The Country of the Blind and other Selected Stories Read online

  ‘I say,’ said Mr Fotheringay, ‘that’s three o’clock! I must be getting back. I’ve got to be at business by eight. And besides, Mrs Wimms –’

  ‘We’re only beginning,’ said Mr Maydig, full of the sweetness of unlimited power. ‘We’re only beginning. Think of all the good we’re doing. When people wake –’

  ‘But –,’ said Mr Fotheringay.

  Mr Maydig gripped his arm suddenly. His eyes were bright and wild. ‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘there’s no hurry. Look’ – he pointed to the moon at the zenith – ‘Joshua!’9

  ‘Joshua?’ said Mr Fotheringay.

  ‘Joshua,’ said Mr Maydig. ‘Why not? Stop it.’

  Mr Fotheringay looked at the moon.

  ‘That’s a bit tall,’ he said after a pause.

  ‘Why not?’ said Mr Maydig. ‘Of course it doesn’t stop. You stop the rotation of the earth, you know. Time stops. It isn’t as if we were doing harm.’

  ‘H’m!’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘Well’ He sighed. ‘I’ll try. Here –’

  He buttoned up his jacket and addressed himself to the habitable globe, with as good an assumption of confidence as lay in his power. ‘Jest stop rotating, will you,’ said Mr Fotheringay.

  Incontinently he was flying head over heels through the air at the rate of dozens of miles a minute. In spite of the innumerable circles he was describing per second, he thought; for thought is wonderful – sometimes as sluggish as flowing pitch, sometimes as instantaneous as light. He thought in a second, and willed. ‘Let me come down safe and sound. Whatever else happens, let me down safe and sound.’

  He willed it only just in time, for his clothes, heated by his rapid flight through the air, were already beginning to singe. He came down with a forcible, but by no means injurious bump in what appeared to be a mound of fresh-turned earth. A large mass of metal and masonry, extraordinarily like the clock-tower in the middle of the market square, hit the earth near him, ricochetted over him, and flew into stonework, bricks, and masonry, like a bursting bomb. A hurtling cow hit one of the larger blocks and smashed like an egg. There was a crash that made all the most violent crashes of his past life seem like the sound of falling dust, and this was followed by a descending series of lesser crashes. A vast wind roared throughout earth and heaven, so that he could scarcely lift his head to look. For a while he was too breathless and astonished even to see where he was or what had happened. And his first movement was to feel his head and reassure himself that his streaming hair was still his own.

  ‘Lord!’ gasped Mr Fotheringay, scarce able to speak for the gale, ‘I’ve had a squeak! What’s gone wrong? Storms and thunder. And only a minute ago a fine night. It’s Maydig set me on to this sort of thing. What a wind! If I go on fooling in this way I’m bound to have a thundering accident!…

  ‘Where’s Maydig?

  ‘What a confounded mess everything’s in!’

  He looked about him so far as his flapping jacket would permit. The appearance of things was really extremely strange. ‘The sky’s all right anyhow,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘And that’s about all that is all right. And even there it looks like a terrific gale coming up. But there’s the moon overhead. Just as it was just now. Bright as midday. But as for the rest – Where’s the village? Where’s – where’s anything? And what on earth set this wind a-blowing? I didn’t order no wind.’

  Mr Fotheringay struggled to get to his feet in vain, and after one failure, remained on all fours, holding on. He surveyed the moonlit world to leeward, with the tails of his jacket streaming over his head. ‘There’s something seriously wrong,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘And what it is – goodness knows.’

  Far and wide nothing was visible in the white glare through the haze of dust that drove before a screaming gale but tumbled masses of earth and heaps of inchoate ruins, no trees, no houses, no familiar shapes, only a wilderness of disorder vanishing at last into the darkness beneath the whirling columns and streamers, the lightnings and thunderings of a swiftly rising storm. Near him in the livid glare was something that might once have been an elm tree, a smashed mass of splinters, shivered from boughs to base, and further a twisted mass of iron girders – only too evidently the viaduct – rose out of the piled confusion.

