Герберт Джордж Уэллс
The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth
III
It was only a few days after this that Redwood opened his paper to find that the Prime Minister had promised a Royal Commission on Boomfood. This sent him, newspaper in hand, round to Bensington's flat.
"Winkles, I believe, is making mischief for the stuff. He plays into the hands of Caterham. He keeps on talking about it, and what it is going to do, and alarming people. If he goes on, I really believe he'll hamper our inquiries. Even as it is – with this trouble about my little boy – " Bensington wished Winkles wouldn't.
"Do you notice how he has dropped into the way of calling it Boomfood?"
"I don't like that name," said Bensington, with a glance over his glasses.
"It is just so exactly what it is – to Winkles."
"Why does he keep on about it? It isn't his!"
"It's something called Booming," said Redwood. "I don't understand. If it isn't his, everybody is getting to think it is. Not that that matters."
"In the event of this ignorant, this ridiculous agitation becoming – Serious," began Bensington.
"My little boy can't get on without the stuff," said Redwood. "I don't see how I can help myself now. If the worst comes to the worst – "
A slight bouncing noise proclaimed the presence of Winkles. He became visible in the middle of the room rubbing his hands together.
"I wish you'd knock," said Bensington, looking vicious over the gold rims.
Winkles was apologetic. Then he turned to Redwood. "I'm glad to find you here," he began; "the fact is – "
"Have you seen about this Royal Commission?" interrupted Redwood.
"Yes," said Winkles, thrown out. "Yes."
"What do you think of it?"
"Excellent thing," said Winkles. "Bound to stop most of this clamour. Ventilate the whole affair. Shut up Caterham. But that's not what I came round for, Redwood. The fact is – "
"I don't like this Royal Commission," said Bensington.
"I can assure you it will be all right. I may say – I don't think it's a breach of confidence – that very possibly I may have a place on the Commission – "
"Oom," said Redwood, looking into the fire.
"I can put the whole thing right. I can make it perfectly clear, first, that the stuff is controllable, and, secondly, that nothing short of a miracle is needed before anything like that catastrophe at Hickleybrow can possibly happen again. That is just what is wanted, an authoritative assurance. Of course, I could speak with more confidence if I knew – But that's quite by the way. And just at present there's something else, another little matter, upon which I'm wanting to consult you. Ahem. The fact is – Well – I happen to be in a slight difficulty, and you can help me out."
Redwood raised his eyebrows, and was secretly glad.
"The matter is – highly confidential."
"Go on," said Redwood. "Don't worry about that."
"I have recently been entrusted with a child – the child of – of an Exalted Personage."
Winkles coughed.
"You're getting on," said Redwood.
"I must confess it's largely your powders – and the reputation of my success with your little boy – There is, I cannot disguise, a strong feeling against its use. And yet I find that among the more intelligent – One must go quietly in these things, you know – little by little. Still, in the case of Her Serene High – I mean this new little patient of mine. As a matter of fact – the suggestion came from the parent. Or I should never – "
He struck Redwood as being embarrassed.
"I thought you had a doubt of the advisability of using these powders," said Redwood.
"Merely a passing doubt."
"You don't propose to discontinue – "
"In the case of your little boy? Certainly not!"
"So far as I can see, it would be murder."
"I wouldn't do it for the world."
"You shall have the powders," said Redwood.
"I suppose you couldn't – "
"No fear," said Redwood. "There isn't a recipe. It's no good, Winkles, if you'll pardon my frankness. I'll make you the powders myself."
"Just as well, perhaps," said Winkles, after a momentary hard stare at Redwood – "just as well." And then: "I can assure you I really don't mind in the least."
IV
When Winkles had gone Bensington came and stood on the hearth-rug and looked down at Redwood.
"Her Serene Highness!" he remarked.
"Her Serene Highness!" said Redwood.
"It's the Princess of Weser Dreiburg!"
"No further than a third cousin."
"Redwood," said Bensington; "it's a curious thing to say, I know, but – do you think Winkles understands?"
"What?"
