wearing ... and thenfollowed hours of description; two others sat always together, andcalled one another pet names, until one day some little thing happened,and they sat apart, blind and deaf as it seemed to one another's being.And always from them all came an incessant tap, tap, tap, tap, and themanageress listened always to the rhythm to mark if one fell away. Tap,tap, tap, tap: so their days passed, so their lives must pass. Elizabethsat among them, kindly and quiet, grey-hearted, marvelling at Fate: tap,tap, tap; tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap.

  So there came to Denton and Elizabeth a long succession of laboriousdays, that hardened their hands, wove strange threads of some new andsterner substance into the soft prettiness of their lives, and drewgrave lines and shadows on their faces. The bright, convenient ways ofthe former life had receded to an inaccessible distance; slowly theylearnt the lesson of the underworld--sombre and laborious, vast andpregnant. There were many little things happened: things that would betedious and miserable to tell, things that were bitter and grievous tobear--indignities, tyrannies, such as must ever season the bread of thepoor in cities; and one thing that was not little, but seemed like theutter blackening of life to them, which was that the child they hadgiven life to sickened and died. But that story, that ancient,perpetually recurring story, has been told so often, has been told sobeautifully, that there is no need to tell it over again here. There wasthe same sharp fear, the same long anxiety, the deferred inevitableblow, and the black silence. It has always been the same; it will alwaysbe the same. It is one of the things that must be.

  And it was Elizabeth who was the first to speak, after an aching, dullinterspace of days: not, indeed, of the foolish little name that was aname no longer, but of the darkness that brooded over her soul. They hadcome through the shrieking, tumultuous ways of the city together; theclamour of trade, of yelling competitive religions, of political appeal,had beat upon deaf ears; the glare of focussed lights, of dancingletters, and fiery advertisements, had fallen upon the set, miserablefaces unheeded. They took their dinner in the dining-hall at a placeapart. "I want," said Elizabeth clumsily, "to go out to the flyingstages--to that seat. Here, one can say nothing...."

  Denton looked at her. "It will be night," he said.

  "I have asked,--it is a fine night." She stopped.

  He perceived she could find no words to explain herself. Suddenly heunderstood that she wished to see the stars once more, the stars theyhad watched together from the open downland in that wild honeymoon oftheirs five years ago. Something caught at his throat. He looked awayfrom her.

  "There will be plenty of time to go," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

  And at last they came out to their little seat on the flying stage, andsat there for a long time in silence. The little seat was in shadow, butthe zenith was pale blue with the effulgence of the stage overhead, andall the city spread below them, squares and circles and patches ofbrilliance caught in a mesh-work of light. The little stars seemed veryfaint and small: near as they had been to the old-world watcher, theyhad become now infinitely remote. Yet one could see them in the darkenedpatches amidst the glare, an
d especially in the northward sky, theancient constellations gliding steadfast and patient about the pole.

  Long our two people sat in silence, and at last Elizabeth sighed.

  "If I understood," she said, "if I could understand. When one is downthere the city seems everything--the noise, the hurry, the voices--youmust live, you must scramble. Here--it is nothing; a thing that passes.One can think in peace."

  "Yes," said Denton. "How flimsy it all is! From here more than half ofit is swallowed by the night.... It will pass."

  "We shall pass first," said Elizabeth.

  "I know," said Denton. "If life were not a moment, the whole of historywould seem like the happening of a day.... Yes--we shall pass. And thecity will pass, and all the things that are to come. Man and the Overmanand wonders unspeakable. And yet ..."

  He paused, and then began afresh. "I know what you feel. At least Ifancy.... Down there one thinks of one's work, one's little vexationsand pleasures, one's eating and drinking and ease and pain. One lives,and one must die. Down there and everyday--our sorrow seemed the end oflife....

  "Up here it is different. For instance, down there it would seemimpossible almost to go on living if one were horribly disfigured,horribly crippled, disgraced. Up here--under these stars--none of thosethings would matter. They don't matter.... They are a part of something.One seems just to touch that something--under the stars...."

  He stopped. The vague, impalpable things in his mind, cloudy emotionshalf shaped towards ideas, vanished before the rough grasp of words. "Itis hard to express," he said lamely.

  They sat through a long stillness.

  "It is well to come here," he said at last. "We stop--our minds are veryfinite. After all we are just poor animals rising out of the brute, eachwith a mind, the poor beginning of a mind. We are so stupid. So muchhurts. And yet ...

  "I know, I know--and some day we shall _see_.

  "All this frightful stress, all this discord will resolve to harmony,and we shall know it. Nothing is but it makes for that. Nothing. All thefailures--every little thing makes for that harmony. Everything isnecessary to it, we shall find. We shall find. Nothing, not even themost dreadful thing, could be left out. Not even the most trivial.Every tap of your hammer on the brass, every moment of work, my idlenesseven ... Dear one! every movement of our poor little one ... All thesethings go on for ever. And the faint impalpable things. We, sitting heretogether.--Everything ...

  "The passion that joined us, and what has come since. It is not passionnow. More than anything else it is sorrow. _Dear_ ..."

  He could say no more, could follow his thoughts no further.

  Elizabeth made no answer--she was very still; but presently her handsought his and found it.

  IV--UNDERNEATH

  Under the stars one may reach upward and touch resignation, whatever theevil thing may be, but in the heat and stress of the day's work we lapseagain, come disgust and anger and intolerable moods. How little is allour magnanimity--an accident! a phase! The very Saints of old had firstto flee the world. And Denton and his Elizabeth could not flee theirworld, no longer were there open roads to unclaimed lands where menmight live freely--however hardly--and keep their souls in peace. Thecity had swallowed up mankind.

  For a time these two Labour Serfs were kept at their originaloccupations, she at her brass stamping and Denton at his press; and thencame a move for him that brought with it fresh and still bittererexperiences of life in the underways of the great city. He wastransferred to the care of a rather more elaborate press in the centralfactory of the London Tile Trust.

  In this new situation he had to work in a long vaulted room with anumber of other men, for the most part born Labour Serfs. He came tothis intercourse reluctantly. His upbringing had been refined, and,until his ill fortune had brought him to that costume, he had neverspoken in his life, except by way of command or some immediatenecessity, to the white-faced wearers of the blue canvas. Now at lastcame contact; he had to work beside them, share their tools, eat withthem. To both Elizabeth and himself this seemed a further degradation.

  His taste would have seemed extreme to a man of the nineteenth century.But slowly and inevitably in the intervening years a gulf had openedbetween the wearers of the blue canvas and the classes above, adifference not simply of circumstances and habits of life, but of habitsof thought--even of language. The underways had developed a dialect oftheir own: above, too, had arisen a dialect, a code of thought, alanguage of "culture," which aimed by a sedulous search after freshdistinction to widen perpetually the space between itself and"vulgarity." The bond of a common faith, moreover, no longer held therace together. The last years of the nineteenth century weredistinguished by the rapid development among the prosperous idle ofesoteric perversions of the popular religion: glosses andinterpretations that reduced the broad teachings of the carpenter ofNazareth to the exquisite narrowness of their lives. And, spite of theirinclination towards the ancient fashion of living, neither Elizabeth norDenton had been sufficiently original to escape the suggestion of theirsurroundings. In matters of common behaviour they had followed the waysof their class, and so when they fell at last to be Labour Serfs itseemed to them almost as though they were falling among offensiveinferior animals; they felt as a nineteenth-century duke and duchessmight have felt who were forced to take rooms in the Jago.

  Their natural impulse was to maintain a "distance." But Denton's firstidea of a dignified isolation from his new surroundings was soon rudelydispelled. He had imagined that his fall to the position of a LabourSerf was the end of his lesson, that when their little daughter had diedhe had plumbed the deeps of life; but indeed these things were only thebeginning. Life demands something more from us than acquiescence. Andnow in a roomful of machine minders he was to learn a wider lesson, tomake the acquaintance of another factor in life, a factor as elementalas the loss of things dear to us, more elemental even than toil.