  You see, when Mr Fotheringay had arrested the rotation of the solid globe, he had made no stipulation concerning the trifling movables upon its surface. And the earth spins so fast that the surface at its equator is travelling at rather more than a thousand miles an hour,10 and in these latitudes at more than half that pace. So that the village, and Mr Maydig, and Mr Fotheringay, and everybody and everything had been jerked violently forward at about nine miles per second – that is to say, much more violently than if they had been fired out of a cannon. And every human being, every living creature, every house, and every tree – all the world as we know it – had been so jerked and smashed and utterly destroyed. That was all.

  These things Mr Fotheringay did not, of course, fully appreciate. But he perceived that his miracle had miscarried, and with that a great disgust of miracles came upon him. He was in darkness now, for the clouds had swept together and blotted out his momentary glimpse of the moon, and the air was full of fitful struggling tortured wraiths of hail. A great roaring of wind and waters filled earth and sky, and, peering under his hand through the dust and sleet to windward, he saw by the play of the lightnings a vast wall of water pouring towards him.

  ‘Maydig!’ screamed Mr Fotheringay’s feeble voice amid the elemental uproar. ‘Here! – Maydig!’

  ‘Stop!’ cried Mr Fotheringay to the advancing water. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, stop!’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Mr Fotheringay to the lightnings and thunder. ‘Stop jest a moment while I collect my thoughts.… And now what shall I do?’ he said. ‘What shall I do? Lord! I wish Maydig was about.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘And for goodness’ sake let’s have it right this time.’

  He remained on all fours, leaning against the wind, very intent to have everything right.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Let nothing what I’m going to order happen until I say “Off!”… Lord! I wish I’d thought of that before!’

  He lifted his little voice against the whirlwind, shouting louder and louder in the vain desire to hear himself speak. ‘Now then! – here goes! Mind about that what I said just now. In the first place, when all I’ve got to say is done, let me lose my miraculous power, let my will become just like anybody else’s will, and all these dangerous miracles be stopped. I don’t like them. I’d rather I didn’t work ‘em. Ever so much. That’s the first thing. And the second is – let me be back just before the miracles begin; let everything be just as it was before that blessed lamp turned up. It’s a big job, but it’s the last. Have you got it? No more miracles, everything as it was – me back in the Long Dragon just before I drank my half-pint. That’s it! Yes.’

  He dug his fingers into the mould, closed his eyes, and said ‘Off!’

  Everything became perfectly still. He perceived that he was standing erect.

  ‘So you say,’ said a voice.

  He opened his eyes. He was in the bar of the Long Dragon, arguing about miracles with Toddy Beamish. He had a vague sense of some great thing forgotten that instantaneously passed. You see, except for the loss of his miraculous powers, everything was back as it had been, his mind and memory therefore were now just as they had been at the time when this story began. So that he knew absolutely nothing of all that is told here, knows nothing of all that is told here to this day. And among other things, of course, he still did not believe in miracles.

  ‘I tell you that miracles, properly speaking, can’t possibly happen,’ he said, ‘whatever you like to hold. And I’m prepared to prove it up to the hilt.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ said Toddy Beamish, and ‘Prove it if you can.’

  ‘Looky here, Mr Beamish,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It’s something
contrariwise to the course of nature done by power of Will.…’

  A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON1

  The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. He moved slowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then he glanced again in my direction.

  I feigned to read. I feared I had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in a moment I was surprised to find him speaking.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said I.

  ‘That book,’ he repeated, pointing a lean finger, ‘is about dreams.’

  ‘Obviously,’ I answered, for it was Fortnum-Roscoe’s Dream States,2 and the title was on the cover.

  He hung silent for a space as if he sought words. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘but they tell you nothing.’

  I did not catch his meaning for a second.

  ‘They don’t know,’ he added.

  I looked a little more attentively at his face.

  ‘There are dreams,’ he said, ‘and dreams.’

  That sort of proposition I never dispute.

