There was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-looking shop near
Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C.
Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents
of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant
tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes,
two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys
(one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a fly-blown ostrich egg
or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass
fish-tank. There was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of
crystal, worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished.
And at
that two people who stood outside the window were looking, one of them a
tall, thin clergyman, the other a black-bearded young man of dusky
complexion and unobtrusive costume. The dusky young man spoke with eager
gesticulation, and seemed anxious for his companion to purchase the
article.
While they were there, Mr. Cave came into his shop, his beard still
wagging with the bread and butter of his tea. When he saw these men and
the object of their regard, his countenance fell. He glanced guiltily over
his shoulder, and softly shut the door. He was a little old man, with pale
face and peculiar watery blue eyes; his hair was a dirty grey, and he wore
a shabby blue frock-coat, an ancient silk hat, and carpet slippers very
much down at heel. He remained watching the two men as they talked. The
clergyman went deep into his trouser pocket, examined a handful of money,
and showed his teeth in an agreeable smile. Mr. Cave seemed still more
depressed when they came into the shop.
The clergyman, without any ceremony, asked the price of the crystal egg.
Mr. Cave glanced nervously towards the door leading into the parlour, and
said five pounds. The clergyman protested that the price was high, to his
companion as well as to Mr. Cave--it was, indeed, very much more than Mr.
Cave had intended to ask when he had stocked the article--and an attempt
at bargaining ensued. Mr. Cave stepped to the shop door, and held it open.
"Five pounds is my price," he said, as though he wished to save himself
the trouble of unprofitable discussion. As he did so, the upper portion of
a woman's face appeared above the blind in the glass upper panel of the
door leading into the parlour, and stared curiously at the two customers.
"Five pounds is my price," said Mr. Cave, with a quiver in his voice.
The swarthy young man had so far remained a spectator, watching Cave
keenly. Now he spoke. "Give him five pounds," he said. The clergyman
glanced at him to see if he were in earnest, and when he looked at Mr.
Cave again, he saw that the latter's face was white. "It's a lot of
money," said the clergyman, and, diving into his pocket, began counting
his resources. He had little more than thirty shillings, and he appealed
to his companion, with whom he seemed to be on terms of considerable
intimacy. This gave Mr. Cave an opportunity of collecting his thoughts,
and he began to explain in an agitated manner that the crystal was not, as
a matter of fact, entirely free for sale. His two customers were naturally
surprised at this, and inquired why he had not thought of that before he
began to bargain. Mr. Cave became confused, but he stuck to his story,
that the crystal was not in the market that afternoon, that a probable
purchaser of it had already appeared. The two, treating this as an attempt
to raise the price still further, made as if they would leave the shop.
But at this point the parlour door opened, and the owner of the dark
fringe and the little eyes appeared.
She was a coarse-featured, corpulent woman, younger and very much larger
than Mr. Cave; she walked heavily, and her face was flushed. "That crystal
_is_ for sale," she said. "And five pounds is a good enough price for
it. I can't think what you're about, Cave, not to take the gentleman's
offer!"
Mr. Cave, greatly perturbed by the irruption, looked angrily at her over
the rims of his spectacles, and, without excessive assurance, asserted his
right to manage his business in his own way. An altercation began. The two
customers watched the scene with interest and some amusement, occasionally
assisting Mrs. Cave with suggestions. Mr. Cave, hard driven, persisted in
a confused and impossible story of an inquiry for the crystal that
morning, and his agitation became painful. But he stuck to his point with
extraordinary persistence. It was the young Oriental who ended this
curious controversy. He proposed that they should call again in the course
of two days--so as to give the alleged inquirer a fair chance. "And then
we must insist," said the clergyman. "Five pounds." Mrs. Cave took it on
herself to apologise for her husband, explaining that he was sometimes "a
little odd," and as the two customers left, the couple prepared for a free
discussion of the incident in all its bearings.