  His quiet discouragement of conversation was an immediate cause ofoffence--was interpreted, rightly enough I fear, as disdain. Hisignorance of the vulgar dialect, a thing upon which he had hithertoprided himself, suddenly took upon itself a new aspect. He failed toperceive at once that his reception of the coarse and stupid butgenially intended remarks that greeted his appearance must have stungthe makers of these advances like blows in their faces. "Don'tunderstand," he said rather coldly, and at hazard, "No, thank you."

  The man who had addressed him stared, scowled, and turned away.

  A second, who also failed at Denton's unaccustomed ear, took the troubleto repeat his remark, and Denton discovered he was being offered the useof an oil can. He expressed polite thanks, and this second man embarkedupon a penetrating conversation. Denton, he remarked, had been a swell,and he wanted to know how he had come to wear the blue. He clearlyexpected an interesting record of vice and extravagance. Had Denton everbeen at a Pleasure City? Denton was speedily to discover how theexistence of these wonderful places of delight permeated and defiled thethought and honour of these unwilling, hopeless workers of theunderworld.

  His aristocratic temperament resented these questions. He answered "No"curtly. The man persisted with a still more personal question, and thistime it was Denton who turned away.

  "Gorblimey!" said his interlocutor, much astonished.

  It presently forced itself upon Denton's mind that this remarkableconversation was being repeated in indignant tones to more sympathetichearers, and that it gave rise to astonishment and ironical laughter.They looked at Denton with manifestly enhanced interest. A curiousperception of isolation dawned upon him. He tried to think of his pressand its unfamiliar peculiarities....

  The machines kept everybody pretty busy during the first spell, andthen came a recess. It was only an interval for refreshment, too brieffor any one to go out to a Labour Company dining-room. Denton followedhis fellow-workers into a short gallery, in which were a number of binsof refuse from the presses.

  Each man produced a packet of food. Denton had no pac
ket. The manager, acareless young man who held his position by influence, had omitted towarn Denton that it was necessary to apply for this provision. He stoodapart, feeling hungry. The others drew together in a group and talked inundertones, glancing at him ever and again. He became uneasy. Hisappearance of disregard cost him an increasing effort. He tried to thinkof the levers of his new press.

  Presently one, a man shorter but much broader and stouter than Denton,came forward to him. Denton turned to him as unconcernedly as possible."Here!" said the delegate--as Denton judged him to be--extending a cubeof bread in a not too clean hand. He had a swart, broad-nosed face, andhis mouth hung down towards one corner.

  Denton felt doubtful for the instant whether this was meant for civilityor insult. His impulse was to decline. "No, thanks," he said; and, atthe man's change of expression, "I'm not hungry."

  There came a laugh from the group behind. "Told you so," said the manwho had offered Denton the loan of an oil can. "He's top side, he is.You ain't good enough for 'im."

  The swart face grew a shade darker.

  "Here," said its owner, still extending the bread, and speaking in alower tone; "you got to eat this. See?"

  Denton looked into the threatening face before him, and odd littlecurrents of energy seemed to be running through his limbs and body.

  "I don't want it," he said, trying a pleasant smile that twitched andfailed.

  The thickset man advanced his face, and the bread became a physicalthreat in his hand. Denton's mind rushed together to the one problem ofhis antagonist's eyes.

  "Eat it," said the swart man.

  There came a pause, and then they both moved quickly. The cube of breaddescribed a complicated path, a curve that would have ended in Denton'sface; and then his fist hit the wrist of the hand that gripped it, andit flew upward, and out of the conflict--its part played.

  He stepped back quickly, fists clenched and arms tense. The hot, darkcountenance receded, became an alert hostility, watching its chance.Denton for one instant felt confident, and strangely buoyant and serene.His heart beat quickly. He felt his body alive, and glowing to the tips.

  "Scrap, boys!" shouted some one, and then the dark figure had leaptforward, ducked back and sideways, and come in again. Denton struck out,and was hit. One of his eyes seemed to him to be demolished, and he felta soft lip under his fist just before he was hit again--this time underthe chin. A huge fan of fiery needles shot open. He had a momentarypersuasion that his head was knocked to pieces, and then something hithis head and back from behind, and the fight became an uninteresting, animpersonal thing.

  He was aware that time--seconds or minutes--had passed, abstract,uneventful time. He was lying with his head in a heap of ashes, andsomething wet and warm ran swiftly into his neck. The first shock brokeup into discrete sensations. All his head throbbed; his eye and his chinthrobbed exceedingly, and the taste of blood was in his mouth.

  "He's all right," said a voice. "He's opening his eyes."

  "Serve him----well right," said a second.

  His mates were standing about him. He made an effort and sat up. He puthis hand to the back of his head, and his hair was wet and full ofcinders. A laugh greeted the gesture. His eye was partially closed. Heperceived what had happened. His momentary anticipation of a finalvictory had vanished.

  "Looks surprised," said some one.

  "'Ave any more?" said a wit; and then, imitating Denton's refinedaccent.

  "No, thank you."

  Denton perceived the swart man with a blood-stained handkerchief beforehis face, and somewhat in the background.

  "Where's that bit of bread he's got to eat?" said a little ferret-facedcreature; and sought with his foot in the ashes of the adjacent bin.

  Denton had a moment of internal debate. He knew the code of honourrequires a man to pursue a fight he has begun to the bitter end; butthis was his first taste of the bitterness. He was resolved to riseagain, but he felt no passionate impulse. It occurred to him--and thethought was no very violent spur--that he was perhaps after all acoward. For a moment his will was heavy, a lump of lead.

  "'Ere it is," said the little ferret-faced man, and stooped to pick up acindery cube. He looked at Denton, then at the others.

  Slowly, unwillingly, Denton stood up.

  A dirty-faced albino extended a hand to the ferret-faced man. "Gimmethat toke," he said. He advanced threateningly, bread in hand, toDenton. "So you ain't 'ad your bellyful yet," he said. "Eh?"

  Now it was coming. "No, I haven't," said Denton, with a catching of thebreath, and resolved to try this brute behind the ear before he himselfgot stunned again. He knew he would be stunned again. He was astonishedhow ill he had judged himself beforehand. A few ridiculous lunges, anddown he would go again. He watched the albino's eyes. The albino wasgrinning confidently, like a man who plans an agreeable trick. A suddenperception of impending indignities stung Denton.

  "You leave 'im alone, Jim," said the swart man suddenly over theblood-stained rag. "He ain't done nothing to you."

  The albino's grin vanished. He stopped. He looked from one to the other.It seemed to Denton that the swart man demanded the privilege of hisdestruction. The albino would have been better.

  "You leave 'im alone," said the swart man. "See? 'E's 'ad 'is licks."

  A clattering bell lifted up its voice and solved the situation. Thealbino hesitated. "Lucky for you," he said, adding a foul metaphor, andturned with the others towards the press-room again. "Wait for the endof the spell, mate," said the albino over his shoulder--an afterthought.The swart man waited for the albino to precede him. Denton realised thathe had a reprieve.

  The men passed towards an open door. Denton became aware of his duties,and hurried to join the tail of the queue. At the doorway of the vaultedgallery of presses a yellow-uniformed labour policeman stood ticking acard. He had ignored the swart man's haemorrhage.

  "Hurry up there!" he said to Denton.

  "Hello!" he said, at the sight of his facial disarray. "Who's beenhitting _you_?"

  "That's my affair," said Denton.

  "Not if it spiles your work, it ain't," said the man in yellow. "Youmind that."

  Denton made no answer. He was a rough--a labourer. He wore the bluecanvas. The laws of assault and battery, he knew, were not for thelikes of him. He went to his press.

  He could feel the skin of his brow and chin and head lifting themselvesto noble bruises, felt the throb and pain of each aspiring contusion.His nervous system slid down to lethargy; at each movement in his pressadjustment he felt he lifted a weight. And as for his honour--that toothrobbed and puffed. How did he stand? What precisely had happened inthe last ten minutes? What would happen next? He knew that here wasenormous matter for thought, and he could not think save in disorderedsnatches.

