Twelve Stories and a Dream (15 page)

"I'm not walking fast, am I?" cried Gibberne, and slackened his pace to
a quick march.

"You've been taking some of this stuff," I puffed.

"No," he said. "At the utmost a drop of water that stood in a beaker
from which I had washed out the last traces of the stuff. I took some
last night, you know. But that is ancient history, now."

"And it goes twice?" I said, nearing his doorway in a grateful
perspiration.

"It goes a thousand times, many thousand times!" cried Gibberne, with a
dramatic gesture, flinging open his Early English carved oak gate.

"Phew!" said I, and followed him to the door.

"I don't know how many times it goes," he said, with his latch-key in
his hand.

"And you—"

"It throws all sorts of light on nervous physiology, it kicks the theory
of vision into a perfectly new shape!... Heaven knows how many thousand
times. We'll try all that after—The thing is to try the stuff now."

"Try the stuff?" I said, as we went along the passage.

"Rather," said Gibberne, turning on me in his study. "There it is in
that little green phial there! Unless you happen to be afraid?"

I am a careful man by nature, and only theoretically adventurous. I WAS
afraid. But on the other hand there is pride.

"Well," I haggled. "You say you've tried it?"

"I've tried it," he said, "and I don't look hurt by it, do I? I don't
even look livery and I FEEL—"

I sat down. "Give me the potion," I said. "If the worst comes to the
worst it will save having my hair cut, and that I think is one of the
most hateful duties of a civilised man. How do you take the mixture?"

"With water," said Gibberne, whacking down a carafe.

He stood up in front of his desk and regarded me in his easy chair; his
manner was suddenly affected by a touch of the Harley Street specialist.
"It's rum stuff, you know," he said.

I made a gesture with my hand.

"I must warn you in the first place as soon as you've got it down to
shut your eyes, and open them very cautiously in a minute or so's
time. One still sees. The sense of vision is a question of length of
vibration, and not of multitude of impacts; but there's a kind of shock
to the retina, a nasty giddy confusion just at the time, if the eyes are
open. Keep 'em shut."

"Shut," I said. "Good!"

"And the next thing is, keep still. Don't begin to whack about. You
may fetch something a nasty rap if you do. Remember you will be going
several thousand times faster than you ever did before, heart, lungs,
muscles, brain—everything—and you will hit hard without knowing
it. You won't know it, you know. You'll feel just as you do now. Only
everything in the world will seem to be going ever so many thousand
times slower than it ever went before. That's what makes it so deuced
queer."

"Lor'," I said. "And you mean—"

"You'll see," said he, and took up a little measure. He glanced at the
material on his desk. "Glasses," he said, "water. All here. Mustn't take
too much for the first attempt."

The little phial glucked out its precious contents.

"Don't forget what I told you," he said, turning the contents of the
measure into a glass in the manner of an Italian waiter measuring
whisky. "Sit with the eyes tightly shut and in absolute stillness for
two minutes," he said. "Then you will hear me speak."

He added an inch or so of water to the little dose in each glass.

"By-the-by," he said, "don't put your glass down. Keep it in your hand
and rest your hand on your knee. Yes—so. And now—"

He raised his glass.

"The New Accelerator," I said.

"The New Accelerator," he answered, and we touched glasses and drank,
and instantly I closed my eyes.

You know that blank non-existence into which one drops when one has
taken "gas." For an indefinite interval it was like that. Then I heard
Gibberne telling me to wake up, and I stirred and opened my eyes. There
he stood as he had been standing, glass still in hand. It was empty,
that was all the difference.

"Well?" said I.

"Nothing out of the way?"

"Nothing. A slight feeling of exhilaration, perhaps. Nothing more."

"Sounds?"

"Things are still," I said. "By Jove! yes! They ARE still. Except the
sort of faint pat, patter, like rain falling on different things. What
is it?"

"Analysed sounds," I think he said, but I am not sure. He glanced at the
window. "Have you ever seen a curtain before a window fixed in that way
before?"

