Герберт Джордж Уэллс
The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth
III
These two met altogether fourteen times before the beginning of the end. They met in the Great Park or on the heights and among the gorges of the rusty-roaded, heathery moorland, set with dusky pine-woods, that stretched to the south-west. Twice they met in the great avenue of chestnuts, and five times near the broad ornamental water the king, her great-grandfather, had made. There was a place where a great trim lawn, set with tall conifers, sloped graciously to the water's edge, and there she would sit, and he would lie at her knees and look up in her face and talk, telling of all the things that had been, and of the work his father had set before him, and of the great and spacious dream of what the giant people should one day be. Commonly they met in the early dawn, but once they met there in the afternoon, and found presently a multitude of peering eavesdroppers about them, cyclists, pedestrians, peeping from the bushes, rustling (as sparrows will rustle about one in the London parks) amidst the dead leaves in the woods behind, gliding down the lake in boats towards a point of view, trying to get nearer to them and hear.
It was the first hint that offered of the enormous interest the countryside was taking in their meetings. And once – it was the seventh time, and it precipitated the scandal – they met out upon the breezy moorland under a clear moonlight, and talked in whispers there, for the night was warm and still.
Very soon they had passed from the realisation that in them and through them a new world of giantry shaped itself in the earth, from the contemplation of the great struggle between big and little, in which they were clearly destined to participate, to interests at once more personal and more spacious. Each time they met and talked and looked on one another, it crept a little more out of their subconscious being towards recognition, that something more dear and wonderful than friendship was between them, and walked between them and drew their hands together. And in a little while they came to the word itself and found themselves lovers, the Adam and Eve of a new race in the world.
They set foot side by side into the wonderful valley of love, with its deep and quiet places. The world changed about them with their changing mood, until presently it had become, as it were, a tabernacular beauty about their meetings, and the stars were no more than flowers of light beneath the feet of their love, and the dawn and sunset the coloured hangings by the way. They ceased to be beings of flesh and blood to one another and themselves; they passed into a bodily texture of tenderness and desire. They gave it first whispers and then silence, and drew close and looked into one another's moonlit and shadowy faces under the infinite arch of the sky. And the still black pine-trees stood about them like sentinels.
The beating steps of time were hushed into silence, and it seemed to them the universe hung still. Only their hearts were audible, beating. They seemed to be living together in a world where there is no death, and indeed so it was with them then. It seemed to them that they sounded, and indeed they sounded, such hidden splendours in the very heart of things as none have ever reached before. Even for mean and little souls, love is the revelation of splendours. And these were giant lovers who had eaten the Food of the Gods …
* * * * *
You may imagine the spreading consternation in this ordered world when it became known that the Princess who was affianced to the Prince, the Princess, Her Serene Highness! with royal blood in her veins! met, – frequently met, – the hypertrophied offspring of a common professor of chemistry, a creature of no rank, no position, no wealth, and talked to him as though there were no Kings and Princes, no order, no reverence – nothing but Giants and Pigmies in the world, talked to him and, it was only too certain, held him as her lover.
"If those newspaper fellows get hold of it!" gasped Sir Arthur Poodle Bootlick …
"I am told – " whispered the old Bishop of Frumps.
"New story upstairs," said the first footman, as he nibbled among the dessert things. "So far as I can make out this here giant Princess – "
"They say – " said the lady who kept the stationer's shop by the main entrance to the Palace, where the little Americans get their tickets for the State Apartments …
And then:
"We are authorised to deny – " said "Picaroon" in Gossip.
And so the whole trouble came out.
IV
"They say that we must part," the Princess said to her lover.
"But why?" he cried. "What new folly have these people got into their heads?"
"Do you know," she asked, "that to love me – is high treason?"
"My dear," he cried; "but does it matter? What is their right – right without a shadow of reason – and their treason and their loyalty to us?"
"You shall hear," she said, and told him of the things that had been told to her.
"It was the queerest little man who came to me with a soft, beautifully modulated voice, a softly moving little gentleman who sidled into the room like a cat and put his pretty white hand up so, whenever he had anything significant to say. He is bald, but not of course nakedly bald, and his nose and face are chubby rosy little things, and his beard is trimmed to a point in quite the loveliest way. He pretended to have emotions several times and made his eyes shine. You know he is quite a friend of the real royal family here, and he called me his dear young lady and was perfectly sympathetic even from the beginning. 'My dear young lady,' he said, 'you know —you mustn't,' several times, and then, 'You owe a duty.'"