  ‘I suppose—’ he hesitated. ‘Do you ever dream? I mean vividly.’

  ‘I dream very little,’ I answered. ‘I doubt if I have three vivid dreams a year.’

  ‘Ah!’ he said, and seemed for a moment to collect his thoughts.

  ‘Your dreams don’t mix with your memories?’ he asked abruptly. ‘You don’t find yourself in doubt; did this happen or did it not?’

  ‘Hardly ever. Except just for a momentary hesitation now and then. I suppose few people do.’

  ‘Does he say—’ he indicated the book.

  ‘Says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation about intensity of impression and the like to account for its not happening as a rule. I suppose you know something of these theories—’

  ‘Very little – except that they are wrong.’

  His emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for a time. I prepared to resume reading, and that seemed to precipitate his next remark. He leant forward almost as though he would touch me.

  ‘Isn’t there something called consecutive dreaming – that goes on night after night?’

  ‘I believe there is. There are cases given in most books on mental trouble.’

  ‘Mental trouble! Yes. I dare say there are. It’s the right place for them. But what I mean—’ He looked at his bony knuckles. ‘Is that sort of thing always dreaming? Is it dreaming? Or is it something else? Mightn’t it be something else?’

  I should have snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawn anxiety of his face. I remember now the look of his faded eyes and the lids red stained – perhaps you know that look.

  ‘I’m not just arguing about a matter of opinion,’ he said. ‘The thing’s killing me.’

  ‘Dreams?’

  ‘If you call them dreams. Night after night. Vivid! – so vivid… this—’ (he indicated the landscape that went streaming by the window) ‘seems unreal in comparison! I can scarcely remember who I am, what business I am on.…’

  He paused. ‘Even now—’

  ‘The dream is always the same – do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s over.’

  ‘You mean?’

  ‘I died.’

  ‘Died?’

  ‘Smashed and killed, and now, so much of me as that dream was, is dead. Dead for ever. I dreamt I was another man, you know, living in a different part of the world and in a different time. I dreamt that night after night. Night after night I woke into that other life. Fresh scenes and fresh happenings – until I came upon the last—’

  ‘When you died?’

  ‘When I died.’

  ‘And since then—’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Thank God! That was the end of the dream.…’

  It was clear I was in for this dream. And after all, I had an hour before me, the light was fading fast, and Fortnum-Roscoe has a dreary way with him. ‘Living in a different time,’ I said: ‘do you mean in some different age?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Past?’

  ‘No – to come – to come.’

  ‘The year three thousand, for example?’

  ‘I don’t know what year it was. I did when I was asleep, when I was dreaming, that is, but not now – not now that I am awake. There’s a lot of things I have forgotten since I woke out of these dreams, though I knew them at the time when I was –1 suppose it was dreaming. They called the year differently from our way of calling the year.… What did they call it?’ He put his hand to his forehead. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I forget.’

  He sat smiling weakly. For a moment I feared he did not mean to tell me his dream. As a rule I hate people who tell their dreams, but this struck me differently. I proffered assistance even. ‘It began—’ I suggested.

  ‘It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up in it suddenly. And it’s curious that in these dreams I am speaking of I never remembered this life I am living now. It seemed as if the dream life was enough while it lasted. Perhaps— But I will tell you how I find myself when I do my best to recall it all. I don’t remember anything clearly until I found myself sitting in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. I had been dozing, and suddenly I woke up – fresh and vivid - not a bit dream-like – because the girl had stopped fanning me.’

  ‘The girl?’

  ‘Yes, the girl. You must not interrupt or you will put me out.’

  He stopped abruptly. ‘You won’t think I’m mad?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I answered; ‘you’ve been dreaming. Tell me your dream.’

  ‘I woke up, I say, because the girl had stopped fanning me. I was not surprised to find myself there or anything of that sort, you understand. I did not feel I had fallen into it suddenly. I simply took it up at that point. Whatever memory I had of this life, this nineteenth-century life, faded as I woke, vanished like a dream. I knew all about myself, knew that my name was no longer Cooper but Hedon, and all about my position in the world. I’ve forgotten a lot since I woke – there’s a want of connection – but it was all quite clear and matter of fact then.’