  His mood was a sort of stagnant astonishment. All his conceptions wereoverthrown. He had regarded his security from physical violence asinherent, as one of the conditions of life. So, indeed, it had beenwhile he wore his middle-class costume, had his middle-class property toserve for his defence. But who would interfere among Labour roughsfighting together? And indeed in those days no man would. In theUnderworld there was no law between man and man; the law and machineryof the state had become for them something that held men down, fendedthem off from much desirable property and pleasure, and that was all.Violence, that ocean in which the brutes live for ever, and from which athousand dykes and contrivances have won our hazardous civilised life,had flowed in again upon the sinking underways and submerged them. Thefist ruled. Denton had come right down at last to the elemental--fistand trick and the stubborn heart and fellowship--even as it was in thebeginning.

  The rhythm of his machine changed, and his thoughts were interrupted.

  Presently he could think again. Strange how quickly things had happened!He bore these men who had thrashed him no very vivid ill-will. He wasbruised and enlightened. He saw with absolute fairness now thereasonableness of his unpopularity. He had behaved like a fool.
Disdain,seclusion, are the privilege of the strong. The fallen aristocrat stillclinging to his pointless distinction is surely the most pitifulcreature of pretence in all this clamant universe. Good heavens! whatwas there for him to despise in these men?

  What a pity he had not appreciated all this better five hours ago!

  What would happen at the end of the spell? He could not tell. He couldnot imagine. He could not imagine the thoughts of these men. He wassensible only of their hostility and utter want of sympathy. Vaguepossibilities of shame and violence chased one another across his mind.Could he devise some weapon? He recalled his assault upon the hypnotist,but there were no detachable lamps here. He could see nothing that hecould catch up in his defence.

  For a space he thought of a headlong bolt for the security of the publicways directly the spell was over. Apart from the trivial considerationof his self-respect, he perceived that this would be only a foolishpostponement and aggravation of his trouble. He perceived theferret-faced man and the albino talking together with their eyes towardshim. Presently they were talking to the swart man, who stood with hisbroad back studiously towards Denton.

  At last came the end of the second spell. The lender of oil cans stoppedhis press sharply and turned round, wiping his mouth with the back ofhis hand. His eyes had the quiet expectation of one who seats himself ina theatre.

  Now was the crisis, and all the little nerves of Denton's being seemedleaping and dancing. He had decided to show fight if any fresh indignitywas offered him. He stopped his press and turned. With an enormousaffectation of ease he walked down the vault and entered the passage ofthe ash pits, only to discover he had left his jacket--which he hadtaken off because of the heat of the vault--beside his press. He walkedback. He met the albino eye to eye.

  He heard the ferret-faced man in expostulation. "'E reely ought, eatit," said the ferret-faced man. "'E did reely."

  "No--you leave 'im alone," said the swart man.

  Apparently nothing further was to happen to him that day. He passed outto the passage and staircase that led up to the moving platforms of thecity.

  He emerged on the livid brilliance and streaming movement of the publicstreet. He became acutely aware of his disfigured face, and felt hisswelling bruises with a limp, investigatory hand. He went up to theswiftest platform, and seated himself on a Labour Company bench.

  He lapsed into a pensive torpor. The immediate dangers and stresses ofhis position he saw with a sort of static clearness. What would they doto-morrow? He could not tell. What would Elizabeth think of hisbrutalisation? He could not tell. He was exhausted. He was arousedpresently by a hand upon his arm.

  He looked up, and saw the swart man seated beside him. He started.Surely he was safe from violence in the public way!

  The swart man's face retained no traces of his share in the fight; hisexpression was free from hostility--seemed almost deferential. "'Scuseme," he said, with a total absence of truculence. Denton realised thatno assault was intended. He stared, awaiting the next development.

  It was evident the next sentence was premeditated."Whad--I--was--going--to say--was this," said the swart man, and soughtthrough a silence for further words.

  "Whad--I--was--going--to say--was this," he repeated.

  Finally he abandoned that gambit. "_You're_ aw right," he cried, layinga grimy hand on Denton's grimy sleeve. "_You're_ aw right. You're age'man. Sorry--very sorry. Wanted to tell you that."

  Denton realised that there must exist motives beyond a mere impulse toabominable proceedings in the man. He meditated, and swallowed anunworthy pride.

  "I did not mean to be offensive to you," he said, "in refusing that bitof bread."

  "Meant it friendly," said the swart man, recalling the scene; "but--infront of that blarsted Whitey and his snigger--Well--I _'ad_ to scrap."

  "Yes," said Denton with sudden fervour: "I was a fool."

  "Ah!" said the swart man, with great satisfaction. "_That's_ aw right.Shake!"

  And Denton shook.

  The moving platform was rushing by the establishment of a face moulder,and its lower front was a huge display of mirror, designed to stimulatethe thirst for more symmetrical features. Denton caught the reflectionof himself and his new friend, enormously twisted and broadened. His ownface was puffed, one-sided, and blood-stained; a grin of idiotic andinsincere amiability distorted its latitude. A wisp of hair occluded oneeye. The trick of the mirror presented the swart man as a grossexpansion of lip and nostril. They were linked by shaking hands. Thenabruptly this vision passed--to return to memory in the anaemicmeditations of a waking dawn.

  As he shook, the swart man made some muddled remark, to the effect thathe had always known he could get on with a gentleman if one came hisway. He prolonged the shaking until Denton, under the influence of themirror, withdrew his hand. The swart man became pensive, spatimpressively on the platform, and resumed his theme.

  "Whad I was going to say was this," he said; was gravelled, and shookhis head at his foot.

  Denton became curious. "Go on," he said, attentive.

  The swart man took the plunge. He grasped Denton's arm, became intimatein his attitude. "'Scuse me," he said. "Fact is, you done know _'ow_ toscrap. Done know _'ow_ to. Why--you done know 'ow to _begin_. You'll getkilled if you don't mind. 'Ouldin' your 'ands--_There!_"

  He reinforced his statement by objurgation, watching the effect of eachoath with a wary eye.

  "F'r instance. You're tall. Long arms. You get a longer reach than anyone in the brasted vault. Gobblimey, but I thought I'd got a Tough on.'Stead of which ... 'Scuse me. I wouldn't have _'it_ you if I'd known.It's like fighting sacks. 'Tisn' right. Y'r arms seemed 'ung on 'ooks.Reg'lar--'ung on 'ooks. There!"

  Denton stared, and then surprised and hurt his battered chin by a suddenlaugh. Bitter tears came into his eyes.

  "Go on," he said.

  The swart man reverted to his formula. He was good enough to say heliked the look of Denton, thought he had stood up "amazing plucky. On'ypluck ain't no good--ain't no brasted good--if you don't 'old your'ands.

  "Whad I was going to say was this," he said. "Lemme show you 'ow toscrap. Jest lemme. You're ig'nant, you ain't no class; but you might bea very decent scrapper--very decent. Shown. That's what I meant to say."

  Denton hesitated. "But--" he said, "I can't give you anything--"

  "That's the ge'man all over," said the swart man. "Who arst you to?"

  "But your time?"

  "If you don't get learnt scrapping you'll get killed,--don't you make nobones of that."

  Denton thought. "I don't know," he said.

  He looked at the face beside him, and all its native coarseness shoutedat him. He felt a quick revulsion from his transient friendliness. Itseemed to him incredible that it should be necessary for him to beindebted to such a creature.

  "The chaps are always scrapping," said the swart man. "Always. And, ofcourse--if one gets waxy and 'its you vital ..."

  "By God!" cried Denton; "I wish one would."

  "Of course, if you feel like that--"

  "You don't understand."

  "P'raps I don't," said the swart man; and lapsed into a fuming silence.

  When he spoke again his voice was less friendly, and he prodded Dentonby way of address. "Look see!" he said: "are you going to let me showyou 'ow to scrap?"

  "It's tremendously kind of you," said Denton; "but--"

  There was a pause. The swart man rose and bent over Denton.

  "Too much ge'man," he said--"eh? I got a red face.... By gosh! youare--you _are_ a brasted fool!"

