I MR. BEDFORD MEETS MR. CAVOR AT LYMPNE
As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under theblue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality ofastonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr.Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might havebeen any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myselfremoved from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. Ihad gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful placein the world. “Here, at any rate,” said I, “I shall find peace and achance to work!”
And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is Destiny withall the little plans of men.
I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an uglycropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded byall the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting myextremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasterswere conceivably of my own making. It may be there are directions inwhich I have some capacity, but the conduct of business operations isnot among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth amongother objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity foraffairs. I am young still in years, but the things that have happenedto me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether theyhave brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter.
It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculationsthat landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about businesstransactions there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. Inthese things there is invariably a certain amount of give and take,and it fell to me finally to do the giving. Reluctantly enough. Evenwhen I had got out of everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fitto be malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outragedvirtue, or perhaps you have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemedto me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to write a play,unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certainimagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a vigorousfight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to my belief inmy powers as a business man, I had always in those days had an ideathat I was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, I believe, avery uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man can do outsidelegitimate business transactions that has such opulent possibilities,and very probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed, got into thehabit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient little reserveput by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come and I set to work.
I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I hadsupposed; at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a_pied-à-terre_ while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckonedmyself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a threeyears’ agreement. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while theplay was in hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have shockedMrs. Bond. And yet, you know, it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, asauce-pan for eggs, and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausagesand bacon--such was the simple apparatus of my comfort. One cannotalways be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative.For the rest I laid in an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, anda trustful baker came each day. It was not, perhaps, in the style ofSybaris, but I have had worse times. I was a little sorry for thebaker, who was a very decent man indeed, but even for him I hoped.
Certainly if any one wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in theclay part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the edge of an old seacliff and stared across the flats of Romney Marsh at the sea. In verywet weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that attimes the postman used to traverse the more succulent portions of hisroute with boards upon his feet. I never saw him doing so, but I canquite imagine it. Outside the doors of the few cottages and houses thatmake up the present village big birch besoms are stuck, to wipe offthe worst of the clay, which will give some idea of the texture of thedistrict. I doubt if the place would be there at all, if it were not afading memory of things gone for ever. It was the big port of Englandin Roman times, Portus Lemanus, and now the sea is four miles away.All down the steep hill are boulders and masses of Roman brickwork,and from it old Watling Street, still paved in places, starts like anarrow to the north. I used to stand on the hill and think of it all,the galleys and legions, the captives and officials, the women andtraders, the speculators like myself, all the swarm and tumult thatcame clanking in and out of the harbour. And now just a few lumps ofrubble on a grassy slope, and a sheep or two--and me! And where theport had been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping round in a broadcurve to distant Dungeness, and dotted here and there with tree clumpsand the church towers of old mediæval towns that are following Lemanusnow towards extinction.
That outlook on the marsh was, indeed, one of the finest views I haveever seen. I suppose Dungeness was fifteen miles away; it lay like araft on the sea, and further westward were the hills by Hastings underthe setting sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes theywere faded and low, and often the drift of the weather took them cleanout of sight. And all the nearer parts of the marsh were laced and litby ditches and canals.
The window at which I worked looked over the skyline of this crest, andit was from this window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just asI was struggling with my scenario, holding down my mind to the sheerhard work of it, and naturally enough he arrested my attention.
The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow,and against that he came out black--the oddest little figure.
He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerkyquality in his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinarymind in a cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers andstockings. Why he did so I do not know, for he never cycled and henever played cricket. It was a fortuitous concurrence of garments,arising I know not how. He gesticulated with his hands and arms, andjerked his head about and _buzzed_. He buzzed like something electric.You never heard such buzzing. And ever and again he cleared his throatwith a most extraordinary noise.