"Where do they make such men?"
"He likes it," she said.
"But I don't see – "
"He told me serious things."
"You don't think," he said, turning on her abruptly, "that there's anything in the sort of thing he said?"
"There's something in it quite certainly," said she.
"You mean – ?"
"I mean that without knowing it we have been trampling on the most sacred conceptions of the little folks. We who are royal are a class apart. We are worshipped prisoners, processional toys. We pay for worship by losing – our elementary freedom. And I was to have married that Prince – You know nothing of him though. Well, a pigmy Prince. He doesn't matter… It seems it would have strengthened the bonds between my country and another. And this country also was to profit. Imagine it! – strengthening the bonds!"
"And now?"
"They want me to go on with it – as though there was nothing between us two."
"Nothing!"
"Yes. But that isn't all. He said – "
"Your specialist in Tact?"
"Yes. He said it would be better for you, better for all the giants, if we two – abstained from conversation. That was how he put it."
"But what can they do if we don't?"
"He said you might have your freedom."
"I!"
"He said, with a stress, 'My dear young lady, it would be better, it would be more dignified, if you parted, willingly.' That was all he said. With a stress on willingly."
"But – ! What business is it of these little wretches, where we love, how we love? What have they and their world to do with us?"
"They do not think that."
"Of course," he said, "you disregard all this."
"It seems utterly foolish to me."
"That their laws should fetter us! That we, at the first spring of life, should be tripped by their old engagements, their aimless institutions! Oh – ! We disregard it."
"I am yours. So far – yes."
"So far? Isn't that all?"
"But they – If they want to part us – "
"What can they do?"
"I don't know. What can they do?"
"Who cares what they can do, or what they will do? I am yours and you are mine. What is there more than that? I am yours and you are mine – for ever. Do you think I will stop for their little rules, for their little prohibitions, their scarlet boards indeed! – and keep from you?"
"Yes. But still, what can they do?"
"You mean," he said, "what are we to do?"
"Yes."
"We? We can go on."
"But if they seek to prevent us?"
He clenched his hands. He looked round as if the little people were already coming to prevent them. Then turned away from her and looked about the world. "Yes," he said. "Your question was the right one. What can they do?"
"Here in this little land," she said, and stopped.
He seemed to survey it all. "They are everywhere."
"But we might – "
"Whither?"
"We could go. We could swim the seas together. Beyond the seas – "
"I have never been beyond the seas."
"There are great and desolate mountains amidst which we should seem no more than little people, there are remote and deserted valleys, there are hidden lakes and snow-girdled uplands untrodden by the feet of men. There– "
"But to get there we must fight our way day after day through millions and millions of mankind."
"It is our only hope. In this crowded land there is no fastness, no shelter. What place is there for us among these multitudes? They who are little can hide from one another, but where are we to hide? There is no place where we could eat, no place where we could sleep. If we fled – night and day they would pursue our footsteps."
A thought came to him.
"There is one place," he said, "even in this island."
"Where?"
"The place our Brothers have made over beyond there. They have made great banks about their house, north and south and east and west; they have made deep pits and hidden places, and even now – one came over to me quite recently. He said – I did not altogether heed what he said then. But he spoke of arms. It may be – there – we should find shelter…
"For many days," he said, after a pause, "I have not seen our Brothers… Dear! I have been dreaming, I have been forgetting! The days have passed, and I have done nothing but look to see you again … I must go to them and talk to them, and tell them of you and of all the things that hang over us. If they will help us, they can help us. Then indeed we might hope. I do not know how strong their place is, but certainly Cossar will have made it strong. Before all this – before you came to me, I remember now – there was trouble brewing. There was an election – when all the little people settle things, by counting heads. It must be over now. There were threats against all our race – against all our race, that is, but you. I must see our Brothers. I must tell them all that has happened between us, and all that threatens now."
V.
He did not come to their next meeting until she had waited some time. They were to meet that day about midday in a great space of park that fitted into a bend of the river, and as she waited, looking ever southward under her hand, it came to her that the world was very still, that indeed it was broodingly still. And then she perceived that, spite of the lateness of the hour, her customary retinue of voluntary spies had failed her. Left and right, when she came to look, there was no one in sight, and there was never a boat upon the silver curve of the Thames. She tried to find a reason for this strange stillness in the world…
Then, a grateful sight for her, she saw young Redwood far away over a gap in the tree masses that bounded her view.
