Short Fiction by H. G. Wells (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

that he should know nothing of her, nothing of the difference of their station. The ways of the city opened before him east and west, north and south. Even in Victorian days London was a maze, that little London with its poor four millions of people; but the London he explored, the London of the twenty-second century, was a London of thirty million souls. At first he was energetic and headlong, taking time neither to eat nor sleep. He sought for weeks and months, he went through every imaginable phase of fatigue and despair, over-excitement and anger. Long after hope was dead, by the sheer inertia of his desire he still went to and fro, peering into faces and looking this way and that, in the incessant ways and lifts and passages of that interminable hive of men.

At last chance was kind to him, and he saw her.

It was in a time of festivity. He was hungry; he had paid the inclusive fee and had gone into one of the gigantic dining-places of the city; he was pushing his way among the tables and scrutinising by mere force of habit every group he passed.

He stood still, robbed of all power of motion, his eyes wide, his lips apart. Elizabeth sat scarcely twenty yards away from him, looking straight at him. Her eyes were as hard to him, as hard and expressionless and void of recognition, as the eyes of a statue.

She looked at him for a moment, and then her gaze passed beyond him.

Had he had only her eyes to judge by he might have doubted if it was indeed Elizabeth, but he knew her by the gesture of her hand, by the grace of a wanton little curl that floated over her ear as she moved her head. Something was said to her, and she turned smiling tolerantly to the man beside her, a little man in foolish raiment knobbed and spiked like some odd reptile with pneumatic horns⁠—the Bindon of her father’s choice.

For a moment Denton stood white and wild-eyed; then came a terrible faintness, and he sat before one of the little tables. He sat down with his back to her, and for a time he did not dare to look at her again. When at last he did, she and Bindon and two other people were standing up to go. The others were her father and her chaperone.

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

He could not control himself to patience. He felt he must speak to her forthwith, or die. He pushed forward to where they were seated, and sat down beside them. His white face was convulsed with half-hysterical excitement.

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

She turned in unfeigned astonishment. Nothing but the fear of a strange man showed in her face.

“Elizabeth,” he cried, and his voice was strange to him: “dearest⁠—you know me?”

Elizabeth’s face showed nothing but alarm and perplexity. She drew herself away from him. The chaperone, a little grey-headed woman with mobile features, leant forward to intervene. Her resolute bright eyes examined Denton. “What do you say?” she asked.

“This young lady,” said Denton⁠—“she knows me.”

“Do you know him, dear?”

“No,” said Elizabeth in a strange voice, and with a hand to her forehead, speaking almost as one who repeats a lesson. “No, I do not know him. I know⁠—I do not know him.”

“But⁠—but⁠ ⁠… Not know me! It is I⁠—Denton. Denton! To whom you used to talk. Don’t you remember the flying stages? The little seat in the open air? The verses⁠—”

“No,” cried Elizabeth⁠—“no. I do not know him. I do not know him. There is something⁠ ⁠… But I don’t know. All I know is that I do not know him.” Her face was a face of infinite distress.

The sharp eyes of the chaperone flitted to and fro from the girl to the man. “You see?” she said, with the faint shadow of a smile. “She does not know you.”

“I do not know you,” said Elizabeth. “Of that I am sure.”

“But, dear⁠—the songs⁠—the little verses⁠—”

“She does not know you,” said the chaperone. “You must not⁠ ⁠… You have made a mistake. You must not go on talking to us after that. You must not annoy us on the public ways.”

“But⁠—” said Denton, and for a moment his miserably haggard face appealed against fate.

“You must not persist, young man,” protested the chaperone.

“Elizabeth!” he cried.

Her face was the face of one who is tormented. “I do not know you,” she cried, hand to brow. “Oh, I do not know you!”

For an instant Denton sat stunned. Then he stood up and groaned aloud.

He made a strange gesture of appeal towards the remote glass roof of the public way, then turned and went plunging recklessly from one moving platform to another, and vanished amidst the swarms of people going to and fro thereon. The chaperone’s eyes followed him, and then she looked at the curious faces about her.

“Dear,” asked Elizabeth, clasping her hand, and too deeply moved to heed observation, “who was that man? Who was that man?”

The chaperone raised her eyebrows. She spoke in a clear, audible voice. “Some half-witted creature. I have never set eyes on him before.”

“Never?”

“Never, dear. Do not trouble your mind about a thing like this.”

And soon after this the celebrated hypnotist who dressed in green and yellow had another client. The young man paced his consulting-room, pale and disordered. “I want to forget,” he cried. “I must forget.”

The hypnotist watched him with quiet eyes, studied his face and clothes and bearing. “To forget anything⁠—pleasure or pain⁠—is to be, by so much⁠—less. However, you know your own concern. My fee