“He gesticulated with his hands and arms”]
There had been rain, and that spasmodic walk of his was enhanced bythe extreme slipperiness of the footpath. Exactly as he came againstthe sun he stopped, pulled out a watch, hesitated. Then with a sort ofconvulsive gesture he turned and retreated with every manifestationof haste, no longer gesticulating, but going with ample strides thatshowed the relatively large size of his feet--they were, I remember,grotesquely exaggerated in size by adhesive clay--to the best possibleadvantage.
This occurred on the first day of my sojourn, when my play-writingenergy was at its height, and I regarded the incident simply as anannoying distraction--the waste of five minutes. I returned to myscenario. But when next evening the apparition was repeated withremarkable precision, and again the next evening, and indeed everyevening when rain was not falling, concentration upon the scenariobecame a considerable effort. “Confound the man,” said I, “one wouldthink he was learning to be a marionette!” and for several evenings Icursed him pretty heartily.
Then my annoyance gave way to amazement and curiosity. Why on earthshould a man do this thing? On the fourteenth evening I could standit no longer, and so soon as he appeared I opened the French window,crossed the verandah, and directed myself to the point where heinvariably stopped.
He had his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicundface with reddish brown eyes--previously I had seen him only againstthe light. “One moment, sir,” said I as he turned.
He stared. “One moment,” he said, “certainly. Or if you wish to speakto me for longer, and it is not asking too much--your moment isup--would it trouble you to accompany me?”
“Not in the least,” said I, placing myself beside him.
“My habits are regular. My time for intercourse--limited.”
“This, I presume, is your time for exercise?”
“It is. I come here to enj
oy the sunset.”
“You don’t.”
“Sir?”
“You never look at it.”
“Never look at it?”
“No. I’ve watched you thirteen nights, and not once have you looked atthe sunset--not once.”
He knitted his brows like one who encounters a problem.
“Well, I enjoy the sunlight--the atmosphere--I go along this path,through that gate”--he jerked his head over his shoulder--“andround----”
“You don’t. You never have been. It’s all nonsense. There isn’t a way.To-night, for instance----”
“Oh! to-night! Let me see. Ah! I just glanced at my watch, saw that Ihad already been out just three minutes over the precise half-hour,decided there was not time to go round, turned----”
“You always do.”
He looked at me--reflected. “Perhaps I do, now I come to think of it.But what was it you wanted to speak to me about?”
“Why, this!”
“This?”
“Yes. Why do you do it? Every night you come making a noise----”
“Making a noise?”
“Like this”--I imitated his buzzing noise.
He looked at me, and it was evident the buzzing awakened distaste. “DoI do _that_?” he asked.
“Every blessed evening.”
“I had no idea.”
He stopped dead. He regarded me gravely. “Can it be,” he said, “that Ihave formed a Habit?”
“Well, it looks like it. Doesn’t it?”
He pulled down his lower lip between finger and thumb. He regarded apuddle at his feet.
“My mind is much occupied,” he said. “And you want to know _why_!Well, sir, I can assure you that not only do I not know why I do thesethings, but I did not even know I did them. Come to think, it is justas you say; I never _have_ been beyond that field.... And these thingsannoy you?”
For some reason I was beginning to relent towards him. “Not _annoy_,” Isaid. “But--imagine yourself writing a play!”
“I couldn’t.”
“Well, anything that needs concentration.”
“Ah!” he said, “of course,” and meditated. His expression became soeloquent of distress, that I relented still more. After all, there _is_a touch of aggression in demanding of a man you don’t know why he humson a public footpath.
“You see,” he said weakly, “it’s a habit.”
“Oh, I recognise that.”
“I must stop it.”
“But not if it puts you out. After all, I had no business--it’ssomething of a liberty.”
“Not at all, sir,” he said, “not at all. I am greatly indebted to you.I should guard myself against these things. In future I will. Could Itrouble you--once again? That noise?”