  He turned away, and instantly Denton realised the truth of this remark.

  The swart man descended with dignity to a cross way, and Denton, after amomentary impulse to pursuit, remained on the platform. For a time thethings that had happened filled his mind. In one day his graceful systemof resignation had been shattered beyond hope. Brute force, the final,the fundamental, had thrust its face through all his explanations andglosses and con
solations and grinned enigmatically. Though he washungry and tired, he did not go on directly to the Labour Hotel, wherehe would meet Elizabeth. He found he was beginning to think, he wantedvery greatly to think; and so, wrapped in a monstrous cloud ofmeditation, he went the circuit of the city on his moving platformtwice. You figure him, tearing through the glaring, thunder-voiced cityat a pace of fifty miles an hour, the city upon the planet that spinsalong its chartless path through space many thousands of miles an hour,funking most terribly, and trying to understand why the heart and willin him should suffer and keep alive.

  When at last he came to Elizabeth, she was white and anxious. He mighthave noted she was in trouble, had it not been for his ownpreoccupation. He feared most that she would desire to know every detailof his indignities, that she would be sympathetic or indignant. He sawher eyebrows rise at the sight of him.

  "I've had rough handling," he said, and gasped. "It's too fresh--toohot. I don't want to talk about it." He sat down with an unavoidable airof sullenness.

  She stared at him in astonishment, and as she read something of thesignificant hieroglyphic of his battered face, her lips whitened. Herhand--it was thinner now than in the days of their prosperity, and herfirst finger was a little altered by the metal punching shedid--clenched convulsively. "This horrible world!" she said, and said nomore.

  In these latter days they had become a very silent couple; they saidscarcely a word to each other that night, but each followed a privatetrain of thought. In the small hours, as Elizabeth lay awake, Dentonstarted up beside her suddenly--he had been lying as still as a deadman.

  "I cannot stand it!" cried Denton. "I _will_ not stand it!"

  She saw him dimly, sitting up; saw his arm lunge as if in a furious blowat the enshrouding night. Then for a space he was still.

  "It is too much--it is more than one can bear!"

  She could say nothing. To her, also, it seemed that this was as far asone could go. She waited through a long stillness. She could see thatDenton sat with his arms about his knees, his chin almost touching them.

  Then he laughed.

  "No," he said at last, "I'm going to stand it. That's the peculiarthing. There isn't a grain of suicide in us--not a grain. I suppose allthe people with a turn that way have gone. We're going through withit--to the end."

  Elizabeth thought grayly, and realised that this also was true.

  "We're going through with it. To think of all who have gone through withit: all the generations--endless--endless. Little beasts that snappedand snarled, snapping and snarling, snapping and snarling, generationafter generation."

  His monotone, ended abruptly, resumed after a vast interval.

  "There were ninety thousand years of stone age. A Denton somewhere inall those years. Apostolic succession. The grace of going through. Letme see! Ninety--nine hundred--three nines, twenty-seven--_threethousand_ generations of men!--men more or less. And each fought, andwas bruised, and shamed, and somehow held his own--going through withit--passing it on.... And thousands more to come perhaps--thousands!

  "Passing it on. I wonder if they will thank us."

  His voice assumed an argumentative note. "If one could find somethingdefinite ... If one could say, 'This is why--this is why it goeson....'"

  He became still, and Elizabeth's eyes slowly separated him from thedarkness until at last she could see how he sat with his head resting onhis hand. A sense of the enormous remoteness of their minds came to her;that dim suggestion of another being seemed to her a figure of theirmutual understanding. What could he be thinking now? What might he notsay next? Another age seemed to elapse before he sighed and whispered:"No. I don't understand it. No!" Then a long interval, and he repeatedthis. But the second time it had the tone almost of a solution.

  She became aware that he was preparing to lie down. She marked hismovements, perceived with astonishment how he adjusted his pillow with acareful regard to comfort. He lay down with a sigh of contentmentalmost. His passion had passed. He lay still, and presently hisbreathing became regular and deep.

  But Elizabeth remained with eyes wide open in the darkness, until theclamour of a bell and the sudden brilliance of the electric light warnedthem that the Labour Company had need of them for yet another day.

  That day came a scuffle with the albino Whitey and the littleferret-faced man. Blunt, the swart artist in scrapping, having firstlet Denton grasp the bearing of his lesson, intervened, not without acertain quality of patronage. "Drop 'is 'air, Whitey, and let the manbe," said his gross voice through a shower of indignities. "Can't yousee 'e don't know _'ow_ to scrap?" And Denton, lying shamefully in thedust, realised that he must accept that course of instruction after all.

  He made his apology straight and clean. He scrambled up and walked toBlunt. "I was a fool, and you are right," he said. "If it isn't toolate ..."

  That night, after the second spell, Denton went with Blunt to certainwaste and slime-soaked vaults under the Port of London, to learn thefirst beginnings of the high art of scrapping as it had been perfectedin the great world of the underways: how to hit or kick a man so as tohurt him excruciatingly or make him violently sick, how to hit or kick"vital," how to use glass in one's garments as a club and to spread redruin with various domestic implements, how to anticipate and demolishyour adversary's intentions in other directions; all the pleasantdevices, in fact, that had grown up among the disinherited of the greatcities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, were spread out by agifted exponent for Denton's learning. Blunt's bashfulness fell fromhim as the instruction proceeded, and he developed a certain expertdignity, a quality of fatherly consideration. He treated Denton with theutmost consideration, only "flicking him up a bit" now and then, to keepthe interest hot, and roaring with laughter at a happy fluke of Denton'sthat covered his mouth with blood.

  "I'm always keerless of my mouth," said Blunt, admitting a weakness."Always. It don't seem to matter, like, just getting bashed in themouth--not if your chin's all right. Tastin' blood does me good. Always.But I better not 'it you again."

  Denton went home, to fall asleep exhausted and wake in the small hourswith aching limbs and all his bruises tingling. Was it worth while thathe should go on living? He listened to Elizabeth's breathing, andremembering that he must have awaked her the previous night, he lay verystill. He was sick with infinite disgust at the new conditions of hislife. He hated it all, hated even the genial savage who had protectedhim so generously. The monstrous fraud of civilisation glared starkbefore his eyes; he saw it as a vast lunatic growth, producing adeepening torrent of savagery below, and above ever more flimsygentility and silly wastefulness. He could see no redeeming reason, notouch of honour, either in the life he had led or in this life to whichhe had fallen. Civilisation presented itself as some catastrophicproduct as little concerned with men--save as victims--as a cyclone or aplanetary collision. He, and therefore all mankind, seemed livingutterly in vain. His mind sought some strange expedients of escape, ifnot for himself then at least for Elizabeth. But he meant them forhimself. What if he hunted up Mwres and told him of their disaster? Itcame to him as an astonishing thing how utterly Mwres and Bindon hadpassed out of his range. Where were they? What were they doing? Fromthat he passed to thoughts of utter dishonour. And finally, not arisingin any way out of this mental tumult, but ending it as dawn ends thenight, came the clear and obvious conclusion of the night before: theconviction that he had to go through with things; that, apart from anyremoter view and quite sufficient for all his thought and energy, he hadto stand up and fight among his fellows and quit himself like a man.

  The second night's instruction was perhaps less dreadful than the first;and the third was even endurable, for Blunt dealt out some praise. Thefourth day Denton chanced upon the fact that the ferret-faced man was acoward. There passed a fortnight of smouldering days and feverishinstruction at night; Blunt, with many blasphemies, testified that neverhad he met so apt a pupil; and all night long Denton dreamt of kicks andcounters and gouges
and cunning tricks. For all that time no furtheroutrages were attempted, for fear of Blunt; and then came the secondcrisis. Blunt did not come one day--afterwards he admitted hisdeliberate intention--and through the tedious morning Whitey awaited theinterval between the spells with an ostentatious impatience. He knewnothing of the scrapping lessons, and he spent the time in tellingDenton and the vault generally of certain disagreeable proceedings hehad in mind.