Mrs. Cave talked to her husband with singular directness. The poor little
man, quivering with emotion, muddled himself between his stories,
maintaining on the one hand that he had another customer in view, and on
the other asserting that the crystal was honestly worth ten guineas. "Why
did you ask five pounds?" said his wife. "_Do_ let me manage my
business my own way!" said Mr. Cave.
Mr. Cave had living with him a step-daughter and a step-son, and at supper
that night the transaction was re-discussed. None of them had a high
opinion of Mr. Cave's business methods, and this action seemed a
culminating folly.
"It's my opinion he's refused that crystal before," said the step-son, a
loose-limbed lout of eighteen.
"But _Five Pounds_!" said the step-daughter, an argumentative young
woman of six-and-twenty.
Mr. Cave's answers were wretched; he could only mumble weak assertions
that he knew his own business best. They drove him from his half-eaten
supper into the shop, to close it for the night, his ears aflame and tears
of vexation behind his spectacles. Why had he left the crystal in the
window so long? The folly of it! That was the trouble closest in his mind.
For a time he could see no way of evading sale.
After supper his step-daughter and step-son smartened themselves up and
went out and his wife retired upstairs to reflect upon the business
aspects of the crystal, over a little sugar and lemon and so forth in hot
water. Mr. Cave went into the shop, and stayed there until late,
ostensibly to make ornamental rockeries for gold-fish cases, but really
for a private purpose that will be better explained later. The next day
Mrs. Cave found that the crystal had been removed from the window, and
was lying behind some second-hand books on angling. She replaced it in a
conspicuous position. But she did not argue further about it, as a nervous
headache disinclined her from debate. Mr. Cave was always disinclined. The
day passed disagreeably. Mr. Cave was, if anything, more absent-minded
than usual, and uncommonly irritable withal. In the afternoon, when his
wife was taking her customary sleep, he removed the crystal from the
window again.
The next day Mr. Cave had to deliver a consignment of dog-fish at one of
the hospital schools, where they were needed for dissection. In his
absence Mrs. Cave's mind reverted to the topic of the crystal, and the
methods of expenditure suitable to a windfall of five pounds. She had
already devised some very agreeable expedients, among others a dress of
green silk for herself and a trip to Richmond, when a jangling of the
front door bell summoned her into the shop. The customer was an
examination coach who came to complain of the non-delivery of certain
frogs asked for the previous day. Mrs. Cave did not approve of this
particular branch of Mr. Cave's business, and the gentleman, who had
called in a somewhat aggressive mood, retired after a brief exchange of
words--entirely civil, so far as he was concerned. Mrs. Cave's eye then
naturally turned to the window; for the sight of the crystal was an
assurance of the five pounds and of her dreams. What was her surprise to
find it gone!
She went to the place behind the locker on the counter, where she had
discovered it the day before. It was not there; and she immediately began
an eager search about the shop.
When Mr. Cave returned from his business with the dogfish, about a quarter
to two in the afternoon, he found the shop in some confusion, and his
wife, extremely exasperated and on her knees behind the counter, routing
among his taxidermic material. Her face came up hot and angry over the
counter, as the jangling bell announced his return, and she forthwith
accused him of "hiding it."
"Hid _what_?" asked Mr. Cave.
"The crystal!"
At that Mr. Cave, apparently much surprised, rushed to the window. "Isn't
it here?" he said. "Great Heavens! what has become of it?"
Just then Mr. Cave's step-son re-entered the shop from, the inner room--he
had come home a minute or so before Mr. Cave--and he was blaspheming
freely. He was apprenticed to a second-hand furniture dealer down the
road, but he had his meals at home, and he was naturally annoyed to find
no dinner ready.
But when he heard of the loss of the crystal, he forgot his meal, and his
anger was diverted from his mother to his step-father. Their first idea,
of course, was that he had hidden it. But Mr. Cave stoutly denied all
knowledge of its fate, freely offering his bedabbled affidavit in the
matter--and at last was worked up to the point of accusing, first, his
wife and then his stepson of having taken it with a view to a private
sale. So began an exceedingly acrimonious and emotional discussion, which
ended for Mrs. Cave in a peculiar nervous condition midway between
hysterics and amuck, and caused the step-son to be half-an-hour late at
the furniture establishment in the afternoon. Mr. Cave took refuge from
his wife's emotions in the shop.