“Something like this,” I said. “Zuzzoo, zuzzoo. But really, youknow----”
“I am greatly obliged to you. In fact, I know I am getting absurdlyabsent-minded. You are quite justified, sir--perfectly justified.Indeed, I am indebted to you. The thing shall end. And now, sir, I havealready brought you further than I should have done.”
“I do hope my impertinence----”
“Not at all, sir, not at all.”
We regarded each other for a moment. I raised my hat and wished him agood evening. He responded convulsively, and so we went our ways.
At the stile I looked back at his receding figure. His bearing hadchanged remarkably, he seemed limp, shrunken. The contrast with hisformer gesticulating, zuzzoing self took me in some absurd way aspathetic. I watched him out of sight. Then wishing very heartily I hadkept to my own business, I returned to my bungalow and my play.
“I looked back at his receding figure”]
The next evening I saw nothing of him, nor the next. But he was verymuch in my mind, and it had occurred to me that as a sentimental comiccharacter he might serve a useful purpose in the development of myplot. The third day he called upon me.
For a time I was puzzled to think what had brought him. He madeindifferent conversation in the most formal way, then abruptly he cameto business. He wanted to buy me out of my bungalow.
“You see,” he said, “I don’t blame you in the least, but you’vedestroyed a habit, and it disorganises my day. I’ve walked past herefor years--years. No doubt I’ve hummed.... You’ve made all thatimpossible!”
I suggested he might try some other direction.
“No. There is no other direction. This is the only one. I’ve inquired.And now--every afternoon at four--I come to a dead wall.”
“But, my dear sir, if the thing is so important to you----”
“It’s vital. You see, I’m--I’m an investigator--I am engaged in ascientific research. I live----” he paused and seemed to think. “Justover there,” he said, and pointed suddenly dangerously near my eye.“The house with white chimneys you see just over the trees. And mycircumstances are abnormal--abnormal. I am on the point of completingone of the most important demonstrations--I can assure you one of _themost important_ demonstrations that have ever been made. It requiresconstant thought, constant mental ease and activity. And the afternoonwas my brightest time!--effervescing with new ideas--new points ofview.”
“But why not come by still?”
“It would be all different. I should be self-conscious. I should thinkof you at your play--watching me irritated--instead of thinking of mywork. No! I must have the bungalow.”
I meditated. Naturally, I wanted to think the matter over thoroughlybefore anything decisive was said. I was generally ready enough forbusiness in those days, and selling always attracted me; but in thefirst place it was not my bungalow, and even if I sold it to him at agood price I might get inconvenienced in the delivery of goods if thecurrent owner got wind of the transaction, and in the second I was,well--undischarged. It was clearly a business that required delicatehandling. Moreover, the possibility of his being in pursuit of somevaluable invention also interested me. It occurred to me that I wouldlike to know more of this research, not with any dishonest intention,but simply with an idea that to know what it was would be a relief fromplay-writing. I threw out feelers.
He was quite willing to supply information. Indeed, once he was fairlyunder way the conversation became a monologue. He talked like a manlong pent up, who has had it over with himself again and again. Hetalked for nearly an hour, and I must confess I found it a prettystiff bit of listening. But through it all there was the undertone ofsatisfaction one feels when one is neglecting work one has set oneself.During that first interview I gathered very little of the drift ofhis work. Half his words were technicalities entirely strange to me,and he illustrated one or two points with what he was pleased to callelementary mathematics, computing on an envelope with a copying-inkpencil, in a manner that made it hard even to seem to understand.“Yes,” I said; “yes. Go on!” Nevertheless I made out enough toconvince me that he was no mere crank playing at discoveries. Inspite of his crank-like appearance there was a force about him thatmade that impossible. Whatever it was, it was a thing with mechanicalpossibilities. He told me of a work-shed he had, and of threeassistants--originally jobbing carpenters--whom he had trained. Now,from the work-shed to the patent office is clearly only one step. Heinvited me to see those things. I accepted readily, and took care, by aremark or so, to underline that. The proposed transfer of the bungalowremained very conveniently in suspense.