Immediately the trees hid him, and presently he was thrusting through them and in sight again. She could see there was something different, and then she saw that he was hurrying unusually and then that he limped. He gestured to her, and she walked towards him. His face became clearer, and she saw with infinite concern that he winced at every stride.
She ran towards him, her mind full of questions and vague fear. He drew near to her and spoke without a greeting.
"Are we to part?" he panted.
"No," she answered. "Why? What is the matter?"
"But if we do not part – ! It is now."
"What is the matter?"
"I do not want to part," he said. "Only – " He broke off abruptly to ask, "You will not part from me?"
She met his eyes with a steadfast look. "What has happened?" she pressed.
"Not for a time?"
"What time?"
"Years perhaps."
"Part! No!"
"You have thought?" he insisted.
"I will not part." She took his hand. "If this meant death, now, I would not let you go."
"If it meant death," he said, and she felt his grip upon her fingers.
He looked about him as if he feared to see the little people coming as he spoke. And then: "It may mean death."
"Now tell me," she said.
"They tried to stop my coming."
"How?"
"And as I came out of my workshop where I make the Food of the Gods for the Cossars to store in their camp, I found a little officer of police – a man in blue with white clean gloves – who beckoned me to stop. 'This way is closed!' said he. I thought little of that; I went round my workshop to where another road runs west, and there was another officer. 'This road is closed!' he said, and added: 'All the roads are closed!'"
"And then?"
"I argued with him a little. 'They are public roads!' I said.
"'That's it,' said he. 'You spoil them for the public.'
"'Very well,' said I, 'I'll take the fields,' and then, up leapt others from behind a hedge and said, 'These fields are private.'
"'Curse your public and private,' I said, 'I'm going to my Princess,' and I stooped down and picked him up very gently – kicking and shouting – and put him out of my way. In a minute all the fields about me seemed alive with running men. I saw one on horseback galloping beside me and reading something as he rode – shouting it. He finished and turned and galloped away from me – head down. I couldn't make it out. And then behind me I heard the crack of guns."
"Guns!"
"Guns – just as they shoot at the rats. The bullets came through the air with a sound like things tearing: one stung me in the leg."
"And you?"
"Came on to you here and left them shouting and running and shooting behind me. And now – "
"Now?"
"It is only the beginning. They mean that we shall part. Even now they are coming after me."
"We will not."
"No. But if we will not part – then you must come with me to our Brothers."
"Which way?" she said.
"To the east. Yonder is the way my pursuers will be coming. This then is the way we must go. Along this avenue of trees. Let me go first, so that if they are waiting – "
He made a stride, but she had seized his arm.
"No," cried she. "I come close to you, holding you. Perhaps I am royal, perhaps I am sacred. If I hold you – Would God we could fly with my arms about you! – it may be, they will not shoot at you – "
She clasped his shoulder and seized his hand as she spoke; she pressed herself nearer to him. "It may be they will not shoot you," she repeated, and with a sudden passion of tenderness he took her into his arms and kissed her cheek. For a space he held her.
"Even if it is death," she whispered.
She put her hands about his neck and lifted her face to his.
"Dearest, kiss me once more."
He drew her to him. Silently they kissed one another on the lips, and for another moment clung to one another. Then hand in hand, and she striving always to keep her body near to his, they set forward if haply they might reach the camp of refuge the sons of Cossar had made, before the pursuit of the little people overtook them.
And as they crossed the great spaces of the park behind the castle there came horsemen galloping out from among the trees and vainly seeking to keep pace with their giant strides. And presently ahead of them were houses, and men with guns running out of the houses. At the sight of that, though he sought to go on and was even disposed to fight and push through, she made him turn aside towards the south.
As they fled a bullet whipped by them overhead.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
YOUNG CADDLES IN LONDON.
I
All unaware of the trend of events, unaware of the laws that were closing in upon all the Brethren, unaware indeed that there lived a Brother for him on the earth, young Caddles chose this time to come out of his chalk pit and see the world. His brooding came at last to that. There was no answer to all his questions in Cheasing Eyebright; the new Vicar was less luminous even than the old, and the riddle of his pointless labour grew at last to the dimensions of exasperation. "Why should I work in this pit day after day?" he asked. "Why should I walk within bounds and be refused all the wonders of the world beyond there? What have I done, to be condemned to this?"