"Just what it is we have made.
"Does he really understand," said Bensington, dropping his voice and keeping his eye doorward, "that in the Family – the Family of his new patient – "
"Go on," said Redwood.
"Who have always been if anything a little under—under– "
"The Average?"
"Yes. And so very tactfully undistinguished in any way, he is going to produce a royal personage – an outsize royal personage – of that size. You know, Redwood, I'm not sure whether there is not something almost —treasonable …"
He transferred his eyes from the door to Redwood.
Redwood flung a momentary gesture – index finger erect – at the fire. "By Jove!" he said, "he doesn't know!"
"That man," said Redwood, "doesn't know anything. That was his most exasperating quality as a student. Nothing. He passed all his examinations, he had all his facts – and he had just as much knowledge – as a rotating bookshelf containing the Times Encyclopedia. And he doesn't know anything now. He's Winkles, and incapable of really assimilating anything not immediately and directly related to his superficial self. He is utterly void of imagination and, as a consequence, incapable of knowledge. No one could possibly pass so many examinations and be so well dressed, so well done, and so successful as a doctor without that precise incapacity. That's it. And in spite of all he's seen and heard and been told, there he is – he has no idea whatever of what he has set going. He has got a Boom on, he's working it well on Boomfood, and some one has let him in to this new Royal Baby – and that's Boomier than ever! And the fact that Weser Dreiburg will presently have to face the gigantic problem of a thirty-odd-foot Princess not only hasn't entered his head, but couldn't – it couldn't!"
"There'll be a fearful row," said Bensington.
"In a year or so."
"So soon as they really see she is going on growing."
"Unless after their fashion – they hush it up."
"It's a lot to hush up."
"Rather!"
"I wonder what they'll do?"
"They never do anything – Royal tact."
"They're bound to do something."
"Perhaps she will."
"O Lord! Yes."
"They'll suppress her. Such things have been known."
Redwood burst into desperate laughter. "The redundant royalty – the bouncing babe in the Iron Mask!" he said. "They'll have to put her in the tallest tower of the old Weser Dreiburg castle and make holes in the ceilings as she grows from floor to floor! Well, I'm in the very same pickle. And Cossar and his three boys. And – Well, well."
"There'll be a fearful row," Bensington repeated, not joining in the laughter. "A fearful row."
"I suppose," he argued, "you've really thought it out thoroughly, Redwood. You're quite sure it wouldn't be wiser to warn Winkles, wean your little boy gradually, and – and rely upon the Theoretical Triumph?"
"I wish to goodness you'd spend half an hour in my nursery when the Food's a little late," said Redwood, with a note of exasperation in his voice; "then you wouldn't talk like that, Bensington. Besides – Fancy warning Winkles… No! The tide of this thing has caught us unawares, and whether we're frightened or whether we're not —we've got to swim!"
"I suppose we have," said Bensington, staring at his toes. "Yes. We've got to swim. And your boy will have to swim, and Cossar's boys – he's given it to all three of them. Nothing partial about Cossar – all or nothing! And Her Serene Highness. And everything. We are going on making the Food. Cossar also. We're only just in the dawn of the beginning, Redwood. It's evident all sorts of things are to follow. Monstrous great things. But I can't imagine them, Redwood. Except – "
He scanned his finger nails. He looked up at Redwood with eyes bland through his glasses.
"I've half a mind," he adventured, "that Caterham is right. At times. It's going to destroy the Proportions of Things. It's going to dislocate – What isn't it going to dislocate?"
"Whatever it dislocates," said Redwood, "my little boy must have the Food."
They heard some one falling rapidly upstairs. Then Cossar put his head into the fiat. "Hullo!" he said at their expressions, and entering, "Well?"
They told him about the Princess.
"Difficult question!" he remarked. "Not a bit of it. She'll grow. Your boy'll grow. All the others you give it to 'll grow. Everything. Like anything. What's difficult about that? That's all right. A child could tell you that. Where's the bother?"
They tried to make it clear to him.