At last he rose to depart, with an apology for the length of his call.Talking over his work was, he said, a pleasure enjoyed only too rarely.It was not often he found such an intelligent listener as myself, hemingled very little with professional scientific men.
“So much pettiness,” he explained; “so much intrigue! And really,when one has an idea--a novel, fertilising idea--I don’t want to beuncharitable, but----”
I am a man who believes in impulses. I made what was perhaps a rashproposition. But you must remember that I had been alone, play-writingin Lympne, for fourteen days, and my compunction for his ruined walkstill hung
about me. “Why not,” said I, “make this your new habit? Inthe place of the one I spoilt? At least, until we can settle about thebungalow. What you want is to turn over your work in your mind. Thatyou have always done during your afternoon walk. Unfortunately that’sover--you can’t get things back as they were. But why not come and talkabout your work to me; use me as a sort of wall against which you maythrow your thoughts and catch them again? It’s certain I don’t knowenough to steal your ideas myself--and I know no scientific men----”
I stopped. He was considering. Evidently the thing attracted him. “ButI’m afraid I should bore you,” he said.
“You think I’m too dull?”
“Oh no; but technicalities----”
“Anyhow, you’ve interested me immensely this afternoon.”
“Of course it _would_ be a great help to me. Nothing clears up one’sideas so much as explaining them. Hitherto----”
“My dear sir, say no more.”
“But really can you spare the time?”
“There is no rest like change of occupation,” I said, with profoundconviction.
The affair was over. On my verandah steps he turned. “I am alreadygreatly indebted to you,” he said.
I made an interrogative noise.
“You have completely cured me of that ridiculous habit of humming,” heexplained.
I think I said I was glad to be of any service to him, and he turnedaway.
Immediately the train of thought that our conversation had suggestedmust have resumed its sway. His arms began to wave in their formerfashion. The faint echo of “zuzzoo” came back to me on the breeze....
Well, after all, that was not my affair....
He came the next day, and again the next day after that, and deliveredtwo lectures on physics to our mutual satisfaction. He talked with anair of being extremely lucid about the “ether,” and “tubes of force,”and “gravitational potential,” and things like that, and I sat in myother folding-chair and said, “Yes,” “Go on,” “I follow you,” to keephim going. It was tremendously difficult stuff, but I do not think heever suspected how much I did not understand him. There were momentswhen I doubted whether I was well employed, but at any rate I wasresting from that confounded play. Now and then things gleamed on meclearly for a space, only to vanish just when I thought I had hold ofthem. Sometimes my attention failed altogether, and I would give it upand sit and stare at him, wondering whether, after all, it would not bebetter to use him as a central figure in a good farce and let all thisother stuff slide. And then, perhaps, I would catch on again for a bit.
At the earliest opportunity I went to see his house. It was large andcarelessly furnished; there were no servants other than his threeassistants, and his dietary and private life were characterised bya philosophical simplicity. He was a water-drinker, a vegetarian,and all those logical disciplinary things. But the sight of hisequipment settled many doubts. It looked like business from cellar toattic--an amazing little place to find in an out-of-the-way village.The ground-floor rooms contained benches and apparatus, the bakehouseand scullery boiler had developed into respectable furnaces, dynamosoccupied the cellar, and there was a gasometer in the garden. He showedit to me with all the confiding zest of a man who has been livingtoo much alone. His seclusion was overflowing now in an excess ofconfidence, and I had the good luck to be the recipient.
The three assistants were creditable specimens of the class of“handy-men” from which they came. Conscientious if unintelligent,strong, civil, and willing. One, Spargus, who did the cooking and allthe metal work, had been a sailor; a second, Gibbs, was a joiner;and the third was an ex-jobbing gardener, and now general assistant.They were the merest labourers. All the intelligent work was done byCavor. Theirs was the darkest ignorance compared even with my muddledimpression.
