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

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, 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 that, 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 ⁠…”

Miss Winchelsea’s Heart

Miss Winchelsea was going to Rome. The matter had filled her mind for a month or more, and had overflowed so abundantly into her conversation that quite a number of people who were not going to Rome, and who were not likely to go to Rome, had made it a personal grievance against her. Some indeed had attempted quite unavailingly to convince her that Rome was not nearly such a desirable place as it was reported to be, and others had gone so far as to suggest behind her back that she was dreadfully “stuck up” about “that Rome of hers.” And little Lily Hardhurst had told her friend Mr. Binns that so far as she was concerned Miss Winchelsea might “go to her old Rome and stop there; she (Miss Lily Hardhurst) wouldn’t grieve.” And the way in which Miss Winchelsea put herself upon terms of personal tenderness with Horace and Benvenuto Cellini and Raphael and Shelley and Keats⁠—if she had been Shelley’s widow she could not have professed a keener interest in his grave⁠—was a matter of universal astonishment. Her dress was a triumph of tactful discretion, sensible, but not too “touristy”⁠—Miss Winchelsea had a great dread of being “touristy”⁠—and her Baedeker was carried in a cover of grey to hide its glaring red. She made a prim and pleasant little figure on the Charing Cross platform, in spite of her swelling pride, when at last the great day dawned, and she could start for Rome. The day was bright, the Channel passage would be pleasant, and all the omens promised well. There was the gayest sense of adventure in this unprecedented departure.

She was going with two friends who had been fellow-students with her at the training college, nice honest girls both, though not so good at history and literature as Miss Winchelsea. They both looked up to her immensely, though physically they had to look down, and she anticipated some pleasant times to be spent in “stirring them up” to her