In the evening the matter was resumed, with less passion and in a judicial
spirit, under the presidency of the step-daughter. The supper passed
unhappily and culminated in a painful scene. Mr. Cave gave way at last to
extreme exasperation, and went out banging the front door violently. The
rest of the family, having discussed him with the freedom his absence
warranted, hunted the house from garret to cellar, hoping to light upon
the crystal.
The next day the two customers called again. They were received by Mrs.
Cave almost in tears. It transpired that no one _could_ imagine all
that she had stood from Cave at various times in her married pilgrimage.
... She also gave a garbled account of the disappearance. The clergyman
and the Oriental laughed silently at one another, and said it was very
extraordinary. As Mrs. Cave seemed disposed to give them the complete
history of her life they made to leave the shop. Thereupon Mrs. Cave,
still clinging to hope, asked for the clergyman's address, so that, if she
could get anything out of Cave, she might communicate it. The address was
duly given, but apparently was afterwards mislaid. Mrs. Cave can remember
nothing about it.
In the evening of that day the Caves seem to have exhausted their
emotions, and Mr. Cave, who had been out in the afternoon, supped in a
gloomy isolation that contrasted pleasantly with the impassioned
controversy of the previous days. For some time matters were very badly
strained in the Cave household, but neither crystal nor customer
reappeared.
Now, without mincing the matter, we must admit that Mr. Cave was a liar.
He knew perfectly well where the crystal was. It was in the rooms of Mr.
Jacoby Wace, Assistant Demonstrator at St. Catherine's Hospital,
Westbourne Street. It stood on the sideboard partially covered by a black
velvet cloth, and beside a decanter of American whisky. It is from Mr.
Wace, indeed, that the particulars upon which this narrative is based were
derived. Cave had taken off the thing to the hospital hidden in the
dog-fish sack, and there had pressed the young investigator to keep it for
him. Mr. Wace was a little dubious at first. His relationship to Cave was
peculiar. He had a taste for singular characters, and he had more than
once invited the old man to smoke and drink in his rooms, and to unfold
his rather amusing views of life in general and of his wife in particular.
Mr. Wace had encountered Mrs. Cave, too, on occasions when Mr. Cave was
not at home to attend to him. He knew the constant interference to which
Cave was subjected, and having weighed the story judicially, he decided to
give the crystal a refuge. Mr. Cave promised to explain the reasons for
his remarkable affection for the crystal more fully on a later occasion,
but he spoke distinctly of seeing visions therein. He called on Mr. Wace
the same evening.
He told a complicated story. The crystal he said had come into his
possession with other oddments at the forced sale of another curiosity
dealer's effects, and not knowing what its value might be, he had ticketed
it at ten shillings. It had hung upon his hands at that price for some
months, and he was thinking of "reducing the figure," when he made a
singular discovery.
At that time his health was very bad--and it must be borne in mind that,
throughout all this experience, his physical condition was one of ebb--and
he was in considerable distress by reason of the negligence, the positive
ill-treatment even, he received from his wife and step-children. His wife
was vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and had a growing taste for private
drinking; his step-daughter was mean and over-reaching; and his step-son
had conceived a violent dislike for him, and lost no chance of showing it.
The requirements of his business pressed heavily upon him, and Mr. Wace
does not think that he was altogether free from occasional intemperance.
He had begun life in a comfortable position, he was a man of fair
education, and he suffered, for weeks at a stretch, from melancholia and
insomnia. Afraid to disturb his family, he would slip quietly from his
wife's side, when his thoughts became intolerable, and wander about the
house. And about three o'clock one morning, late in August, chance
directed him into the shop.