  Whitey was not popular, and the vault disgorged to see him haze the newman with only a languid interest. But matters changed when Whitey'sattempt to open the proceedings by kicking Denton in the face was met byan excellently executed duck, catch and throw, that completed the flightof Whitey's foot in its orbit and brought Whitey's head into theash-heap that had once received Denton's. Whitey arose a shade whiter,and now blasphemously bent upon vital injuries. There were indecisivepassages, foiled enterprises that deepened Whitey's evidently growingperplexity; and then things developed into a grouping of Dentonuppermost with Whitey's throat in his hand, his knee on Whitey's chest,and a tearful Whitey with a black face, protruding tongue and brokenfinger endeavouring to explain the misunderstanding by means of hoarsesounds. Moreover, it was evident that among the bystanders there hadnever been a more popular person than Denton.

  Denton, with proper precaution, released his antagonist and stood up.His blood seemed changed to some sort of fluid fire, his limbs feltlight and supernaturally strong. The idea that he was a martyr in thecivilisation machine had vanished from his mind. He was a man in a worldof men.

  The little ferret-faced man was the first in the competition to pat himon the back. The lender of oil cans was a radiant sun of genialcongratulation.... It seemed incredible to Denton that he had everthought of despair.

  Denton was convinced that not only had he to go through with things, butthat he could. He sat on the canvas pallet expounding this new aspect toElizabeth. One side of his face was bruised. She had not recentlyfought, she had not been patted on the back, there were no hot bruisesupon her face, only a pallor and a new line or so about the mouth. Shewas taking the woman's share. She looked steadfastly at Denton in hisnew mood of prophecy. "I feel that there is something," he was saying,"something that goes on, a Being of Life in which we live and move andhave our being, something that began fifty--a hundred million years ago,perhaps, that goes on--on: growing, spreading, to things beyondus--things that will justify us all.... That will explain and justify myfighting--these bruises, and all the pain of it. It's the chisel--yes,the chisel of the Maker. If only I could make you feel as I feel, if Icould make you! You _will_, dear, I know you will."

  "No," she said in a low voice. "No, I shall not."

  "So I might have thought--"

  She shook her head. "No," she said, "I have thought as well. What yousay--doesn't convince me."

  She looked at his face resolutely. "I hate it," she said, and caught ather breath. "You do not understand, you do not think. There was a timewhen you said things and I believed them. I am growing wiser. You are aman, you can fight, force your way. You do not mind bruises. You can becoarse and ugly, and still a man. Yes--it makes you. It makes you. Youare right. Only a woman is not like that. We are different. We have letourselves get civilised too soon. This underworld is not for us."

  She paused and began again.

  "I hate it! I hate this horrible canvas! I hate it more than--more thanthe worst that can happen. It hurts my fingers to touch it. It ishorrible to the skin. And the women I work with day after day! I lieawake at nights and think how I may be growing like them...."

  She stopped. "I _am_ growing like them," she cried passionately.

  Denton stared at her distress. "But--" he said and stopped.

  "You don't understand. What have I? What have I to save me? _You_ canfight. Fighting is man's work. But women--women are different.... I havethought it all out, I have done nothing but think night and day. Look atthe colour of my face! I cannot go on. I cannot endure this life.... Icannot endure it."

  She stopped. She hesitated.

  "You do not know all," she said abruptly, and for an instant her lipshad a bitter smile. "I have been asked to leave you."

  "Leave me!"

  She made no answer save an affirmative movement of the head.

  Denton stood up sharply. They stared at one another through a longsilence.

  Suddenly she turned herself about, and flung face downward upon theircanvas bed. She did not sob, she made no sound. She lay still upon herface. After a vast, distressful void her shoulders heaved and she beganto weep silently.

  "Elizabeth!" he whispered--"Elizabeth!"

  Very softly he sat down beside her, bent down, put his arm across her ina doubtful caress, seeking vainly for some clue to this intolerablesituation.

  "Elizabeth," he whispered in her ear.

  She thrust him from her with her hand. "I cannot bear a child to be aslave!" and broke out into loud and bitter weeping.

  Denton's face changed--became blank dismay. Presently he slipped fromthe bed and stood on his feet. All the complacency had vanished from hisface, had given place to impotent rage. He began to rave and curse atthe intolerable forces which pressed upon him, at all the accidents andhot desires and heedlessness that mock the life of man. His little voicerose in that little room, and he shook his fist, this animalcule of theearth, at all that environed him about, at the millions about him, athis past and future and all the insensate vastness of the overwhelmingcity.

  V--BINDON INTERVENES

  In Bindon's younger days he had dabbled in speculation and made threebrilliant flukes. For the rest of his life he had the wisdom to letgambling alone, and the conceit to believe himself a very clever man. Acertain desire for influence and reputation interested him in thebusiness intrigues of the giant city in which his flukes were made. Hebecame at last one of the most influential shareholders in the companythat owned the London flying stages to which the aeroplanes came fromall parts of the world. This much for his public activities. In hisprivate life he was a man of pleasure. And this is the story of hisheart.

  But before proceeding to such depths, one must devote a little time tothe exterior of this person. Its physical basis was slender, and short,and dark; and the face, which was fine-featured and assisted bypigments, varied from an insecure self-complacency to an intelligentuneasiness. His face and head had been depilated, according to thecleanly and hygienic fashion of the time, so that the colour and contourof his hair varied with his costume. This he was constantly changing.

  At times he would distend himself with pneumatic vestments in the rococovein. From among the billowy developments of this style, and beneath atranslucent and illuminated headdress, his eye watched jealously for therespect of the less fashionable world. At other times he emphasised hiselegant slenderness in close-fitting garments of black satin. Foreffects of dignity he would assume broad pneumatic shoulders, from whichhung a robe of carefully arranged folds of China silk, and a classicalBindon in pink tights was also a transient phenomenon in the eternalpageant of Destiny. In the days when he hoped to marry Elizabeth, hesought to impress and charm her, and at the same time to take offsomething of his burthen of forty years, by wearing the last fancy ofthe contemporary buck, a costume of elastic material with distensiblewarts and horns, changing in colour as he walked, by an ingeniousarrangement of versatile chromatophores. And no doubt, if Elizabeth'saffection had not been already engaged by the worthless Denton, and ifher tastes had not had that odd bias for old-fashioned ways, thisextremely _chic_ conception would have ravished her. Bindon hadconsulted Elizabeth's father before presenting himself in this garb--hewas one of those men who always invite criticism of their costume--andMwres had pronounced him all that the heart of woman could desire. Butthe affair of the hypnotist proved that his knowledge of the heart ofwoman was incomplete.

  Bindon's idea of marrying had been formed some little time before Mwresthrew Elizabeth's budding womanhood in his way. It was one of Bindon'smost cherished secrets
that he had a considerable capacity for a pureand simple life of a grossly sentimental type. The thought imparted asort of pathetic seriousness to the offensive and quite inconsequent andunmeaning excesses, which he was pleased to regard as dashingwickedness, and which a number of good people also were so unwise as totreat in that desirable manner. As a consequence of these excesses, andperhaps by reason also of an inherited tendency to early decay, hisliver became seriously affected, and he suffered increasinginconvenience when travelling by aeroplane. It was during hisconvalescence from a protracted bilious attack that it occurred to himthat in spite of all the terrible fascinations of Vice, if he found abeautiful, gentle, good young woman of a not too violently intellectualtype to devote her life to him, he might yet be saved to Goodness, andeven rear a spirited family in his likeness to solace his decliningyears. But like so many experienced men of the world, he doubted ifthere were any good women. Of such as he had heard tell he was outwardlysceptical and privately much afraid.