"Not go on with it!" he shrieked. "But – ! You can't help yourselves now. It's what you're for. It's what Winkles is for. It's all right. Often wondered what Winkles was for. Now it's obvious. What's the trouble?
"Disturbance? Obviously. Upset things? Upset everything. Finally – upset every human concern. Plain as a pikestaff. They're going to try and stop it, but they're too late. It's their way to be too late. You go on and start as much of it as you can. Thank God He has a use for you!"
"But the conflict!" said Bensington, "the stress! I don't know if you have imagined – "
"You ought to have been some sort of little vegetable, Bensington," said Cossar – "that's what you ought to have been. Something growing over a rockery. Here you are, fearfully and wonderfully made, and all you think you're made for is just to sit about and take your vittles. D'you think this world was made for old women to mop about in? Well, anyhow, you can't help yourselves now – you've got to go on."
"I suppose we must," said Redwood. "Slowly – "
"No!" said Cossar, in a huge shout. "No! Make as much as you can and as soon as you can. Spread it about!"
He was inspired to a stroke of wit. He parodied one of Redwood's curves with a vast upward sweep of his arm.
"Redwood!" he said, to point the allusion, "make it SO!"
V
There is, it seems, an upward limit to the pride of maternity, and this in the case of Mrs. Redwood was reached when her offspring completed his sixth month of terrestrial existence, broke down his high-class bassinet-perambulator, and was brought home, bawling, in the milk-truck. Young Redwood at that time weighed fifty-nine and a half pounds, measured forty-eight inches in height, and gripped about sixty pounds. He was carried upstairs to the nursery by the cook and housemaid. After that, discovery was only a question of days. One afternoon Redwood came home from his laboratory to find his unfortunate wife deep in the fascinating pages of The Mighty Atom, and at the sight of him she put the book aside and ran violently forward and burst into tears on his shoulder.
"Tell me what you have done to him," she wailed. "Tell me what you have done." Redwood took her hand and led her to the sofa, while he tried to think of a satisfactory line of defence.
"It's all right, my dear," he said; "it's all right. You're only a little overwrought. It's that cheap perambulator. I've arranged for a bath-chair man to come round with something stouter to-morrow – "
Mrs. Redwood looked at him tearfully over the top of her handkerchief.
"A baby in a bath-chair?" she sobbed.
"Well, why not?"
"It's like a cripple."
"It's like a young giant, my dear, and you've no cause to be ashamed of him."
"You've done something to him, Dandy," she said. "I can see it in your face."
"Well, it hasn't stopped his growth, anyhow," said Redwood heartlessly.
"I knew," said Mrs. Redwood, and clenched her pocket-handkerchief ball fashion in one hand. She looked at him with a sudden change to severity. "What have you done to our child, Dandy?"
"What's wrong with him?"
"He's so big. He's a monster."
"Nonsense. He's as straight and clean a baby as ever a woman had. What's wrong with him?"
"Look at his size."
"That's all right. Look at the puny little brutes about us! He's the finest baby – "
"He's too fine," said Mrs. Redwood.
"It won't go on," said Redwood reassuringly; "it's just a start he's taken."
But he knew perfectly well it would go on. And it did. By the time this baby was twelve months old he tottered just one inch under five feet high and scaled eight stone three; he was as big in fact as a St. Peter's in Vaticano cherub, and his affectionate clutch at the hair and features of visitors became the talk of West Kensington. They had an invalid's chair to carry him up and down to his nursery, and his special nurse, a muscular young person just out of training, used to take him for his airings in a Panhard 8 h.p. hill-climbing perambulator specially made to meet his requirement. It was lucky in every way that Redwood had his expert witness connection in addition to his professorship.
When one got over the shock of little Redwood's enormous size, he was, I am told by people who used to see him almost daily teufteufing slowly about Hyde Park, a singularly bright and pretty baby. He rarely cried or needed a comforter. Commonly he clutched a big rattle, and sometimes he went along hailing the bus-drivers and policemen along the road outside the railings as "Dadda!" and "Babba!" in a sociable, democratic way.