The dirty little place was impenetrably black except in one spot, where he
perceived an unusual glow of light. Approaching this, he discovered it to
be the crystal egg, which was standing on the corner of the counter
towards the window. A thin ray smote through a crack in the shutters,
impinged upon the object, and seemed as it were to fill its entire
interior.
It occurred to Mr. Cave that this was not in accordance with the laws of
optics as he had known them in his younger days. He could understand the
rays being refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its interior,
but this diffusion jarred with his physical conceptions. He approached the
crystal nearly, peering into it and round it, with a transient revival of
the scientific curiosity that in his youth had determined his choice of a
calling. He was surprised to find the light not steady, but writhing
within the substance of the egg, as though that object was a hollow sphere
of some luminous vapour. In moving about to get different points of view,
he suddenly found that he had come between it and the ray, and that the
crystal none the less remained luminous. Greatly astonished, he lifted it
out of the light ray and carried it to the darkest part of the shop. It
remained bright for some four or five minutes, when it slowly faded and
went out. He placed it in the thin streak of daylight, and its
luminousness was almost immediately restored.
So far, at least, Mr. Wace was able to verify the remarkable story of Mr.
Cave. He has himself repeatedly held this crystal in a ray of light (which
had to be of a less diameter than one millimetre). And in a perfect
darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did
undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would seem, however,
that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally
visible to all eyes; for Mr. Harbinger--whose name will be familiar to the
scientific reader in connection with the Pasteur Institute--was quite
unable to see any light whatever. And Mr. Wace's own capacity for its
appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of Mr. Cave's. Even
with Mr. Cave the power varied very considerably: his vision was most
vivid during states of extreme weakness and fatigue.
Now, from the outset, this light in the crystal exercised a curious
fascination upon Mr. Cave. And it says more for his loneliness of soul
than a volume of pathetic writing could do, that he told no human being of
his curious observations. He seems to have been living in such an
atmosphere of petty spite that to admit the existence of a pleasure would
have been to risk the loss of it. He found that as the dawn advanced, and
the amount of diffused light increased, the crystal became to all
appearance non-luminous. And for some time he was unable to see anything
in it, except at night-time, in dark corners of the shop.
But the use of an old velvet cloth, which he used as a background for a
collection of minerals, occurred to him, and by doubling this, and putting
it over his head and hands, he was able to get a sight of the luminous
movement within the crystal even in the day-time. He was very cautious
lest he should be thus discovered by his wife, and he practised this
occupation only in the afternoons, while she was asleep upstairs, and then
circumspectly in a hollow under the counter. And one day, turning the
crystal about in his hands, he saw something. It came and went like a
flash, but it gave him the impression that the object had for a moment
opened to him the view of a wide and spacious and strange country; and
turning it about, he did, just as the light faded, see the same vision
again.
Now it would be tedious and unnecessary to state all the phases of Mr.
Cave's discovery from this point. Suffice that the effect was this: the
crystal, being peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the
direction of the illuminating ray, gave a clear and consistent picture of
a wide and peculiar country-side. It was not dream-like at all: it
produced a definite impression of reality, and the better the light the
more real and solid it seemed. It was a moving picture: that is to say,
certain objects moved in it, but slowly in an orderly manner like real
things, and, according as the direction of the lighting and vision
changed, the picture changed also. It must, indeed, have been like looking
through an oval glass at a view, and turning the glass about to get at
different aspects.
Mr. Cave's statements, Mr. Wace assures me, were extremely circumstantial,
and entirely free from any of that emotional quality that taints
hallucinatory impressions. But it must be remembered that all the efforts
of Mr. Wace to see any similar clarity in the faint opalescence of the
crystal were wholly unsuccessful, try as he would. The difference in
intensity of the impressions received by the two men was very great, and
it is quite conceivable that what was a view to Mr. Cave was a mere
blurred nebulosity to Mr. Wace.