  When the aspiring Mwres effected his introduction to Elizabeth, itseemed to him that his good fortune was complete. He fell in love withher at once. Of course, he had always been falling in love since he wassixteen, in accordance with the extremely varied recipes to be found inthe accumulated literature of many centuries. But this was different.This was real love. It seemed to him to call forth all the lurkinggoodness in his nature. He felt that for her sake he could give up a wayof life that had already produced the gravest lesions on his liver andnervous system. His imagination presented him with idyllic pictures ofthe life of the reformed rake. He would never be sentimental with her,or silly; but always a little cynical and bitter, as became the past.Yet he was sure she would have an intuition of his real greatness andgoodness. And in due course he would confess things to her, pour hisversion of what he regarded as his wickedness--showing what a complex ofGoethe, and Benvenuto Cellini, and Shelley, and all those other chaps hereally was--into her shocked, very beautiful, and no doubt sympatheticear. And preparatory to these things he wooed her with infinite subtletyand respect. And the reserve with which Elizabeth treated him seemednothing more nor less than an exquisite modesty touched and enhanced byan equally exquisite lack of ideas.

  Bindon knew nothing of her wandering affections, nor of the attempt madeby Mwres to utilise hypnotism as a corrective to this digression of herheart; he conceived he was on the best of terms with Elizabeth, and hadmade her quite successfully various significant presents of jewelleryand the more virtuous cosmetics, when her elopement with Denton threwthe world out of gear for him. His first aspect of the matter was ragebegotten of wounded vanity, and as Mwres was the most convenient person,he vented the first brunt of it upon him.

  He went immediately and insulted the desolate father grossly, and thenspent an active and determined day going to and fro about the city andinterviewing people in a consistent and partly-successful attempt toruin that matrimonial speculator. The effectual nature of theseactivities gave him a temporary exhilaration, and he went to thedining-place he had frequented in his wicked days in a devil-may-careframe of mind, and dined altogether too amply and cheerfully with twoother golden youths in their early forties. He threw up the game; nowoman was worth being good for, and he astonished even himself by thestrain of witty cynicism he developed. One of the other desperateblades, warmed with wine, made a facetious allusion to hisdisappointment, but at the time this did not seem unpleasant.

  The next morning found his liver and temper inflamed. He kicked hisphonographic-news machine to pieces, dismissed his valet, and resolvedthat he would perpetrate a terrible revenge upon Elizabeth. Or Denton.Or somebody. But anyhow, it was to be a terrible revenge; and the friendwho had made fun at him should no longer see him in the light of afoolish girl's victim. He knew something of the little property that wasdue to her, and that this would be the only support of the young coupleuntil Mwres should relent. If Mwres did not relent, and if unpropitiousthings should happen to the affair in which Elizabeth's expectationslay, they would come upon evil times and be sufficiently amenable totemptation of a sinister sort. Bindon's imagination, abandoning itsbeautiful idealism altogether, expanded the idea of temptation of asinister sort. He figured himself as the implacable, the intricate andpowerful man of wealth pursuing this maiden who had scorned him. Andsuddenly her image came upon his mind vivid and dominant, and for thefirst time in his life Bindon realised something of the real power ofpassion.

  His imagination stood aside like a respectful footman who has done hiswork in ushering in the emotion.

  "My God!" cried Bindon: "I will have her! If I have to kill myself toget her! And that other fellow--!"

  After an interview with his medical man and a penance for his overnightexcesses in the form of bitter drugs, a mitigated but absolutelyresolute Bindon sought out Mwres. Mwres he found properly smashed, andimpoverished and humble, in a mood of frantic self-preservation, readyto sell himself body and soul, much more any interest in a disobedientdaughter, to recover his lost position in the world. In the reasonablediscussion that followed, it was agreed that these misguided youngpeople should be left to sink into distress, or possibly even assistedtowards that improving discipline by Bindon's financial influence.

  "And then?" said Mwres.

  "They will come to the Labour Company," said Bindon. "They will wear theblue canvas."

  "And then?"

  "She will divorce him," he said, and sat for a moment intent upon thatprospect. For in those days the austere limitations of divorce ofVictorian times were extraordinarily relaxed, and a couple mightseparate on a hundred different scores.

  Then suddenly Bindon astonished himself and Mwres by jumping to hisfeet. "She _shall_ divorce him!" he cried. "I will have it so--I willwork it so. By God! it shall be so. He shall be disgraced, so that shemust. He shall be smashed and pulverised."

  The idea of smashing and pulverising inflamed him further. He began aJovian pacing up and down the little office. "I will have her," hecried. "I _will_ have her! Heaven and Hell shall not save her from me!"His passion evaporated in its expression, and left him at the endsimply histrionic. He struck an attitude and ignored with heroicdetermination a sharp twinge of pain about the diaphragm. And Mwres satwith his pneumatic cap deflated and himself very visibly impressed.

  And so, with a fair persistency, Bindon sat himself to the work of beingElizabeth's malignant providence, using with ingenious dexterity everyparticle of advantage wealth in those days gave a man over hisfellow-creatures. A resort to the consolations of religion hinderedthese operations not at all. He would go and talk with an interesting,experienced and sympathetic Father of the Huysmanite sect of the Isiscult, about all the irrational little proceedings he was pleased toregard as his heaven-dismaying wickedness, and the interesting,experienced and sympathetic Father representing Heaven dismayed, wouldwith a pleasing affectation of horror, suggest simple and easy penances,and recommend a monastic foundation that was airy, cool, hygienic, andnot vulgarised, for viscerally disordered penitent sinners of therefined and wealthy type. And after these excursions, Bindon would comeback to London quite active and passionate again. He would machinatewith really considerable energy, and repair to a certain gallery highabove the street of moving ways, from which he could view the entranceto the barrack of the Labour Company in the ward which sheltered Dentonand Elizabeth. And at last one day he saw Elizabeth go in, and therebyhis passion was renewed.

  So in the fullness of time the complicated devices of Bindon ripened,and he could go to Mwres and tell him that the young people were neardespair.

  "It's time for you," he said, "to let your parental affections haveplay. She's been in blue canvas some months, and they've been coopedtogether in one of those Labour dens, and the little girl is dead. Sheknows now what his manhood is worth to her, by way of protection, poorgirl. She'll see things now in a clearer light. You go to her--I don'twant to appear in this affair yet--and point out to her how necessary itis that she should get a divorce from him...."
r />   "She's obstinate," said Mwres doubtfully.

  "Spirit!" said Bindon. "She's a wonderful girl--a wonderful girl!"

  "She'll refuse."

  "Of course she will. But leave it open to her. Leave it open to her. Andsome day--in that stuffy den, in that irksome, toilsome life they can'thelp it--_they'll have a quarrel_. And then--"

  Mwres meditated over the matter, and did as he was told.

  Then Bindon, as he had arranged with his spiritual adviser, went intoretreat. The retreat of the Huysmanite sect was a beautiful place, withthe sweetest air in London, lit by natural sunlight, and with restfulquadrangles of real grass open to the sky, where at the same time thepenitent man of pleasure might enjoy all the pleasures of loafing andall the satisfaction of distinguished austerity. And, save forparticipation in the simple and wholesome dietary of the place and incertain magnificent chants, Bindon spent all his time in meditation uponthe theme of Elizabeth, and the extreme purification his soul hadundergone since he first saw her, and whether he would be able to get adispensation to marry her from the experienced and sympathetic Father inspite of the approaching "sin" of her divorce; and then ... Bindon wouldlean against a pillar of the quadrangle and lapse into reveries on thesuperiority of virtuous love to any other form of indulgence. A curiousfeeling in his back and chest that was trying to attract his attention,a disposition to be hot or shiver, a general sense of ill-health andcutaneous discomfort he did his best to ignore. All that of coursebelonged to the old life that he was shaking off.

  When he came out of retreat he went at once to Mwres to ask for news ofElizabeth. Mwres was clearly under the impression that he was anexemplary father, profoundly touched about the heart by his child'sunhappiness. "She was pale," he said, greatly moved; "She was pale. WhenI asked her to come away and leave him--and be happy--she put her headdown upon the table"--Mwres sniffed--"and cried."

  His agitation was so great that he could say no more.

  "Ah!" said Bindon, respecting this manly grief. "Oh!" said Bindon quitesuddenly, with his hand to his side.

  Mwres looked up sharply out of the pit of his sorrows, startled. "What'sthe matter?" he asked, visibly concerned.