And now, as to the nature of these inquiries. Here, unhappily, comes agrave difficulty. I am no scientific expert, and if I were to attemptto set forth in the highly scientific language of Mr. Cavor the aim towhich his experiments tended, I am afraid I should confuse not onlythe reader but myself, and almost certainly I should make some blunderthat would bring upon me the mockery of every up-to-date student ofmathematical physics in the country. The best thing I can do thereforeis, I think, to give my impressions in my own inexact language, withoutany attempt to wear a garment of knowledge to which I have no claim.
The object of Mr. Cavor’s search was a substance that should be“opaque”--he used some other word I have forgotten, but “opaque”conveys the idea--to “all forms of radiant energy.” “Radiant energy,”he made me understand, was anything like light or heat, or thoseRöntgen Rays there was so much talk about a year or so ago, or theelectric waves of Marconi, or gravitation. All these things, he said,_radiate_ out from centres, and act on bodies at a distance, whencecomes the term “radiant energy.” Now almost all substances are opaqueto some form or other of radiant energy. Glass, for example, istransparent to light, but much less so to heat, so that it is usefulas a fire-screen; and alum is transparent to light, but blocks heatcompletely. A solution of iodine in carbon bisulphide, on the otherhand, completely blocks light, but is quite transparent to heat. Itwill hide a fire from you, but permit all its warmth to reach you.Metals are not only opaque to light and heat, but also to electricalenergy, which passes through both iodine solution and glass almost asthough they were not interposed. And so on.
Now all known substances are “transparent” to gravitation. You can usescreens of various sorts to cut off the light or heat, or electricalinfluence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth from anything;you can screen things by sheets of metal from Marconi’s rays, butnothing will cut off the gravitational attraction of the sun or thegravitational attraction of the earth. Yet why there should be nothingis hard to say. Cavor did not see why such a substance should notexist, and certainly I could not tell him. I had never thought of sucha possibility before. He showed me by calculations on paper, whichLord Kelvin, no doubt, or Professor Lodge, or Professor Karl Pearson,or any of those great scientific people might have understood, butwhich simply reduced me to a hopeless muddle, that not only was sucha substance possible, but that it must satisfy certain conditions. Itwas an amazing piece of reasoning. Much as it amazed and exercised meat the time, it would be impossible to reproduce it here. “Yes,” I saidto it all, “yes; go on!” Suffice it for this story that he believedhe might be able to manufacture this possible substance opaque togravitation out of a complicated alloy of metals and something new--anew element, I fancy--called, I believe, _helium_, which was sent tohim from London in sealed stone jars. Doubt has been thrown upon thisdetail, but I am almost certain it was _helium_ he had sent him insealed stone jars. It was certainly something very gaseous and thin.If only I had taken notes....
But then, how was I to foresee the necessity of taking notes?
Any one with the merest germ of an imagination will understand theextraordinary possibilities of such a substance, and will sympathise alittle with the emotion I felt as this understanding emerged from thehaze of abstruse phrases in which Cavor expressed himself. Comic reliefin a play indeed! It was some time before I would believe that I hadinterpreted him aright, and I was very careful not to ask questionsthat would have enabled him to gauge the profundity of misunderstandinginto which he dropped his daily exposition. But no one reading thestory of it here will sympathise fully, because from my barrennarrative it will be impossible to gather the strength of my convictionthat this astonishing substance was positively going to be made.
I do not recall that I gave my play an hour’s consecutive work at anytime after my visit to his house. My imagination had other things todo. There seemed no limit to the possibilities of the stuff; whicheverway I tried I came on miracles and revolutions. For example, if onewanted to lift a weight, however enormous, one had only to get asheet of this substance beneath it, and one might lift it with astraw. My first natural impulse was to apply this principle to gunsand ironclads, and all the materi
al and methods of war, and from thatto shipping, locomotion, building, every conceivable form of humanindustry. The chance that had brought me into the very birth-chamberof this new time--it was an epoch, no less--was one of those chancesthat come once in a thousand years. The thing unrolled, it expanded andexpanded. Among other things I saw in it my redemption as a businessman. I saw a parent company, and daughter companies, applicationsto right of us, applications to left, rings and trusts, privilegesand concessions spreading and spreading, until one vast, stupendousCavorite company ran and ruled the world.