The view, as Mr. Cave described it, was invariably of an extensive plain,
and he seemed always to be looking at it from a considerable height, as if
from a tower or a mast. To the east and to the west the plain was bounded
at a remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which reminded him of those
he had seen in some picture; but what the picture was Mr. Wace was unable
to ascertain. These cliffs passed north and south--he could tell the
points of the compass by the stars that were visible of a night--receding
in an almost illimitable perspective and fading into the mists of the
distance before they met. He was nearer the eastern set of cliffs; on the
occasion of his first vision the sun was rising over them, and black
against the sunlight and pale against their shadow appeared a multitude of
soaring forms that Mr. Cave regarded as birds. A vast range of buildings
spread below him; he seemed to be looking down upon them; and as they
approached the blurred and refracted edge of the picture they became
indistinct. There were also trees curious in shape, and in colouring a
deep mossy green and an exquisite grey, beside a wide and shining canal.
And something great and brilliantly coloured flew across the picture. But
the first time Mr. Cave saw these pictures he saw only in flashes, his
hands shook, his head moved, the vision came and went, and grew foggy and
indistinct. And at first he had the greatest difficulty in finding the
picture again once the direction of it was lost.
His next clear vision, which came about a week after the first, the
interval having yielded nothing but tantalising glimpses and some useful
experience, showed him the view down the length of the valley. The view
was different, but he had a curious persuasion, which his subsequent
observations abundantly confirmed, that he was regarding the strange world
from exactly the same spot, although he was looking in a different
direction. The long façade of the great building, whose roof he had looked
down upon before, was now receding in perspective. He recognised the roof.
In the front of the façade was a terrace of massive proportions and
extraordinary length, and down the middle of the terrace, at certain
intervals, stood huge but very graceful masts, bearing small shiny objects
which reflected the setting sun. The import of these small objects did not
occur to Mr. Cave until some time after, as he was describing the scene to
Mr. Wace. The terrace overhung a thicket of the most luxuriant and
graceful vegetation, and beyond this was a wide grassy lawn on which
certain broad creatures, in form like beetles but enormously larger,
reposed. Beyond this again was a richly decorated causeway of pinkish
stone; and beyond that, and lined with dense red weeds, and passing up the
valley exactly parallel with the distant cliffs, was a broad and
mirror-like expanse of water. The air seemed full of squadrons of great
birds, manoeuvring in stately curves; and across the river was a multitude
of splendid buildings, richly coloured and glittering with metallic tracery
and facets, among a forest of moss-like and lichenous trees. And suddenly
something flapped repeatedly across the vision, like the fluttering of a
jewelled fan or the beating of a wing, and a face, or rather the upper
part of a face with very large eyes, came as it were close to his own and
as if on the other side of the crystal. Mr. Cave was so startled and so
impressed by the absolute reality of these eyes that he drew his head back
from the crystal to look behind it. He had become so absorbed in watching
that he was quite surprised to find himself in the cool darkness of his
little shop, with its familiar odour of methyl, mustiness, and decay. And
as he blinked about him, the glowing crystal faded and went out.
Such were the first general impressions of Mr. Cave. The story is
curiously direct and circumstantial. From the outset, when the valley
first flashed momentarily on his senses, his imagination was strangely
affected, and as he began to appreciate the details of the scene he saw,
his wonder rose to the point of a passion. He went about his business
listless and distraught, thinking only of the time when he should be able
to return to his watching. And then a few weeks after his first sight of
the valley came the two customers, the stress and excitement of their
offer, and the narrow escape of the crystal from sale, as I have already
told.
Now, while the thing was Mr. Cave's secret, it remained a mere wonder, a
thing to creep to covertly and peep at, as a child might peep upon a
forbidden garden. But Mr. Wace has, for a young scientific investigator, a
particularly lucid and consecutive habit of mind. Directly the crystal and
its story came to him, and he had satisfied himself, by seeing the
phosphorescence with his own eyes, that there really was a certain
evidence for Mr. Cave's statements, he proceeded to develop the matter
systematically. Mr. Cave was only too eager to come and feast his eyes on
this wonderland he saw, and he came every night from half-past eight until
half-past ten, and sometimes, in Mr. Wace's absence, during the day. On
Sunday afternoons, also, he came. From the outset Mr. Wace made copious
notes, and it was due to his scientific method that the relation between
the direction from which the initiating ray entered the crystal and the
orientation of the picture were proved. And, by covering the crystal in a
box perforated only with a small aperture to admit the exciting ray, and
by substituting black holland for his buff blinds, he greatly improved the
conditions of the observations; so that in a little while they were able
to survey the valley in any direction they desired.