"There goes that there great Boomfood baby," the bus-driver used to say.
"Looks 'ealthy," the forward passenger would remark.
"Bottle fed," the bus-driver would explain. "They say it 'olds a gallon and 'ad to be specially made for 'im."
"Very 'ealthy child any'ow," the forward passenger would conclude.
When Mrs. Redwood realized that his growth was indeed going on indefinitely and logically – and this she really did for the first time when the motor-perambulator arrived – she gave way to a passion of grief. She declared she never wished to enter her nursery again, wished she was dead, wished the child was dead, wished everybody was dead, wished she had never married Redwood, wished no one ever married anybody, Ajaxed a little, and retired to her own room, where she lived almost exclusively on chicken broth for three days. When Redwood came to remonstrate with her, she banged pillows about and wept and tangled her hair.
"He's all right," said Redwood. "He's all the better for being big. You wouldn't like him smaller than other people's children."
"I want him to be like other children, neither smaller nor bigger. I wanted him to be a nice little boy, just as Georgina Phyllis is a nice little girl, and I wanted to bring him up nicely in a nice way, and here he is" – and the unfortunate woman's voice broke – "wearing number four grown-up shoes and being wheeled about by – booboo! – Petroleum!
"I can never love him," she wailed, "never! He's too much for me! I can never be a mother to him, such as I meant to be!"
But at last, they contrived to get her into the nursery, and there was Edward Monson Redwood ("Pantagruel" was only a later nickname) swinging in a specially strengthened rocking-chair and smiling and talking "goo" and "wow." And the heart of Mrs. Redwood warmed again to her child, and she went and held him in her arms and wept.
"They've done something to you," she sobbed, "and you'll grow and grow, dear; but whatever I can do to bring you up nice I'll do for you, whatever your father may say."
And Redwood, who had helped to bring her to the door, went down the passage much relieved. (Eh! but it's a base job this being a man – with women as they are!)
VI
Before the year was out there were, in addition to Redwood's pioneer vehicle, quite a number of motor-perambulators to be seen in the west of London. I am told there were as many as eleven; but the most careful inquiries yield trustworthy evidence of only six within the Metropolitan area at that time. It would seem the stuff acted differently upon different types of constitution. At first Herakleophorbia was not adapted to injection, and there can be no doubt that quite a considerable proportion of human beings are incapable of absorbing this substance in the normal course of digestion. It was given, for example, to Winkles' youngest boy; but he seems to have been as incapable of growth as, if Redwood was right, his father was incapable of knowledge. Others again, according to the Society for the Total Suppression of Boomfood, became in some inexplicable way corrupted by it, and perished at the onset of infantile disorders. The Cossar boys took to it with amazing avidity.
Of course a thing of this kind never comes with absolute simplicity of application into the life of man; growth in particular is a complex thing, and all generalisations must needs be a little inaccurate. But the general law of the Food would seem to be this, that when it could be taken into the system in any way it stimulated it in very nearly the same degree in all cases. It increased the amount of growth from six to seven times, and it did not go beyond that, whatever amount of the Food in excess was taken. Excess of Herakleophorbia indeed beyond the necessary minimum led, it was found, to morbid disturbances of nutrition, to cancer and tumours, ossifications, and the like. And once growth upon the large scale had begun, it was soon evident that it could only continue upon that scale, and that the continuous administration of Herakleophorbia in small but sufficient doses was imperative.
If it was discontinued while growth was still going on, there was first a vague restlessness and distress, then a period of voracity – as in the case of the young rats at Hankey – and then the growing creature had a sort of exaggerated anaemia and sickened and died. Plants suffered in a similar way. This, however, applied only to the growth period. So soon as adolescence was attained – in plants this was represented by the formation of the first flower-buds – the need and appetite for Herakleophorbia diminished, and so soon as the plant or animal was fully adult, it became altogether independent of any further supply of the food. It was, as it were, completely established on the new scale. It was so completely established on the new scale that, as the thistles about Hickleybrow and the grass of the down side already demonstrated, its seed produced giant offspring after its kind.