  "A most violent pain. Excuse me! You were telling me about Elizabeth."

  And Mwres, after a decent solicitude for Bindon's pain, proceeded withhis report. It was even unexpectedly hopeful. Elizabeth, in her firstemotion at discovering that her father had not absolutely deserted her,had been frank with him about her sorrows and disgusts.

  "Yes," said Bindon, magnificently, "I shall have her yet." And then thatnovel pain twitched him for the second time.

  For these lower pains the priest was comparatively ineffectual,inclining rather to regard the body and them as mental illusionsamenable to contemplation; so Bindon took it to a man of a class heloathed, a medical man of extraordinary repute and incivility. "We mustgo all over you," said the medical man, and did so with the mostdisgusting frankness. "Did you ever bring any children into the world?"asked this gross materialist among other impertinent questions.

  "Not that I know of," said Bindon, too amazed to stand upon his dignity.

  "Ah!" said the medical man, and proceeded with his punching andsounding. Medical science in those days was just reaching the beginningsof precision. "You'd better go right away," said the medical man, "andmake the Euthanasia. The sooner the better."

  Bindon gasped. He had been trying not to understand the technicalexplanations and anticipations in which the medical man had indulged.

  "I say!" he said. "But do you mean to say ... Your science ..."

  "Nothing," said the medical man. "A few opiates. The thing is your owndoing, you know, to a certain extent."

  "I was sorely tempted in my youth."

  "It's not that so much. But you come of a bad stock. Even if you'd havetaken precautions you'd have had bad times to wind up with. The mistakewas getting born. The indiscretions of the parents. And you've shirkedexercise, and so forth."

  "I had no one to advise me."

  "Medical men are always willing."

  "I was a spirited young fellow."

  "We won't argue; the mischief's done now. You've lived. We can't startyou again. You ought never to have started at all. Frankly--theEuthanasia!"

  Bindon hated him in silence for a space. Every word of this brutalexpert jarred upon his refinements. He was so gross, so impermeable toall the subtler issues of being. But it is no good picking a quarrelwith a doctor. "My religious beliefs," he said, "I don't approve ofsuicide."

  "You've been doing it all your life."

  "Well, anyhow, I've come to take a serious view of life now."

  "You're bound to, if you go on living. You'll hurt. But for practicalpurposes it's late. However, if you mean to do that--perhaps I'd bettermix you a little something. You'll hurt a great deal. These littletwinges ..."

  "Twinges!"

  "Mere preliminary notices."

  "How long can I go on? I mean, before I hurt--really."

  "You'll get it hot soon. Perhaps three days."

  Bindon tried to argue for an extension of time, and in the midst of hispleading gasped, put his hand to his side. Suddenly the extraordinarypathos of his life came to him clear and vivid. "It's hard," he said."It's infernally hard! I've been no man's enemy but my own. I've alwaystreated everybody quite fairly."

  The medical man stared at him without any sympathy for some seconds. Hewas reflecting how excellent it was that there were no more Bindons tocarry on that line of pathos. He felt quite optimistic. Then he turnedto his telephone and ordered up a prescription from the CentralPharmacy.

  He was interrupted by a voice behind him. "By God!" cried Bindon; "I'llhave her yet."

  The physician stared over his shoulder at Bindon's expression, and thenaltered the prescription.

  So soon as this painful interview was over, Bindon gave way to rage. Hesettled that the medical man was not only an unsympathetic brute andwanting in the first beginnings of a gentleman, but also highlyincompetent; and he went off to four other practitioners in succession,with a view to the establishment of this intuition. But to guard againstsurprises he kept that little prescription in his pocket. With each hebegan by expressing his grave doubts of the first doctor's intelligence,honesty and professional knowledge, and then stated his symptoms,suppressing only a few more material facts in each case. These werealways subsequently elicited by the doctor. In spite of the welcomedepreciation of another practitioner, none of these eminent specialistswould give Bindon any hope of eluding the anguish and helplessness thatloomed now close upon him. To the last of them he unburthened his mindof an accumulated disgust with medical science. "After centuries andcenturies," he exclaimed hotly; "and you can do nothing--except admityour helplessness. I say, 'save me'--and what do you do?"

  "No doubt it's hard on you," said the doctor. "But you should have takenprecautions."

  "How was I to know?"

  "It wasn't our place to run after you," said the medical man, picking athread of cotton from his purple sleeve. "Why should we save _you_ inparticular? You see--from one point of view--people with imaginationsand passions like yours have to go--they have to go."

  "Go?"

  "Die out. It's an eddy."

  He was a young man with a serene face. He smiled at Bindon. "We get onwith research, you know; we give advice when people have the sense toask for it. And we bide our time."

  "Bide your time?"

  "We hardly know enough yet to take over the management, you know."

  "The management?"

  "You needn't be anxious. Science is young yet. It's got to keep ongrowing for a few generations. We know enough now to know we don't knowenough yet.... But the time is coming, all the same. _You_ won't see thetime. But, between ourselves, you rich men and party bosses, with yournatural play of the passions and patriotism and religion and so forth,have made rather a mess of things; haven't you? These Underways! And allthat sort of thing. Some of us have a sort of fanc
y that in time we mayknow enough to take over a little more than the ventilation and drains.Knowledge keeps on piling up, you know. It keeps on growing. And there'snot the slightest hurry for a generation or so. Some day--some day, menwill live in a different way." He looked at Bindon and meditated."There'll be a lot of dying out before that day can come."

  Bindon attempted to point out to this young man how silly and irrelevantsuch talk was to a sick man like himself, how impertinent and uncivil itwas to him, an older man occupying a position in the official world ofextraordinary power and influence. He insisted that a doctor was paid tocure people--he laid great stress on "_paid_"--and had no business toglance even for a moment at "those other questions." "But we do," saidthe young man, insisting upon facts, and Bindon lost his temper.

  His indignation carried him home. That these incompetent impostors, whowere unable to save the life of a really influential man like himself,should dream of some day robbing the legitimate property owners ofsocial control, of inflicting one knew not what tyranny upon the world.Curse science! He fumed over the intolerable prospect for some time, andthen the pain returned, and he recalled the made-up prescription of thefirst doctor, still happily in his pocket. He took a dose forthwith.

  It calmed and soothed him greatly, and he could sit down in his mostcomfortable chair beside his library (of phonographic records), andthink over the altered aspect of affairs. His indignation passed, hisanger and his passion crumbled under the subtle attack of thatprescription, pathos became his sole ruler. He stared about him, at hismagnificent and voluptuously appointed apartment, at his statuary anddiscreetly veiled pictures, and all the evidences of a cultivated andelegant wickedness; he touched a stud and the sad pipings of Tristan'sshepherd filled the air. His eye wandered from one object to another.They were costly and gross and florid--but they were his. They presentedin concrete form his ideals, his conceptions of beauty and desire, hisidea of all that is precious in life. And now--he must leave it all likea common man. He was, he felt, a slender and delicate flame, burningout. So must all life flame up and pass, he thought. His eyes filledwith tears.

  Then it came into his head that he was alone. Nobody cared for him,nobody needed him! at any moment he might begin to hurt vividly. Hemight even howl. Nobody would mind. According to all the doctors hewould have excellent reason for howling in a day or so. It recalled whathis spiritual adviser had said of the decline of faith and fidelity, thedegeneration of the age. He beheld himself as a pathetic proof of this;he, the subtle, able, important, voluptuous, cynical, complex Bindon,possibly howling, and not one faithful simple creature in all the worldto howl in sympathy. Not one faithful simple soul was there--no shepherdto pipe to him! Had all such faithful simple creatures vanished fromthis harsh and urgent earth? He wondered whether the horrid vulgar crowdthat perpetually went about the city could possibly know what he thoughtof them. If they did he felt sure _some_ would try to earn a betteropinion. Surely the world went from bad to worse. It was becomingimpossible for Bindons. Perhaps some day ... He was quite sure that theone thing he had needed in life was sympathy. For a time he regrettedthat he left no sonnets--no enigmatical pictures or something of thatsort behind him to carry on his being until at last the sympatheticmind should come....