I followed his eyes, and there was the end of the curtain, frozen, as it
were, corner high, in the act of flapping briskly in the breeze.

"No," said I; "that's odd."

"And here," he said, and opened the hand that held the glass. Naturally
I winced, expecting the glass to smash. But so far from smashing it did
not even seem to stir; it hung in mid-air—motionless.

"Roughly speaking," said Gibberne, "an object in these latitudes falls
16 feet in the first second. This glass is falling 16 feet in a second
now. Only, you see, it hasn't been falling yet for the hundredth part of
a second. That gives you some idea of the pace of my Accelerator." And
he waved his hand round and round, over and under the slowly sinking
glass. Finally, he took it by the bottom, pulled it down, and placed it
very carefully on the table. "Eh?" he said to me, and laughed.

"That seems all right," I said, and began very gingerly to raise myself
from my chair. I felt perfectly well, very light and comfortable, and
quite confident in my mind. I was going fast all over. My heart, for
example, was beating a thousand times a second, but that caused me no
discomfort at all. I looked out of the window. An immovable cyclist,
head down and with a frozen puff of dust behind his driving-wheel,
scorched to overtake a galloping char-a-banc that did not stir. I gaped
in amazement at this incredible spectacle. "Gibberne," I cried, "how
long will this confounded stuff last?"

"Heaven knows!" he answered. "Last time I took it I went to bed and
slept it off. I tell you, I was frightened. It must have lasted some
minutes, I think—it seemed like hours. But after a bit it slows down
rather suddenly, I believe."

I was proud to observe that I did not feel frightened—I suppose because
there were two of us. "Why shouldn't we go out?" I asked.

"Why not?"

"They'll see us."

"Not they. Goodness, no! Why, we shall be going a thousand times faster
than the quickest conjuring trick that was ever done. Come along! Which
way shall we go? Window, or door?"

And out by the window we went.

Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have ever had, or
imagined, or read of other people having or imagining, that little raid
I made with Gibberne on the Folkestone Leas, under the influence of the
New Accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all. We went out by
his gate into the road, and there we made a minute examination of the
statuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legs
of the horses of this char-a-banc, the end of the whip-lash and the
lower jaw of the conductor—who was just beginning to yawn—were
perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance
seemed still. And quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that came
from one man's throat! And as parts of this frozen edifice there were a
driver, you know, and a conductor, and eleven people! The effect as we
walked about the thing began by being madly queer, and ended by being
disagreeable. There they were, people like ourselves and yet not like
ourselves, frozen in careless attitudes, caught in mid-gesture. A girl
and a man smiled at one another, a leering smile that threatened to last
for evermore; a woman in a floppy capelline rested her arm on the rail
and stared at Gibberne's house with the unwinking stare of eternity; a
man stroked his moustache like a figure of wax, and another stretched a
tiresome stiff hand with extended fingers towards his loosened hat. We
stared at them, we laughed at them, we made faces at them, and then
a sort of disgust of them came upon us, and we turned away and walked
round in front of the cyclist towards the Leas.

"Goodness!" cried Gibberne, suddenly; "look there!"

He pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down the air
with wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionally languid
snail—was a bee.

And so we came out upon the Leas. There the thing seemed madder than
ever. The band was playing in the upper stand, though all the sound it
made for us was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of prolonged last
sigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow, muffled ticking
of some monstrous clock. Frozen people stood erect, strange, silent,
self-conscious-looking dummies hung unstably in mid-stride, promenading
upon the grass. I passed close to a little poodle dog suspended in the
act of leaping, and watched the slow movement of his legs as he sank
to earth. "Lord, look here!" cried Gibberne, and we halted for a moment
before a magnificent person in white faint-striped flannels, white
shoes, and a Panama hat, who turned back to wink at two gaily dressed
ladies he had passed. A wink, studied with such leisurely deliberation
as we could afford, is an unattractive thing. It loses any quality of
alert gaiety, and one remarks that the winking eye does not completely
close, that under its drooping lid appears the lower edge of an eyeball
and a little line of white. "Heaven give me memory," said I, "and I will
never wink again."