So having cleared the way, we may give a brief account of this visionary
world within the crystal. The things were in all cases seen by Mr. Cave,
and the method of working was invariably for him to watch the crystal and
report what he saw, while Mr. Wace (who as a science student had learnt
the trick of writing in the dark) wrote a brief note of his report. When
the crystal faded, it was put into its box in the proper position and the
electric light turned on. Mr. Wace asked questions, and suggested
observations to clear up difficult points. Nothing, indeed, could have
been less visionary and more matter-of-fact.
The attention of Mr. Cave had been speedily directed to the bird-like
creatures he had seen so abundantly present in each of his earlier
visions. His first impression was soon corrected, and he considered for a
time that they might represent a diurnal species of bat. Then he thought,
grotesquely enough, that they might be cherubs. Their heads were round and
curiously human, and it was the eyes of one of them that had so startled
him on his second observation. They had broad, silvery wings, not
feathered, but glistening almost as brilliantly as new-killed fish and
with the same subtle play of colour, and these wings were not built on the
plan of bird-wing or bat, Mr. Wace learned, but supported by curved ribs
radiating from the body. (A sort of butterfly wing with curved ribs seems
best to express their appearance.) The body was small, but fitted with two
bunches of prehensile organs, like long tentacles, immediately under the
mouth. Incredible as it appeared to Mr. Wace, the persuasion at last
became irresistible that it was these creatures which owned the great
quasi-human buildings and the magnificent garden that made the broad
valley so splendid. And Mr. Cave perceived that the buildings, with other
peculiarities, had no doors, but that the great circular windows, which
opened freely, gave the creatures egress and entrance. They would alight
upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a smallness almost rod-like, and
hop into the interior. But among them was a multitude of smaller-winged
creatures, like great dragon-flies and moths and flying beetles, and
across the greensward brilliantly-coloured gigantic ground-beetles crawled
lazily to and fro. Moreover, on the causeways and terraces, large-headed
creatures similar to the greater winged flies, but wingless, were visible,
hopping busily upon their hand-like tangle of tentacles.
Allusion has already been made to the glittering objects upon masts that
stood upon the terrace of the nearer building. It dawned upon Mr. Cave,
after regarding one of these masts very fixedly on one particularly vivid
day that the glittering object there was a crystal exactly like that into
which he peered. And a still more careful scrutiny convinced him that each
one in a vista of nearly twenty carried a similar object.
Occasionally one of the large flying creatures would flutter up to one,
and folding its wings and coiling a number of its tentacles about the
mast, would regard the crystal fixedly for a space,--sometimes for as long
as fifteen minutes. And a series of observations, made at the suggestion
of Mr. Wace, convinced both watchers that, so far as this visionary world
was concerned, the crystal into which they peered actually stood at the
summit of the end-most mast on the terrace, and that on one occasion at
least one of these inhabitants of this other world had looked into Mr.
Cave's face while he was making these observations.
So much for the essential facts of this very singular story. Unless we
dismiss it all as the ingenious fabrication of Mr. Wace, we have to
believe one of two things: either that Mr. Cave's crystal was in two
worlds at once, and that while it was carried about in one, it remained
stationary in the other, which seems altogether absurd; or else that it
had some peculiar relation of sympathy with another and exactly similar
crystal in this other world, so that what was seen in the interior of the
one in this world was, under suitable conditions, visible to an observer
in the corresponding crystal in the other world; and _vice versa_. At
present, indeed, we do not know of any way in which two crystals could so
come _en rapport_, but nowadays we know enough to understand that the
thing is not altogether impossible. This view of the crystals as _en
rapport_ was the supposition that occurred to Mr. Wace, and to me at
least it seems extremely plausible...