  It seemed incredible to him that this that came was extinction. Yet hissympathetic spiritual guide was in this matter annoyingly figurative andvague. Curse science! It had undermined all faith--all hope. To go out,to vanish from theatre and street, from office and dining-place, fromthe dear eyes of womankind. And not to be missed! On the whole to leavethe world happier!

  He reflected that he had never worn his heart upon his sleeve. Had heafter all been _too_ unsympathetic? Few people could suspect how subtlyprofound he really was beneath the mask of that cynical gaiety of his.They would not understand the loss they had suffered. Elizabeth, forexample, had not suspected....

  He had reserved that. His thoughts having come to Elizabeth gravitatedabout her for some time. How _little_ Elizabeth understood him!

  That thought became intolerable. Before all other things he must setthat right. He realised that there was still something for him to do inlife, his struggle against Elizabeth was even yet not over. He couldnever overcome her now, as he had hoped and prayed. But he might stillimpress her!

  From that idea he expanded. He might impress her profoundly--he mightimpress her so that she should for evermore regret her treatment of him.The thing that she must realise before everything else was hismagnanimity. His magnanimity! Yes! he had loved her with amazinggreatness of heart. He had not seen it so clearly before--but of coursehe was going to leave her all his property. He saw it instantly, as athing determined and inevitable. She would think how good he was, howspaciously generous; surrounded by all that makes life tolerable fromhis hand, she would recall with infinite regret her scorn and coldness.And when she sought expression for that regret, she would find thatoccasion gone forever, she should be met by a locked door, by adisdainful stillness, by a white dead face. He closed his eyes andremained for a space imagining himself that white dead face.

  From that he passed to other aspects of the matter, but hisdetermination was assured. He meditated elaborately before he tookaction, for the drug he had taken inclined him to a lethargic anddignified melancholy. In certain respects he modified details. If heleft all his property to Elizabeth it would include the voluptuouslyappointed room he occupied, and for many reasons he did not care toleave that to her. On the other hand, it had to be left to some one. Inhis clogged condition this worried him extremely.

  In the end he decided to leave it to the sympathetic exponent of thefashionable religious cult, whose conversation had been so pleasing inthe past. "_He_ will understand," said Bindon with a sentimental sigh."He knows what Evil means--he understands something of the StupendousFascination of the Sphinx of Sin. Yes--he will understand." By thatphrase it was that Bindon was pleased to dignify certain unhealthy andundignified departures from sane conduct to which a misguided vanity andan ill-controlled curiosity had led him. He sat for a space thinking howvery Hellenic and Italian and Neronic, and all those things, he hadbeen. Even now--might one not try a sonnet? A penetrating voice to echodown the ages, sensuous, sinister, and sad. For a space he forgotElizabeth. In the course of half an hour he spoilt three phonographiccoils, got a headache, took a second dose to calm himself, and revertedto magnanimity and his former design.

  At last he faced the unpalatable problem of Denton. It needed all hisnewborn magnanimity before he could swallow the thought of Denton; butat last this greatly misunderstood man, assisted by his sedative and thenear approach of death, effected even that. If he was at all exclusiveabout Denton, if he should display the slightest distrust, if heattempted any specific exclusion of that young man, shemight--_misunderstand_. Yes--she should have her Denton still. Hismagnanimity must go even to that. He tried to think only of Elizabeth inthe matter.

  He rose with a sigh, and limped across to the telephonic apparatus thatcommunicated with his solicitor. In ten minutes a will duly attested andwith its proper thumb-mark signature lay in the solicitor's office threemiles away. And then for a space Bindon sat very still.

  Suddenly he started out of a vague reverie and pressed an investigatoryhand to his side.

  Then he jumped eagerly to his feet and rushed to the telephone. TheEuthanasia Company had rarely been called by a client in a greaterhurry.

  So it came at last that Denton and his Elizabeth, against all hope,returned unseparated from the labour servitude to which they had fallen.Elizabeth came out from her cramped subterranean den of metal-beatersand all the sordid circumstances of blue canvas, as one comes out of anightmare. Back towards the sunlight their fortune took them; once thebequest was known to them, the bare thought of another day's hammeringbecame intolerable. They went up long lifts and stairs to levels thatthey had not seen since the days of their disaster. At first she wasfull of this sensation of escape; even to think of the underways wasintoler
able; only after many months could she begin to recall withsympathy the faded women who were still below there, murmuring scandalsand reminiscences and folly, and tapping away their lives.

  Her choice of the apartments they presently took expressed the vehemenceof her release. They were rooms upon the very verge of the city; theyhad a roof space and a balcony upon the city wall, wide open to the sunand wind, the country and the sky.

  And in that balcony comes the last scene in this story. It was a summersunsetting, and the hills of Surrey were very blue and clear. Dentonleant upon the balcony regarding them, and Elizabeth sat by his side.Very wide and spacious was the view, for their balcony hung five hundredfeet above the ancient level of the ground. The oblongs of the FoodCompany, broken here and there by the ruins--grotesque little holes andsheds--of the ancient suburbs, and intersected by shining streams ofsewage, passed at last into a remote diapering at the foot of thedistant hills. There once had been the squatting-place of the childrenof Uya. On those further slopes gaunt machines of unknown import workedslackly at the end of their spell, and the hill crest was set withstagnant wind vanes. Along the great south road the Labour Company'sfield workers in huge wheeled mechanical vehicles, were hurrying back totheir meals, their last spell finished. And through the air a dozenlittle private aeroplanes sailed down towards the city. Familiar sceneas it was to the eyes of Denton and Elizabeth, it would have filled theminds of their ancestors with incredulous amazement. Denton's thoughtsfluttered towards the future in a vain attempt at what that scene mightbe in another two hundred years, and, recoiling, turned towards thepast.

  He shared something of the growing knowledge of the time; he couldpicture the quaint smoke-grimed Victorian city with its narrow littleroads of beaten earth, its wide common-land, ill-organised, ill-builtsuburbs, and irregular enclosures; the old countryside of the Stuarttimes, with its little villages and its petty London; the England of themonasteries, the far older England of the Roman dominion, and thenbefore that a wild country with here and there the huts of some warringtribe. These huts must have come and gone and come again through a spaceof years that made the Roman camp and villa seem but yesterday; andbefore those years, before even the huts, there had been men in thevalley. Even then--so recent had it all been when one judged it by thestandards of geological time--this valley had been here; and those hillsyonder, higher, perhaps, and snow-tipped, had still been yonder hills,and the Thames had flowed down from the Cotswolds to the sea. But themen had been but the shapes of men, creatures of darkness and ignorance,victims of beasts and floods, storms and pestilence and incessanthunger. They had held a precarious foothold amidst bears and lions andall the monstrous violence of the past. Already some at least of theseenemies were overcome....

  For a time Denton pursued the thoughts of this spacious vision, tryingin obedience to his instinct to find his place and proportion in thescheme.

  "It has been chance," he said, "it has been luck. We have come through.It happens we have come through. Not by any strength of our own....

  "And yet ... No. I don't know."

  He was silent for a long time before he spoke again.

  "After all--there is a long time yet. There have scarcely been men fortwenty thousand years--and there has been life for twenty millions. Andwhat are generations? What are generations? It is enormous, and we areso little. Yet we know--we feel. We are not dumb atoms, we are part ofit--part of it--to the limits of our strength and will. Even to die ispart of it. Whether we die or live, we are in the making....

  "As time goes on--_perhaps_--men will be wiser.... Wiser....

  "Will they ever understand?"

  He became silent again. Elizabeth said nothing to these things, but sheregarded his dreaming face with infinite affection. Her mind was notvery active that evening. A great contentment possessed her. After atime she laid a gentle hand on his beside her. He fondled it softly,still looking out upon the spacious gold-woven view. So they sat as thesun went down. Until presently Elizabeth shivered.

  Denton recalled himself abruptly from these spacious issues of hisleisure, and went in to fetch her a shawl.

 

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