And presently little Redwood, pioneer of the new race, first child of all who ate the food, was crawling about his nursery, smashing furniture, biting like a horse, pinching like a vice, and bawling gigantic baby talk at his "Nanny" and "Mammy" and the rather scared and awe-stricken "Daddy," who had set this mischief going.
The child was born with good intentions. "Padda be good, be good," he used to say as the breakables flew before him. "Padda" was his rendering of Pantagruel, the nickname Redwood imposed on him. And Cossar, disregarding certain Ancient Lights that presently led to trouble, did, after a conflict with the local building regulations, get building on a vacant piece of ground adjacent to Redwood's home, a comfortable well-lit playroom, schoolroom, and nursery for their four boys – sixty feet square about this room was, and forty feet high.
Redwood fell in love with that great nursery as he and Cossar built it, and his interest in curves faded, as he had never dreamt it could fade, before the pressing needs of his son. "There is much," he said, "in fitting a nursery. Much.
"The walls, the things in it, they will all speak to this new mind of ours, a little more, a little less eloquently, and teach it, or fail to teach it a thousand things."
"Obviously," said Cossar, reaching hastily for his hat.
They worked together harmoniously, but Redwood supplied most of the educational theory required …
They had the walls and woodwork painted with a cheerful vigour; for the most part a slightly warmed white prevailed, but there were bands of bright clean colour to enforce the simple lines of construction. "Clean colours we must have," said Redwood, and in one place had a neat horizontal band of squares, in which crimson and purple, orange and lemon, blues and greens, in many hues and many shades, did themselves honour. These squares the giant children should arrange and rearrange to their pleasure. "Decorations must follow," said Redwood; "let them first get the range of all the tints, and then this may go away. There is no reason why one should bias them in favour of any particular colour or design."
Then, "The place must be full of interest," said Redwood. "Interest is food for a child, and blankness torture and starvation. He must have pictures galore." There were no pictures hung about the room for any permanent service, however, but blank frames were provided into which new pictures would come and pass thence into a portfolio so soon as their fresh interest had passed. There was one window that looked down the length of a street, and in addition, for an added interest, Redwood had contrived above the roof of the nursery a camera obscura that watched the Kensington High Street and not a little of the Gardens.
In one corner that most worthy implement, an Abacus, four feet square, a specially strengthened piece of ironmongery with rounded corners, awaited the young giants' incipient computations. There were few woolly lambs and such-like idols, but instead Cossar, without explanation, had brought one day in three four-wheelers a great number of toys (all just too big for the coming children to swallow) that could be piled up, arranged in rows, rolled about, bitten, made to flap and rattle, smacked together, felt over, pulled out, opened, closed, and mauled and experimented with to an interminable extent. There were many bricks of wood in diverse colours, oblong and cuboid, bricks of polished china, bricks of transparent glass and bricks of india-rubber; there were slabs and slates; there were cones, truncated cones, and cylinders; there were oblate and prolate spheroids, balls of varied substances, solid and hollow, many boxes of diverse size and shape, with hinged lids and screw lids and fitting lids, and one or two to catch and lock; there were bands of elastic and leather, and a number of rough and sturdy little objects of a size together that could stand up steadily and suggest the shape of a man. "Give 'em these," said Cossar. "One at a time."
These things Redwood arranged in a locker in one corner. Along one side of the room, at a convenient height for a six-or eight-foot child, there was a blackboard, on which the youngsters might flourish in white and coloured chalk, and near by a sort of drawing block, from which sheet after sheet might be torn, and on which they could draw in charcoal, and a little desk there was, furnished with great carpenter's pencils of varying hardness and a copious supply of paper, on which the boys might first scribble and then draw more neatly. And moreover Redwood gave orders, so far ahead did his imagination go, for specially large tubes of liquid paint and boxes of pastels against the time when they should be needed. He laid in a cask or so of plasticine and modelling clay. "At first he and his tutor shall model together," he said, "and when he is more skilful he shall copy casts and perhaps animals. And that reminds me, I must also have made for him a box of tools!