And where was this other world? On this, also, the alert intelligence of
Mr. Wace speedily threw light. After sunset, the sky darkened rapidly--
there was a very brief twilight interval indeed--and the stars shone out.
They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same
constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and
Sirius; so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system,
and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own.
Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the midnight sky was a
darker blue even than our midwinter sky, and that the sun seemed a little
smaller. _And there were two small moons!_ "like our moon but
smaller, and quite differently marked," one of which moved so rapidly that
its motion was clearly visible as one regarded it. These moons were never
high in the sky, but vanished as they rose: that is, every time they
revolved they were eclipsed because they were so near their primary
planet. And all this answers quite completely, although Mr. Cave did not
know it, to what must be the condition of things on Mars.
Indeed, it seems an exceedingly plausible conclusion that peering into
this crystal Mr. Cave did actually see the planet Mars and its
inhabitants. And if that be the case, then the evening star that shone so
brilliantly in the sky of that distant vision was neither more nor less
than our own familiar earth.
For a time the Martians--if they were Martians--do not seem to have known
of Mr. Cave's inspection. Once or twice one would come to peer, and go
away very shortly to some other mast, as though the vision was
unsatisfactory. During this time Mr. Cave was able to watch the
proceedings of these winged people without being disturbed by their
attentions, and although his report is necessarily vague and fragmentary,
it is nevertheless very suggestive. Imagine the impression of humanity a
Martian observer would get who, after a difficult process of preparation
and with considerable fatigue to the eyes, was able to peer at London from
the steeple of St. Martin's Church for stretches, at longest, of four
minutes at a time. Mr. Cave was unable to ascertain if the winged Martians
were the same as the Martians who hopped about the causeways and terraces,
and if the latter could put on wings at will. He several times saw certain
clumsy bipeds, dimly suggestive of apes, white and partially translucent,
feeding among certain of the lichenous trees, and once some of these fled
before one of the hopping, round-headed Martians. The latter caught one in
its tentacles, and then the picture faded suddenly and left Mr. Cave most
tantalisingly in the dark. On another occasion a vast thing, that Mr. Cave
thought at first was some gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the
causeway beside the canal with extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer
Mr. Cave perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals and of
extraordinary complexity. And then, when he looked again, it had passed
out of sight.
After a time Mr. Wace aspired to attract the attention of the Martians,
and the next time that the strange eyes of one of them appeared close to
the crystal Mr. Cave cried out and sprang away, and they immediately
turned on the light and began to gesticulate in a manner suggestive of
signalling. But when at last Mr. Cave examined the crystal again the
Martian had departed.
Thus far these observations had progressed in early November, and then Mr.
Cave, feeling that the suspicions of his family about the crystal were
allayed, began to take it to and fro with him in order that, as occasion
arose in the daytime or night, he might comfort himself with what was fast
becoming the most real thing in his existence.
In December Mr. Wace's work in connection with a forthcoming examination
became heavy, the sittings were reluctantly suspended for a week, and for
ten or eleven days--he is not quite sure which--he saw nothing of Cave. He
then grew anxious to resume these investigations, and, the stress of his
seasonal labours being abated, he went down to Seven Dials. At the corner
he noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's window, and then another at a
cobbler's. Mr. Cave's shop was closed.
He rapped and the door was opened by the step-son in black. He at once
called Mrs. Cave, who was, Mr. Wace could not but observe, in cheap but
ample widow's weeds of the most imposing pattern. Without any very great
surprise Mr. Wace learnt that Cave was dead and already buried. She was in
tears, and her voice was a little thick. She had just returned from
Highgate. Her mind seemed occupied with her own prospects and the
honourable details of the obsequies, but Mr. Wace was at last able to
learn the particulars of Cave's death. He had been found dead in his shop
in the early morning, the day after his last visit to Mr. Wace, and the
crystal had been clasped in his stone-cold hands. His face was smiling,
said Mrs. Cave, and the velvet cloth from the minerals lay on the floor at
his feet. He must have been dead five or six hours when he was found.