And one day he stood up, straightened his back, and said in a loud voice, "No!
"I won't," he said, and then with great vigour cursed the pit.
Then, having few words, he sought to express his thought in acts. He took a truck half filled with chalk, lifted it, and flung it, smash, against another. Then he grasped a whole row of empty trucks and spun them down a bank. He sent a huge boulder of chalk bursting among them, and then ripped up a dozen yards of rail with a mighty plunge of his foot. So he commenced the conscientious wrecking of the pit.
"Work all my days," he said, "at this!"
It was an astonishing five minutes for the little geologist he had, in his preoccupation, overlooked. This poor little creature having dodged two boulders by a hairbreadth, got out by the westward corner and fled athwart the hill, with flapping rucksack and twinkling knicker-bockered legs, leaving a trail of Cretaceous echinoderms behind him; while young Caddles, satisfied with the destruction he had achieved, came striding out to fulfil his purpose in the world.
"Work in that old pit, until I die and rot and stink!.. What worm did they think was living in my giant body? Dig chalk for God knows what foolish purpose! Not I!"
The trend of road and railway perhaps, or mere chance it was, turned his face to London, and thither he came striding; over the Downs and athwart the meadows through the hot afternoon, to the infinite amazement of the world. It signified nothing to him that torn posters in red and white bearing various names flapped from every wall and barn; he knew nothing of the electoral revolution that had flung Caterham, "Jack the Giant-killer," into power. It signified nothing to him that every police station along his route had what was known as Caterham's ukase upon its notice board that afternoon, proclaiming that no giant, no person whatever over eight feet in height, should go more than five miles from his "place of location" without a special permission. It signified nothing to him that on his wake belated police officers, not a little relieved to find themselves belated, shook warning handbills at his retreating back. He was going to see what the world had to show him, poor incredulous blockhead, and he did not mean that occasional spirited persons shouting "Hi!" at him should stay his course. He came on down by Rochester and Greenwich towards an ever-thickening aggregation of houses, walking rather slowly now, staring about him and swinging his huge chopper.
People in London had heard something of him before, how that he was idiotic but gentle, and wonderfully managed by Lady Wondershoot's agent and the Vicar; how in his dull way he revered these authorities and was grateful to them for their care of him, and so forth. So that when they learnt from the newspaper placards that afternoon that he also was "on strike," the thing appeared to many of them as a deliberate, concerted act.
"They mean to try our strength," said the men in the trains going home from business.
"Lucky we have Caterham."
"It's in answer to his proclamation."
The men in the clubs were better informed. They clustered round the tape or talked in groups in their smoking-rooms.
"He has no weapons. He would have gone to Sevenoaks if he had been put up to it."
"Caterham will handle him…"
The shopmen told their customers. The waiters in restaurants snatched a moment for an evening paper between the courses. The cabmen read it immediately after the betting news…
The placards of the chief government evening paper were conspicuous with "Grasping the Nettle." Others relied for effect on: "Giant Redwood continues to meet the Princess." The Echo struck a line of its own with: "Rumoured Revolt of Giants in the North of England. The Sunderland Giants start for Scotland." The, Westminster Gazette sounded its usual warning note. "Giants Beware," said the Westminster Gazette, and tried to make a point out of it that might perhaps serve towards uniting the Liberal party – at that time greatly torn between seven intensely egotistical leaders. The later newspapers dropped into uniformity. "The Giant in the New Kent Road," they proclaimed.
"What I want to know," said the pale young man in the tea shop, "is why we aren't getting any news of the young Cossars. You'd think they'd be in it most of all …"
"They tell me there's another of them young giants got loose," said the barmaid, wiping out a glass. "I've always said they was dangerous things to 'ave about. Right away from the beginning … It ought to be put a stop to. Any'ow, I 'ope 'e won't come along 'ere."
"I'd like to 'ave a look at 'im," said the young man at the bar recklessly, and added, "I seen the Princess."
"D'you think they'll 'urt 'im?" said the barmaid.
"May 'ave to," said the young man at the bar, finishing his glass.
Amidst a hum of ten million such sayings young Caddles came to London…