"Then books. I shall have to look out a lot of books to put in his way, and they'll have to be big type. Now what sort of books will he need? There is his imagination to be fed. That, after all, is the crown of every education. The crown – as sound habits of mind and conduct are the throne. No imagination at all is brutality; a base imagination is lust and cowardice; but a noble imagination is God walking the earth again. He must dream too of a dainty fairy-land and of all the quaint little things of life, in due time. But he must feed chiefly on the splendid real; he shall have stories of travel through all the world, travels and adventures and how the world was won; he shall have stories of beasts, great books splendidly and clearly done of animals and birds and plants and creeping things, great books about the deeps of the sky and the mystery of the sea; he shall have histories and maps of all the empires the world has seen, pictures and stories of all the tribes and habits and customs of men. And he must have books and pictures to quicken his sense of beauty, subtle Japanese pictures to make him love the subtler beauties of bird and tendril and falling flower, and western pictures too, pictures of gracious men and women, sweet groupings, and broad views of land and sea. He shall have books on the building of houses and palaces; he shall plan rooms and invent cities —
"I think I must give him a little theatre.
"Then there is music!"
Redwood thought that over, and decided that his son might best begin with a very pure-sounding harmonicon of one octave, to which afterwards there could be an extension. "He shall play with this first, sing to it and give names to the notes," said Redwood, "and afterwards – ?"
He stared up at the window-sill overhead and measured the size of the room with his eye.
"They'll have to build his piano in here," he said. "Bring it in in pieces."
He hovered about amidst his preparations, a pensive, dark, little figure. If you could have seen him there he would have looked to you like a ten-inch man amidst common nursery things. A great rug – indeed it was a Turkey carpet – four hundred square feet of it, upon which young Redwood was soon to crawl – stretched to the grill-guarded electric radiator that was to warm the whole place. A man from Cossar's hung amidst scaffolding overhead, fixing the great frame that was to hold the transitory pictures. A blotting-paper book for plant specimens as big as a house door leant against the wall, and from it projected a gigantic stalk, a leaf edge or so and one flower of chickweed, all of that gigantic size that was soon to make Urshot famous throughout the botanical world …
A sort of incredulity came to Redwood as he stood among these things.
"If it really is going on – " said Redwood, staring up at the remote ceiling.
From far away came a sound like the bellowing of a Mafficking bull, almost as if in answer.
"It's going on all right," said Redwood. "Evidently."
There followed resounding blows upon a table, followed by a vast crowing shout, "Gooloo! Boozoo! Bzz …"
"The best thing I can do," said Redwood, following out some divergent line of thought, "is to teach him myself."
That beating became more insistent. For a moment it seemed to Redwood that it caught the rhythm of an engine's throbbing – the engine he could have imagined of some great train of events that bore down upon him. Then a descendant flight of sharper beats broke up that effect, and were repeated.
"Come in," he cried, perceiving that some one rapped, and the door that was big enough for a cathedral opened slowly a little way. The new winch ceased to creak, and Bensington appeared in the crack, gleaming benevolently under his protruded baldness and over his glasses.
"I've ventured round to see," he whispered in a confidentially furtive manner.
"Come in," said Redwood, and he did, shutting the door behind him.
He walked forward, hands behind his back, advanced a few steps, and peered up with a bird-like movement at the dimensions about him. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"Every time I come in," he said, with a subdued note in his voice, "it strikes me as – 'Big.'"
"Yes," said Redwood, surveying it all again also, as if in an endeavour to keep hold of the visible impression. "Yes. They're going to be big too, you know."
"I know," said Bensington, with a note that was nearly awe. "Very big."
They looked at one another, almost, as it were, apprehensively.
"Very big indeed," said Bensington, stroking the bridge of his nose, and with one eye that watched Redwood doubtfully for a confirmatory expression. "All of them, you know – fearfully big. I don't seem able to imagine – even with this – just how big they're all going to be."