  He hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting his face forward and looking up to me appealingly.

  ‘This seems bosh to you?’

  ‘No, no!’ I cried. ‘Go on. Tell me what this loggia was like.’

  ‘It was not really a loggia – I don’t know what to call it. It faced south. It was small. It was all in shadow except the semicircle above the balcony that showed the sky and sea and the corner where the girl stood. I was on a couch – it was a metal couch with light striped cushions – and the girl was leaning over the balcony with her back to me. The light of the sunrise fell on her ear and cheek. Her pretty white neck and the little curls that nestled there, and her white shoulder were in the sun, and all the grace of her body was in the cool blue shadow. She was dressed – how can I describe it? It was easy and flowing. And altogether there she stood, so that it came to me how beautiful and desirable she was, as though I had never seen her before And when at last I sighed and raised myself upon my arm she turned her face to me—’

  He stopped.

  ‘I have lived three-and-fifty years in this world. I have had mother, sisters, friends, wife and daughters – all their faces, the play of their faces, I know. But the face of this girl – it is much more real to me. I can bring it back into memory so that I see it again –I could draw it or paint it. And after all—’

  He stopped – but I said nothing.

  ‘The face of a dream – the face of a dream. She was beautiful. Not that beauty which is terrible, cold, and worshipful, like the beauty of a saint; nor that beauty that stirs fierce passions; but a sort of radiation, sweet lips that sof
tened into smiles, and grave grey eyes. And she moved gracefully, she seemed to have part with all pleasant and gracious things—’

  He stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden. Then he looked up at me and went on, making no further attempt to disguise his absolute belief in the reality of his story.

  ‘You see, I had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown up all I had ever worked for or desired for her sake. I had been a master man away there in the north, with influence and property and a great reputation, but none of it had seemed worth having beside her. I had come to the place, this city of sunny pleasures, with her, and left all those things to wreck and ruin just to save a remnant at least of my life. While I had been in love with her before I knew that she had any care for me, before I had imagined that she would dare – that we should dare, all my life had seemed vain and hollow, dust and ashes. It was dust and ashes. Night after night and through the long days I had longed and desired – my soul had beaten against the thing forbidden!

  ‘But it is impossible for one man to tell another just these things. It’s emotion, it’s a tint, a light that comes and goes. Only while it’s there, everything changes, everything. The thing is I came away and left them in their Crisis to do what they could.’

  ‘Left whom?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘The people up in the north there. You see – in this dream, anyhow – I had been a big man, the sort of man men come to trust in, to group themselves about. Millions of men who had never seen me were ready to do things and risk things because of their confidence in me. I had been playing that game for years, that big laborious game, that vague, monstrous political game amidst intrigues and betrayals, speech and agitation. It was a vast weltering world, and at last I had a sort of leadership against the Gang – you know it was called the Gang – a sort of compromise of scoundrelly projects and base ambitions and vast public emotional stupidities and catch-words – the Gang that kept the world noisy and blind year by year, and all the while that it was drifting, drifting towards infinite disaster. But I can’t expect you to understand the shades and complications of the year – the year something or other ahead. I had it all – down to the smallest details – in my dream. I suppose I had been dreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline of some queer new development I had imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes. It was some grubby affair that made me thank God for the sunlight. I sat up on the couch and remained looking at the woman and rejoicing – rejoicing that I had come away out of all that tumult and folly and violence before it was too late. After all, I thought, this is life – love and beauty, desire and delight, are they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague, gigantic ends. And I blamed myself for having ever sought to be a leader when I might have given my days to love. But then, thought I, if I had not spent my early days sternly and austerely, I might have wasted myself upon vain and worthless women, and at the thought all my being went out in love and tenderness to my dear mistress, my dear lady, who had come at last and compelled me – compelled me by her invincible charm for me – to lay that life aside.