"Or smile," said Gibberne, with his eye on the lady's answering teeth.

"It's infernally hot, somehow," said I. "Let's go slower."

"Oh, come along!" said Gibberne.

We picked our way among the bath-chairs in the path. Many of the people
sitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in their passive poses, but
the contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see.
A purple-faced little gentleman was frozen in the midst of a violent
struggle to refold his newspaper against the wind; there were many
evidences that all these people in their sluggish way were exposed to
a considerable breeze, a breeze that had no existence so far as our
sensations went. We came out and walked a little way from the crowd, and
turned and regarded it. To see all that multitude changed, to a picture,
smitten rigid, as it were, into the semblance of realistic wax, was
impossibly wonderful. It was absurd, of course; but it filled me with an
irrational, an exultant sense of superior advantage. Consider the wonder
of it! All that I had said, and thought, and done since the stuff had
begun to work in my veins had happened, so far as those people, so
far as the world in general went, in the twinkling of an eye. "The New
Accelerator—" I began, but Gibberne interrupted me.

"There's that infernal old woman!" he said.

"What old woman?"

"Lives next door to me," said Gibberne. "Has a lapdog that yaps. Gods!
The temptation is strong!"

There is something very boyish and impulsive about Gibberne at times.
Before I could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatched the
unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violently
with it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extraordinary. The
little brute, you know, didn't bark or wriggle or make the slightest
sign of vitality. It kept quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolent
repose, and Gibberne held it by the neck. It was like running about with
a dog of wood. "Gibberne," I cried, "put it down!" Then I said something
else. "If you run like that, Gibberne," I cried, "you'll set your
clothes on fire. Your linen trousers are going brown as it is!"

He clapped his hand on his thigh and stood hesitating on the verge.
"Gibberne," I cried, coming up, "put it down. This heat is too much!
It's our running so! Two or three miles a second! Friction of the air!"

"What?" he said, glancing at the dog.

"Friction of the air," I shouted. "Friction of the air. Going too fast.
Like meteorites and things. Too hot. And, Gibberne! Gibberne! I'm all
over pricking and a sort of perspiration. You can see people stirring
slightly. I believe the stuff's working off! Put that dog down."

"Eh?" he said.

"It's working off," I repeated. "We're too hot and the stuff's working
off! I'm wet through."

He stared at me. Then at the band, the wheezy rattle of whose
performance was certainly going faster. Then with a tremendous sweep
of the arm he hurled the dog away from him and it went spinning upward,
still inanimate, and hung at last over the grouped parasols of a knot of
chattering people. Gibberne was gripping my elbow. "By Jove!" he cried.
"I believe—it is! A sort of hot pricking and—yes. That man's moving
his pocket-handkerchief! Perceptibly. We must get out of this sharp."

But we could not get out of it sharply enough. Luckily, perhaps! For we
might have run, and if we had run we should, I believe, have burst into
flames. Almost certainly we should have burst into flames! You know we
had neither of us thought of that.... But before we could even begin to
run the action of the drug had ceased. It was the business of a minute
fraction of a second. The effect of the New Accelerator passed like
the drawing of a curtain, vanished in the movement of a hand. I heard
Gibberne's voice in infinite alarm. "Sit down," he said, and flop, down
upon the turf at the edge of the Leas I sat—scorching as I sat. There
is a patch of burnt grass there still where I sat down. The whole
stagnation seemed to wake up as I did so, the disarticulated vibration
of the band rushed together into a blast of music, the promenaders
put their feet down and walked their ways, the papers and flags began
flapping, smiles passed into words, the winker finished his wink and
went on his way complacently, and all the seated people moved and spoke.

The whole world had come alive again, was going as fast as we were, or
rather we were going no faster than the rest of the world. It was like
slowing down as one comes into a railway station. Everything seemed
to spin round for a second or two, I had the most transient feeling of
nausea, and that was all. And the little dog which had seemed to hang
for a moment when the force of Gibberne's arm was expended fell with a
swift acceleration clean through a lady's parasol!