This came as a great shock to Wace, and he began to reproach himself
bitterly for having neglected the plain symptoms of the old man's
ill-health. But his chief thought was of the crystal. He approached that
topic in a gingerly manner, because he knew Mrs. Cave's peculiarities. He
was dumfounded to learn that it was sold.
Mrs. Cave's first impulse, directly Cave's body had been taken upstairs,
had been to write to the mad clergyman who had offered five pounds for the
crystal, informing him of its recovery; but after a violent hunt, in which
her daughter joined her, they were convinced of the loss of his address.
As they were without the means required to mourn and bury Cave in the
elaborate style the dignity of an old Seven Dials inhabitant demands, they
had appealed to a friendly fellow-tradesman in Great Portland Street. He
had very kindly taken over a portion of the stock at a valuation. The
valuation was his own, and the crystal egg was included in one of the
lots. Mr. Wace, after a few suitable condolences, a little off-handedly
proffered perhaps, hurried at once to Great Portland Street. But there he
learned that the crystal egg had already been sold to a tall, dark man in
grey. And there the material facts in this curious, and to me at least
very suggestive, story come abruptly to an end. The Great Portland Street
dealer did not know who the tall dark man in grey was, nor had he observed
him with sufficient attention to describe him minutely. He did not even
know which way this person had gone after leaving the shop. For a time Mr.
Wace remained in the shop, trying the dealer's patience with hopeless
questions, venting his own exasperation. And at last, realising abruptly
that the whole thing had passed out of his hands, had vanished like a
vision of the night, he returned to his own rooms, a little astonished to
find the notes he had made still tangible and visible upon, his untidy
table.
His annoyance and disappointment were naturally very great. He made a
second call (equally ineffectual) upon the Great Portland Street dealer,
and he resorted to advertisements in such periodicals as were lively to
come into the hands of a _bric-a-brac_ collector. He also wrote
letters to _The Daily Chronicle_ and _Nature_, but both those
periodicals, suspecting a hoax, asked him to reconsider his action before
they printed, and he was advised that such a strange story, unfortunately
so bare of supporting evidence, might imperil his reputation as an
investigator. Moreover, the calls of his proper work were urgent. So that
after a month or so, save for an occasional reminder to certain dealers,
he had reluctantly to abandon the quest for the crystal egg, and from that
day to this it remains undiscovered. Occasionally, however, he tells me,
and I can quite believe him, he has bursts of zeal, in which he abandons
his more urgent occupation and resumes the search.
Whether or not it will remain lost for ever, with the material and origin
of it, are things equally speculative at the present time. If the present
purchaser is a collector, one would have expected the enquiries of Mr.
Wace to have reached him through the dealers. He has been able to discover
Mr. Cave's clergyman and "Oriental"--no other than the Rev. James Parker
and the young Prince of Bosso-Kuni in Java. I am obliged to them for
certain particulars. The object of the Prince was simply curiosity--and
extravagance. He was so eager to buy because Cave was so oddly reluctant
to sell. It is just as possible that the buyer in the second instance was
simply a casual purchaser and not a collector at all, and the crystal egg,
for all I know, may at the present moment be within a mile of me,
decorating a drawing-room or serving as a paper-weight--its remarkable
functions all unknown. Indeed, it is partly with the idea of such a
possibility that I have thrown this narrative into a form that will give
it a chance of being read by the ordinary consumer of fiction.
My own ideas in the matter are practically identical with those of Mr.
Wace. I believe the crystal on the mast in Mars and the crystal egg of Mr.
Cave's to be in some physical, but at present quite inexplicable, way
_en rapport_, and we both believe further that the terrestrial
crystal must have been--possibly at some remote date--sent hither from
that planet, in order to give the Martians a near view of our affairs.
Possibly the fellows to the crystals on the other masts are also on our
globe. No theory of hallucination suffices for the facts.
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