And I was in it!
I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but Ijumped there and then.
“We’re on absolutely the biggest thing that has ever been invented,” Isaid, and put the accent on “we.” “If you want to keep me out of this,you’ll have to do it with a gun. I’m coming down to be your fourthlabourer to-morrow.”
He seemed surprised at my enthusiasm, but not a bit suspicious orhostile. Rather, he was self-depreciatory.
He looked at me doubtfully. “But do you really think--?” he said. “Andyour play! How about that play?”
“It’s vanished!” I cried. “My dear sir, don’t you see what you’ve got?Don’t you see what you’re going to do?”
That was merely a rhetorical turn, but positively, he didn’t. At firstI could not believe it. He had not had the beginning of the inklingof an idea. This astonishing little man had been working on purelytheoretical grounds the whole time! When he said it was “the mostimportant” research the world had ever seen, he simply meant it squaredup so many theories, settled so much that was in doubt; he had troubledno more about the application of the stuff he was going to turn outthan if he had been a machine that makes guns. This was a possiblesubstance, and he was going to make it! _V’la tout_, as the Frenchmansays.
Beyond that, he was childish! If he made it, it would go down toposterity as Cavorite or Cavorine, and he would be made an F.R.S., andhis portrait given away as a scientific worthy with _Nature_, andthings like that. And that was all he saw! He would have dropped thisbombshell into the world as though he had discovered a new speciesof gnat, if it had not happened that I had come along. And there itwould have lain and fizzled, like one or two other little things thesescientific people have lit and dropped about us.
When I realised this, it was I did the talking, and Cavor who said “Goon!” I jumped up. I paced the room, gesticulating like a boy of twenty.I tried to make him understand his duties and responsibilities in thematter--_our_ duties and responsibilities in the matter. I assuredhim we might make wealth enough to work any sort of social revolutionwe fancied, we might own and order the whole world. I told him ofcompanies and patents, and the case for secret processes. All thesethings seemed to take him much as his mathematics had taken me. A lookof perplexity came into his ruddy little face. He stammered somethingabout indifference to wealth, but I brushed all that aside. He had gotto be rich, and it was no good his stammering. I gave him to understandthe sort of man I was, and that I had had very considerable businessexperience. I did not tell him I was an undischarged bankrupt at thetime, because that was temporary, but I think I reconciled my evidentpoverty with my financial claims. And quite insensibly, in the way suchprojects grow, the understanding of a Cavorite monopoly grew up betweenus. He was to make the stuff, and I was to make the boom.
I stuck like a leech to the “we”--“you” and “I” didn’t exist for me.
His idea was, that the profits I spoke of might go to endow research,but that, of course, was a matter we had to settle later. “That’s allright,” I shouted, “that’s all right.” The great point, as I insisted,was to get the thing done.
“Here is a substance,” I cried, “no home, no factory, no fortress, noship can dare to be without--more universally applicable even than apatent medicine! There isn’t a solitary aspect of it, not one of itsten thousand possible uses that will not make us rich, Cavor, beyondthe dreams of avarice!”
“No!” he said. “I begin to see. It’s extraordinary how one gets newpoints of view by talking over things!”
“And as it happens you have just talked to the right man!”
“I suppose no one,” he said, “is absolutely _averse_ to enormouswealth. Of course there is one thing----”
He paused. I stood still.
“It is just possible, you know, that we may not be able to make itafter all! It may be one of those things that are a theoreticalpossibility, but a practical absurdity. Or when we make it, there maybe some little hitch----!”
“We’ll tackle the hitch when it comes,” said I.